UNCOMFORTABLE SUBJECTS : PRIVATE RACISM

A REFLECTION ON RACE IN AMERICA

I want to take some time to mention what I'm planning to write over the next few days. I think it's especially important to lay out my intentions this time because I am about to venture into very difficult territory.

Whenever I set out on a new intellectual endeavor, I always think of my mentor: Friedrich Nietzsche. In this instance, I think about the title to one of his aphorism collections: Uncontemporary Observations. Nietzsche did not care whether he wrote about subjects that ruffled traditional feathers. He purposely contradicted the expectations of the "the present" and "contemporary" society. His ideas at times recapitulated themes from distant history. At other times, they foretold the future. In either case, he was not "contemporary." To the contrary, he purposely defied "contemporary."

Writers face constant pressure to be contemporary. After all, you can't be successful if you don't write to meet present expectations. Yet no one ever evolves without taking daring chances; and writers are no exception. By accident, I find myself in early 21st Century America: A strange, confusing, conflicted, changing civilization. There are certain subjects that we simply do not talk about, or at least we do not voice certain sentiments about them in public. It is irrelevant what we privately think about these "taboo" subjects. We just never voice what we really believe. Sometimes our beliefs are not even conscious.

Race is among those subjects. Personally, race is an obsession of mine. It frequently inspires my writing because it is so maddeningly relevant. Yet there are certain things we simply do not say about it, no matter how often we think them.

Race has played a pivotal role in American civilization from our earliest history. Through race, we have seen just how low American civilization can fall. Through race, we see our principles challenged. All our grand rhetoric about equality, dignity and fairness falls flat when applied to the American experience with race. It is no surprise that much of my satire involves racial realities in the United States. After all, when we honestly view race in America, we see several different Nations living in one. And they aren't all equal, no matter what the law says.

But I struggle with my own conflicts about race. In my writing and in my public expressions, I vociferously advocate equality. I believe that everyone in this country--no matter their origins--should have equal legal opportunities and a fair shot at success. I truly believe that. It is only just. We cannot claim to live in a just society if some people do not have the same chances for success simply because of their ancestry in a certain country or a certain continent.

Yet even in saying this I feel myself a hypocrite. In fact, I come close to a confession when I say that I am a racist. But we all are. Americans simply do not understand that racism comes in many shades. Some are overt, but most are extraordinarily subtle. Everyone in the United States is a racist in their own fashion; you do not have to be David Duke to be a racist. Rather, every American--including declared liberals--harbors deep-rooted cultural expectations about the "ways" of different ethnic groups. Every American believes on some level that people in other ethnic groups are "different" and "act differently" than they do "because that's the way they are." They do not necessarily mean it in a malicious way; but it is ever-present. And it is racism.

We are racists the moment we say: "Two guys and a black guy entered the room." I was raised with these distinctions. I also grew up in a distinct cultural background (southeastern Connecticut; and as the biological product of hardworking Northern European Protestant descendants). Both by nature and by operation of economic forces, that cultural background was racially exclusive. For the longest time, I never thought I was racist. How could I be? After all, I always learned that it was "bad to be a racist" and that I wasn't a racist because I did not publicly say bad things about people in other ethnic groups. But my own family--the same family that taught me these abstract lessons about race with the best possible intentions--cultivated a set of cultural values in me that made me completely dissociate myself from other races. Those values also made me intuitively judgmental toward anyone who did not share them. And on a subconscious level, I began to believe that my values were normal, while others were not. That was racist.

Racism is everywhere in the United States. It is on everyone's mind all the time. And it is intensely private. When white people eat at a restaurant and a black beggar enters the restaurant, I challenge everyone sitting there to say that they do not harbor certain negative assumptions about black people: "Why doesn't he work? Why do they beg? Why are they all so poor? They're all like that..." they think. They might be ferocious liberals and believe in equality. But in that cultural situation, I challenge them all to say that they do not make immediate judgments about black people in their own private minds. And it is not their fault: It is simply a function of their own cultural backgrounds reacting to another cultural background.

America elected Barack Obama. But that does not mean we are not beyond racism. My "uncontemporary observation" on this subject is that EVERYONE IS A RACIST. It is just a question of degree. We may bear no conscious ill-will toward other ethnic groups. Yet when we make even the most subtle assumptions about them, we are racists. Even disadvantaged ethnic groups engage in racism. I challenge any black person to say he harbors no assumptions about white people when placed in a social situation with them: "He's not going to be fair with me. He's not going to treat me right. He's going to condescend to me. He's going to exploit me. He's going to disrespect me. He's going to fire me because I'm black. That's what they all do. White people are mean and will hurt me any chance they get." Racism goes in both directions--all the time.

