Race-Blind Racism

Rev William Barber II

In the 80s, I learned one of the tenets of Critical Race Theory, and it changed the way I think about racism to this day. It’s the understanding of how racial disparities are perpetuated even if no individual person in the system has anti-Black bias in their heart. It’s a powerful way to understand racism, and I wish that antiracists talked about it more. In general, I like all the parts of anti-racism activism that have evidence behind them, and this concept seems like the one that needs the most attention. It’s both powerful and seemingly downplayed. Here I’d like to consider this concept’s value separate from the rest of Critical Race Theory. When I learned about it, it was not associated with the other tenets of CRT, such as convergence theory or counter-storytelling. 

In sociology class, we were taught to call it “institutional racism”, but I no longer use that term. Alternatively, this sort of racism is sometimes described as systemic or structural, but I don’t use those terms either. Different people use these terms in different ways, so I never know what someone means when they use one of them. Sometimes they mean what I’m getting at here: racism that operates in the absence of bias. Sometimes they mean the opposite: racism that operates through bias that is systemic, structural, or institutional. The term “meritocratic racism” has some promise since it’s the meritocracy that primarily perpetuates inequality from one generation to the next, but its meaning isn’t obvious. I hope that the phrase “race-blind racism” is clear enough that people know what I mean. 

Ibram Kendi gives an example of race-blind racism when he cites climate change as racist. Climate change is already hitting non-whites around the world harder than it hits whites, a sort of racism that rolls out without anyone directing it to roll out that way. Meanwhile, our carbon-fueled economy brings in profits to Texas oilmen, Norwegians, Dutch, Arabs, and Persians—all of whom are “white” under US law. Fighting climate change is anti-racist regardless of people’s feelings. (It’s no coincidence that I’m the co-chair of my church’s climate action team.)

Another example from Kendi is health insurance. Our current system is an example of race-blind racism. It disproportionately disadvantages African Americans even if you can’t find reference to race anywhere in the regulations or insurance policies. Expanding health coverage is effectively anti-racist, and I’m all for it. (Unitarian-Universalists recently passed a resolution in favor or universal healthcare coverage.)

Kendi echoes King in saying that antiracists should focus on changing policy over changing hearts. Policy, not feelings, is where race-blind racism operates. Let’s hope that Kendi’s many readers take him seriously. 

A key driver of race-blind racism is the way that resources and advantages are largely heritable from one generation to the next. For both white and Black Americans, the primary factor that determines one’s socio-economic status is the SES into which one is born. As long as the previous generation of Americans had a racial divide in terms of resources, the next generation will perpetuate that divide. Here you can consider “resources” in the broadest terms, not just money but also education, neighborhood, family stability, personal security, etc. Progressive taxation of income is one way that the system pushes in the opposite direction, but it’s not much of a push. Tax wealth, I say, but that’s another post.

One place where educators are pushing back against race-blind racism is in the educational meritocracy. Educational resources are routinely restricted by “merit”, such as admission to universities being contingent on academic achievement. Since white and Asian kids tend to do better on academic achievement than African American kids, gatekeeping by achievement disproportionately hurts African Americans. Higher educational institutions respond by lowering standards for African American candidates and often by raising them for East Asians. This policy has some antiracist effect but doesn’t come close to generating equal outcomes. Some schools are questioning the very idea of meritocracy. Gifted programs disproportionately help white and Asian kids because those are the kids that more often qualify for them. Eliminating gifted programs works against race-blind racism by taking a benefit away from white and Asian kids. The NAACP’s Youth Council, for example, demands that Seattle schools dismantle their “Highly Capable Cohort” program, and the school board has recently started this process. Likewise, Lowell High School in San Francisco is switching from admission based on achievement to a lottery system. The student population has been 60% Asian and only 2% Black, and the lottery will change that. In general, any education program that benefits higher achieving students disproportionately disadvantages African American students. (Personally, I see value in education programs for highly capable students, but I’ve been wrong before.)

After Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr saw the civil rights movement succeed, he pivoted to fight poverty. Within six months, he was assassinated. King knew that freedom to compete doesn’t help much when the race-blind meritocracy benefits those who are born into privilege and leaves out those who are born into poverty. His plan was a massive program to redistribute wealth, including a guaranteed minimum income for people of any race. All anti-poverty and pro-safety-net policies are antiracist. 

