Social Justice Demands Sacrifice

Thus far in his campaign to summon Americans to confront and overcome their racial problems, President Clinton has focused almost exclusively upon bigotry that virtually all intelligent and respectable people now abhor: the color barrier that excluded black baseball players from the major leagues, the notorious medical experiments on black men in Tuskegee, racially motivated, violent hate crimes.

It is useful for the president to highlight these despicable acts insofar as some Americans remain unaware of the extent to which contempt for people of color has poisoned society. It would be a mistake, however, for the president to suggest that aggressive bigotry lay at the heart of our current racial dilemmas.

If racially motivated violence, the Ku Klux Klan, the N-word, and the ugly sentiments that nourish these vile outcroppings of racial animus were suddenly to disappear, we surely would be left with a better society. This welcome development, however, would have little effect on the isolated, miserable, criminogetic circumstances in which disproportionately large numbers of blacks, Latinos and Native Americans live. Nor would the sudden, magical disappearance of racial hatred massively reduce the discriminations that unfairly burden minorities in the criminal justice system and housing and employment markets.

Many of the deprivations that ensnare large numbers of racial minorities are vestiges of past injustices that perpetuate harms even in the absence of any continuing purposeful aim to do so. Thus, unfortunately, the horrid conditions that menace so many Americans stuck in our black and brown ghettos continue to wreak havoc even without the aid of racial malevolence. Mere indifference will suffice.

The problem facing the president or anyone else seriously concerned with addressing the core of racial inequity is not persuading the Great American Middle that burning black (or any other) churches is terrible or that it is disgusting to hate people simply because of the color of their skin. The vast majority of people have already been persuaded to embrace these propositions. The real problem is persuading the Great American Middle to reorient fundamentally the allocations of power and privilege that continue to make America a “pigmentocracy” despite the substantial and heartening changes for the better that have occurred over the past 50 years. To carry out this task will require more than a willingness to avoid gratuitously insulting or harming others because of their race. It will also require something that President Clinton has yet to mention with any real clarity: sacrifice.

Redressing the wounds left by our long history of racial oppression will require an expensive reconstruction. But the ascendant politics of the moment is averse to redistributing wealth and opportunity downward, whether in terms of class, gender or race. To push the nation toward the realization of its ideals will require the president to tell the public something that he appears loath to articulate: that social justice, like many of the best things in life, is costly, and that for us to pay this cost is worthwhile.

The president, like many commentators, speaks as if ceasing to engage in racial discrimination is cost-free, as if all that such a renunciation would entail is merely the forgoing of an arbitrary gesture. But that is often not so. Of course, some racial discrimination stems solely from bigotry; but a lot of racial discrimination is strategic. Strategic racial discrimination arises when people calculate, often correctly, that they can attain some extra bit of security by using race (typically coloredness) as a proxy for an increased risk of danger. Much of the racial discrimination engaged in by home buyers, taxi drivers and employers is of this sort. They initially disfavor colored neighborhoods, potential customers and prospective employees not because they are bigots but because they perceive that doing so will maximize their self-interest, at least in the short term.

If racial discrimination that adversely affects minorities were solely an activity carried out by marginal creeps, it would not constitute the major problem that it is. The fact that racial discrimination often does advance the narrow self-interest of intelligent, decent, influential people is what gives it deep roots and makes any serious effort to uproot such practices a far more difficult and disruptive venture than the president’s rhetoric has so far indicated.