“Systemic Racism” Theory is the New Political Tribalism – The Property Chronicle
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“Systemic Racism” Theory is the New Political Tribalism

The Analyst

Blurred photograph of crowds walking through London

Have you stopped beating your wife? Yes or No? This is the classic question that condemns you as a wife beater, regardless of your answer. Now, welcome to the new world of “systemic racism.” Are you still benefiting from your “white privilege” oppression of others? Yes or No. Either reply unmasks you as a past or present racist. You are now branded with the letter “R” forever more. 

Systemic racism has become the catchphrase under which all the evils of the world are now collected. It does not matter that slavery in America ended over 150 years ago. Nor that the post-Civil War segregation laws of the South were removed from the statute books well over half a century ago. Nor that social, educational and employment opportunities for many members of the black community in America have never been greater. Racism, it is asserted, continues to rule. 

History Leaves Its Mark on Society

Of course, this does not mean that the legacies of history do not leave their trace on people and societies, sometimes long after a series of events or institutional arrangements of the past. The failure of the Turkish siege of the Habsburg capital of Vienna in 1683 halted the extension of Islam deeper into the center of Europe. But a continuing presence of Turkish control over large parts of the Balkans in southeastern Europe until the eve of the First World War left a legacy of differences among peoples in the region that helped ignite the civil wars of the 1990s following the political disintegration of Yugoslavia. 

From the late 12th century to 1922, Ireland was ruled as a part of Great Britain, with resulting resentments, angers, and sometimes rebellions on the part of the Irish against British rule, and contempt, arrogance, and racial prejudices against the Irish by many in England. This was compounded by the division between a majority of Catholics and a minority of Protestants, the latter especially clustered in the northern part of Ireland and loyal to the British crown. Yet, in spite of Irish independence in the larger southern portion of the island nearly a century ago, “the troubles” in Northern Ireland have persisted over the last 100 years, sometimes in extremely violent and deadly forms, and all more than 800 years after the Norman invasion of Ireland. 

The Japanese Empire ruled over Korea for half a century from 1895 to 1945, with the Koreans contemptuously and sometimes brutally treated by their Japanese masters. Over that half century Korean immigrants came to Japan, and today their descendants number over 700,000. Yet, in spite of all the generations separating the original arrival of those Koreans and their descendants today, many in Japanese society still do not view or treat them as “really” Japanese because of their ethnic classification.  

It should not be surprising, therefore, if after almost 250 years of slavery in colonial and then independent America up to the Civil War, and then nearly a century more of Jim Crow in the Southern states and various discriminatory attitudes and actions in the North, that racist biases and tacit behaviors have persisted among some people as a legacy of that long period of United States history. History leaves its residues, whether we always fully realize it or care about it. 

America’s Progress Out of a Racist Past

But the present is not a carbon copy of the past, since history is made by human actions, and people’s attitudes, beliefs and values have and do change over time. Orlando Patterson, professor of sociology at Harvard University and recognized scholar on the history and impact of slavery in America, has recently explained in articles and interviews the serious problems that he still sees in race relations in the United States. But even with all of these, he made the point of emphasizing how far America has come in the last half century, when looking at the actions and attitudes of white Americans toward their fellow citizens. 

In a recent feature article on “The Long Reach of Racism in the U.S.” in The Wall Street Journal (June 05, 2020), Professor Patterson said:

“The despair of so many Americans in this moment of naked exposure of racism’s persistence in the U.S. should not lead us to deny the successes of the civil rights revolution. Black Americans are now included in the public domain of the nation. They form an integral part of its political life and an important component of its military, and they play an outsize role in its intellectual and cultural life. The black middle class is real, however tenuous its economic base and downwardly mobile its male children. The majority of white Americans have also undergone a radical transformation in their racial views, especially the young, who are arguably the most racially liberal group of whites anywhere in the world.” 

