Rationalamerican: Race In America

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Race In America

Last edited October, 2003, last reviewed September 2007

One very basic premise present in American and other legal foundations is the idea that family descendants of a person should not be punished for acts committed by their predecessor. Indeed, the US Constitution specifically touches on this principle in Article III section 3: "The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted." In other words, if we nail a guy for treason, we can't punish his children for the act. The phrase "corruption of blood" refers to the descendants of the person in question. If your father committed a crime, it is not your responsibility to pay for it. This basic premise is anchored also to the idea of individual responsibility for one's actions. Even children on the school playground understand that the defense "he made me do it" will not hold water with an adult. Children also intuitively understand the wrongheaded idea of punishing a group of innocent people for one person's mistake. "That's not fair!" will be the rallying cry when recess for the whole class is cancelled because one child didn't follow directions. As individuals in a free society we are responsible for our own crimes and we should reap the rewards of our own hard work. To bring it full circle: in our own work, in our own lives, in our own behavior and conduct as citizens and humans we must be judged, rewarded and punished as individuals and not as a member of a family or a group. This is at the core of the American being.

Believe it or not, the modern American concepts of race are all entangled in this core principle. In truth, race today should be nothing more than a scientific curiosity, a tool perhaps for determining certain health risks or for tracing anthropological development. But it isn't. Instead, race is infused in nearly every aspect of American public policy and very often in private existence. Every American citizen has studied the gaping and appalling hole that was retained in the original Constitution. We have all absorbed the history and the lessons of slavery, of the civil war, of the strange fruit that hung from southern trees, of the internment of Japanese-Americans in WW II, of public figures who spoke out against ignorance and prejudice and discrimination, and of countless atrocities that occurred in America and in the world at large. Yet, the subject of race is so tender, so contentious, and so difficult, that America seems to slide further down this slippery slope with each passing year. What is wrong?

The answer is deceptively simple. For the issue of race in America the difference between progress and frustration lies in grasping the difference between saying, "I am a black man" or in saying "I am a man with brown skin". It is the difference between making the statement, "my Asian friend is pretty" versus the statement, "my friend has pretty straight black hair and lovely pale skin". In both cases the former statement is racist; the latter is not. Perhaps all of the statements are meant to be benign. However, they point to the root problem beneath all race issues in America today: we are not judging, rewarding and punishing our citizens as individuals and very often, we are not living our lives as individuals. Instead, we identify people by their affiliation with a race; we see our self-identity as tied to a race. In our culture and in our laws we are propagating and institutionalizing the anti-American idea that people are first and foremost a member of a racial group and perhaps individuals a distant second. We are making judgments not of individuals but of racial groups. We are rewarding and punishing not individuals, but members of racial groups. As a result, the core American principle of individual responsibility is being eradicated with each succeeding generation. We are holding up high the "corruption of blood" principle as the new ideal! Most ironically, the individuals who now choose to define themselves so completely by their race are the very people pushing us hardest off the course of so-called "racial harmony".

The problem of slavery was obvious, if not easily rectified. The problem of race today, in contrast, is much more insidious. For in the ideas of affirmative action, of "multicultural" initiatives in schools and after-school programs, of racial gerrymandering, of race-based testing and statistical analysis, and in the cultural phenomena of promoting pride as a result of one's racial identity, there is a genuine belief by the participants that they are doing the right thing. An ignorant slaveholder or a bigoted "redneck" is an easy enemy to understand. A 13-year-old girl, whose entire self-identity is tied to the facts that she has brown skin, listens to "black" music, behaves according to the unspoken rules within her local racial group, and practices forms of language and communication understood only within her local racial group is another kind of enemy altogether. Is that an intolerant statement? Not at all. We can even take it a step further: this stereotyped girl shares the same core belief as the stereotyped white-skinned Aryan-nation skinhead. Namely, people are to be judged not by their individual actions but by their membership in a racial group. The girl probably means no harm to anyone else; the skinhead may very well mean harm to others. However, both share the same awful principle in their beliefs.