Overcoming racism is about more than turning to the law for superficial equalization. Overcoming racism is a mammoth cultural endeavor; and we are nowhere near achieving it. Until we truly harbor no assumptions or expectations about "how other ethnic groups act," and until we truly do not think "How typical" when someone from a particular ethnic group acts in a particular way, we are racists. Yet we do these things all the time without even knowing it. We are merely giving expression to the combined weight of our respective cultural heritages. Heritage bears down upon us in America as in no other country on earth. Nowhere on earth have so many disparate cultural traditions been thrown in with one another. And nowhere else has such burning intolerance arisen when those traditions clash.

Let me be clear for the record. I live my life to avoid racism in all things. But I am still as racist as every other American because I cannot honestly say that I do not occasionally make negative assumptions about other ethnic groups in difficult situations. In this sense, we are all racists. When a black youth wearing a doo rag, low pants, a crooked hat and gangster-style sports garb acts rowdy with his friends on a subway train, I intuitively think: "He is up to no good. He's going to cause a scene." I wish I didn't. But I do. I tell myself I shouldn't think it. I challenge any white person from my cultural background to claim the very same thoughts do not flash in his mind in the same situation.

I have no solutions to the racism problem. The best we can do is to forbear as much as we possibly can in our external behavior. We must try to understand one another as best we can for the sake of order and coexistence. It is relatively easy never to "act like a racist" or "say racist things" in public. It is easy not to be David Duke. But it is not so easy to truly drive racist thoughts from our minds in pressing circumstances.

I wish we weren't all racists. I really, really do. But we would all be dishonest if we said we weren't. And I will immediately call anyone a hypocrite who denies his own racism. Racism is not just the overt hatred we hear about in groups like the KKK. Racism is also about unconscious economic segregation. Living in a part of town that no black person can afford is racist, too. Supporting an economic system that perpetuates racial inequalities is racist, too. After all, why do most wealthy white people live in areas that black people cannot afford? Because they won't have to be around black people. When black people are around, it's a "bad neighborhood." Even using the term "bad neighborhood" is racism. It is no coincidence that "bad neighborhoods" are always the poor, black areas. And it is racist to assume the poor, bad areas are always black. Yet people who claim not to be racist use the term "bad neighborhood" all the time.

Consider a white real estate broker who thinks he is not a racist. He says to his client: "You don't want to live above 96th Street. That's a bad neighborhood." Why? Because black people mostly live there. How can that not reflect deeply entrenched, racist assumptions about black people? Think about how often we use terms like "bad neighborhood." They are racist. And most barely comprehend why.

Racism in the United States is exquisitely subtle. It is the inevitable byproduct of placing so many cultural backgrounds in close proximity to one another, along with the natural human propensity to resent those who are different. As such, racism is everywhere. I know it's not popular to say. But that does not mean we cannot honestly grapple with it. Is it terrible? Of course it is. But there are lots of terrible things about American life; and in my view it makes more sense to call a spade a spade than to pretend it's not.

This is my uncontemporary observation for the day.

JOHN MAYER IS A FUCKIN' ASSHOLE, PURE AND SIMPLE

OESTERHOUDT STRIKES - FOR THE THROAT

I've never liked John Mayer. I always branded his music vacuous, unimpressive, pretentious, lightweight, bourgeois-pleasing, chart-serving rubbish. And I knew from day one that he was no reclusive "shy boy" type. I knew that was all just a lady-luring façade. As the tabloids now routinely report, Mayer is no "in-bed-by-10" sort of dude. He's more an "in-bed-with-10-chicks-by-10-the-next-morning" sort of dude. So all that whispery, faux romantic, breathy, oh-I'm-so-sweet, honey-dipped, bedhead lyricizing all amounts to a big stinking heap of hypocritical bullshit.

Having written my opening paragraph, you can see I have a bias against him. I won't conceal that.

But I'm not writing today to player-hate John Mayer. After all, there are plenty of men out there who would want to be in John Mayer's lady-killing shoes right this minute. They sling dirt at him just because they are envious. To be clear, I'm not envious. There are other things about John Mayer beyond romantic prowess that really repel me. The kiss-and-tell womanizing and the ignorant suburban pretentiousness pale in comparison to his much more substantial misconceptions about social realities in the United States.

