Race and State
The emerging racial state promises no real progress for most minorities while deepening ethnic divides and undermining the basis for democratic self-rule.
The upcoming ruling by the US Supreme Court on racial preferences is certain to ignite yet another divisive debate about whether or not a person’s ethnic heritage should determine their treatment by the state and major institutions. After steady progress towards “race-blind” governance, the notion of equal treatment is disappearing in a frenzy of ethnic self-assertion and white guilt.
The new racialized politics sunders the basis for liberal societies, essentially diminishing the value of merit and hard work. Some advocates even support separate living places on college campuses, a chilling reprise of segregation. Elsewhere, grade schoolers are instructed that America is based on lies and its current systems and structures are irredeemable. There are cases of schools separating third-graders by race and asking them to rank their “privilege.”
The wellspring for this movement lies on college campuses, where whiteness is sometimes treated like a social disease. Evergreen University’s “Day of Absence” instructed white students to leave campus, and the University of Florida’s “BIPOC Anthropology town hall” excluded whites. Canadian universities, like their American counterparts, have become enamored with guilt-tripping whites, accusing them collectively for the damage done to First Peoples, irrespective of when their families arrived or any traceable culpability.
The origins of the racial state
The advocates of the emerging racial state generally dismiss the fundamentals of democracy—the rule of law, open debate, equal treatment, perceiving them to be subtle instruments of white supremacy. They often want to replace the ideal of merit with a regime in which decisions are largely shaped by race and gender. Sadly, the Biden administration has followed this approach while some blue states employed racial “qualifications” for vaccines, even though it was clearly the elderly, whatever their ethnicity, who were most vulnerable.
Race-centrism has become the modern equivalent of Catholic dogma, once a requirement at church-run colleges. Now some legal and medical establishments routinely publish pledges in support of an omnipresent DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) agenda. DEI-related courses are now required of all students at the State University of New York; job applicants at Ohio State’s engineering school must sign a pledge to promote the progressive race agenda. A recent AEI study found that in a survey of 999 jobs, “19 percent require diversity statements, while 68 percent include the terms ‘diversity’ or ‘diverse’ in some fashion, often as a way of describing the university environment.”
Although racism has been a component of the human condition from time immemorial, race has often not been the primary motivation for human behavior. Indeed, for most of history, even slavery was not based on race—instead, slaves were sourced from the ranks of subjugated war prisoners, conquered peoples, and the destitute. Turkish slavers and other Muslim regimes bound over a million eastern Europeans for servants, concubines, soldiers, and even administrators.
Racialized slavery emerged with the rise of Europe’s nation-states. As Europe’s imperial regimes expanded to Asia, Africa, and the Americas, they adopted racial categorization to justify their exploitation of “inferior” races. Non-whites, such as Native Americans and Africans were quickly enslaved by the Spanish in the Americas, and once these populations declined, they looked to African chieftains to supply the human cargo needed by the plantations of the Caribbean and later North America. Aborigines in Australia were considered—as the Hobart Town Gazette suggested in 1826—a “savage and vindictive race,” whose neolithic culture justified conquest and subjection to a “superior” Western culture.
The legacy of slavery and displacement certainly weighs heavily against the remarkable advances towards democracy and the rule of law in Western societies. It tarnishes the American Republic’s founders, who tolerated slavery even as they laid out the essential liberal view of governance or even benefited from it directly (although some founders were anti-slavery, particularly in New England). In ensuing decades, the country was almost torn apart by slavery, the elimination of which required a monumental effort. Even after abolition, discrimination remained commonplace, particularly in the former Confederacy.
By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, racism became enmeshed with a form of pseudoscientific inquiry, which reached its apotheosis with the rise of Nazism. Breaking with the Kantian notion of a common humanity, the German Reich sought to establish what historians Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann described as a “barbaric utopia” based entirely on ethnic hierarchies. At the top were those considered “Aryans,” with other races deemed inferior, and still others, notably Jews and Gypsies, considered less than human. Critically, National Socialism enjoyed strong support from within the academic and artistic community.
The logic of the new racialism
Resentment about the past provided the essential fuel for racialism. Nazis blamed Jews and Communists for Germany’s loss in the First World War and the economic catastrophe that followed. Today, we see this as even ancient past sins of racial oppression are not forgiven but used to justify exactions, financial and otherwise, from the white majority. Many Americans’ ancestors did not even get to the country before slavery was abolished in 1865.
