The ideology of anti-racism

The negation of black empowerment

Ibram Kendi, in How to be an antiracist, reports that in 2013, most blacks did not view white racism as the source of racial inequity, and the percentage who blamed white racism had been declining for years. But between 2013 and 2017, there was a dramatic reversal in this long-standing trend in public opinion, such that in 2017, 59% of blacks (along with 35% of whites and 45% of Latinos) affirmed the view that white racism was the principal cause of racial inequity.

Kendi maintains that the reason for the change in public opinion between 2013 and 2017 was a rise in black consciousness, as a result of televised police killings of blacks, and because of the consciousness-raising work of Black Lives Matter.

I would put it differently. In my view, the change was a consequence of the way that tragic cases of killings of black citizens by police were framed and presented to the public by black activists who, when such incidents occurred, instead of calling for calm and waiting until the full facts could be investigated and known, incited the people to protest and, in some cases, violence. Furthermore, this frame put forth by activists was widely disseminated in the media.

As the wave of passion with respect to police conduct unfolded, there were principled black scholars who challenged the prevailing discourse. One is Glenn Loury, a Professor of Economics at Brown University. In a February 10, 2021, article in Quillette, “Unspeakable Truths about Racial Inequality in America,” Loury writes:

There are about 1,200 fatal shootings of people by the police in the US each year, according to the carefully documented database kept by the Washington Post which enumerates, as best it can determine, every single instance of a fatal police shooting. Roughly 300 of those killed are African Americans, about one-fourth, while blacks are about 13 percent of the population. So that’s an over-representation, though still far less than a majority of the people who are killed. More whites than blacks are killed by police in the country every year. You wouldn’t know that from the activists’ rhetoric.

Loury observes that the killing of 1200 people per year, is too many, so this is an issue that ought to be analyzed and discussed. “Still, we need to bear in mind that this is a country of more than 300 million people with scores of concentrated urban areas where police interact with citizens. Tens of thousands of arrests occur daily in the United States. So, these events—which are extremely regrettable and often do not reflect well on the police—are, nevertheless, quite rare.”

Seeking to further put the issue of police killing of blacks in a larger context, Loury notes that

there are about 17,000 homicides in the United States every year, nearly half of which involve black perpetrators. The vast majority of those have other blacks as victims. For every black killed by the police, more than 25 other black people meet their end because of homicides committed by other blacks. This is not to ignore the significance of holding police accountable for how they exercise their power vis-à-vis citizens. It is merely to notice how very easy it is to overstate the significance and the extent of this phenomenon, precisely as the Black Lives Matter activists have done.

Rising on the wave of the passion generated by misleading accounts of police violence in the black community, the ideologues put forth the notion of “systemic racism,” an absurd characterization of a nation with constitutional principles and implemented laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race or gender, and which has developed structures of preferential treatment in employment and higher education for all social sectors except white males. These principles and laws were nearly universally supported in white society by the twenty-first century, and preferential treatment for minorities and women was for the most part accepted as a form of compensation for past racist and sexist practices. In the half century following the civil rights reforms of 1964-1965, white society evolved toward egalitarian norms and values with respect to race, with increasing strength each decade. Current manifestations of residual racism should be placed in this context.

In spite of its empirically inaccurate foundation, anti-racism became influential from 2013 to 2023, because it emerged as an ideology, that is, a set of ideas that defend the interests of particular sectors that have sufficient influence to disseminate them.

In today’s commentary, I write on the ideology of anti-racism. I make the following arguments. (1) Black activists presented a distorted image of killings of black citizens by police, stoking passions¸ as noted above. (2) The anti-racist ideology presents an empirically inaccurate description of American reality, and it is analytically limited. (3) The ideology of anti-racism promoted the interests of the black middle class, which had previously established itself as a separate social sector through outmigration from traditional black neighborhoods. (4) The ideology of anti-racism found resonance among economically secure whites who had unresolved guilt with respect to historic racist practices, and who had not undertaken a thorough investigation of said practices. (5) The corporate elite promoted the anti-racist ideology, because it divided the people and distracted attention away from the common social and economic interests of the people vis-à-vis the elite. (6) The anti-racist ideology undermines black empowerment, as has been noted by a number of black scholars.