Many others have already written about Mayer's recent interview in Playboy magazine. I will recount it in order to show that John Mayer is just an opaque asshole, pure and simple.

During the interview, Mayer fielded this question: "If you didn't know you, would you think you're a douche bag?" In response, Mayer said: "It's like I come on very strong. I am a very…I'm just very. V-E-R-Y. And if you can't handle very, then I'm a douche bag. But I think the world needs a little very. That's why black people love me."

Wait a minute. Just wait a goddamn minute. Black people love you? What the hell is going on here? What is this white man from Fairfield County, Connecticut talking about? Does he really think that African-Americans in any way identify with him? Isn't it enough that he copied their musical forms and passed them off as his own? I suppose John Mayer thinks--as many breathtakingly naïve white hipsters do--that it is "cool to be black." And somehow his imitation of black musical forms entitles him to adoration from those "cool black people." In other words, Mayer thinks that being "loved by black people" means you're "cool."

This is beyond embarrassing. It is insulting.

John Mayer's cultural experience could not be more different from the average black American's cultural experience. John Mayer grew up in Connecticut's wealthiest county. I know what it's like there: I grew up three counties over: Most people's biggest worry is whether to buy a new Range Rover or a Volvo. And there aren't many black people around, I can tell you that.

Mayer's parents were comfortable bourgeois. He went to college. He didn't even go into debt for it. He never wanted for anything. He did not suffer discrimination or abuse. His biggest challenge was dealing with suburban angst, for which he took Xanax pills. He achieved remarkable commercial success by copying blues musicians, even though nothing in his background even remotely compares to what original bluesmen endured in the segregated South a hundred years ago. Sure, maybe John Mayer's "baby left him (ie, Jennifer Aniston, Jessica Simpson, etc.)." But that transitory woe hardly compares him to 1920s black musicians, who not only lamented losing their girlfriends, but also struggled to escape lynch mobs and scrape a living working on a railroad in Arkansas or something. Put simply, John Mayer doesn't know shit about the blues with his well-situated Connecticut ass.

Yet it doesn't end here--not even close. Mayer went on to say that black people love him so much that they gave him a "hood pass." In the Playboy interview, he clarified what he meant: "And by the way, it's sort of a contradiction in terms, because if you really had a hood pass, you could call it a nigger pass…[] I said, 'I can't really have a hood pass. I've never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, 'We're full.'"

Oh no he didn't. Oh yes he did. He said it. He not only said it. He said it publicly. This is the same guy who claims that "black people love him." Well, from John Mayer's perspective, I suppose it really doesn't matter. He gets to be cool like a black guy without the attendant complications, like being turned away from restaurants because you're black. Nope, he doesn't need to worry about that. On stage, he can be a brother. But off stage, he can just be another rich white cocksucker from Fairfield. Oh, double standards… how very convenient they can be when they work for you.

Inconsistencies bother me in any intellectual endeavor. True, it is hard to escape inconsistencies in life. We are all wracked with contradiction and conflict. I have my own contradictions. But the smugness in John Mayer's strikingly inconsistent positions about race really makes my blood boil. After all, Mayer has made his career imitating black musical forms. He owes African-American culture everything for his success. If it weren't for soul, R&B and the blues, he wouldn't have anything to play. He styles himself "just another black guy." He relishes adoration from black audiences. He touts his "hood pass." But then he turns around and remarks that he never has to suffer the same social handicaps as his black "heroes." And he likes it that way.

Worse, in the Playboy interview, he even said: "My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I've got a Benetton heart and a fuckin' David Duke cock."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think many black people would "love" any white man who favorably mentions David Duke in any context. And this is the maddening thing about John Mayer's racial inconsistencies. On the one hand, he owes black Americans everything and "loves" them. On the other hand, he uses the term "white supremacist" to describe his sexual life. Now, everyone is entitled to their sexual tastes. But favorably invoking white supremacy in any context is a bit problematic for a man who claims that black people love him. And it is even more troubling for a man who has made a fantastic career commandeering black musical forms. My conclusion: Once again, John Mayer is just an asshole, plain and simple.

