Sunday, December 09, 2012

Racial Consciousness


The Audacious Epigone noted in passing, halfway down the linked post, that he is detecting an increase in a sense of racial identity among white people of his generation.  I had not quite thought of it that way, but immediately thought he is correct in this.  I think I am detecting the same thing.  I consider this a bad thing, even dire, for America.  I suspect he automatic assumption is that such consciousness of race is primarily, or even necessarily, anti-black or anti-Hispanic.  I don’t think that is much true, and says more about the assumers than the assumees. Still, it's all a bad thing.

I am already well ahead of myself.  Let me trace the history from my earliest training.  I was taught that we are all Americans, with equal rights, and all in this together.  Some people didn’t want black people to have the same rights, but they were wrong.  This was known to be more common in the South, but present everywhere. There had recently (this was the 50's and 60's) been some legitimate argument whether people from one part of the country should make people from another part of the country be fair whether they liked it or not, and some dispute about speed.  Yet because bad people had hid behind some plausible arguments, the decent people had pretty much abandoned them.  The goal was that black people should be mainstream Americans, because they weren’t really any different.  Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight, etc. Decent people who were also alert made a special effort not to be accidentally unkind to black people, who had been kicked enough.  Sometimes they fell over themselves being kind.  This was regarded as clumsy and gauche, but essentially well-meant.

Somewhere in the 70’s, the idea came around that this wasn’t the right solution.  Because those decent white people were unconsciously assuming everyone was like them, that was prejudice too.  It was a package with assuming maleness to “mankind,” or Christianity to “religion,” or other ways of leaving some people out of the picture, even without intending to.

It is hard to recreate what I thought then, or how things changed, but I’ll have a go at it.  I thought that dividing up Americans was a step backward, but I saw the point.  It was true that my picture of Americans was something of a portrait of my own circle, not really including the others, and I can see why it felt insulting to not be included.  They were, after all, just as validly American as I was.  Plus, I figured, I’m from New Hampshire, what do I know?  People who deal with this as part of their daily lives must just know better than I what the best way forward is.

Let me interject here the important point that the foregoing is clearly ridiculous and impossible.  There never were any decent white people who thought this way, they were all unconsciously racist and they should have no voice now.  (See how jarring that sentiment is when it is in the context of a real person, rather than a set of people to be lumped for purpose of political gain? )

I’ve read for years about people who note that other American groups have identities in order to increase political power, white people should do the same.  I’ve always thought that was fringey and ridiculous, and wondered if the sentiment were not more anti-black than pro-white.  I don’t know much about such folks, they just turn up once in awhile, so I can’t say I know what they are thinking.  However, I do think that’s an enormous step backward for America. But looking at it, I don’t know how any other result could be expected when dividing up Americans became the ideal.  Not that everyone would mentally divide themselves out, but that some would.  Isn’t that a rather natural result of being told that your reasons are not your real reasons, and the tone of glee that the former mainstreamers are no longer numerically ahead, as if that in itself were some advance?  I don’t think it has any effect on whether people are for or against other races or groups.  Those who were, remain so, those who weren’t, remain that.  But I think something subtler does occur.  White people decide that they aren’t the ones misunderstanding others.  They look around and think “No, I understand them fine.  It’s they who don’t understand me, always accusing.”

I don’t attribute this to Obama or his blackness, BTW.  I now think this is a trend that has been building for decades, recently efflourescing.  Maybe it’s a little faster because of the accident of the particular players, but I they didn’t start the fire. 

***     ***

I am ahead of myself again, or at least, verging into other territory.  Let me get back on track about racial consciousness.  Ideas we acquire are not necessarily inexorable, just because we can trace their roots far back.  I have a racial sidebar that remained a mere curiosity for twenty years or so, only emerging as the red state-blue state divide arose and became especially vitriolic starting in 2004.

I am an evangelical, but I have always considered myself to be an unusual specimen.  Not rare, because I have been able to find other evangelicals at least somewhat like me, but not comfortable in the music, books, and tapes of popular evangelical culture.  Still, I have some identification with the group, and so always perked up my ears around surveys and statistics about evangelical beliefs and behaviors.  Sometime in the 80’s, there was this article about young evangelicals, going out of its way to point out what hypocrites they were, because their illegitimacy rate was just as high as mainstream denominations and nonreligious.  So hahaha. But about a week before, I had read a separate article in a nonreligious but political magazine, complaining that sociological studies did not break out religious groups by race, because those called “evangelical” or “fundamentalist” tended to be either all black or all white, and very different socially and politically.