Personal bias certainly also plays a role in racial disparities, but it’s pretty common for people to overstate its role, as if race-blind racism isn’t a factor. Race-blind racism works by driving higher rates of dysfunction in poor communities and then letting the meritocracy play out. If poor kids show up to kindergarten already behind rich kids in reading and math, the meritocracy rewards the rich kids over the poor kids. Those poor kids, of course, are disproportionately African American. Structural issues that exacerbate racial disparities, such as higher levels of lead in inner city environments, are hard to get excited about. It’s easy to get excited about bias. When King switched from fighting racial discrimination to fighting poverty, he caught flak from his supporters, and no one picked up King’s campaign after he was murdered. Maybe only a leader of his stature had the potential to change the movement’s direction. Fifty years later, Rev William Barber II picked up the banner of the Poor People’s Campaign, and I’m hoping for the best. 

The Liberal Victory of Same-Sex Marriage

Good times, 2015

When same-sex marriage swept the United States, it was a stunning liberal victory. In 1999, no state in the union even had civil unions for same-sex couples. By 2015, gay marriage was the law of the land. Hats off to Vermont for igniting the movement. I fondly remember in 1999 when Vermont’s supreme court called bullshit on limiting the benefits of marriage to cross-sex couples. Then in 2000, Vermont became the first state in the US to allow civil unions between same-sex couples. Other states followed Vermont’s lead, establishing either civil unions or marriage for same-sex couples until, in 2015. the US Supreme Court made gay marriage legal in all fifty states. 

The implicit message of the gay-marriage campaign was that our institutions are good, and that everyone should have the right to be part of them. Marriage is a good thing, they said. Most voters are married, and the gay-marriage campaign validated married life. It was a positive message about love and commitment. Who doesn’t like a rainbow? 

If your political opponents are associated with happy things like rainbows and parades, you’ve lost. Opponents of gay marriage came across like haters, which is not only accurate but also politically convenient for liberals like me. I’m hoping that legalizing weed can be another feel-good campaign for liberals, and I think it’s about time, but that’s another story. 

Meanwhile, the proponents of marriage equality did not ask heteroes to confess their hetero privilege. The leaders did not have their eyes on dismantling western civilization. Smashing hetero supremacy was not on the agenda.

In terms of human history, gay-marriage advocates accomplished something remarkable. In societies all across the globe, strict gender roles have been the norm. Gender-nonconforming people were generally expected to take on a different gender role rather than transgress the boundaries of the gender role that they were born into. Modern liberal society, in the other hand, is remarkable for how loose gender roles are, relative to the rest of history. Same-sex marriage seems fine to kids born into our society, but it was unthinkable for our ancestors except perhaps the last few. In terms of being something new under the sun, same-sex marriage really is.

Sixteen years is a short amount of time for such a momentous change. The gay-marriage campaign was a big success, and it was part of a successful movement across the globe. When it comes to social justice, I like approaches that work, and that’s why I’m a liberal. Maybe we can learn from what’s worked and do more of it. 

Secular Apocalypse

apocalyptic science fiction
for children, 1976

The global power network on which governmental authority depends has been revealed to be a corrupt, racist oligarchy. Capitalism is driving the natural world to ruin and pushing humanity toward total war. Corporations poison us for profit, politicians embrace racism, and the police rely on brutality for crowd control. Racism, sexism, and homophobia are built into the system. The expanding population leads to more pollution and more extinctions, with no end in sight. Humanity’s only hope is a definitive break with its oppressive, destructive past, especially Western civilization. Humanity will be destroyed if we don’t establish a revolutionary new society, where all people share the world equally and children are raised to be kind instead of greedy. 

Anyway, that’s how it looked in the mid-70s when I was 11 years old. So today when people tell me much the same narrative, I can empathize. 

