Thoughts on Dismantling Racism

Bob Gordh

Following the brutal, nationally televised murder of a Black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer, there have been massive ongoing protests and a dramatic national, and even international, upsurge of concern about the issue of race in the United States as well as the wider world. “Dismantle racism” is one of the rallying cries of the movement, and I assume that a majority, if not all of those who are likely to read these words do indeed want to see racism dismantled. And yet it can be difficult to specify exactly what is meant by “dismantling racism.” Exactly what does racism consist of, and what would the dismantling of it entail?

Let us distinguish between 2 primary aspects of racism. The first I will call the “hearts and minds aspect.” This consists of racist beliefs, racist ideas, racist attitudes, racist feelings, even racist physical sensations, and the like.

The second aspect is often referred to with such terms as institutional, systemic, or structural racism. These terms are rather vague; they seem to point to something rather amorphous and intangible. It seems hard to say exactly what dismantling racism in these senses amounts to. I find the work of historian Ibram X. Kendi very helpful at this point. In both his magisterial, National Book Award winning, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America and his brilliantly thought provoking best seller How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi strongly emphasizes the importance of changing racist policies. Indeed, for Kendi, systemic racism really consists of a huge array of racist policies. A racist policy is one that either intentionally or unintentionally produces or perpetuates racial inequity. By contrast, an antiracist policy is one that produces or perpetuates racial equity. Equity, for Kendi, is roughly synonymous with equality.

Using Kendi’s definitions, we can give more shape to the notion of dismantling racism.

Dismantling racism involves 2 huge tasks: 1) That of changing racist hearts and minds (including our own, to at least some degree) into antiracist hearts and minds. And 2) That of replacing racist policies with antiracist policies. When most people think of racism, they think, it seems to me, of hearts and minds racism. For that very reason, I will focus in what follows on the task of dismantling racist policies. It should be kept in mind, however, that since racist hearts and minds and racist policies mutually support each other, the two tasks intertwine to a considerable degree.

Changing racist policies is an enormous task because there are so many of them and so many different kinds of them and also because there are extremely powerful economic and psychological vested interests that want to keep racist policies in place. Racist policies can be written or unwritten, explicit or implicit, intentional or unintentional, conscious or unconscious. They can be quite limited or vast in their impact. They can take the form of habits, customs or traditions. They can be held by individuals or groups or by institutions: schools, school systems, churches, corporations, hospitals, libraries, local, state, or national governments, police departments and other government agencies, the court system, the jail and prison system, etc. All of these have created and operated in accordance with numerous racist policies.

In the present historical consciousness of most residents of the United States, the policy of enslaving kidnapped Africans and their progeny no doubt looms, for good reason, as the single most horrific and consequential explicitly racist policy in the history of the U.S. Any number of subsidiary policies were of course involved in supporting and carrying out the aims of the institution of slavery. The Jim Crow system that pervaded the South after Reconstruction was prematurely abandoned is also a widely known, explicit and hugely consequential racist set of policies that carried out an uber-policy of treating Black Americans as inferiors in every aspect of life. As Isabel Wilkerson puts it in her new book Caste, “The overarching rule was that the lowest caste was to remain low in every way at all times, at any cost” (54).

Less well known to the person on the street, but still explicitly racist and hugely consequential, was housing policy (and myriad sub-policies) in the U.S. during the middle decades of the 20th Century. In an extremely important book published in 2017, Richard Rothstein has persuasively argued that enormously influential housing policies created and carried out by the U.S. Federal Government as well as by state and local governments all around the country were unconstitutional because, in violation of the 13th Amendment, they preserved 2nd class citizenship, a relic of slavery. Rothstein summarizes the operation of the federal government in this way: “First, the government embarked on a scheme to persuade as many white families as possible to move from urban apartments to single-family suburban homes. Then once suburbanization was under way, the government, with specific racial intent, made it nearly impossible for African Americans to follow” (60). How was this done? Mainly, under the auspices of the Federal Housing Administration, by giving to white people easy access to favorable, low-interest loans with which to purchase homes and by denying black people such access. These policies not only increased and rigidified housing segregation. They also