John Mayer swiftly apologized for his statements--in a bite-sized Twitter sentence, no less. He explained that "he should not have used the word" during the interview, remarking that it is impossible to "intellectualize it." Yet Mayer missed the point. The fact that he used the word "nigger" in the Playboy interview is only symptomatic of a much larger issue, namely, his simplistic and self-contradicting positions about race in the United States. John Mayer needs to understand this more than most white Americans, because John Mayer makes his money imitating black music. While many white Americans routinely get away with casual racism, Mayer cannot. He cannot have it both ways. He cannot both be a hood hero and a white supremacist. Despite his contention that "black people love him," he coarsely generalizes about black Americans just as much as the most ignorant white teenage rap wannabe: They're "cool." They're "hip." It's "cool to have a hood pass."

And once again, he does not end there with the generalizations. First, he said that "black people love him" because he is "very." That puzzled the interviewer. But a little interpretation makes clear that Mayer was just stereotyping. "Very" is an adverb that means "more than usual." There is "black," and there is "very black." It intensifies the adjective. John Mayer said that "black people love him" because he is "very." Very what? Simply "very," meaning "living intensely, excessively, recklessly, thoughtlessly, frolickingly." In other words, living "more than usual." Mayer's statement, then, implies that all black Americans live this way; and that's why they love him. He lives "very." He lives "black." This is gross stereotyping.

I am not going out on a limb here. John Mayer truly feels this way. Consider what he said later in the interview: "What is being black? It's making the most of your life, not taking a single moment for granted. Taking something that's seen as a struggle and making it work for you, or you'll die inside. Not to say that my struggle is like the collective struggle of black America. But maybe my struggle is similar to one black dude's."

So now John Mayer--a wealthy white Connecticut suburbanite--is an authority on the meaning of black identity in America? This is so stunningly condescending it's funny. But then you realize it's not funny at all, because this guy actually believes he understands black Americans because he can imitate their guitar-playing. It is simply ludicrous for John Mayer to even suggest he knows a thing about the "collective struggle of black America," let alone to compare his "struggle" (whatever that is… maybe bagging some dancer chick on tour) to "one black dude's."

No matter what he says, John Mayer has not faced struggle in his life. Worrying whether a song about pillows makes the Pop Top 10 does not qualify as a "struggle." By contrast, battling to overcome the pernicious historical legacy of slavery--all the while contending with rampant poverty, educational inequality, discriminatory treatment, unequal housing, violence, broken homes and crime --is a "struggle."

John Mayer is no hero. He's an arrogant, self-righteous, fake, low-frequency imitator who knows nothing about racial realities in the United States. That really bothers me. Every American must come to terms with racism. Our Nation's racial conflict will never end; it stains the land. But there is a way to address it respectfully and a way to address it irresponsibly. John Mayer not only addresses it irresponsibly; he also profits from it. Then he gloats about how wonderful it is to be white and rich in America. So he gets the best of both worlds: Cool like a black guy; privileged like a white guy. Plus he gets all the white chicks and never has to wait for a table in a trendy restaurant.

All this makes him a straight-up asshole in my book.

And this is not slander. This is just an opinion about a nauseating public figure. But it really doesn't matter, because you can't slander anyone with truth.

OBAMA IS GENETICALLY RELATED TO STALIN, MAO AND CASTRO : I HAVE PROOF

PALIN ON POLICY

Families are very important in America. I, for example, come from a very strong family. Alaskans believe in good family values. That's one of the reasons I entered politics. It saddens me to see declining family values in America. Children have babies out of wedlock. Parents divorce. And relatives abandon each other when one family member suffers a health crisis. Why? Because too many people have ignored traditional family values.

I am glad that I never turned my back on family values. My family is strong. We practice traditional American family values. I come from strong roots. I can prove who my father was. I even know my mother and grandmother. We all believed in the same things: Freedom, liberty, justice, nature, stag hunting, business opportunities, low taxes, gun ownership. We all liked the same things. We even kind of all looked the same, too. Family always gives you away; if you ever doubt who you are, just look at old family pictures and you'll remember where you come from.

Barack Hussein Obama does not believe in family. That is why he is destroying this country. It is no accident that he is a socialist. People from broken families turn into socialists or worse. Sometimes they become intellectuals or terrorists, or even intellectual terrorists. Over the last year, he has made war on traditional American values, like the freedom to buy private health insurance and the freedom to work for little pay. In short, Obama has already struck a grave blow at America's golden virtue: Responsibility. And only the right kind of families can cultivate responsibility.

This is not my grandfather's America. It is not even my mother's America. It is new and shocking. Government is telling everyone what to do. It is taking away people's property. It is sentencing old people to death under Obama's new "rationed" health care system. It is freeing convicted African killers and allowing them to rape white women. It is imposing unfair burdens on credit card companies. It is even paying for people's college education and freeing them from debt.