Kendi Says Change Policies

a daring work

In his book How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X Kendi offers a number of critiques of social justice activism. Activists, he says, should fix their failing messaging, stop saying that African Americans can’t be racist, and change their focus. In particular, he emphasizes the importance of changing policy over changing hearts. As he explains, an emphasis on policy change is hardly new, even if it runs counter to today’s mainstream antiracist activism. Kendi says you’re not an activist unless you have a track record of changing policy. This bold framing comes as an indictment of a broad range of social justice action that seems to be aimed more at winning converts rather than at changing laws and regulations. As a liberal who has been surprised and disappointed by impractical rhetoric on the left, I heartily welcome Kendi’s perspective.

For years it has puzzled me why so many social justice messages fail to include a call to action. The documentary 13th has no call to action. The book Caste is the same way. Signs at the MLK march tend to express feelings but not plans or next steps. Activists have told me that it would be “white privilege” if they made practical plans to fight racism. Thomas Sowell suggests that movement leaders focus on feelings rather than on plans because that’s the less risky approach. If you don’t attempt anything, you can’t fail.

A good deal of demonstrations seem meant to declare or promote general support for a movement. Some activists explicitly describe their job as building participation in “Movement” until the population reaches a tipping point. Sometimes this tipping point is pegged at 3.5%, a figure derived from a study that confirmed the value of mass movements of nonviolent protest. For these activists, there’s little point to pursuing electoral victories? Until the population reaches its tipping point (the story goes), electoral efforts are going to be ineffective, and after the tipping point they’ll be a breeze. In Kendi’s formulation, the people marching on MLK Day are merely demonstrating, not really protesting. Until they have changed policy, they don’t even deserve the term “activist”, at least not in Kendi’s perspective. 

Some of the feelings-first rhetoric on the radical left appeals to the New Age imagination. We are enjoined to wake up, heed a new vision of humanity, embrace the spirit of abundance, dismantle civilization, and create a new society founded on equity. It’s sometimes called the Great Turning. Here the focus is on confession, repentance, and zeal rather than policy change. New-Age “visualization” makes an appearance here as “re-imagining” society.

Feelings-oriented antiracist rhetoric also appeals to some people because it tells them what they want to hear. The implicit message is, “Your personal feelings are super important.” Plenty of would-be activists respond warmly to the idea that the work they’re called to do amounts to reading, self-help, introspection, and being emotionally moved.

Kendi, however, calls all this feelings-oriented work into question. To back up his challenge, he cites Martin Luther King, Jr. Activists these days have a love-hate relationship with King. They love to quote him when he agrees with them, such as when he said that riots are the language of the unheard, but they hate it when he gets quoted against them, such as when he condemns riots as self-defeating. In Kendi’s case, he criticizes activists for failing to heed King’s message that it is wise to focus on changing policy rather than on changing hearts. Changes in heart, King said, will follow changes in policy. With 50 years of hindsight, Kendi backs up King’s claim with historical evidence. For example, the Supreme Court ruled that interracial marriages are legal in 1967, which was followed by a steady rise in support for such marriages. If King and Kendi both agree that policy change should come first, who will say otherwise?

If we accept Kendi’s message, what sort of policy change would be considered antiracist? Kendi defines antiracism as anything that improves racial equality, regardless of intent. In that view, any policy that helps Americans who are less well off is, by default, antiracist because it disproportionately helps African Americans. Fixing health insurance, Kendi says, would be antiracist. A do-nothing climate policy, on the other hand, is a racist climate policy. Kendi’s reference to policies that help the poor reminds me of King’s Poor People’s Campaign, now given new life by Rev William Barber II.

How much influence will Kendi’s dissenting take on activism have on social justice movements in the US? To date, I haven’t heard much discussion in social justice circles about Kendi’s challenge to feelings-first rhetoric, but maybe there’s dialog taking place behind the scenes. I’d love to see more focus on policy change because I agree with King and Kendi that it’s more effective. Is it wishful thinking to expect that Kendi’s book will really make a difference?

Cousins and Garbage

one bag for glass, one for aluminum

Some days, I walk half a mile to the Git-and-Go for a six-pack of Goose Island’s Next Coast IPA and maybe a bag of caramel corn. My mom likes caramel corn, and my sister-in-law is collecting beer bottle caps, so everyone gets a little something. Today, here was the exchange with the cashier.

Cashier, a Black woman: Would you like a bag?

Me, a white guy: Yes, thanks, could I get two bags? 

