Last summer when The New York Times debuted its 1619 Project, the breath-taking narrative hit my radar because I had been teaching a bit about Critical Race Theory. The NYT seeks to change the entire American historical story on race using systemic racism as a foundational term and even thesis. Then the death of George Floyd in late May this year elevated deep concerns about justice. America has an opportunity for an improved and, in some ways, new perspective on race.
As I looked to see what was meant by systemic racism, so strongly protested and even riotously opposed, I had two significant ‘aha’ moments. I had listened to African American acquaintances, including one at a BLM meeting. I needed to hear what they said. The level of pain was often striking.
1 Society’s Racism: Society itself has a significant strain of lingering racism. Some of it is hard line; most of it may be soft, but all of it is felt daily, and often sharply, by the broad African American community. This was a wake-up for me, too. My work in Detroit and Columbus had broadened my perspectives on what African Americans felt, so I was not totally shocked at the pervasiveness of the racial attitudes, distinctions, and discriminatory behaviors of ordinary white people throughout America. This does not mean that every white person is intentionally or even consciously offensive attitudes and behavior, but that African Americans still have a broad experience of racism in American society. Our denials and explanations, while they have a point, ring hollow and do not begin to scratch that itch. We should acknowledge this area of racism.
2 Government Structural Racism: The second, and larger, ‘aha’ dealt with our government structures. The charge of systemic racism applies not just to society but to our government structures as they affect welfare, housing, public support, entitlements, policing, and justice. All the programs, entitlements, laws, and affirmative action have failed, according to Black Lives Matter and others. I wondered why the left would attack the left. The obvious but unacknowledged answer is that the white left has failed African Americans. Fifty-five years after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, urban African Americans are no better off in housing or neighborhoods, and the gap between white and black income and wealth has not shrunk.
That means that the Great Society of the 1960s, which implemented the New Deal with nearly infinite agencies and dollars, has not only failed, but has proven to be patrician, or rather racist, as you might now expect the 1619 Project to assert.
Who’s left? We have white racists on the social side of America, and we have white racists on the government institutional side of America. Who’s left? No one. That is what systemic racism means. This is Critical Race Theory; all white people are racists who oppress African Americans and others. The deeply blue cities are the worst, as in most racist. Ask yourself, “Are the urban police accused of being social racists or structural racists?” Urban areas are not only full of African Americans, but urban areas may also be centers of structural racism. The left may have proven too much and accused themselves. More on this later.
The answer to the larger question of equity for all races is either to double down on the failed Great Society programs or to pursue a new, more equitable approach to public support. The prevalence of structural racism suggests that a new approach would be better, but this is politically unpopular, and CRT has ideas.
My goal today is not to assert that our lingering racism is only a shadow of what it had been or that our four million first-generation Black migrants did not come to America to be oppressed. My goal is to share my ‘aha’ moments about how our social and structural racism are real. They are not only worse than I realized, but the failure of the Great Society was equally a part of racism in America, according to its harshest critics. I will provide a chart that helps me understand systemic, social, and structural racism throughout history. Later, I will show my idea for a post-Great Society approach to structural racism in America.