increased the wealth gap between Blacks and whites. Moreover, they contributed mightily to the continuation of the wealth gap into the present day. After all, most of the wealth of middle-class whites takes the form of the homes they own. Blacks were prevented to a huge extent from gaining such wealth. Whites on the average are at least 10 times as wealthy as blacks. Some of the gap can be traced back to slavery, some to severe job discrimination during the Jim Crow Era and to subsequent discrimination by both employers and the criminal justice system. In addition, a very substantial part of the gap is traceable to mid-twentieth century housing policy.

Considering the racist ways in which it has been produced, the huge racial wealth gap that separates blacks and whites must surely be considered inequitable. In that case, following Ibram Kendi’s definitions, policies that help to perpetuate the gap must be considered racist. No doubt there are any number of such policies. Many of these may not be explicitly or overtly racist. The policies that govern inheritance in our country are a case in point. These may not have sprung out of racist motives, and they may not be racially motivated to this day. But they surely help to perpetuate a racially inequitable distribution of wealth, and for that reason they are racist policies. In like manner, the policy of tying school funding to property taxes is not couched in terms of race, but it surely contributes to racial inequity in public schools and is thus a racist policy. Some might argue at this point that the word “racist,” as defined by Kendi, simply covers too much ground to be useful. I would argue that the problem lies not with Kendi’s definition but with the overwhelming pervasiveness of racist policy in this society.

It would seem that a great many racist policies are carried out unconsciously and unintentionally. As R. James Addington puts it in Tragic Investment, “The architecture of White Supremacy is maintained by myriads of default settings”(36). The default settings are the policies to which we are so accustomed that we do not even notice them. It is worth noting that just as racist policies need not be couched in terms of race, the same is true of antiracist policies. Policies that reduce wealth inequality for persons of all “races” would be cases in point.

The American public is now apparently more willing than before to consider antiracist policy changes in the areas of criminal justice and reparations. I want to argue that antiracists who desire really significant changes in those areas must take on a formidable obstacle to such changes, an obstacle that consists of both ideology and an array of policies, an obstacle that has become so engrained in American life that it may be considered an immense racist default setting. The obstacle I have in mind usually goes unnamed but is sometimes known as Neoliberalism.

At the level of ideas, Neoliberalism is a social-economic-political philosophy that glorifies “private enterprise” and unrestrained, laissez faire capitalism. David Harvey, in A Brief History of Neoliberalism, defines it as “the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action”( 3). The doctrine, Harvey adds, “has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since about 1970” ( 3 ). In the U.S. it entered the mainstream of U.S. public opinion with Ronald Reagan’s presidency and has been a potent influence ever since during both Republican and Democratic administrations. According to The Guardian,

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning. (www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot)

As Marilyn Robinson has pointed out, Neoliberalism entails a kind of “anthropology,” a theory of human nature:

This view of things is radically individualistic, indifferent to any narrative of identity or purpose. It takes a cynical view of people as such, since no one’s true motives are different from those of the consciously selfish. Because there is only one motive — to realize a maximum of benefit at a minimum of cost — those who do not flourish are losers in an invidious, Darwinian sense. Winners are exempt from moral or ethical scrutiny . . . .

(Marilynne Robinson, www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/06/11/what-kind-of-country-do-we-want/)

At the policy level, Neoliberals are generally opposed to, or wish to minimize

— big government (“Government is the problem, not the solution.”)

— government regulation of business

— government spending for the sake of the public good

— public education (Private education, operated on a business model, is preferable.)

