Racism punching down?
When racism needs a different word
The issue of whether black people can be racist certainly gets people going, as does the idea that, as I phrased it, racism punches down, not up.
And surely the formulation is oversimplified. Equally oversimplified, however, is the idea that prejudice against a race is evil no matter who from and no matter what the circumstances.
Some of the issue is time period. For example, my mother wasn’t crazy about white people. She was trained in psychology and social work and had a doctorate, with the enlightened worldview one would expect of someone with those credentials. However, she grew up in the deep South in the 1940s and 1950s and as a result, on a visceral level she never truly trusted white people and had tart words about them here and there.
I think most readily see that this was perfectly understandable given what she had seen of white people in her time and place. I also think few would be seriously inclined to designate her “a racist.” People who spent their formative years under Jim Crow can be forgiven for being at least to some degree “racist.”
There is also the issue of modern-day life experience. Say a black boy grows up in a neighborhood where practically his only live interactions with whites are with cops, often surly and maybe sometimes violent. That boy often grows up to be someone who doesn’t like white people much. I can imagine someone designating him as harboring the flaw of “racism,” but I find that a little prim. I suspect most do as well. He, like my mother, doesn’t like white people because during his formative years they haven’t liked him.
Where this gets harder is black people in our times who don’t like white people despite not having been injured by them.
What about black teens who make a point of beating up white ones, and not in retaliation against white teens doing it to them? It happens. White kids can get beat up by black kids for being white, as so very many testimonials questioning my last post attest to. And this isn’t new – Norman Podhoretz recounts it from his childhood. Nor is it restricted to boys, as sometimes girls do it.
Or what about black adults who, when whites aren’t around, are given to saying that they just “don’t like white people”? I imagine most black people know a person or two like this, for whom all white women are potential Karens and all white men are potential Darren Wilsons. Many white people know or work with black people with sentiments of this kind and don’t know it.
The term racism is more plausible for this type and the teenagers. It is a contempt that the white recipient has reason to think they don’t deserve. More to the point, it will justifiably seem to be splitting hairs to say that the black kids beating up a white kid are punching “up,” and the black person who asserts that they don’t like white people often leads a life of affluence.
However, I still see this “racism” as different from white racism and yes, I find it lower on the reprehensibility scale.
To be sure, this kind of black racism is founded in an exaggerated sense of whites’ menace, to be sure. Its ultimate attraction is in giving a black person a sense of belonging in a community – it’s always easier to nurture a sense of community against an enemy. I have always wished people like this would find other ways of having a sense of belonging, especially since there’s just a certain plain whackness about lumping all whites together as some forbidding unitary category. It’s parochial, let’s face it.
But this kind of racism is still, in essence, reactive. Maybe it isn’t punching up so much as out. You may not agree with the premise of this prejudice, but that alone does not justify crudely classifying it as the same failing as a white person not liking black people just “because.” To be a member of the Other, and subordinate, group and to not like the majority in power doesn’t deserve the same judgment as the “racism” of whites who judged blacks inferior, and whose descendants saw blacks hobbled by the results of this judgment and deemed them inferior yet again.
By the way – I limit this point to racist sentiment. Some might think the key point here is that white racism is “worse” because of its systemic impact. But this is a different observation and ultimately less interesting, in being so obvious.
The more challenging question is whether, to put it in oversimplified and antiquated terms – which can be useful sometimes – George Jefferson’s racism was the same thing as Archie Bunker’s.
To the extent that most would say no, how about if George Jefferson now has a college-educated grandson who quietly “just doesn’t like white people.” Is that racism subject to the same judgment as the white frat boy this Jefferson scion went to college with, who after a few too many, admits to his friends that he could do without the (insert the relevant word)s?
To me, no. I find it a little simplistic to suppose so. I can imagine an alternate universe, an alternate language, where the word applied to the black person’s sentiment here would be different from the one applied to the white one’s. This would make sense to me.
P.S. Many will ask how this applies to black racism when directed at races other than whites. Here, I consider black people to get no pass whatsoever. If we go out and recapitulate what has defined our very history in such tragic ways, there is no “understanding” necessary. For example, reports of black kids bullying and beating up Asian ones for being Asian demonstrate black people’s sheer humanity – but via one of the more nauseating strains of humanity indeed.