Collective guilt has evolved into a canon for progressive intellectuals dating back to books like Andrew Hacker’s 1992 Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile and Unequal. More critically, this is also the approach taken by leading black intellectuals like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Cornel West, who seem to be as worried about acting “white” and integrating into a society they treat with suspicion as they are with finding pragmatic ways to improve outcomes in the classroom, marketplace, and workplace.
This approach, however, requires a rewriting of history to fit the agenda. The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” for example, asserts that American history has been defined primarily by racism. It rejects the idea of the “melting pot” and the idea that societies grow stronger through what historian David Hollinger has called “a dynamic mixing” with other races. Instead, racialists portray America as essentially based on the repression of blacks—its revolution merely a ploy to preserve slavery and its economy dependent on the plantation system. Although this thesis has been widely debunked by both mainstream and Marxist historians, it is now being widely taught in schools, often to students who have little existing knowledge of historical events.
This Manichean worldview does not seek commonalities with the majority, as was the case with the early civil rights movement. Rather, it sees “people of color” in permanent conflict with a majority imbued permanently with the curse of whiteness and anti-black dread. As antiracist author and activist Ibram X. Kendi recently told the Guardian, “At the end of the day, there is an all out war on American voters, particularly younger voters, particularly younger voters of colour, and it’s happening from Texas to Florida and it’s really causing the American people to decide whether we want our democracy or not.” A writer for Mother Jones argues that the Supreme Court, including its veteran black conservative Clarence Thomas, illustrates not a conservative bent but “white grievance.” This approach is now common in media coverage. When minorities murder their own people—such as the killing of Tyre Nichols by black policemen in Memphis or the Asians assaulted and killed by an Asian assailant in California—the perpetrators’ actions are routinely blamed on omnipresent white supremacy.
This kind of thinking flattens history’s nuances and contingencies into a racial melodrama. It provides the basis for “anti-racism,” as popularized by Kendi, which dismisses merit and equal treatment as insufficient and advocates a long-term imposition of discrimination based on race. It also fuels the growing movement to seek reparations for slavery and its aftermath, which extend far beyond the lifetimes of people who actually suffered legal discrimination.
As John Murawski has observed, the demand for reparations could just as easily be extended to other ethnic groups and even gays, all of whom can offer their own litany of historic discrimination. Canada’s current prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has backed an increasingly racialized public policy; there are even efforts to adjust criminal sentence by ethnicity. Some also want to impose climate reparations on Western industrial countries and within the United States, given that minorities often live in environmentally hazardous areas.
Will California set the tone?
California’s legislature, a reliable font of progressive thinking, is leading the charge on reparations. It is presently considering proposals from the state Reparations Task Force to issue $360,000 payments to descendants of slaves—a move that could cost up to around $640 billion in a state with a looming budget deficit. In the reparations package for San Francisco alone, a city with severe economic issues, the bill could reach over $100 billion. If adopted nationally, estimates of a national reparations bill could top $14 trillion, a significant burden on a Republic already drowning in debt.
California was never a slave state, so it seems like a strange place to lead on reparations, particularly for African Americans. Slavery existed widely only before the US seizure of the territory. Early Spanish Franciscans compared native Californians to “a species of monkey,” stripped them of their cultures and traditional livelihood, and forced them to work at the Missions. This was followed by expropriations and discrimination against Mexicans, which led to open rebellion in the 1870s and expulsions in the 1920s. Asian immigrants brought in to work in the area were particularly badly treated. They were subject to racially based discrimination and suffered bloody pogroms in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
In contrast, California was a comparatively congenial place to be black. Blacks suffered from discrimination, particularly in housing, but while Hispanic and Asian homeownership has grown or stayed stable, that of blacks has declined. Many blacks considered California, for all its residual racism, to be a kind of promised land. It was certainly far better than the South. As Ralph Bunche has noted, blacks in California were able “to partake in the freedom and grandeur of the Southland.”
Blacks were never an especially large group in California and constitute only about five percent of the population today, less than half the national average. But they have left a powerful imprint well beyond their numbers. Arguably the most important state politician in the late 20th century was Willie Brown, who served as Assembly speaker for 15 years and Mayor of San Francisco for eight. The state has also produced the first African-American vice-president, while other blacks have risen to prominence as mayors—two of the last six in Los Angeles alone, a city which is less than 10 percent black—as well as numerous Assembly speakers. They have played a large role in shaping the cultural map, from hip hop to the origins of LA’s fast-food and diner scene.
