culture
politics
After George Floyd, Where Do We Go From Here?
Fellow, Manhattan Institute
Writer, The New Republic
0
0
Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale
June 25th, 2020
Let me start where I agree. Police accountability is a huge issue. It is not just a matter of getting rid of “bad apples.” The incentive structure of the system is flawed.
At the same time, I worry about the reflexive tendency to blame social ills on racial bias. Yes, black weed dealers are more likely to get arrested than white ones. But is that because of racism? Maybe–though it can’t be assumed. Could it be that black marijuana dealers are more likely to operate in open-air drug markets, where it is much easier to get busted? Could it be a mixture of both?
Racial disparities are not, by themselves, evidence of racism. White murderers, for example, are more likely to get arrested than black murderers. (We know this because the clearance rate for white murder victims is higher, and nearly all murders are within-race). Yet one would not jump to the conclusion that anti-white bias is the cause of that disparity. We should apply the same rigor to disparities that run in the reverse direction.
More and more, people want it to be true that systemic racism is behind most racial disparities. It’s a simple explanation that splits the world into good and evil. The truth is usually more complicated. Major cities–like Detroit and Atlanta–are going on their fifth or sixth consecutive black mayor, yet are still seeing the same issues of racial disparity as cities with more diverse leadership.
When Freddy Gray died in Baltimore, nearly all of the public servants one might be tempted to blame–the police chief, the mayor, the State’s Attorney, the judge, the POTUS–were all black. I don’t know what lesson to draw from this, but it’s certainly not that we need to care more about the skin color of our politicians (i.e., “more representation”). That is just one example of how a reflexive focus on race reliably leads us to misdiagnose the problems we face as a society.
I’d probably agree with you more than you might expect about the pervasiveness of anti-black racial bias–especially of the subconscious variety. But I tend to think that racial bias, though pervasive, does not represent a powerful force in American society today. It is no longer the driving force behind inequality, and the energy spent fighting it has become excessive.
If I were to compare America to an imagined utopia, I would say that it is extremely racist by comparison. But if I compare America to the actual alternatives that exist (i.e., other countries), I find it to be far less racist than average. It is no accident that America is the number one destination for black and brown migrants all over the world. They see a unique opportunity for upward mobility here–regardless of one’s race. They’re right about that.
That’s not to say we don’t have problems. We have serious problems. But if we think white supremacy is still one of those serious problems, we are deluding ourselves.
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