How could this be happening in America? What happened to our "do-it-yourself-no-help-thank-you" attitude that transformed us from frontiersmen into the greatest Nation on earth? What happened to paying our own way? What happened to me first, you second? Basically, what happened to the families?

Let's look closely at Obama. It is no surprise that he is ruining the country because he does not come from the right kind of family. People did not think that Obama would become a socialist once he won the White House. But I knew better. After all, I have uncovered evidence that decisively proves Obama's socialist ancestry. I hold an Honorary Degree in Investigative Biology from the University of Alaska at Elk's Bush. Using my expertise, I discovered some truly startling facts. Americans have long been worried about Obama's citizenship. But my research shows far more than Obama's lack of citizenship. It shows that he is genetically related to the worst socialists in history. I even have photographs to prove my points.

Let's begin.

Barack Hussein Obama's father was an African. Look at him; it's obvious:

Socialism runs rampant in Africa. Should we be surprised that son followed father? But the trail does not end there. No, Obama's father had an uncle in Southern Russia who was related to notorious Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Family does not lie. Look at the resemblance:

Should we be surprised that Obama is dismantling the free market system? He is related to Joseph Stalin, for goodness sakes!

I wish this were the only bad news I discovered during my research. Unfortunately, it is not. I also found out that Obama's great uncle lived in China. By no small chance, that great uncle was Mao Zedong's cousin. Again, look at the resemblance:
Obama's socialist roots run deep and cross continents. He is related to Mao and Stalin by blood. He is an internationalist by family bond. If ever there were a time for America to stand up against this tyrant, the time is now.

But there is even more. Thanks to help from a prominent Genetics scholar at Elk's Bush, I uncovered another disturbing link in Obama's family tree. Specifically, after proving Obama's definitive relationship to Stalin and Mao, I determined that Obama's great-great-great-grandfather was seized in Africa and sent to the West Indies as a slave. Over the generations, Obama's forefathers intermingled with the local Spanish population in Cuba. One of his descendants is Fidel Castro. Again, let's examine the resemblance:
Can anyone deny the genetic link? I have the records and the photographs to prove that Obama is communist dictator-spawn. This is America. We believe in families, not dictators. And Obama descends from the wrong kind of family, make no mistake about it.

We must take action. Our "President" is related to infamous socialists from three Continents. When he talked about diversity during the campaign last year, this is not the diversity we had in mind. We he talked about international understanding, we had no idea he was the living embodiment of worldwide socialism. If we care about American families, we must stand against Obama. He is not an American. He is a frightening communist-African-Chinese-Cuban-Russian amalgam seething with anti-capitalist venom. He represents everything America detests. We cannot allow him to take a single step further.

This is about families. I care about family because I come from a strong American family. We take our commitments seriously. I refuse to allow Obama to destroy this Nation with his poisonous ancestry. It is my duty to inform the American people about who is really leading them. This is not an American. This is a socialist with bona fide socialist roots. If you see a dog, you can pretty much bet it will act like a dog. That is why Americans need to know about Obama's ancestry. Obama's relatives murdered millions and made war on free market economics worldwide. How can we tolerate a ruler who might do the same here in America? If we lose the free market, what do we have left?

Stand with me against Obama and his socialist pedigree. Obama may have fooled America into thinking he was a pillar of hope against economic despair. But my research shows otherwise. We must band together to stop his socialist machinations before it is too late. In one year, he has already made it more difficult for health insurance companies to deny customers coverage. That is the first step to communism. And if we care about economic freedom, we must act now. Because when insurance companies are not free to act as they please, we have fallen into socialism.

Let's tell this Maoist Stalinist Castro-African bandit that we don't appreciate socialism in America. America is for American families, not your kind of families.

USING RACIAL BIAS FOR PROFIT

OESTERHOUDT STRIKES

I saw a report yesterday on a local New York City newscast about a private nightclub that allegedly turned away several patrons "because they were black." Apparently, these patrons were all friends with a noted local author who is black, too. She was throwing a party and wanted all her friends to be there. According to the report, the doormen refused her friends entry at about 2 AM last Sunday. The report also mentioned that the club is a popular nightspot. Many people can't get in, even celebrities.

You know what's coming. Now the local author has hired a lawyer and she has filed a $1 billion class action racial discrimination lawsuit against the club. She says that the club's management engaged in racial bias against her and now she has a right to collect money damages. The report did not say which law she invoked in her complaint.

