Blum states that racism falls into three types or categories:
- Personal racism: Racist acts, beliefs and/or attitudes on the part of individual persons.
- Social racism: Racist beliefs, attitudes and/or stereotypes widely shared within a given population and expressed in social modes such as religion, popular entertainment, advertisements and other media.
- Institutional racism: Racial inferiorizing or antipathy perpetrated by specific social institutions such as schools, corporations, hospitals, banks or the criminal justice system.
There are, however, at least two problems with this assertion:
First, the evidence that's cited in support of the claim that our institutions are systemically racist usually consists in perceived disparities in how people of different races are treated, but disparities are a very problematic litmus test for detecting racism since they can result from a host of causes that have nothing to do with racism.
To illustrate why disparity is not in itself a good indicator of institutional racism let me cite a couple of examples of how disparities might be thought to show individual racism:
A high school English teacher may find in grading essays that black students are disproportionately less likely to use standard grammar in their writing.
If she penalizes their papers for this short-coming and black students are consequently not well-represented among the better achieving students in the class, is the teacher's act racist? Should she not hold all her students to the same standard? If she allows black students leeway on their use of substandard English that she would not grant to white students, would not that be racist?
Or, suppose it's found that a school punishes black students for misbehavior more severely than it does white students who commit similar offenses. The disparity in treatment seems to be prima facie evidence of racism, but there are many factors that go into the school's disciplinary decisions beyond just the immediate offense.
When students are confronted by school authorities for their misdeeds some lie, some yell obscenities and threats at the teacher or administrator, some violently resist being removed from the classroom.
The punishment the school administers often takes into account all of these exacerbating factors as well as such matters as the student's prior record of conduct. To ignore these factors while claiming that the disparity in discipline between whites and blacks who committed the same basic offense reveals racism on the part of the school authorities is simplistic, misleading and unhelpful.
Actual genuine disparate treatment on the basis of race is, in any case, illegal. A landlord who seeks ways to avoid renting to blacks, for instance, is culpable before the law and can be prosecuted.
The second problem with the notion of systemic, institutional racism is that institutions can't in themselves be racist, only people can. There's no such thing as "racism without racists." If racism does pervade some institution like banks, realty agencies or churches, it's because the individuals who developed the policies and practices of the institution and who currently carry them out were and are themselves racist.
In other words, institutional or "systemic" racism is merely the outward manifestation of the individual racism of the people employed by the institution.
To seek to perpetuate the notion of a racist America, despite finding so few individual racists, by locating the evil in the structures of society is to make a category mistake. It is to impute to an impersonal entity, an institution, a moral sin of which only persons can be guilty.
Here's another point to consider about the use of the word racism:
People tend to think that anyone who does or says something racially insensitive is a racist. This is an example of what Blum calls "conceptual inflation." Someone who flies the Confederate flag may have no racist motives but be unaware of the significance the flag has for others.
A person is no more a racist because something they said or did was born of ignorance or insensitivity than a person is cruel because they said something hurtful without realizing that it was hurtful.
When considering whether to label something as racist we should bear in mind that motive matters. If there's no intent on the part of one person to inferiorize or express antipathy toward another on the basis of the other's race then it's wrong to call that person a racist, even if their words or deeds were thoughtless or inconsiderate. Being racially insensitive or unaware is not the same thing as being racist.
There's much more in Blum's book that's of interest on this topic, but I want to close with a question posed by the authors of the textbook in which Blum's extract appears. Blum repeatedly asserts that racism is a moral evil worthy of our revulsion and opprobrium, so here's the question the authors of the text ask us to ponder: "How would you explain to someone from Mars why racism is wrong?"
Is racism wrong because it harms people? What about racist beliefs a person holds upon which she never acts and thus never result in harm? Are they not still wrong nonetheless? Why?
And why is it wrong to harm someone anyway? Why was it wrong for the Spaniards to torture and slaughter indigenous people in Central America in the 16th century or for plantation owners in the West indies to work African slaves in the hot sun until they dropped dead from exhaustion and disease? If they had the power to do these things, if they were never called to account for doing them, if they died content in their old age after decades of having caused others to suffer, what makes their acts wrong?
The theist who believes we are all made in the image of a God who loves us and commands us to love and respect each other and who will ultimately hold us accountable for how we treat others has an answer to these questions.
The secular man who believes there is no God or that God is irrelevant has no persuasive answer. For him the only answer to the question "why is racism wrong?" is that, well, it just is, and that answer doesn't, or shouldn't, convince any thinking person.
