Race and Hatred
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A couple of posts back, I said that it was problematic to define racism in terms of holding certain factual beliefs, because we typically don’t consider it particularly wicked to hold a mistaken factual belief. There is, however, a pretty glaring counter-example to this claim, namely Holocaust denial. Whether or not the Holocaust happened is a factual question, yet we don’t regard someone who denies the reality of the Holocaust as being merely mistaken, but as being somehow evil.
The fact that we regard Holocaust denial with such opprobrium is not due simply to the fact that it goes against the evidence. We would probably look more kindly, at least from a moral point of view, on someone who denied that WWII happened than on someone who just denied the Holocaust. Nor is there anything wicked about the idea of there not being a Holocaust as such. If the Holocaust really hadn’t happened, that would be a wonderful thing.
The reason, I think, why we treat Holocaust denial with such moral contempt is that we do not believe it can be arrived at honestly. The evidence is favor of there being a Holocaust is so strong, and the noxious associations and views of many of the leading Holocaust deniers so apparent, that we are inclined to think anyone who adopts such a view must do so not from an honest (though mistaken) appraisal of the evidence, but because of an ulterior motive, namely antisemitism.
Similar, perhaps in describing certain factual claims as being racist, we are saying not that there is something metaphysically racist about the claims, but that we think anyone who makes such a claim is doing so because they have an animus towards a particular racial group. Racism, then, would consist ultimately in the hatred of a particular racial group, and in the beliefs and actions motivated (consciously or unconsciously) by that hate.
Pretty clearly, hating people on account of their race is going to constitute racism on any proper analysis. And it is not so hard to see why racial hatred would be wrong, and seriously so. The question, though, is whether racial hatred can fully account for all examples of racist actions and beliefs. I used to think that the answer to this question was yes. Further rumination of the matter, however, has left me doubtful, and in the next couple of posts, I will attempt to offer some reasons for thinking that racial hatred can’t be the whole story when it comes to defining racism.
Next in Series: Racism without Race?
We would probably look more kindly, at least from a moral point of view, on someone who denied that WWII happened than on someone who just denied the Holocaust.
I think I can agree with this as far as it goes, particularly with the “moral point of view” qualifier. In an ideal view, facts are netural. In the real world, facts are brought up or disputed because they are believed to be significant.
The other evening I was watching a fascinating documentary on PBS on chemist Percy Julian. Where it is germain to this discussion is a part of the documentary where they mentioned IQ research being done at Harvard and other places. That research was confirming the dominant societal view that blacks were mentally inferior and WASPs were intellectually superior. Now obviously cranium measurements and similar things are not racist, but pointing out these things without noting the enironmental conditioning can reasonably be seen as whitewashing society’s role in the outcomes achieved. Malice isn’t necessarily required to be racist. Racism amongst people was not typically malicious. More often racism manifested itself in people convincing themselves of lies or as President Bush put it so well, “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
You don’t have to be racist to recognize differences between people groups.
I don’t know if the brain is bigger or smaller in black people. Doesn’t matter. What if it is smaller. It would be racist to deny the fact if in fact it was a fact.
Racism then is the intentional ignorance of facts with the intent on unjustly treating a people group. There are plenty of people who are afraid of being called racist who ignore facts and so thereby are actually more racist than they even think they are.
Facts is facts. The question is why do we want to find a group of people to blame for all our own woes?
If I didn’t get a PHD then should I not be allowed to ride in the front of the bus? But at the same time there is no problem admitting that I do not have a PHD. But there are plenty of people who would then prejudge me based on that fact.
It is a matter of human pride and accountability. It doesn’t matter what group of people we prejudge. It is our own sin that we are not dealing with.
So to solve the problem we need not give all kinds of artificial rights to people groups who have been prejudged, but we need to focus on the real problem which is personal sin.
I could care less about anybody talking about racism who is not willing to talk about their own sin.