Reflecting on the Murder of Ahmaud Arbery (originally written in the Spring of 2020, after the initial arrests were made in the case; the three assailants were convicted of murder just last week — 11/24/21 — by a jury of 11 White jurors and 1 Black juror):
[We deceive ourselves when] “talking about the failure of past anti-racism efforts based upon the “incorrect conceptions of race as a social construct (as opposed to a power construct), of racial history as a singular march of racial progress (as opposed to a duel of antiracist and racist progress), of the race problem as rooted in ignorance and hate (as opposed to powerful self-interest).”
Ibram X. Kendi, How To Be An Anti-Racist (Random House 2017)
I write this as someone who acknowledges that in all my life’s experiences to date those experiences have been framed, in meaningful ways, by white privilege. This requires, upon stating my positions on this matter, for me to be open to push-back, criticism and claims that my very positions are framed by that privilege. I accept that. However, there is a problem and I do not see such a problem being solved by admonitions to change behavior, as those who see this as a Black problem might suggest. As for those who may see this as a White problem, no amount of sensitivity training or education or simple exposure will solve the problems this country has, problems ranging from racial heedlessness to racial negligence to racial animosity to racial violence, including murder.
Kendi’s main thesis in his excellent book, referenced above, is that racism is not a social problem that can be undone with superficial interventions. “Educational and moral suasion is not only failed strategy. It is a suicidal strategy.” [230]. He goes on to explain that racism, at its core, is a power dynamic developed to create and institutionalize hierarchies. Those hierarchies serve a purpose, namely, to institutionalize and normalize benefits that favor one group of people over another. In other words, it constructs a norm that is protected institutionally, preserved and enhanced by convention, bolstered by public acclaim and encouraged by private rewards.
His prescription for solving this problem is to change policy. “Saturate the body politic with the chemotherapy…of anti-racist policies that shrink the tumors of racial inequities, that kill undetectable cancer cells. Remove any remaining racist policies, the way surgeons remove the tumors…[leaving only] healthy cells of equity.” [237] I do not agree. This proposed remedy has been tried before. He speaks about the “anti-racist” policies from the past. Specifically, he looks to Civil Rights era legislation creating protections in the areas of employment, fair housing, health and education, to name just a few. He posits why these policies failed: they were enacted in the economic context of capitalism. [158] He has a point, but I believe he misses the mark.
Many of his proposed ideas concerning anti-racist attitudes are excellent, such as rejecting assimilation and instead celebrating differences. He urges us to consider that all racial generalizations are inherently racist. He advocates for seeing equality in differences, working collectively to reduce inequities, promoting equal opportunity, and seeing individuals as individuals. The latter point is true, to a point, but often leads to supporting those who advocate for a “color blind” society, which he rightly and explicitly rejects. “Claiming “color blindness” is a mask to hide racism.” [138, 32, 34, 10]
As the reader follows Kendi’s logic, he seems to have the answer in his grasp and then abandons it in favor of a theory that change will come about from changes in policy. What I hoped for was a prescription that demonstrated the need to change the norms we labor under in this country – norms that can only be described as white norms. These norms are perpetrated not only by those who benefit, but also by those who aspire to the benefits of being accepted into the norm. And, of course, hierarchies accomplish the establishment of a “superior” category of people, and then descending categories of human value most often related to skin color, physical features, mannerisms, customs, language, dress and more, but mostly with skin color.
We see the impact of this hierarchy play out constantly in real life events. And research has shown examples of why this is. It has been demonstrated that darker versions of a person of color affects how on onlooker views their likely criminality. It has shown wildly divergent sentencing between whites and blacks for the same or similar crimes. A black woman (Marissa Alexander) gets 20 years for firing a warning shot into the air to ward off domestic violence, while George Zimmerman, in contravention of police orders not to directly confront Trayvon Martin, is found innocent of murdering him. The fact that Alexander was subsequently released does not detract from the kind of “justice” she received initially. A black woman (Tanya McDowell) places her son in a school district to make up for deficiencies in the educational opportunities where she and her son live, deficiencies that have been part of the American experience for generations, and she gets convicted of grand larceny and sentenced to 5 years in jail. Felicity Hoffman gets 14 days in jail in the College Admissions Scandal. Tamir Rice is gunned down within seconds of a police car running up on him in a park playing with a toy gun. White supremacists demonstrate at state capitals armed with machine guns and they are lauded by the President as “good people.” Violations for failure to social distance in the current Covid pandemic disproportionately targeted at people of color in New York City.