Yet despite this history, the racial statists in California have succeeded in passing a grade-school curriculum that categorizes all whites, no matter their origins, as enjoying “white privilege.” Groups like Jews, Irish, and other European immigrants, they maintain, have all benefited from “white privilege” (an idea that might have surprised their immigrant forebears). Asians, now far more numerous than blacks in California, are dismissed as “white adjacent” due to their high levels of education and income.
This approach is ideal for fostering racial discord, particularly in a state with such a varied ethnic history, and in which Latinos make up nearly half the poverty population. If national polls can be applied to California’s population, reparations are likely to be very unpopular with the groups who make up over 90 percent of the state’s population. African Americans may favor reparations, but the proposal registers large disapproval ratings, notes Pew, not just among whites but also among Hispanics and Asians.
Sadly, none of this is likely to address the real problems facing African Americans, in California or elsewhere. The state, suffering a troubling budget deficit, clearly does not have the resources to fund a massive racial spoils system. It’s also evident that the state’s generally progressive policies are failing many African Americans, whose percentage of the population has fallen consistently since 1980. In a recent study of minority success, the three worst regions for black economic upward mobility are all in the Golden State, including San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Pushing division amid growing grassroots diversity
The reparations approach, in California and elsewhere, simply gets the race issue wrong. The question is not how to separate the ethnic groups but how to integrate them into the broader economy and society. We need to rediscover what the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal, an early and extraordinarily competent analyst of American ethnicity, called “the American creed”—an abiding sense that every individual, regardless of circumstances, deserves fairness and the opportunity to realize their potential.
This creed is built around a set of aspirations that unite people, something that can also be applied to the UK, Australia, and Canada. Minority experiences in all these countries are complex, diverse, and only getting more so. This undermines a central precept of racialist ideology, according to which minorities are united in opposition to what the BIPOC Project describes as “white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism.”
This worldview inevitably diminishes minority achievement. Sociologist John McWhorter, for example, suggests that a “true and healthy history of black America” would also focus on the enormous cultural, political, and economic successes of African Americans since the end of slavery. Despite decades-long concerns from radicals about political marginalization, African Americans have now served in almost all the highest offices, including US president and vice-president. There are currently 58 black representatives in Congress. As of this writing, the mayor of the four biggest US cities—New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Houston—are all African American.
We see a similar process in other multiracial countries. In Canada, the number of nonwhite minorities in parliament stands at a record level; in Ontario, the country’s dominant province, nonwhites already represent almost a quarter of all members. Britain’s new prime minister is a Hindu, a first for a major Western country.
Rather than foreshadowing a hyper-segregated, racially driven future, at the grassroots, we see what my colleague Sergio Munoz has described as “the multiculturalism of the streets.” Racists of all colors may deny this integration of cultures, but it is a fundamental reality. For generations, black culture has had a profound influence on American society—indeed, in much of the world, black culture is synonymous with American culture, from hip hop and jazz to fashion and art. Across Europe, black and Middle-Eastern players now count among the leading cultural and sports stars.
This hybridization seems likely to be more prevalent in the future, as countries become ever more racially diverse. According to Statistics Canada, “half of the Canadian population will be made up of immigrants and their Canadian-born children” by 2041. Pew projects that the United States, due largely to Hispanic and Asian growth, will be majority-minority by 2050.
The limits of the racial state
“Multiculturalism of the streets” is most evident in spheres which governments and powerful institutions cannot control. People mix once they are in school, jobs, churches, and neighborhoods with those from different backgrounds. Re-segregation may be an idea popular on the racialist Left, but interracial dating and marriage are growing rapidly. The fastest growing race in America is mixed; one in 10 babies born in the US has one white and one non-white parent and 12 percent of all American blacks are now immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. Canada, too, has seen growing intermarriage rates among Asians and other minorities. In Australia, one in four couples are interethnic.
This commingling suggests that, under the skin, people generally want the same things—a good partner, a nice neighborhood, safe streets, opportunity, and success. This can be seen in suburban areas to which minorities are moving. Like the vast majority of the American middle class, a growing number of blacks, Asians, and Hispanics have moved beyond inner-city ghettos, barrios, Chinatowns, and other enclaves. Over the last decade, racial minorities have constituted over 95 percent of all growth in the periphery. Britain’s Asians also appear to be heading to suburbs, which matches their aspirations for homeownership and family-friendly space. Similar trends can be seen in Australia and Canada.
