"I'm Not a Racist--But...": The Moral Quandry of Race. (Reviews).

Lawrence Blum. (Cornell University Press, 2001.)

What does "race" mean? Or what does it mean to be, or to be called, "racist?" On the one hand, there's an easy--and essentially true but terribly unredeeming--answer to this question. "Race," so this answer would go, is an inherently muddied concept, which arose out of colonial and imperial nations' need to invent a subhuman or differently human category for subjected peoples. In the later nineteenth and then twentieth century, this already confused concept took on an equally faulty "scientific" patina, as biology, genetics, anthropology; and so on were enlisted in the attempt to lend some scientific credibility to the "discovery" of race. But we all know better now: the concept that was incoherent in its inception and which bad science couldn't improve should simply be dispensed with by all modern and right-thinking persons. This explanation often comes with the proviso that those in the past who employed the concept in good faith--say, W.E.B. DuBois -- can be forgiven their error inasmuch as they were simpl y confusing "race" with ethnicity, our much preferred term now (though the concept of "ethnicity" no doubt has some pretty frayed edges too.)

On the other hand, the cold hard political facts are that, shamefully nearly 150 years after the Fourteenth Amendment and nearly forty years after Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, there is arguably nothing that divides many Americans more than the "issue of race" -- from the higher national profile stories of Los Angeles police beatings, torture, and shootings, to urban politics, to O.J. Simpson, to continuing economic and social disparities, to multiculturalism and identity politics debates in the academy, to the ever virulent political and judicial argument over Affirmative Action, to say nothing of what happens down below face to face between individuals. Hence the conundrum we're in: while it would be easy to dismiss the concept of race as antique and confused nonsense (a maneuver some even in left or progressive circles are wont to do), doing so would prevent our attending to a set of ideas, or dispositions, which powerfully animate the way so many of us think and behave. The concept of "nationalism" migh t offer a rough analogy here--as befuddled, or self-contradictory, as based on bad, imagined history or equally bad science, as "invented," etc., as a variety of nationalist ideologies may be, it would be a rather serious mistake to pretend its intellectual failings render it politically and culturally inert.

In this context, then, Lawrence Blum's "I'm Not a Racist, But...": The Moral Quandry of Race is a breath of courageous fresh air. Blum is fully aware of the conceptual inconsistencies, fraudulent "science," etc., surrounding the concept of race, as his chapters five, six, and seven covering its history attest. In spire of these incoherencies, and also because of them, the task Blum sets himself is to identify and interrogate the many dimensions (however inconsistent, faulty; ephemeral) of our use and notion of "racism" (and here he sets off the "inferiorizing" and "antipathy" features of racism as a working, legitimate core meaning.) While a number of other critics have attempted to so examine the concept of "race" or racism (among them Anthony Appiah, Paul Gilroy; Lani Guinier, Amy Gutmann, Randall Kennedy, Martha Minow, Lucius Outlaw, all well consulted and evaluated here), few have done so strictly from the point of view of philosophy. Furthermore, however valuable he finds these accounts from other discip lines, Blum's volume is singular in its assessment of the landscape of "racism" from a distinctly moral point of view. This moral methodology allows Blum to dissect the concept in a variety of ways which taken together, I believe, significantly exceed the critical directions mentioned above.

One such central target in the author's moral critique of the way we (mis)use "racism," which figures prominently throughout the book, has to do with what Blum calls "categorical drift." By this "categorical drift" he means to refer to an "all or nothing" racial viewpoint--that which inclines us to view a particular act, or person, as either above racialist reproach or, then if not, as an utterly "racist" act or person. Blum wants to insist, against this Manichean view, that "genuine racism" must be usefully distinguished "from lesser racial ills and infractions" (28). And Blum's campaign against categorical drift which falsely collapses all phenomenon into good and evil is advanced in no small part by employing a vocabulary of moral degree--which would allow us to distinguish between "genuine racism" and phenomena better described as acts arising from racial discomfort, racial ignorance, racial insensitivity, or racial injustice. (Another virtue of the book is the many in-the-trenches examples Blum offers. H ere's one relevant to this context: Consider a school teacher who ends up developing less rapport with and hence treating differently, students of one particular ethnicity out of unfamiliarity with that ethnic culture. Compare the moral difference between that teacher and one who treats students of that ethnicity differently because she hates members of that group.) To the extent that the highly charged terms "racism" or "racist" elide these differences, "honest interracial exchange" is made that much less possible. I must say; Blum is most certainly not insisting on recognition of these moral differences as a kind of apologia for these other kinds of acts, much less that we ought somehow to treat them less seriously than we now do. Rather, Blum is simply pointing out that a modicum of moral subtlety would alert us to the significant differences along the spectrum of "racial phenomena," and would thus allow us better to understand causes, entertain remedies, or simply just to communicate what we think is goin g on or wrong, without the mere mention of such acts making things worse.