Ahmaud Arbery is just one recent disturbing case. He apparently walks on to a construction site to look inside the nearly completed house. Some have suggested burglary. The police found no evidence that he stole anything. What if he was curious? What if he, like many of us, wanted to see if this was the kind of house he would like to own? Unfortunately, he will never have that opportunity. He was tracked down, followed, and, like the Southern militias of the pre-and post-bellum South, killed in what has been appropriately characterized, including by the Mayor of Atlanta, as a “lynching.” Most recently, we have a police officer in Minneapolis, Derek Chauvin, murdering a handcuffed man, George Floyd, by fatally kneeling on his neck until he could no longer breathe. These are all examples of how race predetermines our disposition towards treatment. The dispositions are based upon implicit and explicit acceptance of a white norm, such that simply being white permits acting in ways that are acceptable. Additional norms are at play, such as the expectation of a black man as a criminal, along with the expectation norm of the legitimacy of a white man taking justice in his own hands when it concerns a person viewed as a subordinate member of society.
The only way to eliminate racism is not through policy change, but through transformation of these norms. I think of Spinoza’s Ethics, where he states that we are all bound together and what I want for myself, I should want for others. I think of Bookchin’s rejection of assimilation and his focus on Social Ecology, which he defines as an “ecological wholeness…[not an] immutable homogeneity but rather the very opposite – the unity of diversity.” Kendi certainly subscribes to this concept but falls short of seeing it as the path to addressing oppression and mal/disparate treatment based upon race. As long as a judge sees a white defendant who stands before him and identifies with him, not as a criminal, but as a young white male in a white normative society, we will have a continuation of these kinds of injustices. As long as police officers interact with black men and immediately identify them as likely criminals, we will continue to see police shootings of black men, innocent or not. We must accept that we live in a white normative society before we can reject this norm in favor of a new norm of diversity and inclusivity. And for those whites who believe they are objective, until we acknowledge that our purported objectivity is a lie because it is framed by the collective subjectivity of white societal norms, we will not overcome racism and have any hope of living in anything close to a just society. One conclusion that can be reached by this analysis is that since a white standard is the norm that must be overcome, it follows that this is first and foremost a “white problem” that needs to be addressed first and foremost by white people.
So what would it take to overcome pervasive, even universal, white societal norms? First, we must understand what social norms are and where they come from.
H. Peyton Young, in an article published by the Oxford Department of Economics entitled, The Evolution of Social Norms (October 2014), describes social norms as “patterns of behavior that are self-enforcing at the group level: everyone wants to conform when they expect everyone else to conform. There are multiple mechanisms that sustain social norms, including a desire to coordinate, fear of being sanctioned, signaling membership in the group, or simply following the lead of others.
What purposes do social norms serve? Social norms can promote social harmony, even promote uneven cooperation when expectations are established that provide at least a sense of control in predetermining outcomes of one’s actions. But social norms can also serve to oppress others who are not perceived as being part of a certain group. In the Jim Crow south, there were implicit and explicit norms – blacks having to wait to be served until every white person was served; blacks having to step off the sidewalk to allow white persons to pass by; not looking a white person in the face when spoken to; addressing black men as “boys;” addressing young white boys as Master or Mister, drinking out of segregated water fountains, using separate bathrooms, even swearing on different bibles in courts of law, and more. Such norms also included a widespread normative acceptance of lynching. In the North during this period, social norms basically revolved around expectations that whites would be favored in all areas of housing, employment, union participation, public benefits, and more, founded on normative, implicit, beliefs in the superiority of the white race. These were combined with the expectation norm that blacks and other minorities would live in segregated areas. Currently, the legacy of these norms remains with us, although expressed in different ways.
In her book, The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander speaks to this legacy. “Hundreds of years ago, our nation put those considered less than human in shackles; less that one hundred years ago, we relegated them to the other side of town; today we put them in cages.” [2012 Edition; 141] Of course, the legacy is manifested in other ways. Educational, housing, and job opportunity disparities, wealth inequality, and safety disparities all demonstrate the lingering impacts of discrimination.