So I wondered if the illegitimacy study had been broken out by race.  I was ashamed of myself for even wondering, and never mentioned it anywhere.  Polite people didn’t mention such things.  It might indeed prove that it was a more typically black illegitimacy rate in those churches, but they were our Christian brothers and sisters, and we weren’t going to kick them when they were down.  We stand together.  It was not until some years later, I think during the Clinton election that someone suddenly did break those numbers out by race, and they were appalling.  I remember thinking “Well, no one on the left is going to want that to get out.  That’s the last we’ll hear about that.”  But it kept coming, and the implication was clear: those white yahoos from Mississippi and South Carolina are just self-righteous hypocrites. Look at all this state-by-state pathology.

God forgive me, I believed that too.  I knew at some level that this wasn’t quite right, and sometimes remembered it, but it occupied a separate part of my mind.  New Hampshire has the highest SAT’s in the nation, or 2nd-lowest dropout rate, yeah, eat our dust, Arkansas! (Polite people can have ugly prejudices against some groups after all, eh?)  You can see the real numbers on white IQ’s bystate over at The Audacious Epigone, BTW. The stereotype generally holds, but much more weakly than advertised.  The entire range is 98-103.  Not very big.

As I was leaving liberalism, I still held – in some ways still hold – that prejudice.  Even knowing that the numbers for whites in different states were not all that different, I still pinned the more dramatic numbers on my picture of their typical citizen.  But in the last few years, the opposite has become automatic: Red States are net receivers of government aid compared to Blue States, we are told with a sneer.  I now ask “Does that include military installations?  Veterans’ benefits? Is that broken out by number of illegal immigrants?  Is that broken out by race?” And so on. Obesity. Diabetes. Educational attainment. Special Ed. Disability claims. Crime rates.  Illegitimacy. Divorce rates.   I suspect that when liberal white people from Vermont try to make political hay out of such things, the recipients often knew “Oh, so now you’re making it racial (or NAM in general).   You don’t know that, but that’s what you just did.  If I point that out, I’ll be the bad guy, but you just reminded me once again.”  The difference is that  the nonliberal white people in Vermont have started noticing it too, because such a big deal is being made of the pathology of being the wrong sort of white person.

We have long all politely not mentioned that “the problem of our cities” has a strong racial and ethnic piece.  It’s just not nice, and there doesn’t seem to be any point.  But now that’s moving up to the state level, in a bitterly divided country, and whiteness is being specifically described as a problem.  I don’t like being described as a problem when I haven’t done anything wrong.  The irony is, those people who for reasons of fashion devote much energy and vitriol into demonstrating that they are not the bad sort of white person, by identifying out, are actually intensifying the phenomenon.

9 comments:

  1. I have been struck several times while listening to post-election analysis and hearing statements like "If Mitt Romney had won the Latino vote, he would have won the election." or "Mitt barely carried the white vote, but if he had been able to win among women, then that would have gotten him the electoral votes he needed." (I'm just making up these examples).

    This subdividing and cross-category analysis just seems to me to be a rather pointless splitting of so many imaginary hairs. Yet it seems to be more and more a de riguer method of political analysis. It's all what ifs and would haves, but it is treated as legitimate analysis simply because it is given group labels. It betrays a sloppy and deceiving way of viewing the world.

    I want to write my own insightful column. The lead would be "Polls show that if a lot more people had voted for Mitt Romney, he would have won the election."

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  2. It's so strange for me to read this...because I have the total opposite feeling/reaction. It must be that we encounter vastly different takes on the issue.

    To me, it seems like there is a great resurgence in the assumption that white culture is all that is holding civilization together in this country....at least according to people like Pat Buchannan, who has written extensively about low birth rates among whites and the hand-wringing he does over it.

    I just don't see the "white people are a problem" theme very much. I do see the attempts by some to create a "white identity"....but I don't see how far they will get with that. Any identity based solely on skin color will be oversimplified .

    For instance, is Pat worried about low birth rates among poor whites? Are those who think white culture is superior thinking about people they would classify as white trash or rednecks or hillbillies?