Racial discrimination is alive and well in all multicultural societies. It is not a uniquely American problem. Still, the United States is famous for its racism. Yes, we have a black President now. But this is no "post-racial society." Blacks die at a younger age than any other ethnic group in this country. They make significantly less money. They go to prison in far greater proportions. They consistently score lower on educational achievement tests. And this is no accident: There is a legacy of State-sponsored discrimination at work in America that continues to negatively impact blacks in all life pursuits.

In short, racism exists in America. It always has and it probably always will. It is a constant problem. It deserves condemnation when it appears.

But racism does not explain everything. In many cases, racism does not account for unjust results in social interactions between the races; not every white man is a bigot. I think the New York author's case represents a false racial cry. It is one thing to claim that racism exists in private businesses in the United States. It is one thing to take a principled stand against it. But it is quite another to use purported racial bias as an excuse to sue a business for $1 billion.

In short, financial motives obscure principled ones. Here, the author undoubtedly has a financial motive. If she truly cared about dignity and equality, why would she demand $1 billion to crusade for them? To an objective observer, this looks like a stab at personal paydirt, not a principled call for justice. After all, a crusader for justice wants justice, not a billion dollars.

In theory, awarding money damages for racial discrimination vindicates the Nation's interest in rooting out racism. It works by penalizing businesses for proven racial bias. If racism is unprofitable, so the theory goes, then businesses will not engage in it. But asking for $1 billion from a single nightclub is beyond the pale. It could never possibly pay that amount. If the Plaintiff got what she wanted in this case, the club would cease to exist several times over. And who would benefit from this? A few aggrieved clubgoers who could not drink and dance where they wanted one night? By demanding so much, this Plaintiff loses her moral authority and comes across as a common profiteer.

I venture that it is utterly shameless to use racial discrimination as a pretext for immense personal profit. I find it disgusting when people use this country's bad racial history to extort astronomical sums for personal gain. This author should be ashamed of herself. Even if the club discriminated against her and her friends, she would have done better to ask for a much more modest sum than $1 billion. She could have asked that any damages be paid to an educational fund or something, not her own bank account. If she really cared about racial bias, she would have used the case not so much to enrich herself than to publicly investigate the club's practices. Perhaps that is what she wanted to do along. Yet asking for $1 billion just makes her look like a cheap hustler out for cash, not a principled warrior out for justice.

I am not surprised that the author's lawyer so willingly went along with this circus act. After all, he stands to gain publicity and a hefty fee for his toils. It does not matter whether this is all just a crude attempt to shake a club down by conjuring the ghosts of America's racist past. It does not even matter whether the law supports his position. He has personal motives, just like the Plaintiff. This has nothing to do with remedying continuing racial ills in America. This is about money and fame, pure and simple.

He would be wise to mind the law in this case, too. After all, the Constitution forbids racial discrimination only when the State engages in it. See U.S. Const. Amd. XIV sec. 1 When private businesses discriminate, it is much more difficult to prevail. Federal and State laws prohibit racial discrimination in "places of public accommodation." But those laws require the Plaintiff to prove "discriminatory intent" against the private actor. That is no easy task. It is one thing for a person to think that a private club racially discriminated against him or her. It is quite another to show that a private club had an intentional policy disfavoring blacks. After all, this was a popular club. It turned many people away, including celebrities. It could conjure up virtually any explanation for its decisions. It will never admit "actual racial animus" against blacks.

From a legal standpoint, this is what it takes to win cases like this. It won't happen.

Instead, the author will scream and whine and talk to tabloid newspapers. She will attract attention to herself and boost her book sales. Some will say she suffered racism. Others will say she is exaggerating. Still others will simply ignore her.

No matter the reaction, one thing remains: She is trying to exploit America's sad racial history for crass personal profit. That is downright contemptible.

EXPLAINING AMERICA'S RACE PROBLEM : RACE RIOTS

AN ESSAY

Two weeks ago, I visited St. Louis. I had never been there before. I grew up in Connecticut and I've spent most of my adult life in New York City. I lived and worked in Chicago for several years; I did not find people's attitudes all that different from people's attitudes in New York. For the most part, I liked Chicago. But before moving there, I had heard stories that it was "segregated" and "had a race problem." These stories gave me a preconception that everyone in Chicago was a racist and that it was "very white and conservative."