Minorities living in these increasingly diverse communities represent a major advance in terms of integration and cultural change. Multiculturalism is no longer primarily a big-city phenomenon; it is as prevalent in shopping malls and small-town high streets as it is in Manhattan, London, or Sydney. Highly diverse Fort Bend County, Texas, outside Houston, notes the Kinder Institute, now houses one of the nation’s wealthiest immigrant communities.
These minorities may have little use for the doctrines promoted by racialists. They frequently adopt the capitalist work ethic and supposedly “European” discipline with enthusiasm, as evidenced by their greater proclivity to start businesses. In the United States, where 13.7 percent of the population is foreign-born, immigrants represent 20.2 percent of the self-employed workforce and 25 percent of startup founders. As in the US, foreign-born Canadians show a greater proclivity to start businesses than native-born Canadians and also evidence higher labour participation rates.
These individuals, and those working for them, are unlikely to share the view of progressive intellectuals, who see crime primarily as an expression of injustice, and who sometimes excused looting during the summer of 2020. After all, many victims of “no justice, no peace” rioters were themselves minority business and their communities face the greatest threat from renewed levels of violent crime in cities such as New York and Chicago. In the US, most blacks and other minorities do not favor defunding the police, even as such policies are advocated in their name. A corporate regime of hiring executives by race, not to mention affirmative action in general, lacks popular support according to a recent Reuters survey, a stance that has remained strong over the recent past, even among historically disadvantaged minorities.
Class, not race, is the real issue
To be sure, there remain considerable disparities between ethnic groups. But a race-based approach does not seem to be the best way—practically or politically—to address them. Asians, for example, now have higher incomes than whites. Nor does being black necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to advancement. Among immigrants from Africa, females already do better than their white counterparts according to a recent study, and overall these newcomers have achieved among the highest education levels of any group.
It is also clear that race-based affirmative action has not solved the problems of poverty or education for African Americans. Black enrollment at elite colleges has fallen since 1980. The problems facing distressed communities are not simply racial in nature, but also reflect prevailing cultural attitudes and family structure. As the sociologist Thomas Sowell has noted, “having waved aside all differences between people,” social activists can only blame “evil intentions—discrimination, racism and exploitation.”
The notion that everything is the fault of “colonialism” and European oppression may secure university positions, but it does not benefit minorities in any meaningful way. Certainly, the attitudes inculcated by race activists are not helpful for meeting the challenges of modernity. It doesn't help a kid living in the ghetto that some academic “experts” denounce math as racist, despite its roots in places like India and the Arab world. One professor has even claimed that math is “a white, cisheteropatriarchal space.”
Nor will blacks and other minorities benefit from the notion that hard work, punctuality, individualism, family, and even cleanliness are “white” traits and characteristics. Fundamentally, blaming failure on whiteness strips minorities of their agency. Rather than address “socially mediated behavioral issues,” notes economist Glenn Loury, racialism leaves the hope for salvation, ironically, to the guilt and kind sentiments of people routinely denounced as hopelessly racist. For this reason and others, Loury has denounced the reparations and racialist agenda as little more than a shtick with little positive impact.
Rather than push a racial agenda, we could more effectively address disparities by addressing the needs of the multiracial working class. This will cover many minorities who already make up over 40 percent of the US working class and will constitute the majority by 2032. These workers face bigger problems than identity and reshaping history; they are focused on issues like inflation, rising crime, poor schools, and threats to their livelihoods posed by advances in AI and draconian green policies.
Ultimately, racial issues can be best addressed, in terms of policy and politics, by expanding opportunity and economic growth. It is economic opportunity that matters. What working-class minorities need is not more Maoist “struggle sessions” but pro-family and pro-growth policies that address the needs of the broad working class. Corporate mea culpas about racism, solidarity with Black Lives Matter, and expanding minority corporate board membership may blunt criticism (at least for a while), but won’t actually help most poorer minorities, who really need access to learning basic skills and economic opportunities. Blacks and other minorities, suggests former Citibank chairman Richard Parsons, will only feel better when they “feel it in their pockets.”
The emerging racial state promises no real progress for most minorities while deepening ethnic divides and undermining the basis for democratic self-rule. Their approach, oddly, largely reprises the racial obsessions of colonialist regimes or the old South. In a world where diversity is an everyday reality, we should seek ways to help individuals, whatever their race, achieve success based on their efforts. This is the best approach to foster the kind of postracial society that can best sustain our liberal order.
