LET US review the bidding: By now the reader knows that I take a constructivist position in regard to the ontological status of “race”: A field of human subjects characterized by morphological variability comes through concrete historical experience to be partitioned into subgroups defined by some cluster of physical markers. Information-hungry agents hang expectations around these markers, beliefs that can, by processes I have discussed in some detail, become self-confirming. Meaning-hungry agents invest these markers with social, psychological, and even spiritual significance. Race-markers come to form the core of personal and social identities. Narrative accounts of descent are constructed around them. And so groups of subjects, identifying with one another, sharing feelings of pride, (dis)honor, shame, loyalty, and hope—and defined in some measure by their holding these race-markers in common—come into existence. This vesting of reasonable expectation and ineffable meaning in objectively arbitrary markings on human bodies comes to be reproduced over the generations, takes on a social life of its own, seems natural and not merely conventional, and ends up having profound consequences for social relations among individuals in the raced society.
The reader also knows that I am committed to the position of anti-essentialism. My emphasis on the conventional and not natural character of race is accompanied by a conviction that no deep-seated, inherent inequality of human potential as between the members of different racial groups exists. And so I can credit no appeal to essential difference as an ultimate explanation of African-American social disadvantage. This belief in anti-essentialism calls me to a ministry of racial apologetics—defending my faith in Axiom 2. But it also makes me keenly aware of the presence among my fellow citizens of infidels and apostates—people who, in a not necessarily conscious manner, give credence to the essentialist view. Confronted by the facts of racially disparate achievement, the racially disproportionate transgression of legal strictures, and racially unequal development of productive potential, observers need to give an account. They need to tell themselves a “story,” to adopt some “model” of what has generated their data, to embrace some framework for gauging how best to respond. In effect, observers must answer the question, Where does the problem lie, with US or with THEM? Their willingness to examine whether taken-for-granted civic arrangements in fact correspond to their nation’s professed ideals depends upon the answers they give to this question. Indeed, the very processes of social cognition and discernment, the awareness of anomaly and capacity for empathy, the stirrings of conscience in a society will, I have argued, be influenced by widely held beliefs in this regard.
Faced with manifestations of extreme marginality and dysfunction among some of the racially marked, will the citizenry indignantly cry out, “What manner of people are THEY, who languish in that way?” Or will they be moved, perhaps after overcoming an instinctual revulsion, to ask, reflectively and reflexively, “What manner of people are WE who accept such degradation in our midst?” I have argued that the attainment of racial justice depends crucially on which narrative is settled upon. Reform becomes possible only when this second question is posed.
Readers who have persisted to this point know that I hold the latter response to be less probable, and that I expect this response to come less easily to an external observer’s mind when the raced group in question is stigmatized in that observer’s perception. Racial stigma, then, promotes the tacit presumption of an essentialist cause for racial inequality, ascribing to blacks (in the case at hand) the virtual social identity that they are, in some sense, “damaged goods.” While I am undisturbed at the use of the term “racism” in reference to stigmatization of this sort, I am also unenlightened by it.
Given my anti-essentialist commitment, I am keen to distinguish between two accounts of the problem of persisting racial inequality. One account gives pride of place to racial discrimination. The other makes racial stigma the main concern. I have argued in favor of the latter account—relatively speaking, not taking that position in an absolutist way—for two reasons. As an empirical judgment, I hold that reward bias (unequal returns to equally productive contributors) based on race is now less important in accounting for the disparate social outcomes that history has bequeathed to us than is development bias (unequal chances to realize one’s productive potential) based on race. As a moral judgment, I hold that there is a fundamental tension between the ideal of attaining racial justice and that of respecting individual autonomy: Given our history in the United States, autonomous individuals will elect to practice discrimination in contact. Yet the inevitable consequence of such racially preferential social intercourse, I have argued, is to impair the developmental opportunities of a racially stigmatized group like African Americans.
The idea of discrimination points mainly to reward bias, telling us little that is useful about the practice of racial preference in associative behavior. The stigma idea is more flexible, providing insight both into race-constrained social interactions and race-influenced processes of social cognition. Thinking in terms of stigma helps us to better understand the operations of causal feedback loops that can perpetuate racial inequality from one generation to the next.
The idealized social interactions that I have employed in this book to analyze the problem of racial inequality involve an observer and a subject being observed. (This can, in one important and interesting case, be understood reflexively, such that the observer and the subject coincide.) Race is a cluster of marks on the bodies of subjects to which subjects and observers attach expectations and meanings. The “stereotype models” of Chapter 2 were designed to show, in the context of these subject-observer interactions, how expectations (information) come to be embedded in the race-markers via self-confirming feedback loops. With the “stigma models” of Chapter 3 I explored how meanings are attached to the race-markers (meanings about identity, identification, ideals, worthiness).