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A black middle class and urban white liberal ideology

In a 2018 article in Dialectical Anthropology, Adolph Reed Jr., Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania and a well-known black political scientist, maintains that the new anti-racist politics is not compatible with leftist politics as conventionally understood; it is in fact anti-leftist. It “is fundamentally antagonistic to a left politics of broadly egalitarian social transformation.” It is characterized by “militant opposition to conventional left norms of justice that center on economic equality.” It does not seek the elimination or reduction of inequalities of the nation; it only seeks equal access to the hierarchical distribution of goods and services. It is committed to the pursuit of racial parity within the established order.

According to Reed, anti-racist politics promotes the interests of the professional-managerial class of the nation, and therefore, it does not seek to forge a large, broad political base seeking social transformation. It is rooted in the social position and worldview of government administrators tied to the Democratic Party, news analysts and commentators, educational administrators and professors, corporate administrators, social service and non-profit sectors, and the diversity industry. The members of this stratum are in agreement that race and other ascriptive identities should be central to the framing of social justice issues.

Drawing upon Reed’s analysis, I am inclined to describe anti-racism as the ideology of a political alliance forged by the corporate elite and the black professional/administrative class, an alliance needed by both to protect and attain their political interests. The elite wants to retain its privileges, but it is in an ideologically disadvantaged position, because it cannot declare its true philosophy of privileged entitlement, while many of the people struggle with increasing anxiety to provide for basic needs. In this situation, the ideology of white racism gives the elite the ideological upper hand. Armed with the anti-racism ideology, the elite now appears to be virtuous, defending the victims of racism. And this virtuousness has no cost for the elite, for it matters not at all to them if more blacks and other ascriptive identities enter higher positions in the management of a society that the elite controls.

At the same time, for the black middle class, the support of corporations in the anti-racist political agenda means that it can much more readily attain a greater number of the coveted professional positions in the society, especially important in the context of the sustained structural crisis of the world-economy and the relative economic decline of the nation. Cooperation between the black professional/managerial/entrepreneurial class and the corporate elite is the perfect alliance, benefiting both and defending material privileges in the name of moral righteousness.

Whites who support the anti-racism ideology of the corporate-black alliance are well represented in the upper-middle and middle classes. They feel secure in their relatively privileged material position, and at the same time, they suffer from an unresolved guilt with respect to the nation’s historic social sins of slavery and racism, having never fully studied the full historical and philosophical implications of these phenomena. They feel guilty about their relatively privileged position in the world, which is in actuality rooted partially in their skin color, but principally in the social class and nation to which they belong. They are conscious of the fact that they did not earn their relative privilege, even though they are only vaguely aware of the historical, economic, and political sources of their privilege. Support of the anti-racist ideology enables their personal redemption from the social sin of racism; and at the same time, the inclusion of blacks and other ascribed categories is perceived as having little likelihood of threatening their own relative economic security.

The anti-racist ideology not only distorts reality to promote the interests of particular sectors. It also imposes. Inaccurate conceptualizations—designed to formulate a political agenda of particular sectors of society—cannot be disseminated through reasoned discourse, because the practice of reason would expose the inaccuracy of the formulation. The dissemination of the anti-racist ideology is unavoidably driven by authoritarian tendencies. Accordingly, one sees examples of persons being dismissed from their positions for challenging the assumptions and the inaccuracies of the anti-racist ideology.

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The Rainbow Coalition: A potential not fulfilled

In the 1980s, Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition—unlike the anti-racist ideology, and also unlike identity politics—called white workers, white professionals and white businesspersons to join a process of change. The Rainbow Coalition presented a comprehensive platform that responded to the concrete needs of all sectors, including workers, farmers, women, blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, gays and lesbians, environmentalists, and small businesspersons. The Rainbow Coalition platform was based in a process of listening to the proposals of each of the groups, in that it presented the proposals of each group as they themselves had formulated them in their various organizations. Jackson called for unity of all the popular sectors in support of the concrete needs of each, as the necessary road for the empowerment of the people, ultimately taking political power and control of the government from the hands of the corporate elite. In the Rainbow Coalition, there existed the potentiality of obtaining a consensual majority forged by the unity of progressive forces and popular sectors.

