Race-based Paradigms

The Buck Stops Here blog points readers to an essay by Professor Martin Haberman of UWM talking about the state of education in urban school districts. In the essay, Professor Haberman makes repeated reference to race as part of the problems dealing with inner-city education. These evocations of race are usually completely unnecessary. For example, he says, "Low income people of color cannot find affordable housing in suburbs or the transportation and jobs needed to live in small towns." Now, why use the qualification "of color" in this sentence? Low income white people have the exact same problem, so the qualification is substantively meaningless. At issue is low income people, not "people of color." I don't want to comment on the substance of Haberman's essay, but rather its reflection of an interesting and important facet of how our culture views society. Since the 1960's, we have adopted a race-based view of the dynamics of our society. In other words, we view problems in racial terms. Though times have changed since the 1960's, this fundamental paradigm has not.

Why is this important? If we view our society's problems in racial terms, any proposed resolution will be race-based as well. If the problem is really not racial, then we pursue "solutions" which solve nothing and serve to perpetuate those problems. For example, Professor Haberman writes, "There is a continuing and growing shortage of school leaders of color who can function effectively in African American and Latino communities." If that is part of the problem, the obvious solution is, then, to hire more minority school teachers. But would this be an adequate solution? Where would quality black teachers go to teach? To the affluent suburbs, where pay and benefits would be higher, or to the inner cities, with lower pay and lower professional satisfaction? Generally, black teachers would follow the same path a comparable quality white teacher would, namely to the schools with the better pay. This is part of the problem in the education system, that the best teachers go the affluent schools, the worst teachers go to the inner city schools. Therefore, simply educating and hiring more black teachers would do little to solve the problems of inner-city education. There are many other problems, of course, but the point is that employing a racial paradigm to understanding the problem misdiagnoses the situation, resulting in a "solution" that do little to solve anything.

As a people, we have become accustomed to viewing the dynamics of our society in racial terms. When a cop shoots a fleeing suspect, newscasts make sure to note the race of the shooter and victim, especially if the cop was white and the victim not. It is immediately cast as a race incident, until proven otherwise. That the cop may have simply been doing his or her job is not immediately considered. The overrepresentation of blacks in prison and on death row is characterized by some as a race problem, when it could well be a function of economic class, i.e. a poor white defendant would get just as bad a defense from the public defenders' office as a poor black defendant.

Viewing society through the lens of race is an outdated relic of the 1950's and 1960's. At that time, racism at an institutional and societal level was very much an issue. But decades of civil rights reform have addressed that, to the point that today's charges of racism often focus on rather silly things like dress codes at bars. I am not suggesting racism is dead. There will always be racists. But, at an institutional level, i.e. the laws and institutions of the nation, racism has been expunged. People are no longer oppressed through the laws and practices of the land. By continuing to employ this paradigm, real issues and problems will be misunderstood, and attempt at solution of these issues will fail. To properly address issues, we must first view them properly.