The social norms of today that keep us from acting as one society with common interests are deeply ingrained, viscerally internalized, and will not be undone except through extraordinary means. As stated by Peggy McIntosh in her article White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (http://lovingjustwise.com/white_privelege.htm), “My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow “them” to be more like “us.”” In further looking at how to overcome “white norms,” it would be helpful to define exactly what we mean by “white norms.” This is a task much more difficult that one would think and suggestive that many of what could be described as white norms are either aspirational, derived or fabricated norms, which could go a long way, if true, in explaining why being white, for many, is a fragile state, needing constant reinforcement and fervent defense.
I struggled to come up with what may be seen as white norms. Some of the more familiar norms would, I believe, include the following, which I list with qualifications:
- Intact families – this is more aspirational and reflective of a 1950s ideal portrayed in sitcoms and like Ossie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver and others. About 70% of white families are intact, but the trend has been sloping downward since the 1950s.
- Children born in wedlock – Again, this is a supposed norm that is anachronistic at best. According to Eduardo Porter in his book, American Poison, “the share of white babies born out of wedlock today is greater than that of black babies when Moynihan wrote his famous report,” back in 1967 where he used research showing that welfare rolls increased even when black unemployment decreased. [146]
- Christian Values – perhaps, but for too many people, their religion represents a sporadic practice without real-world consequences or as a weekly ritual without real world applicability.
- Holiday Celebrations – mostly derived from our European roots, with others (like Columbus Day) under constant assault when the narrative goes from seeing erstwhile explorers as murderers and greedy, genocidal fiends.
- Rugged Individualism – This can be seen as aspirational as well. Examine truck ads (and old time cigarette commercials) where there are men on horseback, rounding up cattle, throwing bales of hay in the back of pickups and such. This norm is beyond aspirational and basically fabricated. About 5% of the workforce is engaged in livestock ranching/farming of all kinds.
- Race Neutral/Color Blindness – This norm is convenient and allows us to believe we are not racist and have nothing to do with racism, as in “I see people as people. I do not see color.” Kendi’s opinion of that is stated upfront. Michelle Alexander, in The New Jim Crow, sees color blindness as a refusal to accept the imbalance of criminal justice when it comes to people of color. In other words, incarceration rates have nothing to do with race. The racist position would be that more blacks are criminals because they are more inclined towards criminality. Even research has shown that teaching color-blind exercises in school has perverse effects. In tests done on groups of children where they determined how certain actions should be interpreted (like tripping), “Encouraging children to remain blind to race dampened their detection of discrimination…Color blindness promoted exactly the opposite of what was intended: racial inequality. It left minority children to fend for themselves in an environment where the harms they endured could not be seen” [Jennifer L. Eberhardt, Biased, Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do, Page 218]
- Purported Objectivity – This is an example of a derived norm, one derived by white people living in a white normative environment. Thinking each of us can be objective, when that objectivity is based on collectively subjective norms makes the purported objectivity subjective. Because the norm is derived from a fabricated construct (whiteness), the objectivity norm is fabricated as well.
- Work Ethic/Hard Work = Success – This is fabricated norm, created in order to deny that others confront barriers that white people never or seldom have to deal with.
- Progress as More of Everything – Hyper-capitalism relies on exploitation and hyper-consumerism. The capitalistic need for constant growth has been adopted into the white norm as progress relative to seeing degrees of consumption as determinative of varying degrees of success. This norm is derived from our economic system.
- Binary Social Beliefs/It is “either/or” with no nuance – Any divergence from the norm is not tolerated. Like my father continually told me in my youth – either I believe in our way of life or I must be a communist.
- Defensiveness/Distrust of “Others/” Fear of Divergence – Derived from the tenuous nature of what makes up “white norms.”
Assuming the above makes some sense, it begs the question of whether there is an inherent understanding of the fragility of “whiteness” as a normative guide and that explains why there is so much defensiveness and social negligence when it comes to issues of race. When we look at the examples of injustice, even the few mentioned above, it would appear that in reality a white norm is really about whiteness itself. In other words a white norm as such is self-defining. “I am white and so (except in the most egregious of circumstances), eo ipso, I therefore am right.”
