I encourage everyone to take a careful look at this long CNN article on “The New Threat: ‘Racism Without Racists’” by John Blake. It is a revealing, even wonderful, example of unwittingly exemplifying what it purports to expose — rampant, unrecognized bias.
“Science has bad news,” it pontificates, for those who believe in colorblindness, “for anyone who claims to not see race: They’re deluding themselves, say several bias experts. A body of scientific research over the past 50 years shows that people notice not only race but gender, wealth, even weight.”
The cited experts, however, are not people most would recognize as scientists but sociologists such as the most-quoted (seven times) Eduardo Bonilla-Silva of Duke whom many will recall from his prominent role in Duke’s “Gang of 88” during the lacrosse scandal there. A few Bonilla bon mots from KC Johnson’s instructive profile of him:
In his most recent book, his preface described the United States as “gringoland.” In a course syllabus used at his previous institution, Texas A&M, he wrote, “We conclude the class with a discussion of some of the solutions that have been proposed to deal with the racial dilemmas plaguing the United States of Amerikkka (I will remove the three Ks from this word when the USA removes racial oppression from this country!).” Without explanation, he dropped two of the “Ks” in a forthcoming essay entitled, “Latinos in the Midst: Where Will Latinos Fit in the Emerging Latin America-Like Racial Order in Amerika….”
Racism without Racists opens with the following claim: “In this country, racial ‘others’ of dark complexion are always viewed as incapable of doing much; we are regarded and treated as secondary actors only good for doing beds in hotels or working in fast-food restaurants….”
Bonilla-Silva denies that he seeks “to demonize whites.” After all, he noted, “Historically, many good people supported slavery and Jim Crow”—just like the “good people” in the current environment who “oppose (or have some reservations about) affirmative action.”
True to form, Bonilla-Silva perfectly embodies and epitomizes the bias that unwittingly pervades CNN’s article. Consider his comment:
“The main problem nowadays is not the folks with the hoods, but the folks dressed in suits,” says Bonilla-Silva.
“The more we assume that the problem of racism is limited to the Klan, the birthers, the tea party or to the Republican Party, the less we understand that racial domination is a collective process and we are all in this game.”
Note well that regal, condescending we. The we that sees the Klan, the birthers, the tea party, and the Republicans as all of a piece is the same we that sees no difference between support for slavery and Jim Crow and opposition to (or at least “some reservations” about) affirmative action since “good people” do both. Or, according to Bonilla-Silva, another distinction without a difference: “For example, instead of saying as they used to say during the Jim Crow era that they do not want us as neighbors, they say things nowadays such as ‘I am concerned about crime, property values and schools.'”
Bonilla-Silva, of course, is not some isolated ideologue, and in fact CNN quoted other “bias experts” to back him up. Crystal Moten, a history professor at Dickinson College, asserts that “violence against people of color is the national status quo.” Doreen E. Loury, director of the Pan African Studies program at Arcadia University, near Philadelphia, says racism “permeates every facet of our societal pores.” Charles Gallagher, a sociologist at La Salle University in Philadelphia, says “A white police officer in Ferguson may be married to a black woman and have black and Latino friends, but that doesn’t mean the officer is above racial profiling,” and hence a racist.
John Blake, the author of the CNN article, fears that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Roberts may be about to put an end to “disparate impact” discrimination claims. “Disparate impact,” Blake explains to those who may not be familiar with the concept, “is built on the belief that most people aren’t stupid enough to openly announce they’re racists but instead cloak their racism in seemingly race-neutral language.” Contemporary post-Jim Crow racists are sly and devious, but not stupid.
Blake quotes Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine:
Roberts has equated affirmative action programs with Jim Crow laws, says Erwin Chemerinsky, author of “The Case Against the Supreme Court.”
“Chief Justice Roberts has expressly said that the Constitution and the government should be colorblind,” Chemerinsky says. “He sees no difference between government action that discriminates against minorities and one that benefits minorities.”
I of course can’t speak for Chief Justice Roberts, but I seriously doubt that it’s accurate to say that he “sees no difference between government action that discriminates against minorities and one that benefits minorities.” I, for example, agree with Roberts’s opinions on race, but I can see all sorts of differences between programs that discriminate against and for minorities. I’ve never argued, for example, that affirmative action is “as bad” as Jim Crow. And if I can see those differences, certainly Chief Justice Roberts can see them as well. But one difference I cannot see — and I believe and hope Chief Justice Roberts cannot see — is that some discrimination on the basis of race should be legal. Laws and executive orders that were both intended and written to require that all Americans should be treated “without regard” to race should not tolerate some Americans being given benefits and others burdens because of their race.
