Racism - not a problem of ‘deplorables’

William Holman Hunt, The Scapegoat

Racism is a reality that still exists in American society today. This shouldn’t be a controversial statement, yet it is – and not only controversial, but one which many people simply check out in response to, because it has been addressed in all the wrong ways to all the wrong people. But here’s the reality: in regards to access to credit, access to housing, payday lending, schooling, policing, prisons, military recruitment – black Americans still face an inordinate number of institutional hurdles and potholes that simply don’t exist for ‘white’ Americans. Heck, even on health care – where are all the community clinics which should exist in black neighbourhoods? And why does Planned Parenthood primarily target black communities, if not because (just like the payday lenders and petty usurers they truly are) they understand full well that the family and economic situations of black Americans are more likely to lead them to seek abortions?

Here’s Dirty Little Secret #1. All of these racist institutions are, to a one, run, maintained and upheld by urbane, well-meaning, polite, cultured, liberal, ‘white’ Americans who in all likelihood never so much as uttered the ‘n’-word in their lives (or at least, never in public). And all of these urbane, well-meaning, polite, cultured, liberal, ‘white’ Americans would assuredly take umbrage at being accused of racism (that’s a failing of the rural, ‘deplorable’, uncouth, uncultured, wrong kind of ‘white’ people, don’t you know?), even as they continue to uphold and entrench it.

And here’s Dirty Little Secret #2. There is no grand ‘conversation’ that needs to be had on this. There is no great ceremony of racial reconciliation that we need to entertain. There is no intellectual scourge we privileged ‘white’ folks need to whip ourselves with often enough in penitence – if that would even help! We could start taking practical actions, from the local level on up, to fix a number of these racial problems tomorrow, if we were so inclined. Obama has had eight long years to bring these issues to the table, and he’s sadly only just started to address two of them (prisons and policing), and even then in ways which are not particularly productive.

We all know that these racial problems won’t go away under Trump, because he isn’t interested and his supporters simply aren’t interested; and to the extent they do pay attention to these problems, they focus solely on the most narrowly atomistic and individualist possible level. Unlike his erstwhile European counterpart, the American conservative is, by and large, a bourgeois creature most closely concerned with his bottom line, to whom spiritual and moral exhortations have diminishing effects. But the ‘deplorables’ aren’t the first ones to blame! Take a look at the list of the most segregated cities in America – LA, Boston, Miami, Philly, NYC, Milwaukee, Detroit. Look at how many incidences of police brutality happen in LA, NYC, Baltimore and the like. And then tell me with a straight face that racism isn’t actually a white liberal problem. (Our problem. My problem, as it were, if I’m being honest!)

But I’m not here to argue for more self-flagellation or mea culpas. Seeing our own sins can be healthy, but there’s been far too much virtue-signalling on the topic of racism and far too little productive action. So I’m here to talk about practical, common-sense measures.

With regard to the credit problem – the huge elephant in the room when we talk about racism – we can start by advocating for non-profit credit cooperatives and Raiffeisen societies that specifically work for and are run by black people and minorities without access to credit. Microfinance was a big thing for the fashionable ‘white’ liberal crowd when it was pioneered in India and Bangladesh; but we have plenty of neighbourhoods and people here at home, in the US, who could use services like that first. We can start funding and crowdsourcing urban farms in black communities to help provide cheap, healthy food. Or, heck, let’s encourage rural farming, too! Call it ‘forty acres and a mule’, updated for 2016.

With regard to policing – police face a tough and often-thankless job that is made even tougher and more dangerous by a(n often deserved) lack of trust. The most promising ways of dealing with that lack of trust – ways which both reduce racial tension and make it easier for the police to do their jobs well – are actually being pioneered already in places like Providence, Rhode Island. Community-police collaborations are pretty humdrum, not at all a sexy, tech-savvy front-page kind of policy. But ultimately these collaborations seem the most promising avenue of building trust and defusing resentments before they boil over, and avoiding the kind of high-profile deadly race-fuelled confrontations that seem to be plaguing so many police departments around the country. Black lives matter – and black lives are best served and protected by institutions that take the time to earn their trust.

With racially-predatory institutions and market actors like payday lenders, Gosnell-style abortion clinics and for-profit prisons, though: a far harder line is needed. And this is where bourgeois ‘white’ liberalism really needs to take some much-deserved heat, because they have been active, even instrumental, in defending every single one of these predatory practices that victimise black and minority communities every single day.

Those of us who are on the left have to face these problems head-on, as they exist on the ground, and put some ‘skin in the game’ rather than hiding behind the usual political bromides and academic theories. Unfortunately, it seems too many of us want to continue blaming the usual scapegoat of the rural bumpkin, who – whatever his own attitudes and level of knowledge might indicate – has very little to do with the real, daily-life problems many black Americans face today (and who is sick of being blamed for them).