In addition, the Rainbow Coalition advocated an anti-imperialist foreign policy of North-South cooperation. Its proposal was fully consistent with the principles of the New International Economic Order proposed by the Non-Aligned Movement and adopted by the UN General Assembly, principles that include respect for the sovereignty of nations, non-interference in the affairs of states, mutually beneficial trade among nations, and solidarity among peoples.

The Rainbow Coalition, if it had proceeded to develop, would have provided the foundation for the reformulation of the nation’s narrative in a form that draws upon the experiences of all the popular sectors, regardless of race, color, gender, or creed; and in a form that redefines the relation of the United States with the rest of the world.

Following Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign, the next stage in the movement, which had been formulated by Jackson, was to be the development of the Rainbow Coalition as a mass organization in each state, including the forming of study groups for the education of the people, participating in activities related to social justice causes, and supporting progressive candidates for local offices. As a mass organization in each state, the Rainbow Coalition would function as both a social movement organization and a political current within the Democratic Party, dedicated above all to the raising of the political consciousness of the people and to supporting candidates for political office at all levels.

I was a Jackson delegate at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, and several of us from South Carolina met on a number of occasions following the convention to discuss the formation of the Rainbow Coalition as a recognized organization in our state. But the conversations were lacking in direction and without concrete results.

Rev. Jackson visited Presbyterian College to deliver a lecture. Our small college had donor support for inviting speakers, which enabled the College to offer Jackson $25,000 to deliver a lecture. Seated by his side during dinner, I tried to talk with him about the issue of developing the coalition as a mass organization. He referred me to others, whom I subsequently found were unable to help. In reflecting on Rev. Jackson’s manner in responding to my effort to raise the issue, combined with my previous efforts with South Carolina Jackson delegates, I concluded that the organization lacked the commitment to developing the concept in practice. I decided, perhaps not correctly, to focus my energies on my writing and on developing experiential educational programs dedicated to encountering the people’s movements and revolutions of the Third World.

The emergence of the Rainbow Coalition as a dynamic mass organization could perhaps have functioned as an alternative to the toxic ideology that emerged from the alliance of middle-class blacks, urban upper-middle-class whites, and the corporate elite.

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The oversights of Ibram Kendi

Ibram Kendi begins How to be an antiracist, with a series of definitions. A racist is “one who supports racist policy through their actions or inaction or who expresses a racist idea.” Policy refers to “written and unwritten laws, procedures, processes, regulations, and guidelines.” “Racist policy and racist policymakers” are the central agents of racism. They constitute “racist power.” “A racist idea is any idea that suggests one racial group is inferior or superior to another racial group in any way.” Racism “is a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities.” Racial inequity “is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing,” exemplified by the fact that 71% of white families are homeowners, as against 41% of black families. In contrast, racial equity is standing on relatively equal footing.

Kendi creates with these definitions a situation in which it is very difficult for whites to escape the accusation of being racist. Even whites who are not policymakers and who reject the racist idea that one racial group is inferior to another, and if they are inactive in the face of unwritten guidelines and social processes that generate unequal standing, they too are racist. There is no escape from moral culpability for persons who do not approve of the racial situation into which they were born and live, but do not know what they can do about it. Their only option appears to be accepting guilt for a situation that they had little voice in creating.

It is an unfair accusation against white society. By and large, in the four decades following the civil rights reforms of 1964-1965, whites accepted significant changes in laws and customs with respect to race, intermingling with persons of color in public settings in a form rarely seen prior to 1965. To be sure, whites in general did not enter into a profound dialogue on the issue of race, and they therefore never arrived to understand black movement proposals for black control of the black community, for the creation of a multiracial and multiethnic coalition in defense of common needs, and for an anti-imperialist foreign policy of cooperation with peoples of color throughout the world. But this lack does not constitute, in and of itself, belief in the idea that “one racial group is inferior or superior to another racial group” in some way.

Standing accused of racism, some white people, who in general are persons who have not come to terms with feelings of guilt over racial inequities, undertake some form of activism, thereby escaping the racist accusation. The most common expressions of such redemptive activism are shouting slogans in the street and calling out the racism of other persons on the Internet. Such activism may not contribute to the creation of a more just world, but it does enable the attainment of personal redemption, or at least the signaling of virtuousness.

