The Fallacy of 'White Racism': An Analysis of a Misguided Concept

1. Introduction

As virtually all known liberal and progressive whites to be anti-racist, it is disconcerting that law and order racialist white politicians are getting increasing electoral support in many counties, including the United States, Australia, Canada, South Africa and Rhodesia. The willingness of thousands of white people to indulge in 'love-ins' with society's oppressed has not been translated into effective solidarity with such oppressed except in a trickle rather than a flood. The white people who actively join with non-whites in their fight against white racists are still a small minority. This active minority, however, are quite influential in the academic, religious, liberal, and trade union movements in many countries. Their influence, one suspects, will continue to be relatively weak as long as white anvils feel that another turn of the gallows' rope will not be particularly painful to them. Also, it is now widely recognized that white 'allies' sometimes take more integrity and courage to be chosen by the downtrodden than it takes to do the choosing.

Despite the active involvement of many white people in the anti-racism struggle, one also finds evidence of a vigorous racist minority within white populations in liberal democracies. Such evidence, which comes to us from all over the world, raises questions about the causal factor or factors in the concept known as 'white racism'. To attribute white racism to white pigmentation is to accept the 'separate race' theory, a belief that leads to racial conditioning or the cultivation of a race so conditioned. But, as can be seen, the entire theory of racism as being whites versus people of colour is false or, in short, a fallacy. The white racist - a person, not a pigment - has been created by a stark abortion of human values, has created no trivial crisis for the world. This paper is a discussion of the concept of white racism, its fallacious foundation, its multiple causes and possible solutions.

1.1. Background and Context

Some say that white society should bend over backward to make up for past injustices; others, no doubt genuinely believe that society already has made great strides to correct former wrongs, and that if blacks are not more fully and probably more equally assimilated today, this is due to some defect in the blacks. What is wrong with either view is that they begin with the assumption that almost anyone readily accepts: that white attitudes towards blacks are shaped primarily or almost exclusively by the emotions of the moment, and that generally what whites think, feel, and believe today in 1968 bears the unmistakable stamp of the history of the ages in the black labor contracts and the relations of employers to their Negro workers. Loewe, for example, argues that employers themselves have few racial biases of their own. She argued during the past six years, Henry Pratt Fairchild, the Soviet Examiner of a generation ago, has authored and edited twenty white racism articles attacking the Communists. Koppelman summed up Loewe's argument as follows.

At the root of white racism is the myth of white superiority. This is often taken for granted. Some would explain the existence of the belief in the innate superiority of whites and the inferiority of blacks by reference to history. Because whites enslaved blacks, because for years, they denied them full rights of citizenship and segregated them until 1965 from the general society, it would be surprising indeed if a belief in white superiority were not widespread among whites today. There are several ways of dealing with those who argue that history, of slavery and segregation, teach us the historical materialist roots of racist ideas and attitudes.

2. Defining Racism

Part of the confusion in defining "racism" rests with the lack of developed lexicons for many of the English vocabulary items. Over the centuries, it has been primarily the constitutional lawyers who have made the most frequent and extensive use of the terms appearing in legislative statutes and constitutional clauses. Because they have been the most frequent users of these terms they also are, or should be, the principal definers of such items. Court decisions are the most authoritative source of definition for legally loaded terms since the common law tradition is operative. The owners of such words are keen that their dictionaries be accurate and held definitions be in proper condition. In the absence of legal definitions, dictionaries should be the final source for clarification of the laws of language.

What is racism? There is no substitute for etymological studies when one is faced with the apparent misapplication or misunderstanding of terms. The term "racism" can properly be equated with "race prejudice." But, there is no universal definition of "racism." Each definition is couched in terms of the particular bias of the definer. It is this lack of a uniform definition that causes so much confusion in its use. The lack of an authoritative definition does not deter social scientists and laymen from applying the term quite freely in any related situation. The principle red flags are racial prejudice, ethnic superiority or dominance, racial hatred, and racial discrimination.

2.1. Historical Evolution of the Concept

The importance of understanding the political nature of infringement of rights based on race requires examining the underlying theory used to justify these policies. Both legal and academic writers have generally presented the concept of "white racism," whereby the independent racial activities of white people can be deemed to have disadvantaged non-whites. The concept is thought to have originated in writings that criticize the inability of laws to fully integrate blacks and whites in public life. Ann Harper Fender, in an important understanding of the concept of de jure racial discrimination, traces the expression of "white supremacy" derived from philosophical and religious traditions, which, binding together presumptions of religious duty, common origins, ability and capacity, nourished the view of Anglo-Saxon dominance into the political ideology on which American Nationhood was grounded. As the American nation emerged, a virtual white commonsense existed about the inferiority of blackness. After the Civil War, such explicit invocations of white racist sentiment were less frequent and overt appeals to racial stereotypes increasingly came to be deemed as "racist."