My experience contradicted all these preconceptions. Chicago is an extraordinarily Democratic city. Although it is 800 miles from the Atlantic, it is surprisingly cosmopolitan and progressive. New Yorkers are wrong to think it is a "sleepy, backward Midwestern town." Much to the contrary, it is as vibrant a place as you will find anywhere outside the Five Boroughs. And most Chicagoans are ferociously liberal: Republicans don't stand a chance in city government. True, the city is unashamedly corrupt. But benignly so. Sometimes people just like things the way they are, as long as everyone gets a nice paycheck. "Hey, who cares as long as no one gets hurt and everybody wins?" That's how it is in Chicago.

Does Chicago have a "race problem?" To answer that question, I don't think it's fair to single out Chicago. Every American city has a "race problem." Black people do not generally live in wealthy neighborhoods in any American city, and black people commit proportionately more poverty-related crime than whites in all urban areas. This is a "national issue." It holds true in Chicago. The city is economically segregated, and that means it is also racially segregated. Blacks live on the South and West Sides because it is cheaper than the North Side, where most whites live. Blacks do not live on the South and West Sides because government ordered blacks to live there; they live there because they are too poor to live in the white areas. Contrary to Justice Thomas' outrageous assertion, blacks do not live in ghettoes because they made "innocent private decisions including voluntary housing choices." See Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S 701 (slip. op. at p. 51)(Thomas, J., concurring)(2007). For the most part, they have no choice.

New Yorkers mistake these economic realities for official racial discrimination. But the same thing happens in New York. New York is just as segregated as Chicago; white New Yorkers just see more black people on the street. Economic reality makes it impossible for blacks to live on the Upper East Side and downtown Manhattan, not governmental racism. While blacks might walk the streets in "white areas," they likely do not live there: They just took the subway. The same thing is true in Chicago's "white areas" : They just took the El.

In short, "race problems" exist in every American city, not just Chicago. Economic realities translate into racial realities. Government might not legislatively discriminate against blacks as it did a century ago. But private actors can achieve the same result simply by competing in the free market. Blacks stand at a material economic disadvantage in the United States. They cannot compete for housing, goods and services at the same level as whites. Thus, it is possible for cities to become "segregated" simply by action of "everyday commerce." This is generally what happens in northern cities like New York and Chicago.

I had all this in mind when I landed in St. Louis. I thought St. Louis would be like Chicago; after all, they are cities at opposite ends of the same State: Illinois. But this was no northern city. St. Louis was different. Whites lived in sprawling, palatial, mansion-like structures with gates and lush lawns. Just blocks away, blacks lived in dilapidated row houses with boarded windows. I stayed in a hotel with a steel fence and guards. All the servants were black. All the guests were white. White folk frolicked by the pool. Black folk trudged around outside the fence.

This was more than just economic segregation. This was real, social segregation. The great, unspoken reality in St. Louis was that black folk knew their place and white folk lorded over them. Unlike New York and Chicago, blacks did not even show up in places reserved for whites. They stayed home. They did not have a subway to get around, anyway.

Then it dawned on me: St. Louis was a southern city. I had never really seen a southern city. I did not like it at all. While New York and Chicago might guiltily acknowledge their "race problems," St. Louis had a "race problem" and didn't seem to mind it at all. After all, this was just the "way things were supposed to be." In New York and Chicago, everyone knows racism exists. But very few people acknowledge it publicly; they just let private commerce do its work. In St. Louis, by contrast, racism is just assumed. That jarred me.

Why did this jar me? After all, I routinely write about America's continuing racial woes. I am usually the first to point out that we do not live in a postracial society, and that racial problems in America encapsulate everything wrong with American civilization. But it is one thing to theorize and read about these problems; it is quite another to see them up close. Put simply, race problems exist in the United States because they are the poisonous legacy of slavery and State-sponsored discrimination. Not that many generations have passed since the law called black men "chattel property," and even fewer have passed since it was considered "good and legal" in the South to murder black men without trials for perceived offenses against "the social order." No matter how much we learn to be "politically correct" about these issues--and even to rue the conduct of our ancestors--this evil legacy lives on. And it undermines any claim that we live in a Nation of principle.

Racial problems in the North and the Midwest are relatively recent phenomena. They are essentially the "third chapter" in the history of racial intolerance in America after slavery and Reconstruction in the South. I did some reading and discovered that St. Louis was the first "northern" city to which southern blacks migrated in the early 20th Century. At that time, State-sponsored discrimination made life in the South virtually intolerable for blacks. While they might have been "legally equal" on paper, white mobs (some included judges and prosecutors) lynched hundreds every year. To escape life in southern society, many blacks looked north. St. Louis was right up the Mississippi River from the Deep South.