In the world of Ibram Kendi, black people too stand accused. Black people nearly always internalize racist ideas in some form or another, according to Kendi, including Ibram himself. The book is part social analysis and part intellectual autobiography, and it describes Kendi’s own struggle to be anti-racist, which is implied in the title of the book. This is truly a sad thing, that all of us must live under the burden of the social sin of racism, whites and blacks, including Kendi, in spite of the empirically evident significant progress since 1965, which really ought to be a reason for celebration, accompanied by commitment to progress further.

I believe that, inasmuch as the nation has made significant progress in overcoming racism and discrimination, all of us, blacks and whites, ought to be liberated from the personal burden of living under a racist accusation. We have laid the foundation for making further progress, by laughing and playing with one another, loving one another, reasoning with one another, and struggling together to do justice, for those of us so inclined, all of which would help the nation toward further progress on the issue.

Kendi addresses and defends affirmative action. He maintains that it is morally acceptable to discriminate against a person on the basis of race, if the intention is to create equity. If it creates equity, it is not racist but anti-racist. Affirmative action is discriminating today to correct the discrimination of the past, Kendi maintains.

I find this defense of affirmative action as justifiable discrimination to be problematic. In the first place, in the absence of programs that address the rights of workers and the educational and health needs of families, affirmative action generates resentment and resistance among whites. Affirmative action would be much more politically viable if it were part of a larger project that attends to the social and economic needs of all the people.

Moreover, in addition to being politically costly, affirmative action does not accomplish much social justice; it benefits primarily minorities and women with stronger educational and employment credentials, not women and minorities with limited credentials and in conditions of economic need.

In addition, Kendi’s formulation violates the liberal principal of equal treatment for all, a principle at the foundation of the American Republic. History teaches us that social change is not accomplished by rejecting historic principles of a nation, but by rejecting existing practices in the name of sacred historic principles.

In his analysis of racism, Kendi assumes that racist policy is the cause of racial inequities. From a social scientific point of view, this is a problematic assumption. Certainly, racist ideas and policy could be a factor in explaining racial inequity; but so could class and cultural factors. How can it be assumed that racism is the more important factor, when there are laws and policies against racial discrimination, and when there are limited efforts to attend to the needs of lower-income persons, be they black or white? Kendi does not offer the reader any explanation of why class factors should not be taken into account in addressing racial inequities.

Perhaps more than accusations of racism, we need today a profound national debate and discussion concerning the role of the state in the economy and society, concerning the necessary role of the state in directing the development of the economy and in ensuring a just distribution of goods and services. Sound national policies emerging from such discussion would benefit the lower and working classes, regardless of race. It would benefit blacks disproportionately, since blacks are disproportionate in these classes. But the rationale for the program would be improving the living conditions of all our citizens who have need. It is their need that justifies the program, not their color.

There also are possible cultural factors in explaining racial inequity in income, and Kendi does address this issue. He attempts to refute those who argue that cultural factors are important in explaining racial inequities. He rightly criticizes the assimilationist view, which has had both white and black proponents. The assimilationist view, assuming the inferiority of black culture, maintains that blacks can be instructed to acquire the behaviors of white culture and integrate into white society. And he rightly criticizes the “culture of poverty” literature of the 1960s, which described black inner-city culture as pathological. Kendi maintains that neither the culture nor the people are pathological; rather, it is the conditions of poverty that are pathological. He notes that in response to pathological conditions, the people invent cultures and behaviors that may be different from those of the richer neighborhoods, but not inferior. If the elite race-class evaluates by its own cultural and behavioral norms, then it will judge the culture of the black poor to be inferior, when it actually is simply different.

There are questions that need to be asked here. What if some of these culturally different but not inferior behaviors are in fact obstacles to reducing poverty in the neighborhood? If this is so, as some black leaders and scholars have asserted for four decades, does someone have the responsibility to educate the black poor, to bring them to behaviors that are faithful to who they are, to their ancestors, to their history and culture, but yet at the same time would empower them to education and employment, or to whatever they need to satisfy their material needs as they define them? Clearly, white people cannot do this, out of respect for the cultural autonomy of the black community, and in order to stay clear of paternalism. Development in the culture of the black poor is and must be the responsibility of black society, and a generalized accusation of white racism does not address this responsibility.