She, unamused: You can have one bag.

Me: I’m going to put my stuff in this backpack*. I want to use the bags to pick up aluminum cans and glass bottles.

She, warmly: Oh, yes, you can have two bags. 

Me: Thanks. The last time I was in here, I was too embarrassed to ask for bags.

She: It’s all right.

Me: We’re all in this together.

She, giving me two bags: That’s right. Here you go. 

Me: I figure if all Black people are brothers and sisters, then you and I are cousins at least.

She: We’re all from Africa. We all have the same DNA.

Me, resisting the urge to show her photos of my beautiful biracial daughter and instead putting my fist up to the anti-COVID plexiglass: That’s right.

She, fist-bumping me through the plastic: Take care.

Me:  See you.

Is this the first time that I have connected with someone different from me across a gas-station counter? No. Am I a dork? Yes, and that’s why I treasure being a Unitarian-Universalist, a community in that embraces dorkiness. Don’t believe me? Just listen to us sing some Sunday, once the pandemic is over.

*If you work for Amazon, you might get ground up, but you might also get a rocking backpack. 

Everway Silver Anniversary Edition

Silver Anniversary edition

Everway is the only roleplaying game that I ever got my late wife to play. We played a lot of Magic: The Gathering and Netrunner, but roleplaying wasn’t her thing. With Everway, I talked her into playing a with two other couples. My original goal with Everway was to make it accessible and attractive to new players, and my late wife’s experience tells me that I more or less succeeded. Everway is also the first game I created after my daughter was born, and it is dedicated to her. I love all my roleplaying games. Like children, each one is special in its own way. But of all of them, Everway means the most to me personally. It’s exciting that this game from 1995 is coming back in a beautiful new Silver Anniversary edition.

 

When I hired on with Wizards of the Coast at the end of 1993, I brought the rough concept for Everway with me, and it was my main project for my first two years there. My thinking was that it had to be something new and different. There wouldn’t be much point in releasing a standard-issue roleplaying game, which would have little chance of competing externally with Dungeons & Dragons or internally with Magic. Everway was an ambitious attempt to reach a broader audience, using a system that would appeal both to experienced gamers and to new fans outside the gamer community. 

For one thing, the game had to be beautiful. The standard roleplaying experience can look to observers like an exercise in sensory deprivation, and Magic had raised expectations for how colorful a hobby game could be. Everway’s imagery was as global and multicultural as we could manage. With my own little biracial daughter at home, I wanted a game that transcended the Eurocentric template set by D&D. After Everway was published, I once got an email from an African American roleplayer who thanked me for the game. He said it had changed the way he roleplayed, inspiring him to create Black characters for the first time, not just in Everway but in other games as well. Have I mentioned how much this game means to me personally?

Colorful images appeal to the
next generation of gamers

The imagery is more than decoration. It inspires people to invent characters, adventures, and lands, drawing stories out of their imaginations. New players are often delighted to find out that they can create characters and backstories with a little prompting from the artwork. Instead of dice, Everway uses a Fortune Deck, modeled after the major arcana cards of tarot decks. The Fortune Deck is a randomizer, but one that uses symbols instead of numbers. The deck has a secret pattern, but keeping the pattern secret was a mistake. Players didn’t notice the hidden pattern, so they couldn’t appreciate it, and in the Silver Anniversary the pattern is explicit. 

While Everway didn’t clear a profit, it inspired a lot of indie RPG designers. It’s fondly remembered by a number of designers who have since made great progress in developing ways to support narrative, free-form practices in roleplaying games. It was meant to show people new ideas about how to play these games that we love, and it did. 

As a project at Wizards, Everway faced a number of systemic challenges, as perhaps all the projects that weren’t trading card games did at that time. For one thing, we didn’t control costs, and the components were prohibitively expensive. Also, it’s packaging showed that the game was different—in fact too different. On game store shelves, the packaging didn’t work. Within months of the game’s release, Wizards cut many teams and product lines and laid off the employees connected to them. Roleplaying games were cut, and the roleplaying staff was laid off. I landed in R&D, working first on Netrunner and on beginner versions of Magic. Thankfully, the company worked to find homes for the games that were cut, and Everway ended up with two big fans, twin brothers Jesse McGatha and Richard Thames Rowan. 