3. The Emergence of 'White Racism'

The growing disbelief in the evolutionary theory of the relationship between races caused, or was at least significantly related to, the shifting of the conceptual conflict of the Twentieth Century, a conflict caused basically by the conservatives operating within the revolution settling the technical and humanitarian problems of the civil rights trilogy (public accommodations, schools, and voting). It is in this new, typified universe (a universe of struggles for control, historically, by one race or another for the differential power and status that comes from being a complete citizen or a ruler) that conservative movements and organizations, operating against the intentions of the civil rights statutes, have begun to cement the concept of "white racism" in American life and to make it appear as if the only problems that exist between blacks and whites are those created by the criteria of excluding them from a status built by the force of jure, the construct of units running this civil struggle and most of its criteria basing for race.

A number of events, movements, and social and academic developments have been related to the emergence of the concept of "white racism." These developments were significantly spurred on, of course, by the civil rights struggle of minorities in the United States. In this section, we shall describe the period preceding this struggle, which began after the turn of the century in the U.S. when people who today are called white began to attempt to unite determinant (in the Marxist sense) factors such as skin color and physical traits to the spiritual, social, or cognitive attributes that determine virtue, beauty, and progress. Following this, we take up the discussion of specific relevant events in the rest of the century.

3.1. Origins and Development

The distinction that must always be made between institutional racism and 'white racism' is that the former can be imposed and operated whether whites are white-racist or not (they know that, too). White racism, on the other hand, if it ever came to be operated would not entail its predicated results and would indeed cease to be operational. Despite the fact that, in the West, racism generally makes its theoretical victims more deserving of hatred the more placid or militant, passive, servile, acquiescent, individual or separately organized oppressed people are the longer they submit to the torment, the more 'promises' they uphold and the fewer 'threats' they deliver, the system of racially derogatory oppression, in order to be actually operationable, must also operate within some kind of irregular perimeters.

Would whites ever feel emboldened enough to act in this fashion towards racial minority people if such behavior were to displease them? That is to say, feeling themselves to be in a numerical majority and collectively 'hating' black people, why should they not go ahead with perpetrating their exclusionment or oppression at any time without feeling the necessity of consulting the welfare of those whose welfare they are theoretically prepared to trample on? Institutional racism and the racist ideology or prejudice that we find ourselves surrounded by exists and is discernible enough to be practically impossible to be missed, yet without overt behavior to put flesh unto the conception very little suffering would be produced.

4. Critical Examination of the Concept

Understand the problem, someone will say, and forget about symbols. In actuality what we have is: not X, not Y, not Z, ad inf., are white. What are we supposed to mean by such an arrangement of symbols? Although all these peoples are not by any stretch of the imagination white in the literal sense of complexion, but are all the same, by the same stretch, inferred to be white in the sense of race and culture that is employed and thought to be referred to by the use of this epithet, "white racism"? And do we understand exactly the traits that inhere in the concept of "white culture"? Would it not be better to talk about "European cultures"? What justification is there for lumping together Irish, Bulgars, and North Italians as "people of white culture"? Or for isolating Mexican-Americans, who are merged with Anglo-Americans, from other Latins on the ground of complexion, a different complexion? And if it is merely that the latter have been conquered by the former, how is this "complexion" racism and not just color prejudice?

It is clear that virtually no user of that concept means to imply, by the prefix "white," anything to do with complexion or physical characteristics. Your poor, colored Eskimo with red or olive-brown skin, in as absolute and clear a case of racism as may be easily discovered anywhere, is definitely "not white." It is only in the special sense of meaning Europeans and heirs of European culture that the word is employed. Just what the theory of the writer is who talks about racism among Basques, Croats, Celts, Huns, Jews, etc., persons generally of a complexion "definitely not white," would be difficult to say.

4.1. Flaws and Inconsistencies

Many of the identified flaws and inconsistencies associated with the flawed definition of racism would be less disturbing if the question, race, and religion-based questions did not make their inevitable appearance in our political lives except for those wanting to perpetuate hate for reasons of their own. It is not the intelligence question being asked but the spheres of power question.