    Somehow I don't think so.

    While race and ethnicity certainly have an impact on such things, I think poverty and educational level may have an even greater say. It is no coincidence that illegitimacy is high in impoverished areas..such as Mississippi which is one of the poorest states in the US.

    Also, having lived in the South for 5 years, I feel that I can say that white and black culture are not universal. Race relations are very different in binary areas that have large populations of two races, as opposed to places like Florida that are filled with white, black, and Hispanic people who have their own set of sub-groups and ethnic make-ups. In such divers places , with lots of inter-racial relationships and children, there is always consciousness of race, but it doesn't have the strength of a two-race region...partly because of diversity, but Also because of the transient nature of the population. When everyone comes from somewhere else and there are no long, historical ties to land, property, or power, it's a little easier for people to adjust to change and to racial/cultural differences.

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  3. It's so strange for me to read this...because I have the total opposite feeling/reaction. It must be that we encounter vastly different takes on the issue.

    To me, it seems like there is a great resurgence in the assumption that white culture is all that is holding civilization together in this country....at least according to people like Pat Buchannan, who has written extensively about low birth rates among whites and the hand-wringing he does over it.

    I just don't see the "white people are a problem" theme very much. I do see the attempts by some to create a "white identity"....but I don't see how far they will get with that. Any identity based solely on skin color will be oversimplified .

    For instance, is Pat worried about low birth rates among poor whites? Are those who think white culture is superior thinking about people they would classify as white trash or rednecks or hillbillies?

    Somehow I don't think so.

    While race and ethnicity certainly have an impact on such things, I think poverty and educational level may have an even greater say. It is no coincidence that illegitimacy is high in impoverished areas..such as Mississippi which is one of the poorest states in the US.

    Also, having lived in the South for 5 years, I feel that I can say that white and black culture are not universal. Race relations are very different in binary areas that have large populations of two races, as opposed to places like Florida that are filled with white, black, and Hispanic people who have their own set of sub-groups and ethnic make-ups. In such divers places , with lots of inter-racial relationships and children, there is always consciousness of race, but it doesn't have the strength of a two-race region...partly because of diversity, but Also because of the transient nature of the population. When everyone comes from somewhere else and there are no long, historical ties to land, property, or power, it's a little easier for people to adjust to change and to racial/cultural differences.

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  4. Terri, that is what has been taught in social science circles, especially educational circles, for decades - that Pathology A causes Pathologies B, C, and D.

    Except it hasn't held up under scrutiny.

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  5. You'll have to explain more of what you mean about how it hasn't held up. I am not necessarily saying A causes B...as much as I am saying these things are inter-related.

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  6. Racism is one of the many forms of tribalism, which has always been the scourge of mankind. Terri has a salient point when she mentions Florida with its diverse population relatively new to the area - it mirrors early America with its diverse immigrants free of old world feuds, language, religious and boundary disputes.

    AVI, My background is very similar to yours. When you went on your nostalgia kick a while back I followed along with you on Route 28. My old stomping grounds. Your observations about the state of of relations parallel mine. The "melting pot" was a point of pride.

    The "left", for want of a better term, has been promoting tribalism for more than a century as a means to its political ends - divide and conquer. I sense and fear that it is on the verge of success. I won't be around much longer but my grandchildren will. It troubles me.

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  7. Remember the refrain of the song, "Charlie Brown": "Why's everybody pickin' on me?" It kinda does seem like everyone (in the media, at least) is pickin' on us folks who happen to be "white". Latinos? Now we know there are "white" ones as well as brown ones, and black ones; the media done tole us so. We "whites" mostly consider ourselves as Americans first, with a little "where did my ancestors come from", though some have more of that. I've read Latinos consider themselves as where they/their families came from, not just "Latino".

    Daniel Moynahan pointed out your last para back in the '60s, and the libs went ballistic.

    Lastly, what is the meaning of NAM?

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  8. Non-Asian Minorities. Over the last two decades, Northeast Asians (Japan, Korea, parts of China) have been hit even harder by reverse discrimination. They score higher and qualify at higher rates for many academic and musical slots than all others.

    That they are now excluded from being considered minorities in many circumstances is telling.

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  9. AVI, that's RAAAAACIST! On their part, not yours.

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