"The issue of whether black people can be racist certainly gets people going, as does the idea that, as I phrased it, racism punches down, not up."
You sure get me going John! Bless your heart!
"And surely the formulation is oversimplified. "
Not just oversimplified John. It is invalid. It is so invalid, I can create a classic syllogism using your own ideas to prove it wrong. Who doesn't like syllogisms?
1. Black kids bullying and beating up asian kids for being asian is racism
2. Asian kids are not "down" from black kids
3. Therefore racism is not "about who is up versus down."
Okay its not as clean as Socrates is mortal, but close enough. No rational person can recite the mantra "Racism punches down." Eventually, if the person is not a racist themselves, their minds and hearts will crash into obvious examples where it is wildly false. Like you have.
"Equally oversimplified, however, is the idea that prejudice against a race is evil no matter who from and no matter what the circumstances."
I agree with this, but only because I do not think it is evil to have prejudice against a race. Prejudice is something we all form based on our experiences and what we are told by other people; it is a necessary function of our limited rational faculties; a shortcut our minds must use to make time delimited judgements and actions about new events with limited data. Among many things, it functions to protect us against dangers and guides us toward pleasures. While racial prejudice gets the most focus in politics, and often transmutates into racism which then can even foment into genocide, we are guided through life by a myriad of boring prejudices that no one cares about.
Take for example, the common prejudice that fruit is sweet. If we were given 4 categories of food to choose from and were asked to select the food we think is sweet, but we had never seen any of the foods before: all we were told was one was a vegetable, one was a fruit, one was meat, and one was a grain, I imagine most people would bet on the fruit. This is because we have formed a prejudice around fruit--particularly fruit is sweet. But of course, not all fruit is sweet; some fruit is bitter, some fruit is sour, but for many of us, most of the fruit we have eaten is sweet. Maybe we have even learned that most fruit is sweet. Maybe we are fruit connoisseurs and know that 74.6% of known fruit is sweet. Given we do not know anything else about the foods besides the categories of food that we are told, it is completely rational to select the fruit. Our "bias" toward the fruit is *rational* bias, and it allows us to bet on what will most likely be sweet.
Now, moving on to race. What if I am asked to create a basketball team and if my team wins, 10 million dollars can be given to a charity of my choice. I am given a list of ids representing different people, and along each person their race ("black", "white", "asian", "latino"), their height, and their weight. I can choose 10 people for my team. What will my algorithm be for choosing my players? Will I, not wanting to be racist, heightist, or weightist, randomly choose my players and just hope for the best? Hell no. Id first filter for all people who had a BMI between 22 and 30. Among that group, I would then filter for people who were taller than 6ft, and I would then filter for people who were *black*. And then among them, Id pick a random set of 10 people. This is all prejudice. I'm selecting these people without knowing anything individually about their basketball skills. I am basing my judgement on their basketball skill on superficial characteristics that I happen to think statistically will likely find me good basketball players; this is based on my admittedly quite limited knowledge about the likelihood that black people, who are over 6ft and within a particular BMI are more likely to have trained in basketball than any other combination. Not only is this not evil, to have a racial prejudice -- it would be virtuous, particularly if my prejudice was rationally valid sufficiently for me to win: I could then give to a charity of my choice a lot of money; how about the Innocence Project?
Your mother learned her prejudices about the character of white people as I did the basketball skills of black people; we all learn our prejudices in similar ways. But what do we do with our prejudices? What do I do when I come across data that contradicts my prejudices? Do I hold onto them? Do I adjust them? And what do I do with individuals that do not fit my prejudices? Do I treat them and think of them the same as I would people who do fit my prejudices? If I were told that one of the short asians in my list won the national three point shooting tournament would that affect my judgement of who I selected? What if I knew the precise id of that asian?
Prejudice becomes bigotry, and racial prejudice becomes racism when we do not adjust our prejudices with new data -- and we do not seek to learn new data to enhance the accuracy of our prejudices. Our prejudices become fixed, immovable, stubborn. Your mother would become a racist if she stopped adjusting her racial prejudices and did not seek to challenge them. The black boy who grows up around mean white cops, and has only that experience and the experience of his family reassuring him the wickedness of white people, becomes a racist when he meets white children that are not mean and he does not adjust his prejudice toward white people and treats them like he would like to treat the mean cops but doesn't have the *power* to.