Another set of issues illuminated by Blum's moral critique is brought out in his ostensibly straightforward question, "Can Blacks Be Racist?" (ch. 2). It's a measure of the subtlety of his moral based approach that he begins this discussion by presenting then arguing as insufficient four reasons for answering "no" to such a question (viz., that "true racism must be an ideology and white Europeans have more or less cornered the market on formal racialist ideologies; that Black racial antipathy isn't fully "racist" since it's by definition "reactive"--reactive that is to the monstrous institution of slavery and its tailings; and so on.) Yet lest one imagine that one should draw from these rebuttals the conclusion that Black racism is just the same as white racism, Blum again employs a set of moral arguments to build a case for the different moral valences between white-on-Black racism versus Black-on-white racism (such as, say, a claim that whites' lack of melanin implies a moral and spiritual deficiency.) Blu m lays claim to four central arguments in behalf of there being a moral asymmetry among "forms of racism differentiated by perpetrator and target groups;" chief among them is the point that racism carried out against already "inferiorized" or subordinately positioned groups carries different social and individual consequences for such groups than for groups not so positioned. As Blum puts it, "...(everything else being equal) white prejudice is laden with weightier, morally more significant meanings than are black prejudices. These meanings, as expressed in the four forms of moral asymmetry, should become part of a taken-for-granted discourse about racial issues. Their existence implies that whites should recognize that their prejudices carry these meanings, and, for that reason, can do greater psychic damage. Failure to acknowledge these asymmetrical moral meanings can constitute a kind of moral negligence" (50). But let's be careful here. Blum is not saying that a perpetrator of racism is less morally blame worthy if the racist act is directed at a less historically victimized or currently inferiorized group (say, Norwegian Americans). I'd hate for him to be misunderstood here. Rather, he's simply arguing that we come to recognize the differing social consequences of acts, and those consequences aren't sufficiently calculable apart from an assessment of perpetrator/target group differences: "The asymmetry of moral concern does nor translate neatly into race-based asymmetries of moral responsibility It does not follow, for example, that a white racist is more morally evil than a black racist, nor that a Puerto Rican's prejudice against white people is morally worse than the reverse, nor that a white individual is any more blameworthy or morally responsible for her racist attitudes or behavior than is a black individual)....Though a white individual is not more racist or more morally evil in harboring racial prejudice than is a black individual, the moral asymmetry makes the consequences of her prejudices, and of the acts expressing them, worse than those of the black individual. In this sense they are worthy of greater concern" (50-51).

Though Blum doesn't directly advance this argument, it strikes me his insistence on attending to the differing moral standings of racism via an assessment of their consequences, interestingly dovetails with a related area of law. States which have hate-compounded sentencing guidelines may more greatly punish, for instance, someone who singles our store clerks for murder because they're female, or Black, or gay, than someone who randomly murders store attendants. In more greatly punishing the former, I take it society is not saying the life of a female clerk is worth more than the life of a male clerk, but that we wish to further condemn the special kind of hate which generates such acts otherwise equally wrong in themselves.

An at least equally compelling employment of moral critique is to be found in Blum's analysis of Affirmative Action/preferential initiatives (ch. 4.) This is a bit of a "stealth" argument, as Blum doesn't announce that he's about to take up and wrestle with this most contentious aspect of race in the legal arena. Rather, he asks us to ponder the various meanings which might be given to "color blindness," an innocent enough conceptual inquiry. Two of those meanings in particular catch the eye as possibly in tension--"race egalitarianism" and "race neutrality." The latter has become a kind of national mantra, particularly when invoked in dismissal of Affirmative Action-type public policy initiatives. By this account "color blindness" is equated with "race neutrality," meaning both blind to race privilege and race stigma/inferiorizing. This understanding is given the status of holy writ when Martin Luther King Jr.'s oft-quoted remark is enlisted in its support: "I have a dream my four little children will one da y live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

But compare the ascendant support for "race neutrality" with the concept of "race egalitarianism"--"a social order in which racial identity does not affect basic life chances, and racial discrimination and its legacy are opposed" (93). One could seek to work toward a racially egalitarian policy, however, by employing policies other than the strictly race neutral. Consider so-called "percentage plans" by which some states (which face recent federal court rulings antagonistic to Affirmative Action, such as Texas) admit the top ten percent of all high school graduates to their public university system. Given the legacy of geographic and urban segregation or demographics, such plans will have the effect of ensuring a certain percentage of minority students will gain admission. Such percentage plans have greater political and public support than traditional Affirmative Action plans, presumably because they achieve an ethnically diverse student body by means of a formally neutral instrument. But as Blum points out, there is a "differential acceptability" here which amounts to an astonishing moral inconsistency: if both Affirmative Action-type plans and percentage plans aim to further the same race-egalitarian and diversity purposes, why favor the one simply because it employs a neutral-looking means but to achieve the very same distinctly non-neutral ends?