Www.freeblackthought.com is a website that “seeks to represent the rich diversity of black thought beyond the relatively narrow spectrum of views promoted by mainstream outlets as defining ‘the black perspective.’” Among the contributors to Free Black Thought is John McWhorter, Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University. He reviews the two big anti-racism best sellers, Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility and Kendi’s How To Be An Anti-Racist. Capturing well the impact of the book on white readers, he writes that “White Fragility presents an indoctrination program seeking to make whites aware of inner racism they didn’t know they had, broadening their self-image into one of passive but unpardonable complicity within a fundamentally racist system.” He concludes that White Fragility offers “psychological torture sessions in the guise of sociopolitical commitment.”

With respect to Kendi’s How To Be An Anti-Racist, McWorter observes that Kendi’s explicit foundational assumption is that “all racial disparities are due to racism.” For Kendi, this assumption is beyond question for any moral person, and he views anyone who argues against it to be racist. McWorter maintains that even though intellectuals who think like Kendi do not want to hear it, cultural factors are important, which is a fact that “ordinary people tend to understand spontaneously.” For example, “racism quite often leaves cultural legacies that render black people unable to take advantage of anti-racist policies” that are designed to create more equity. Many concerned people, McWorter notes, dedicate their careers to trying to figure out what to do about these cultural factors. Kendi does not help in this reflection, for he subscribes to today’s popular notion that careful reasoning, the written word, and objectivity are white practices that should not be imposed on black people.

Adolph Reed, mentioned above, and Walter Benn Michaels, Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, co-authored an article that appears in the Free Black Thought website. They maintain that “racism is real and antiracism is both admirable and necessary, but extant racism isn’t what principally produces our inequality, and antiracism won’t eliminate it.” They note that the increase in inequality from 1968 to 2016 was not caused by racism, but by the policy turn to neoliberalism. “And because racism is not the principal source of inequality today, antiracism functions more as a misdirection that justifies inequality than a strategy for eliminating it.”

Reed and Michaels observe that many of the rich are eager to embark on a course of moral purification through anti-racist ideology and training, but they have no interest in a politics of social democratic redistribution that would alter the material conditions that make them rich. This is the culmination of ideological tendencies of the last half century, during which racial democracy has displaced social democracy as the dominant principle in black politics and in U.S. politics in general.

Many anti-racists and liberals, Reed and Michaels observe, express indifference toward or disdain for poor and working-class whites. But such indifference and disdain ultimately supports the perpetuation of social inequality as well as racial inequity. “It is practically impossible, as generations of black proponents of social democracy understood clearly, to imagine a serious strategy for winning the kinds of reforms that would actually improve black and brown working people’s conditions without winning them for all working people and without doing so through a struggle anchored to broad working-class solidarity.” I am in agreement with this formulation, but I propose following the example of triumphant revolutions in Latin America, which explicitly invoked solidarity not only with the working class but with all sectors of the people, thereby including professionals, small businesspersons, and the middle class in the broad-based coalition, which in many cases played central roles in revolutionary processes (including, for example, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Salvador Allende).

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The negation of black empowerment

Another theme addressed in the Free Black Thought website is the tendency of the anti-racism ideology and the prevailing black rhetoric to view victimization as the essence of the black experience. Erec Smith, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at York College of Pennsylvania, maintains that black rhetoric tends to promote an essentialism that minimizes individuality and promotes the erroneous idea that black people have a shared viewpoint, and adherence to this viewpoint becomes a measure of authenticity for black people. He further maintains that for Critical Race Theory the most essential black characteristic is victimhood, which complements its tenet that white people in America and America itself are irredeemably racist. He writes that “Critical Race Theory seems to guarantee the perpetual essentialized victimhood of black people.”

In perpetuating essentialized black victimhood, the anti-racism ideology is disempowering. Smith maintains that contemporary anti-racism promotes a feeling of victimization and learned helplessness in people of color. In giving primacy to identity, contemporary anti-racism attracts the sector of the black population that feels disempowered, whose embracing of radical activism reinforces their powerlessness, even as it gives the appearance of empowerment.