The fallacy of defining white racism as racism in general and non-white racism as prejudice is indelibly linked with the "politically correct" thinking that generated the belief that the sin of sins is racism and, when white racism dies, racial harmony will survive. There are numerous conventions and inconsistencies that illuminate this duplicity. First, excuse for the existence of prejudice on the part of the victims. Second, an idiosyncratic conceptualization of race. Third, a definition of the intensity of prejudice that anticipates prejudice to be negatively affected by marginality, powerlessness, and low self-esteem. Fourth, restrictivity regarding spatial distribution of racial prejudice. Fifth, presumption that only the majority group is prone to discriminate on racial grounds. Lastly, an irrelevant question is asked.

5. Implications and Consequences

The result is limitless 'white racism,' government by quotas in disguise, fastest blade, social policies that increase black youth unemployment, a social loan policy where the rich borrow assets, and resistances that make poor-job poor-housing cities more secure in their apartheid power. The greatest danger is not that affirmative action will disappear, but that it will continue until the whole Polish nation has been covered with a crust of deep envy and self-esteem. Black radicals fear an inevitable increase in prejudice and discrimination. Their beliefs about 'white racism' suggest that consciousness precedes existence, that as public attitudes become more positive, the civil rights movement will become more negative, and that as we approach equality of opportunity for blacks, whites will increasingly hate blacks. The circular construction attributes the lack of progress to negative white attitudes that assure that progress is impossible and that only propaganda and money can prevent 'white racism'.

The traditional black leadership wrongly believes that collective improvement and treatment, as well as group empowerment and entitlement, arise when government dictators honor the collective wishes of leaders. It wrongly believes that demonstrators cause improved racial preferences, boycott recently desegregated schools, damage businesses under boycott, support racial discrimination with racial preferences, threaten apartheid cities, and demand money from casinos. However, black aspirations for individual freedom and empowerment must be considered as well as leaders' desires to coerce group members into surrendering their individual freedom to the collective. Rather than negotiating with only political representatives and civil rights leaders who demand group privileges, government dictators must also consider the aspirations and preferences of members who have dreams of individual upward mobility... When black aspirations for freedom of choice are acknowledged, only then will black dreams be reached.

5.1. Impact on Society

It should be surprising to all to witness the fairly high incidence of acceptance by cultural variations in city streets. Such responses require some basic capability in displaying models of one's identity to approximate others covering different cultural characteristics, and electrodes could reinforce or depress such attempts at modification. Many of the city dwellers reject conflict over the impinging of their models. One should also consider the constraints of the urban theme in the contemporary behavioral setting. Changes are occurring due to the relocation of residents, an influx of lifestyles, attrition by desertion of these lifestyles, and their decay over historical time. One of the influential factors on present historical time results from territory, within which people engage in those activities within their model that satisfy their personal needs.

Western society is paying dearly for dwelling on the solace of racial smugness, which keeps the basic social issue relevant and raw as far as many of its subjects are concerned. The simple conclusion that social commentators overlook is that concentrations on the superficial physical aspects of a personal characteristic cloud the fact that racist attitudes and acts are the symptoms of a gap in perception in the social consciousness of those who may be indirect victims of the racial and monetary actions of the rich and powerful. It is no indictment on the rank and file of the white race to state that white racism is a misnomer worthy more of derisory assessment than of scholarly investigation. It is unfortunate also that racial leaders have failed to recognize that the concept of 'white racism' keeps the attention on whites without elucidating the foundations of all racism. It is no wonder that in most discussions on racism in America, class stratification and class differences are irrelevant.

6. Counterarguments and Rebuttals

There are three fundamental reasons why America has decided to focus in terms of race. These reasons are weighty and clear-cut. It is unnecessary to disagree with these reasons to disagree with the manner in which racism and racists are presently characterized, or how or why we use this term. It is these reasons which should provide the elite classes with a point of departure. However, the stress is on overly broad notions. These notions are not helpful in increasing or explaining how, why, and where a 'cosmic crackup' or 'vaporous schizophrenia' occurs. We cannot hope to achieve further understanding of these problems unless we analyze and understand them in other than racial terms.

The major criticism lodged against this thesis is that using the concept of 'white racism' is justified, and that this concept is useful and necessary, as long as the stress is on the negative consequences of racism and not on the racial group who practices it. At first glance, this may seem to be a reasonable counterargument; however, a very large area of nuance and complexity in American life is ignored by this argument. The United States, as well as other countries, has not decided to initiate this stress in terms of race without good reasons. It has not become a racialist state for its own sake or simply for the sake of being different. Far more weighty reasons have impelled it to focus upon race.

6.1. Responses to Common Defenses

In response to my attack on the concept that poverty, as now generally perceived and enacted through welfare programs, is thus not to be directly related to individual man and to a very general set of ideas, it will be replied that clearly these broader applicabilities cannot conveniently be directly mapped to such affluence at the other strife-ridden pole; however, guilt-sharing can rid you of viciously unpleasant sensations that rise toward the perception of the numerous differences at virtually every step along the black-white public and private improvement journey. Maybe it would be reasonable to encourage wailing motherhood problems for other people whose sins may not yet apparently be of the same general magnitude!