Now that we've been slyly invited to consider how a look at the moral implications of these different legal initiatives reveals a symmetry of ends and an arguably not morally significant difference in mere form, perhaps other legal aspects deserve similar moral scrutiny. Consider for instance other "non-merit" rewards, in the form of "legacy" admissions (preference given to offspring or descendants of alumni), athletic scholarships, or admission policies which take geographic diversity into account. Presumably each of these policies has some tie to a university's goals or educational mission, in the suggestion that the university community is enriched if made diverse in these ways. Is there anything problematic, for instance, in the University of Michigan tailoring its admission policies to foster a student body made up of somewhat less than one hundred percent Michigan residents? Or to aim to include a few more older than average or non-traditional students? If these other community characteristics are a leg itimate public purpose, why wouldn't a strategy to train leaders and participants for a democratic and culturally pluralist society be also (given voice in at least Justice Powell's plea in 1978's Bakke decision that fostering a racially diverse student population could serve important educational purposes)? A marker of how far we've moved away from that logic can be seen in the Supreme Court's 1996 Hopwood decision, which established that, at least m the Fifth Circuit, "the use of race, in and of itself, to choose students simply achieves a student body that looks different. Such a criterion is no more rational on its own terms than would be choices based upon the physical size or blood type of applicants." But, again, a moral reading of this argument suggests its failings inasmuch as the court appears to conflate skin color, or merely "looking different," with race/ethnicity. However skin color, or tone, is not the morally salient factor here--race is:

Mere skin color, or skin tone, considered entirely apart from its racial significance in our society, is indeed an arbitrary feature....An admissions policy based on skin color would be irrational and unfair, and discriminatory for that reason. But race is not skin tone, and it is not arbitrary in relation to university admission in the way skin tone is. Race, like gender, is a deeply significant social identity arguably pertinent to legitimate goals of institutions of higher education. College admissions offices do not ask applicants to describe their precise skin tone but to state their racial identity. (83-4)

It's important to recollect what Blum accomplishes in this chapter. In keeping with the larger purpose of the book, to explore the moral dimensions of the notion of "racism," Blum deftly picks up pieces of the law and measures them against the larger background of moral consideration; it's always worth remembering, after all, that one way of looking at the law is as an instrument with which we enact public policy, not necessarily as public policy entirely in its own right. And I'd like to nominate Blum for the Fairest Footnote of the Year award (see note 20, p. 199). There he makes dear he doesn't intend his moral evaluation of court arguments as necessarily bearing on their constitutional legitimacy, though a number of constitutional scholars, such as Ronald Dworkin, would argue the two are rightly inseparable. He then goes on to say he's only (morally) criticizing a portion of the reasoning in the Hopwood case. Though that reasoning (conflating skin pigment with race) might well be considered by others as a fundamental flaw, he states that he's not in a position to evaluate these arguments on strictly constitutional grounds, then cites relevant literature which does. Would that we all adhered to such standards of scholarly precision and humility.

In sum, Lawrence Blum's volume provides a much needed, and fresh, voice in the daunting project of understanding "race" or "racism," a project that commentators from other fields have begun in earnest but which hasn't been given the morally resonant treatment found here. I can easily imagine the book being valuably employed in a Critical Race Theory course, or any variety of public policy and ethics courses, within an African-American studies course, or as an extended case study in a regular ethics course, especially as the volume is an enriching illustration of the application of moral reasoning to a central political and social issue. I can also imagine a course built around this book by means of extracting the many illuminating examples provided and having students discuss them first, text unseen. Then, after students take a crack on their own at some of the dimensions in the examples, they could then be directed to the relevant chapters to examine how the cases play out in the author's extended analysis. In any event, Blum's volume deserves serious attention for its courageous, forthright, and scholarly moral exploration of a vexed and vexing concept, "racism," whose hold on our minds and cultures continues as such a burden.

PHIL COX has been a labor organizer in human services and higher education, and is now an associate professor in Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He teaches ethics, medical ethics, social and political philosophy, and philosophy of law, and has published in the areas of First Amendment expressive rights, Philosophy of Religion, Critical Race Theory, and Human Subjects' Rights in the Developing World.