In an interview with The Harvard Gazette (June 4, 2020), when asked about the recent protests and demonstrations in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by a policeman in Minneapolis, Professor Patterson expressed his many worrying concerns about persistent racism in America, but he made a point of also stating: 

“I’ve argued in my writings that there has been extraordinary progress in the changing attitudes of white Americans toward blacks and other minorities. As late as the early ’60s, a majority of whites openly said they saw blacks as inferior, and now there is an acceptance of equality, at least in their views. I’ve always said that this may be the great majority, but there’s still 20, 25 percent of whites who still embrace white supremacist views. 

“I don’t want to use the term ‘white people’ in general terms because as I said before, what is special about these recent protests is the participation of whites in it, many of them young. But I also see middle-aged and some people my age. I want to emphasize that I think white Americans have gone through quite radical changes in their attitudes, and that we’re talking about a more likely 25 percent of Americans who are hardcore racist, but I think most Americans have quite decent views about race.”

(Due to the peculiar times in which we presently live, it seems necessary to observe that Professor Patterson is black, because of the possible response by some of the more uninformed who might immediately conclude that this must be the rationalizations of a white racist.) 

Attitudes Have Changed for the Better in One Lifetime

Some attitudes stand out about how people of one ethnic or racial group feel about those in another group. One such attitude, surely, concerns interracial marriage. In a 1969 Gallup poll, only 17 percent of white Americans approved of interracial marriages between whites and blacks. However, 50 years later, according to a Pew Research Center poll in 2017, 91 percent of whites responded positively, saying either it does not matter (52 percent) or it was a good thing (39 percent). 

Half a century ago, 52 percent of black Americans approved of interracial marriages, while in 2017 that number had increased to 82 percent, with 46 percent saying it did not make a difference and 36 percent replying it was a good thing. In that 2017 Pew Research poll, 95 percent of Hispanics expressed approval of interracial marriages, with 60 percent saying it did not matter and 35 percent saying it was a good thing. 

Between 1980 and 2015, again according to the Pew Research Center, the number of black Americans in interracial marriages increased from 5 percent to 18 percent. For whites, the number in interracial marriages between those same years rose from 4 percent to 11 percent. In 2015, 27 percent of Hispanics had entered interracial marriages, and for Asian-Americans, that number stood at 29 percent. 

Not too surprisingly, matching this has been the number of interracial babies in two-parent households. The Pew Research Center found that that number had increased from 5 percent of babies in 1980 to 14 percent in 2015. The largest number of such small children in 2015 was between whites and Hispanics, representing 42 percent of that 14 percent total. There were 10 percent with white and black parents, and 14 percent with white and Asian parents. Babies with multiracial parents made up 22 percent of that 14 percent out of the total baby population in the country. 

Racial Differentials Often a Product of Government Policies

Critics insist that this is all “on the surface,” that serious disparities still exist and persist among whites and blacks in terms of income, education, employment, and a variety of other life opportunities. It would be absurd to categorically deny this situation in these and other facets of life. 

For decades, for instance, black youth unemployment has been especially far higher than that of white youths, for instance. The finger is pointed, with the immediate accusation of racism behind the failure of young blacks to find gainful employment. It should be noted that white youth unemployment rates have long been above that of adult unemployment rates, as well. 

The reason for this, as many economics studies have explained, is primarily due to minimum wage laws. The young have fewer skills, less on-the-job work experience, and are often with lower levels of education as a starting point for entry-level employment. This means that the productive value of the young, in general and on average, is less than older members of the workforce with more time on the job. 

As a result, if someone in this category is worth, say, $5 or $6 an hour in terms of their value to an private employer’s efforts to produce a good or supply a service consumers will be willing to pay for, it should not be surprising that mandating a legal minimum wage of $7.50 or $15 an hour has the effect of pricing many of such young hopefuls out of the chance for a job. 






The Analyst

About Richard M. Ebeling

Richard M. Ebeling, an AIER Senior Fellow, is the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina. Ebeling lived on AIER’s campus from 2008 to 2009.

Articles by Richard M. Ebeling

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