Shelby Steele, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, also addresses the theme of an apparent exercise of power that hides lack of agency. He writes that nearly sixty years after the Civil Rights Law, groups like Black Lives Matter are part of a “vast grievance industry” that assert themselves using “America’s insecure moral authority around race.” In American culture, there is an unspoken agreement, in which American institutions are obligated to prove their innocence of racism as a condition for moral legitimacy, and blacks in turn are obligated to take advantage of new economic opportunities by attaining parity with whites. If whites comply with a newfound racial innocence, and if blacks attain parity in a now post-racist environment, then America will have overcome its social sin of racism. The American promise of democracy will have been attained.

The problem with this agreement, Steele maintains, is that it turns blacks into perpetual victims trading on their victimization. White institutions demonstrate their innocence by making concessions to black demands; and blacks put themselves forward as continued victims in order to make the case for further concessions. This process converts “black suffering into a moral power to be wielded, rather than a condition to be overcome. This is the power that blacks discovered in the ’60s. It gained us a War on Poverty, affirmative action, school busing, public housing and so on. But it also seduced us into turning our identity into a virtual cult of victimization—as if our persecution was our eternal flame, the deepest truth of who we are, a tragic fate we trade on. After all, in an indifferent world, it may feel better to be the victim of a great historical injustice than a person left out of history when that injustice recedes.”

But, Steele maintains, there is today a fundamental factual problem with this American racial accord, namely, that “we blacks aren’t much victimized any more. . .. Today we are far more likely to encounter racial preferences than racial discrimination.”

“Moreover, we live in a society that generally shows us goodwill—a society that has isolated racism as its most unforgivable sin.” There is, therefore, an “absence of malice” that contradicts the discourse of blacks focused on their victimization. “The great diminishment (not eradication) of racism since the ’60s means that our victim-focused identity has become an anachronism. Well suited for the past, it strains for relevance in the present.”

The anachronistic use of victimization as a political strategy is reinforced by “a narcissistic embrace of lived experience as [anti-racism’s] primary ethos and epistemology,” in the words of Erec Smith. The post-modern subjectivist epistemology of the “lived experience” nullifies the duty to take into account the understandings of others, based on their lived experiences, be they others in the nation, in history, or the world. A genuine quest for understanding requires that there be no selectivity in this. That is, it can’t be said that the lived experiences of black lesbians count, but not those of white male Christians. To be sure, the voice of the former did not count in the past; but in rectifying this, it cannot be that the voice of the latter no longer matters. The subjective selection of the voices of lived experiences, based on personal preferences, constitutes a moral laxness and intellectual laziness that can only result in social and political conflict, because the now excluded others, if they are to be authentic human beings, cannot permit it to stand.

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Conclusion

As I maintain in my last commentary (“The rise and eclipse of black power: The abandonment of the black community by the black middle class,” November 26, 2024), anti-racist ideology did not emerge from black power. It emerged from the outmigration of the black middle class and the forgetting of black power. It emerged as an uncritical subjectivist expression based in the “lived experiences” of the black middle class, not knowing that what one learns in experience is merely the first stage in the process of arriving to understanding and insight. Lacking consciousness of the theory and practice of black power, it did not critically engage black power with respect to the issues of the good of the black community and the nation. Lacking the theoretical capacity for reasoned discussion, its advocates gained a superficial and temporary moral upper hand through the accusation of racism, which gave them the power to destroy the careers or to “cancel” and “ghost” anyone who spoke in defense of reason, critical analysis, or the common good.

The damage that has been done to the nation by so-called Critical Race Theory must somehow be healed. Perhaps it is time for those black leaders and intellectuals who have been criticizing the ideology of anti-racism to reach out to the various ethnic groups and races that form the American people, indicating the parameters for moving forward from here. It is impossible to imagine changing the things that need to be changed in the nation without mutual support and cooperation among all the sectors that comprise the people of the United States, including the middle, lower middle, and lower classes; intellectuals, professionals, businesspersons, and workers; and urban liberals and conservatives from rural areas and middle America.

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