The black adults become racists when they no longer see white people as individuals that are not mere avatars of their prejudices, and no matter what white people say or do, as individuals, they "dont like them." They become racists when they refuse to investigate or learn about things that could alter their perception of the white people they do not like. They become racist when they hold white people today responsible for what unrelated white people did in the past; they are invoking past experiences, prejudices of the past, and placing the blame on people today that do not fit the what those prejudices are based on; and they are not reforming them.
"It is a contempt that the white recipient has reason to think they don’t deserve."
They don't just have reason to think they don't deserve it. They *don't.* -- well assuming whatever racist notions they hold toward white people doesn't apply to the white recipient.
The same logic applies to any person, regardless of race. A white racist originally learns his prejudices from his experiences and from those around him, or from the often stupid books he reads. He doesnt dislike black people "just because." But if a white person fails to examine his prejudices and revaluate them based on new data and new arguments, his racial prejudices have become racism.
That all being said -- not all racist sentiment is equally bad. For someone to have a fixed prejudice (racism) that their race is superior to another race is not as bad as someone who has a fixed prejudice that a particular race should be exterminated. Thus, to call someone a racist, without qualifying the sort of racist they are, certainly can be... improper or misleading. The racism of a Korean grandmother who only wants her granddaughter to marry other Koreans is nowhere near as bad as the neo nazi who thinks blacks and jews should be exterminated. The black people who think black men should only date black women are not as bad as the white person who thinks black people should never be in a position of authority. The sin of racism is a spectrum of immorality, and one side of the spectrum, only a light admonition might be justified, on the other side of the spectrum the FBI should keep an eye on them. But the race of the individual that is holding that fixed prejudice is irrelevant. It is a sin of the will. Of the individual. Of the soul. And that requires repentance, not pardon. To pardon such sins will only contribute to further crystallization and contribute to the potential growth of other bigotries. Very few bigots have just one fixed prejudice.
Would more words perhaps be helpful to describe the different kinds of racism that exists? Possibly, but we don't need to pardon anyone of any of the kinds of racism that they exhibit. It always represents a vice regarding how we reflect upon and modify our racial prejudice. If a friend of mine perceived a bigotry forming in my soul, I'd hope he loved me enough to save me from the shame of it developing beyond what it already was and do his honest best to reveal it to me.
I must confess though, I do think I may have a fixed prejudice toward cats.
Thank you for reading my essay.
"Say a black boy grows up in a neighborhood where practically his only live interactions with whites are with cops, often surly and maybe sometimes violent."
I would be curious about the inverse: what about the white boy who grows up in a neighborhood where practically his only live interactions with blacks are with criminals, often destructive and sometimes violent? A distrust of black people would seem to be a perfectly rational response to such a situation. I assume that part of your argument would be that cops are acting as agents of state power, but I don't think that makes as much difference to the 'gut check' fairness that I think a lot of people operate off of, and also ignores that violence is itself an expression of power, albeit a different kind.
I would say my aversion to the punch up/punch down distinction is this: it is, almost without fail, used to excuse bad behavior. One issue is, I think, that social media has made public what used to be private conversations, and while I have sympathy for people expressing unsavory frustrations in private, expressing those frustrations publicly is a problem.
A second issue is the very difficult questions about what is actually punching up or down. There appear to be a large cohort of exceedingly privileged black, Indian, Asian, etc people who are delightedly taking swipes at poor whites dying of opoid abuse, but it was "okay", because it was "punching up", an idea that's farcical on its face. This is kind of the whole problem with identarianism: every person inherits the slights and traumas of every other person who even slightly resembles them, and so you get third-generation Yale graduates acting as if they've been victimized by racism's legacy as much as people who grew up in projects.
And that leads to the third problem...when do we know when the switch is flipped? Because if "punching up" is okay, then surely there is a point when black people are no longer punching up in being racist towards white people, and their racism becomes unacceptable. What is that switch?