— unionization of workers

— social safety nets

— taxation

Two major governmental branches are generally exempt from the Neoliberal drive to limit government: the police and the military. These are needed to protect the rights of corporations to compete freely. “Freedom,” indeed, is one of the Neoliberal’s favorite words. We must keep in mind, though, that

Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining means the freedom to suppress wages. Freedom from regulation means the freedom to poison rivers, endanger workers, charge iniquitous rates of interest and design exotic financial instruments. Freedom from tax means freedom from the distribution of wealth that lifts people out of poverty. (The Guardian)

Is Neoliberalism racist? Although I have said nothing about race in defining and describing it, the answer is an emphatic “yes.” Why? Because Neoliberal policies produce and perpetuate racial inequity in every area of life — income, wealth, health, education, political power, etc. And because Neoliberal ideology rationalizes its racist policies.

Antiracists must therefore push very hard against Neoliberalism. The push back, of course, on the part of the rich and the powerful and their supporters, will be enormous. But If we push hard enough and long enough and strategically enough, we may reach what Staci K. Haines, in The Politics of Trauma, calls a ”transformed” society. “We could say,” Haines explains,”that a society, or the political economy, has transformed when the economic, social, and political systems (institutions, practices, and norms) are designed for equity for all people and sustainability with the planet.” She adds, moreover, in a sentence that is surely a strong contender for “Understatement of the Year” honors, “These are radically different economic, social, and political structures than what we currently have” (35).

I myself envision a transformed society as economically socialist and politically far more democratic than our present society, but I do not wish to argue here on behalf of a specific version of a much better world. The transition, however that might happen, to such a society

would undoubtedly entail the transformation of racist policies affecting pretty much every area of life into antiracist ones. Here, though, I want to focus on how such an overall societal transformation might relate to a transformation of our criminal injustice system.

Let us imagine, then, that our society at the least did some profound reprioritizing in an anti-Neoliberal and pro-community direction. Let us imagine a collective decision to invest massive resources, far greater than have ever been invested before, in such publicly beneficial projects as eliminating poverty, housing everyone who wants to be housed, providing excellent (and antracist) schools for all neighborhoods, and the like. Now let us imagine that within this highly progressive program, a department of public health and safety was instituted. The highly trained persons who would staff this department would be concerned above all with promoting the physical and mental wellbeing of the society. Much of their work would be proactive. They would provide nurturing childcare and educational, fun, empowering youth programs. Healthcare would, of course, be universal, and both physical care and mental health support would be readily available. So would parenting classes. Addiction would be treated not as a crime but as a mental health issue.

Three key principles, among others, would govern the culture and methodology of the department we are imagining: This branch of government is to be 1) non-punitive, 2) respectful of the dignity of every individual, and 3) anti-racist. Every prospective policy of this branch must conform to these principles, and every staff member is required to obey them consistently. This question inevitably arises: what is to be done in such a society about violent, dangerous, or even just harmfully dishonest people? A partial answer is that there would in fact have to be staff members who are trained to interact with such people. And some of these interactions would no doubt have to lead to the separation of some individuals from society, both for their own good and to protect society. Exactly how these trained public safety professionals would proceed in various situations is part of what those of us who want to “reimagine public safety” need to do some of our reimagining about. There are components of the new system that might need to correspond roughly to our current police, courts, and jails and prisons. But if these are to be non-punitive, respectful of everyone’s dignity, and anti-racist, they would have to be vastly and qualitatively different from what we have now. Such reforms as banning chokeholds and appointing special prosecutors to cases in which officers are accused of murder or excessive force would do little to bridge the qualitative gap I am referring to. And our current criminal court system and system of incarceration would need to be replaced by something qualitatively new as well. The current institutions would need to be abolished, for they would no longer be needed.

Activists, many of whom are abolitionists in the sense I have indicated, are working for the kinds of change I am talking about as we speak, and there have been some beautiful victories. For example, pressured by a valiant and persistent alliance known as Justice L.A., the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has recently voted to scrap plans for a 3.5 billion dollar new men’s jail. On a smaller but still significant scale. A coalition of students, teachers, and community members has recently induced the Los Angeles Unified School Board to eliminate the presence of uniformed officers in the schools, to reduce the school police budget by 35%, and to invest the money saved, in programs to support black youth, who have been shown to have been unfairly profiled by the school police.