What Now? How is this social disease of “whiteness” to be eradicated and replaced by a norm of inclusivity in diversity? I am in no way an expert, even a trained amateur, on this topic. However, there seems to be a consensus that for the most part social norms cannot be effectively fabricated. But if this is the case, how can we work to replace one norm for another?
The only way it is possible is through creating the circumstances that have the greatest impact on social norms – context, interaction and expectations. In the current context of the United States in the Trump/Covid era, where Trump has succeeded in turning a crisis into a divisive wellspring of us versus them – freedom fighters vs. leftist blue-state government oppressors – the first task is to defeat Trump at the polls and deliver a Democratic majority to the Senate. This will prevent the division from getting worse. However, anticipating Biden as the Democratic candidate, his presidency will continue to rely on neo-liberalism. This country’s ills will not be solved as we continue our “race to the bottom,” while inequality continues to increase and more Americans continue to suffer with a lack of life’s basic necessities. However, such a political change is necessary if we are ever to provide for the context and space required for work towards a unified diversity.
The next priority is to tamp down on the divisive rhetoric. I cannot go a day on social media without seeing references to liberals as “snowflakes” or reading conspiracy theories about how liberals are using this crisis to undermine our Bill of Rights, particularly with regard to religious freedom, or seeing memes with assholes being super-imposed on the faces of Democratic elected officials, most notably Nancy Pelosi. On the other side of the spectrum, with just as much frequency, there is no shortage of characterizations of Trump supporters being referred to as idiots, along with every other synonym with equal meaning. I believe those on the left need to take the first attempt to undue this culture of contempt (as described by Arthur C. Brooks in his book by the same title). There is a rational basis for why people are angry and see themselves and their families losing the standard of living, a standard they have come to expect. Opening up in this way may very well allow for some discussion about common issues that can form the basis for cooperation, maybe even gain a recognition and rejection of long-lasting sentiments that seem to suggest that Eduardo Porter was right in what he described as America’s “exceptional contradiction: unwilling to share the bounty of state with people of other races and creeds…real Americans – the white ones – have prevented the erection of a welfare state at all.” [American Poison…89] Of course, opening up can occur as well from the other side. I find hope in the September 2017 Trump rally where BLM organizers were marching alongside Trump supporters, with much antagonism on each side, when Hank Newsome, NY BLM President, was invited onstage, nearly kicked off, but then the organizer of the Trump rally handed him the microphone and respectfully defended Newsome’s right to be heard. His talk was received with mixed reaction by the Trump supporters. But even mixed reactions, when it comes to Trump supporters, should provide hope for those on the left and the right accustomed only to thinking in extreme binary terms. Such diminution of contemptuousness can open up minds and allow all to make adjustments to our individual and group expectations.
Everything I have read on this topic suggests that, ultimately, meaningful interaction is a necessary precondition for social harmony. Porter in his book, referenced above, places some faith in younger generations whose members act in more open and tolerant ways. I hope his optimism is justified. In the meantime, I am convinced that our focus must be on interaction within community settings. As espoused by Johann Gottfried Von Herder, people can only fully realize themselves when they are part of a group. Through this process of individuation, we are instilled with expectations that are held internally, framed by our circumstances and reinforced by our experiences. These expectations are important, allowing us to cope with whatever life we are able to live and providing with the foundational security for expanded interaction. Once each of us can find comfort in who we are within a supportive, inter-dependent and cooperative context, with relations that are active, deep and ongoing as opposed to passive, superficial and sporadic, we will be in a position to be inclusive and open to norms that thrive on unity as opposed to division both within and without these communities.
But how do we ensure that communities do not become closed, exclusive and chauvinistic? This will only happen if and when local communities have real economic and political capacity that is also dependent, in substantial ways, on the health and vitality of all communities. What will be the motivating factor in change from a white norm to a norm of unity in diversity? In a phrase, just like the accepted norm of wearing seat belts or against smoking in public, self-interest is the ultimate determining factor. And how is self-interest generated? Self-interest will develop a new norm of diverse unity through a combination of mandates, exposure, democratic governance at accessible levels, education and real opportunities for meaningful economic participation at the local level.