The difference between racial stigma and racial stereotyping might be thought of in the following way: Whereas stereotyping concerns an observer’s anticipation of acts that are thought to be associated with, but are not necessarily coextensive with, the subject, stigma invokes the observer’s (perhaps not consciously acknowledged) perception of qualities thought to be essential to the make-up of the subject. (In principle, the attached meanings need not be derogatory, though in the context at hand—race in the United States—they most often will be.) Basically, what I want to invoke with the notion of “stigma” is some kind of “meta-belief,” a matter more of “specification” than of “inference,” a belief by the observer (or the subject!) about the subject’s intrinsic nature which conditions how other more specific pieces of evidence involving the subject will be interpreted.
Let us suppose that social outcomes (inequality, mobility, performance) for subjects depend on the qualities of “structures,” the nature of subjects, and the behaviors of subjects and observers. “Structures” are of two kinds:
Now, faced with the durable inequality of race-marked subjects, observers need to figure out what has gone wrong. The possibilities are threefold:
Meaningful equality of citizenship requires that (3) be ruled out by axiom (non-essentialism) and that (1) be remedied via reform wherever possible. (This is not a bad short definition of “racial justice.”) Out-group observers who credit (3) are disinclined to examine the possibility of (1). In-group subject-observers who credit (1) are disinclined to examine the possibility of (2), especially if they fear that some outsiders credit (3), or, in the tragic but not to be dismissed case, if they themselves credit the possibility of (3).
The apostates and infidels who are unmoved by the “sermon” I have offered here on behalf of racial apologetics credit (3). The social-cognitively challenged agents in the thought experiments of Chapters 2 and 3 (the policeman who thinks “If they look alike, they act alike”; the monopolistic employer who thinks “Those people just don’t make good workers”) are impeded from perceiving the possibility of (1) by their (perhaps partial) crediting of (3). Black civil society heroes (inner-city Christian pastors, black Muslims working in prisons) may practice “pro-black discrimination in contact” in the service of looking into and remedying (2).
One can ask whether it is necessary for race-marked insiders who want to ensure that (1) is remedied to deny that (3) is widely believed, even when it is. That is Charles Mills’s charge against the Frederick Douglass of 1852. Most of the Founders, who incorporated slavery into the republic, Mills says, believed (3) and did nothing to remedy (1). Yet Douglass broke with the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison when the latter insisted that the Constitution was a “compact with death.” Douglass idealized the Founding, denying that it could be tainted by belief in (3). Was this necessary?
Notice that outside observers of the race-marked group can intervene only to address (1), and this will be ineffective if mainly (2) or (3) is true. Observing that they reject (1) is not to establish that they accept (3). Thus one need not impute belief in (3) to the editorial writer for American Enterprise magazine mentioned in Chapter 3 for the force of my criticism to stand. One need only impute to him an unwillingness to explore (1) as fully as it deserves to be explored, an unwillingness he may feel because he believes (2). So a way to translate my criticism into the language of this concluding chapter would be to insist that these outside observers have a civic duty to explore (1) until all avenues are exhausted, even if they do believe (2), and indeed, perhaps especially if they do.
Notice further that insider race-marked subject-observers can mainly address (2), though of course they can remonstrate and agitate on behalf of (1). But if these (now pathetic) insiders themselves credit (3), they may, in the madness of their self-contempt, be induced to deny this to their conscious selves, and become rabid advocates of (1), accusing every outsider in sight of believing (3). Outsiders who do not believe (3), but who are unwilling to bear the duties of citizenship associated with exploring and remedying (1), will talk about (2) all the time. This will make life difficult for insiders who reject (3) as well, but who know that, while (2) may be a part of the question, unless (1) is fixed the oppressive weight of history on their group will not be removed. If they now openly advocate for (2), they lend aid and comfort to the duty-shirking outsiders.
Civic-minded outsiders, who do not credit (3) at all but who think too little attention is being paid to (2), may be reluctant to listen to insider arguments for exploration and remedy of (1). And communally responsible insiders, who know that (2) needs attention but who think the larger polity has abandoned its responsibility to look into (1), may withdraw in despair or rage. Finally, the role of the responsible race-marked public intellectual of today (say, a race-marked subject-observer like me) might be understood as follows. Keep both (1) and (2) in play, finding a way to make reform in either sphere complement that in the other.