After all these years, Rich and Jesse have formed the Everway Company to publish a new edition of Everway—the Silver Anniversary edition. The game has an all-new format, and it will look great on game store shelves. The new publishers have incorporated art from the Spherewalker supplement by my old friend Greg Stolze, and the new version is all color. It also includes a lot more content, mostly material from Spherewalker and from several published adventures. The original was slim, but the Silver Anniversary edition is grand.

How will the new edition fare? It’s a better offering than the original, and the gaming community is more ready for a free-form game like Everway than it was 25 years ago. The Kickstarter campaign will be an opportunity for us to see just how much love there is out there for Everway, and how well the game might inspire a new generation of roleplayers. Originally, the Rich and Jesse were going to handle the Kickstarter on their own, but their edition is so marvelous that I told them I wanted to be involved myself. I’ll be running the Kickstarter, and I’m excited to see this remarkable game get another shot at finding its audience.

more about the Silver Anniversary edition

Discussing Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

Please read Ibram Kendi’s
How to Be an Antiracist 

tl;dr Racism is a vast, global, perennial injustice that deserves authors who are willing to take risks. In How to be an Antiracist, Ibram Kendi takes risks. Some of his book I agree with, some I disagree with, and some I struggle to come to terms with. With Caste, Isabel Wilkerson risks little. In 2019, an earnest antiracist in my Unitarian church said that her book discussion group had been reading antiracist books for years, and she still had no idea what she could actually do. Caste would fit in with the books that this woman’s discussion group read. Read How to be an Antiracist.

Exploring Caste

If you read Caste, I’d suggest rounding out the experience by considering some of the following questions. Wilkerson’s topic is so big and important that it demands extra thought, research, and information. For these questions, some answers I already knew, some answers I had to look up, and some I still don’t know.

Wilkerson says that the way to address racial injustice today is to understand the “origins of our discontents” and for people to undergo a change of heart. What evidence does she offer that this approach is effective? What schools of political thought are in line with this approach? What alternative approaches do others advocate, such as Martin Luther King or Ibram Kendi? 

Wilkerson makes her case primarily with metaphors, analogies, anecdotes, generalizations, and hypotheticals. Where does this approach originate from? From critical race theory? Counter-storytelling? Journalistic style? A little of each?

What historical social system did Southern plantation owners see themselves as emulating? 

How is racial stratification in the US different from what Wilkerson describes in Nazi Germany and Hindu India? How are the lynchings she describe different from the killings she recounts from Germany and India? How is the historical arc of African Americans different from that of German Jews and Indian Dalits?

Wilkerson cites scholars who have identified the US racial structure as a caste system. If this framing has been suggested before but has never been generally accepted, what is different today? If the nation were to adopt this framing, what benefit could we expect?

Wilkerson describes the racial caste system in North America as originating on American soil in 1619, and she describes anti-Semitism in Germany as resulting from Nazi propaganda. What were the larger historical contexts in which these injustices took place?

Wilkerson cites laws and customs from the South as representative of the caste system. How would her narrative be different if she took the laws and customs of the Yankee North as representative? What major 19th century event in race relations does she mostly elide, and how would including this event change her narrative?

What is the original meaning of the Portuguese word “caste”? 

What is the original meaning of the Sanskrit word “varna”? 

When European scientists identified “Caucasians” and “Negroes” as different taxonomic groups, how close did they come to identifying ancestral groups, as identified by modern genetic research? When early Americans differentiated people by “white” or “black” skin, what difference did they imagine themselves to be identifying? How well could height have served to identify the same difference that early Americans thought they were identifying? 

How well do Latinos and Asians fit together into a “middle caste”? How well does the “model minority” concept fit this American “middle caste” or middle castes in Nazi Germany and Hindu India? How would Wilkerson’s narrative be different if she gave Latinos and Asians more consideration?

Where do Jews fit in Wilkerson’s caste formulation? Are they middle-caste “model minorities”, like Asians supposedly are? What does it mean that Jews are more likely to be victims of hate crimes than African Americans? What caste did Einstein appear to be in? 