Yet the abolitionist movement can go only so far under the Neoliberal or quasi-Neoliberal policies that prevail now. It is a step in the right direction, for instance, to reduce police budgets and invest the savings in community programs, but reducing police budgets will not liberate sufficient funds to bring about the kind of transformation of our society’s approach to public safety that I have sketched above. Providing the necessary funds will require a much larger, anti-Neoliberal transformation of public policy than that. There are many reasons why antiracists must strive to defeat Neoliberal capitalism. One of them is that it stands in the way of transforming the way in which we do public safety into something radically more humane and racially equitable. (Some say we need to defeat capitalism as such. I agree but will not argue that point here.)

Some policies dictate inaction rather than action. A department store, for example, might have a policy of not accepting returns of merchandise more than a month after the purchase was made. These policies can be racist or antiracist. A hugely consequential racist policy of this kind in U.S. history was the policy on the part of the national government, and of local and state governments as well, of not granting land to African Americans after they had been liberated from slavery. Hugely consequential as well has been the local, state and national policy of not granting reparations to the descendants of enslaved African Americans

in compensation for slavery, the convict leasing system, Jim Crow, housing discrimination, mass incarceration and all the rest. This policy perpetuates racial inequity and therefore it is racist.

Reparations are surely owed to African Americans, and antiracists should fight for them. What such reparations should consist of is open to discussion. Economically, it seems reasonable to insist on a sufficient transfer of wealth to abolish the wealth gap between Blacks and whites.

This would cost trillions and trillions of dollars but would still not be sufficient, for reparations are owed in the areas of health, education, criminal justice, etc. Replacing the current “no reparations” policy with a policy that granted reparations unstintingly would represent an enormous shift from racist to antiracist policy in this country.

Here again, antiracist activists have won some limited victories. For example,

In 1974, a group of survivors and families impacted by the 40-year-long Tuskegee experiments, during which nearly 400 Black men with syphilis were left untreated so that scientists could study the progression of the disease, reached an out of court settlement of $10 million that included both monetary payments and lifelong medical treatment for survivors and their families. (Movement for Black Lives Reparations Toolkit)

And

In 1994, the state of Florida agreed to pay $3.4 million in reparations to survivors of a 1923 white vigilante attack, in which the state was complicit, which completely destroyed the town of Rosewood, displaced all of its residents, and resulted in the death of 8 people and the rape, beating, and torture of dozens of others. The reparations package included approximately $2.4 million to compensate living survivors and money for scholarships for descendants of survivors. (Movement for Black Lives Reparations Toolkit)

Such victories, however, have been few and far between, and our federal government has yet even to issue an apology to African Americans. Nevertheless, the idea of reparations is at least being talked about, and in California, Assembly Bill 3121, which is currently in the appropriations committee of the California State Senate, would establish a commission to study the issue of reparations for descendants of enslaved African Americans.

But here again, an antiracist demand, the demand for massive reparations, runs into Neoliberal opposition — or perhaps a complete Neoliberal lack of interest. As Marilynne Robinson points out, Neoliberalism “lacks any account of past or future, any vision of ultimate human well-being.” The idea of compensation for extreme past injustice simply has no purchase within a worldview that “lacks any account of [the] past.” And the idea of an equitable distribution of the good things in life likewise lacks any purchase within a worldview that “lacks any account of . . . [the] future” (Robinson). The future for the Neoliberal is simply up for grabs: “Let the competition proceed, and let the chips fall where they may!” The fact that it stands in the way of reparations is yet another reason why antiracists must push against Neoliberalism.

Ibram Kendi’s emphasis on policy helps demystify the concepts of systemic or institutional or structural racism. By doing so it helps define the task of dismantling these forms of racism. It does not, however, scale down the size of the task. If anything, quite the opposite. The task is enormous and will take a very long time to complete, if indeed it can be completed. Any notion that the recent surge of interest in race has put us within sight of the goal is based on a very superficial impression of what the goal is.

And of course, there is also the task of changing hearts and minds. Luckily, we need not change all the hearts and minds before we set to work to make significant changes in policy. The work began long ago. Let’s get on board.