I’m frankly more concerned that (3) is a widespread view. It is unhelpful to call someone who believes in (3) a “racist,” though that description is not necessarily wrong. In the quotation in Chapter 3 from the American Enterprise magazine, and in the article from which it is drawn, the editorialist, Karl Zinsmeister (who, of course, merely stands in here for a host of conservative voices), never allows that either (1) or (2) might account for the problem. And, though he doesn’t expressly endorse (3), he expressly defends Charles Murray, who does. This familiar conservative argument amounts to “That I don’t credit (1) as worthy of investigation doesn’t mean that I don’t ‘care’ about these folks.” The reason I resist calling belief in (3) “racism” is that not “caring” is what many people think racism is. So a person will feel insulted by the nonspecific charge of “racism,” while continuing to credit (3) or being too lazy to explore fully the possibility of (1).
I have argued that race-blindness—as a purely procedural theory of racial justice—is necessarily insufficient because it cannot cope with the consequences of its own violation. Moreover, in practice the moral criterion of race-blindness fails for a related though distinct reason: Its proponents tend to apply their cherished principle only to a restricted domain of public life—that of policy implementation in formal economic and bureaucratic undertakings. Yet the issue of racial justice, properly conceived, ought not be so limited, and the intuitive appeal of “blindness” as a guiding moral principle is far weaker when applied in the domain of policy evaluation. I drive this point home by contrasting the race-blindness idea with what I have called race-indifference—a disregard for the effects of a policy choice on the welfare of persons in different racial groups. By pointing to a history of racial subordination and the evident importance of race in present-day structures of opportunity in the United States, I make the case that the “indifference” question should be regarded as ethically more fundamental than the “blindness” question, and that race-indifference should be rejected in the American context. This supports my conclusion that, insofar as the concern is the lagging status of African Americans, the quest for social justice should entail a commitment to race-egalitarianism, and that this commitment can properly be pursued through policies (such as but not limited to affirmative action) that may fail to meet the standards of race-blindness, race-indifference, or both.
Finally, I see two big ideas emerging from this argument. The first is the claim that both the analytic and the philosophic resources of liberal individualism are insufficient to generate an understanding of, or to provide an adequate response to, the problem of pronounced and durable social disadvantage among African Americans. I claim that abstract individualism is just not up to the task here—neither the descriptive nor the prescriptive task. The second idea is closely connected with the first. It is, to repeat, the distinction I want to insist be drawn between racial discrimination and racial stigma in discussions of the problem of social exclusion and economic disadvantage among black Americans.
Discrimination is about how people are treated; stigma is about who, at the deepest cognitive level, they are understood to be. As such, these distinct ways of framing the problem of racial inequality lead to radically distinct intellectual and political programs. A diagnosis of discrimination yields a search for harmful or malicious actions as the treatment, using the law and moral suasion to curtail or modify those actions. But seeing stigma as the disease inclines one to look for insidious habits of thought, selective patterns of social intercourse, biased processes of social cognition, and defective public deliberations when seeking a cure. Here the limits of conventional legal action and moral suasion, and the need for deeper and more far-reaching structural reform, come clearly into view. To be sure, such reform should redress resource disparities between groups. But it should also attend to the ways in which race-mediated social meanings are constructed, in order to avoid the perpetuation into yet another American generation of the ugly legacy of racial stigma.
These big ideas incline me to the following major conclusion: The unfair treatment of persons based on race in formal economic transactions is no longer the most significant barrier to the full participation of blacks in American life. More important is the fact that too many African Americans cannot gain access on anything approaching equal terms to social resources that are essential for human flourishing, but that are made available to individuals primarily through informal, culturally mediated, race-influenced social intercourse. It follows that achieving racial justice at this point in American history requires more than reforming procedures so as to ensure fair treatment for blacks in the economic and bureaucratic undertakings of private and state actors.
This kind of reform, while necessary, is far from sufficient. Yet it is the only reform that the liberal-individualist morality of race-blindness affords us. I hope to have persuaded the reader with the foregoing argument that a broader and more comprehensive moral vision is required of us—the vision I have called race-egalitarianism. On this view, achieving the elusive goal of racial justice requires that we undertake, as a conscious end of policy, to eliminate the objective disparity in economic and social capacity between the race-segregated networks of affiliation that continue to characterize the social structure of American public life, and that constitute the most morally disturbing remnant of this nation’s tortured racial past.