Systemic Racism

Everywhere we turn, it seems, we're confronted with the allegation that our society is shot through with "systemic racism," and we hear it so often many of us simply assume it must be true that this vague but pernicious evil corrupts every institution of our culture. We might pause amidst our self-deprecation, however, and ask ourselves exactly what it is America is being accused of. What exactly is "systemic racism"?

Harvard Government professor Harvey Mansfield has written an editorial for the Wall Street Journal in which he dissects the idea and finds it to be pretty much vacuous. Here are some excerpts from his column:

Systemic racism, also known as institutional or structural racism, is a new phrase for a new situation. We live in a society where racism is not, and cannot be, openly professed. To do so not only is frowned upon but will get you into serious trouble, if not yet jail, in America.

Yet even though this is impossible to miss and known to all, “systemic racism” supposedly persists. The phrase describes a society that is so little racist that no one can respectably advocate racism, yet so much racist that every part of it is soaked with racism. We live with the paradox of a racist society without racists.

Systemic racism is said to be a result of structuring our institutions to privilege whites and consequently to be, perhaps unconsciously, biased against blacks. Mansfield notes that, "It is strange to describe an unconscious effect as racism, for an ism is an opinion, a doctrine, not a mere condition. A doctrine has adherents who articulate it; it cannot be held unconsciously as can a prejudice."

Nor is criticism of blacks ipso facto racist as is often alleged by those on the left:

Racist doctrine says that blacks are a naturally and inherently inferior race. To criticize the character or behavior of blacks, individually or even on average, is not racism. Criticism implies that blacks are not living up to their potential, hence that they are capable of behaving well. Criticism implies an essential equality between critics and whomever they criticize. This is contrary to racism.

He also puts his finger on another paradox:

The idea of systemic racism proclaims that racism is unjust but exists nonetheless despite ourselves. How could this happen? It is the bad result of the behavior we regard as good. The good behavior of conscientiously striving to better oneself is joined to the bad behavior of always preferring oneself.

Thus any privilege one earns and deserves is tied to undeserved privilege: A successful life if you are white comes out as white supremacy. Despite your verbal rejection of that result, the system behind your intentions brings it about.

The notion of systemic racism is designed to make you feel guilty about this if you are white. But why should you? The system did it, not you. You can’t change the system; that’s what “systemic” means....

The movement against systemic racism must fail. How could it succeed where Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. couldn’t? Systemic racism exists despite our intentions; so it can’t be cured by changing our intentions — as by protesting.

In other words, those who accuse white culture of systemic racism tell us there's nothing we can do about it no matter how much we may want to. If that's so, however, and if whites benefit from these unjust structures there's no reason to feel guilty about it since things couldn't have been otherwise.

Moreover, those who declare that society is systemically racist are themselves operating under an assumption that can only be described as itself racist:

Systemic racism ...tells blacks that they are quite OK, and that it is entirely up to whites to change their thinking and their behavior. This means that blacks must allow whites to hold their future for them.

But is not the claim that black well-being depends on white behavior an implicit claim that blacks are helpless unless whites take care of them? It might also be said that if the structures of society are unavoidably and inveterately racially repressive and nothing can be done to change them then the implication is that they must be torn down or else blacks will never be able to thrive in America. The foolishness of the conclusion demonstrates the foolishness of the premise:

Systemic racism ignores the agency of black citizens, leaving them nothing to do except to protest in the streets or cheer from the sidelines. Meanwhile whites are told by the same idea that all their past efforts against white supremacy have been in vain. Nothing they have done has worked or could have worked.

All along our history, the Constitution and the Rights of Man we thought we practiced and defended were nothing but the power of white men. All the heroes of both races and their sacrifices were defeated by systemic racism and went for naught. What we might do now differently from what we have done in the past is left totally unclear. More affirmative action and more subsidies—what can they do that will now help instead of hurt? Call them “reparations”—will that do any good?

What is the evidence that our institutions are arrantly racist? We're often told that the evidence is the unequal representation of races in various fields of endeavor, but this racial inequity, if it exists, can hardly be evidence that racism is afoot. If it is then the most racist institutions in our country are professional sports leagues, which, except for hockey, are dominated by blacks.

As one letter writer to the Journal asks, "How is it possible for a country stricken with pervasive racism to have, over the years, elected black mayors and appointed black police chiefs? How can it be that these pervasive racists also elected a black president twice?"

Actually, there is institutional racism in this country, but it's not the sort that the progressive left thinks it is. Indeed, the institutional racism in this country is in institutions dominated by the left. Our universities systematically deny highly qualified Asians admission because of their race, blacks are often given preference in hiring and college admissions because of their race and the Democratic party refuses to allow black parents to send their children to the schools of their choice where they'd have a much better chance of getting an education that would help them succeed as adults.

Each of those is an example of racism in this country that progressives are perfectly happy with.