In response to my critique of the "whites are racist" thinking, it is likely that it will be suggested that as such, it does not advance the 'cause' of inner-city black improvement expressed through welfare programs. In other words, I am questioning a concept that will offend few individuals, since no matter how 'truthful' you insist that the concept is alleged to be, the 'advancement of such thinking does little to directly subdue the' inner-city law-violators and generally welfare dependent, the inner-city, self-helpless. I can offer no suggestions on how such ideas can be 'helped' to directly produce the proposed assistance. I am also aware of the need for ideological fronts; one thing worthy to be abandoned is the concept that such political fronts are to 'hold high certain moral standards.

1 Introduction. 2 Origins and Content of Racialism. 3 Fallacious Aspects of the Racial Phenomenon. 4 Problems with the Promotion of 'White Racism'. 5 The Promotion of Massive Zoning Inequality. 6.1. Responses to Common Defenses.

7. Conclusion

In the interim, it remains the task of scholars in this discipline to develop more adequate and different categories of analysis, which should be more than mere value free exercises. In a sense, such change must surely come sooner or later, perhaps through the replacement of an overemphasis on tolerance and common rationality by both the content and practice of the human rights (or the Universal Human Condition) approach. Such a political culture must adopt the critical emphasis on historical-sensitivity and images, instinctive and conscious myths, as well as an understanding of the psychological and cultural dimensions of the relationship between the citizen and the state. The state must ultimately represent the means of realization of each of these indispensable functions. These alternatives confront real-world problems and can engender practical solutions to the quest for a more universal human condition. It represents an eminently more relevant form of political praxis or category of analysis, to the times that the antiquated 'white racism' concept buried in the mists of insensitivity to historical immanence. Furthermore, the capacity to examine and comprehend different conceptual forms and alternative democratic praxis may also represent a turning point academic discourse and, indeed the life of the most citizens, in a world threatened by growing social tensions.

The discussion has sought to reveal that the concept of 'white racism' is seemingly theoretically impoverished and therefore devoid of specificity; analytically inadequate, ineffective and categorically impossible, if at all possible; historically and empirically unfounded; contextually simplistic; naively propagandist; institutionally and structurally irrelevant; analytically evasive and theoretically/politically cowardly. It is neither adequate to capture the essence of past racial experiences nor is it theoretically coherent to give specificity to race and racial experiences. As such, it adds no particular value to the understanding of racial categorizations, differences and the experiences of either victims/movements of racism/anti-racism or perpetrators of this concept. Its conceptual pretentiousness only devalues the power, reality and uniqueness of race and racism. Adherence to this concept can serve only to reverse the already slow gains hitherto achieved in the anti-racist struggles of the oppressed. This insidious process is assisted by the co-optation of some sections of the previously 'anti-racist' forces in both the First and Third Worlds, who now pander to 'white racism' or countries such as the Federal Republic of Germany that are totally disillusioned as to the denazification process.

7.1. Summary of Key Points

2. Close examination of the assumption that led to this proposition reveals some of its invalidity. If members of the pure opposite race are desired for love objects due to concealed hostile feelings, what happens when a love object exists? Is it more likely that the desired object becomes the recipient of overtures of hostility, or that the object is abolished as an object of hostility by a variety of pretexts rather than by concealed hostility? Findings of this presentation have continually shown that rather than overt hostilities being the outcome of these contact-conditioned, concealed hostile feelings, fears may be alleviated and a degree of amity may result from the relationship. The single most profound conclusion that can be drawn from our study is that the race problem here in the broad is due less to overt hostilities and prejudices, that are only a secondary disturbance, than to the fact that you men and women are leaning so heavily upon each other and of the intolerance and judgments that follow just from such dependence.

1. The assumption that race prejudice is due to the color of the skin has been the basis of many of the studies in the field of ethnic relations. One group of researchers has advanced evidence to show that Negroes and whites practice the same amount of discrimination or have the same amount of prejudice. A fundamental part of this presentation has been the study of overt hostilities between whites and Negroes in America. They have accepted the Freudian thesis that, since a man's body is at the base of his personality and his social behavior, and since there is no inherent Negro-White animist hostility in this country, that much of the race trouble can be explained by the male's efforts at symbolizing the apparent aversions and hostilities that exist between him and members of the pure opposite sex. If this is true, then race contacts would be the very mechanism by which these hostile feelings of the males come 'closer to consciousness'.