Where do Native Americans fit in Wilkerson’s proposed caste system? How would her narrative be different if she gave substantial consideration to Native Americans? 

According to James Henry Hammond, who were the “mud sills” of the North? How did Northerners react to his infamous speech? What alternative view of what makes a nation prosper did Abraham Lincoln offer?

What can we learn from majority-white nations with substantial Black populations that don’t have a caste system? For example, since Canada did not have a hundred years of Jim Crow, what can we learn from the success of the African-Canadian population? More generally, what are some good examples of societies where people of different ancestries live together harmoniously, such as East Asians with Africans or settlers with Indigenous people? What can we learn from those societies? Where in the world today can we find the most successful African-descended population?

Wilkerson recounts the 1990 case of Charles Stuart, who murdered his pregnant wife and blamed the crime on an African-American man. In recent years, what are some famous cases where reports of outrageous interracial crimes turned out to be hoaxes or mistakes? 

As if channeling Jordan Peterson and his infamous lobsters, Wilkerson talks about natural human hierarchies, using wolf packs and their alphas, betas, and omegas as a template. What was the primordial social order system of _Homo sapiens_? What new social orders did our ancestors develop over the last 50,000 years or so, and why?

Wilkerson recounts the tragic, outrageous case of [REDACTED]*. What pertinent details does she leave out? 

Wilkerson points out that, contrary to stereotypes, most African Americans are not poor, and most poor Americans are not Black. If you share this information with antiracist activists, with what emotional tenor might they respond?

Wilkerson points out that being shot by the police is a leading cause of death among young, African American men. What is the leading cause of death for that demographic?

Wilkerson builds her argument about “caste” by describing racial stratification, and she talks little about class. How would her narrative be different if she paid more attention to class?

Wilkerson mentions that white evangelicals predominate in the Republican base but touches lightly on religion. To what extent could opposition to liberal policies and support for Trump relate to religious beliefs? How prominently has Christianity featured in support for Trump compared to race? If the caste system tells whites that they are superior, to what extent do evangelical Christian beliefs tell believers the same thing about them? Would American voters rather vote for an African American Christian or a white atheist?

To what extent does American nationalism tell white Americans that they are special and on top? Toward whom would Trump supporters feel more warmly: an African American waving a US flag or an ethnic Russian waving a Russian flag? 

Only 43% of white voters voted for President Obama in the 2008 election, a low figure that Wilkerson attributes to the caste system. How does that percentage compare to votes earned by previous Democratic candidates? What single demographic trait best predicted whether a voter chose Obama or McCain (also Hillary or Trump, etc)?

As Wilkerson points out, the US military is noteworthy in the way it provides real opportunities for advancement to African Americans. How does the military establish solidarity among soldiers from different ethnicities? What practices did the US Army establish in order to integrate its officer corps? What professional cadre elsewhere in the world, if any, is more racially integrated than the US Army officer corps?

Wilkerson says that African Americans have been denied reparations, while reparations have been granted to other groups that have suffered discrimination. What are some good examples of such reparations.

Wilkerson refers to two aspects of human nature: the universal desire to be free and the putative tendency to form hierarchies like wolves do. What other aspects of human nature, especially our social instincts, might help illuminate racial inequality in the US? 

Wilkerson says that the caste system hurt white America by, for example, distorting the meritocracy and preventing society from taking full advantage of everyone’s abilities. How would ending racism be good or bad for white Americans, and to what degree would it be a net benefit or drawback?

If we substituted the term “status” for “caste”, as in whites being “high-status” and African Americans being “low-status”, what would be lost and what would be gained? The same question goes for Wilkerson referring to gender inequality and age inequality as “caste”.

As we as a nation confront the injustice of racism, what personal and collective actions does Wilkerson advocate that we undertake, and which seem more promising?

If a gifted journalist were to write a parallel book that ignored all the racist history that Wilkerson recounts and recounted all the egalitarian history that Wilkerson ignores, how close could the author come to making it sound like race relations in the US are peachy keen? (This question is hypothetical because I do not advocate that gifted journalists write one-sided accounts of race relations in US history and society.)

* It’s taboo to question accounts of this incident even when the details in the account are questionable, and I’m no Wilfred Reilly.