To truly solve the problem of race in America, we must reject the principle of "corruption of blood" both in relation to punishing the innocent individuals of a group and in assuming the personal mantle of a racial group in our own lives. Let us remind ourselves that we are individuals in a free society. Let us remind ourselves that in our own work, in our own lives, in our own behavior and conduct as citizens and humans we must be judged, rewarded and punished as individuals and not as a member of a family or a group. If this core American belief is brought back to life, we will necessarily find that much of our current legal and cultural race-based detritus should be cast away.

Affirmative action, well meaning as it may be, is an aberration of American principle and it is just as damaging as was Article I Section 2. There is no good reason for our government at any level to ask for or to track one's race. There is no good reason for our government to make any policy on the basis of race, in spite of good intentions. How will African-Americans or Latino-Americans, or Asian Americans get a leg up in a society that obstructs their rise to success? Well, now they will just be "Americans". Now they will be judged on their merits as individuals in a free market in a free society. Will life be fair? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe an individual will have the misfortune of living in an area or working in an organization that is chock full of ignorant bigots and affirmed racists hostile to them. That individual, in our free society, will have the liberty to move to another location or to another means of employment. Since smart and gifted people occur as members of all human races, organizations and geographic areas that shun people of particular races will eventually find themselves at a disadvantage. They will change their views, or, in the long run, they will collapse under the weight of their own ignorance. Will not such a process be arduous, ugly and slow? Yes, it will. Such a process will also eventually heal the original American wound that has cleaved our society for two and a half centuries.

Culture, insofar as it encourages self-identity on the basis of race, is the most intractable problem. There is not, nor should there be, a law against individuals or private organizations speaking out for or against a particular race. It is, however, a problem. In schools, especially, the encouragement of children to define their personality and their very being on the basis of their race is dangerous. Very young children notice differences in people in a healthy way. Asked what his friend looks like, a Kindergartener will describe her height, her brown skin, and perhaps the sneakers she always wears. A few years later, he will identify his friend as a "black girl". She is no longer an individual with particular features; she is a member of a race whose identity is understood by a racial stereotype. In the course of a few years, the child has absorbed an evil message through his family, his peers, television, music, and even his public school's inane "multicultural" messages. He still enjoys his friend, but his friend has a new group-based identity. Teaching children to find pride and identity in their racial makeup is the same as teaching the corruption of blood. Is "black history month" any different than would be a "white history month"? The implicit message of "black history month" is that people do think and behave differently because of the color of their skin or their racial "heritage." Can we not focus instead on the achievements of all Americans regardless of their race? Pride should come from our own individual achievements, not from the achievements or tribulations of our racial group. Likewise, individual responsibility stems from a self-identity that is not tied to a group. Children who see themselves as individuals in a free society are more likely to take control of their own future and responsibility for their own actions. Children who see themselves as group members are less likely to take personal control of their future, and more likely to find blame for their own failures in the context of a society hostile to them. Instead of: "me in a world of possibilities", it is: "us against them".

To the extent that we as individuals and as a society can discourage racial group identity, we can turn up the heat on the melting pot. Though it may not come naturally to some, we must force ourselves to evaluate our fellow Americans as individuals. We must discourage politicians and so called "black leaders" or "Latino spokesmen" or whomever else from doing their well-intentioned damage. Those that actually traffic in their race must be exposed to the light of reason and left there to burn up. In our schools and workplaces we must seek the talented and the experienced and we must ignore their racial makeup-even if it means that one race or another is not represented. In time, the culture of race will be obliterated and the culture of merit will reward the worthy regardless of race. Since the worthy are found in every human race, in time members of all races will be rewarded for their individual achievements. We need to unleash the power of freedom in order to make our nation whole.

To cite this article:

Painter, John. Race In America. (October 2003). Retrieved month x, 2xxx, from

<http://rationalamerican.com/thorns>