But their problems did not disappear once they arrived in St. Louis. They did not receive a warm welcome from ostensibly "progressive" northern whites. To the contrary, European immigrants and their descendants in St. Louis resented the idea that these "black interlopers" were stealing their jobs and "fraternizing with white women." After America entered World War I in 1917, tensions reached a boiling point. After factory owners began hiring blacks to replace white workers called off to war, white mobs marched on black neighborhoods. The Governor called in the National Guard, but in many cases the troops joined the mob and helped terrorize the black population. Over a three-day period, white mobs killed several dozen blacks and burned down their whole neighborhood. The police basically stood by and let the violence happen, tacitly supporting the white mob's position.

Something similar happened in Chicago two years later. As was true in St. Louis, thousands of blacks settled in Chicago in the early 20th Century. After World War I, thousands more returned from Europe to compete for jobs in the city. Whites and blacks informally agreed to "live in their own neighborhoods." They even respectively agreed not to use parts of the Lake Michigan beachfront reserved for the other race. But in 1919, a black boy dared to go swimming in "white waters." Several white boys threw rocks at him and he drowned. A dispute broke out between blacks and whites on the beach. When the police arrived, they arrested angry blacks rather than the white boys who threw the rocks. This led to rioting. As was the case in St. Louis, white mobs did the damage. They marched into black neighborhoods and burned almost everything in their path. They were just waiting for the opportunity to vent their anger about losing jobs to blacks. And as was true in St. Louis, the police tacitly supported the rioters by refusing to intervene against them.

I use these two examples to illustrate why we still have a "race problem" in the United States. Although they both took place 90 years ago, I think they have genuine relevance to modern urban issues involving race. For one, I find it perversely interesting that we call these disturbances--and others like them--"race riots." Who is the aggressor in a "race riot?" Who is the victim? In both St. Louis and Chicago, blacks were undeniably the victims, while the whites were the aggressors. Yet the term "race riot" implies that a "race" starts a riot. In American discourse, the word "race" generally implies "African-American." For deeply troublesome reasons, the word "race" conjures black men in the white mind. It conjures the perennial, uncomfortable, uneasy racial legacy that has remained with us since the Civil War and before. But in these "race riots," blacks did not cause disturbances to protest their inferior social standing. Unrest may well have been justified in the circumstances. Yet it was whites who caused the disturbances. And why? For economic reasons, and for "pride:" They did not like the idea that blacks threatened their jobs, swam "on their beaches" and "mixed with their women." These are not very noble reasons to riot.

This is not to say that blacks have not begun racial disturbances in our history. In 1992, for instance, black mobs rose up to protest the Rodney King police brutality verdict. But in that case, they did not severely damage white neighborhoods. They likely wanted to, but in the end they wound up burning their own property and some Asian-owned property. No matter who suffered injury, however, blacks rioted because they perceived a serious injustice, namely: that a supposedly "neutral" justice system failed to deliver justice against white police officers who visibly brutalized a black man on videotape. In this sense, "black-launched" race riots differ from "white-launched" race riots. Blacks riot to protest manifest injustice and betrayed principle. Whites riot to protect their jobs and bloodlines.

Race riots offer a revealing glimpse into the reasons why we still contend with smoldering "racial problems" in the United States. There is always tension between blacks and whites, not least because blacks know they stand a much lower chance to succeed in the free market system than their white counterparts. This resignation to failure has everything to do with the same destructive legacy that supported slavery and motivated the northern race riots. These are institutional problems that persevere over the generations, no matter what "legal adjustments" government makes. The fact that authorities generally stand by and let race riots occur--or, worse, join them--only reinforces black cynicism about their place in American society. If the police and courts tacitly condone lawlessness against blacks, how can we blame blacks for believing that the law does not stand for them?

Racism lives on in America because the law cannot touch it. It lives in men's minds. It finds expression in intrinsic social values that resist generational change. Law cannot change minds; it can only plunder pocket books and imprison bodies. Nor can law excise deeply-entrenched values. Racism smolders every day in every American city. Serious pressures--whether economic or ideological--bring the smolder into a flame: Race riots.

Throughout American history, we have seen the same pattern. Race riots honestly tell us what each race thinks and assumes about the other without subterfuge or pretense. Unlike language, violence is never subtle.

GREETINGS FROM THE FEDERAL CHANCELLOR FOR LIVING/DEAD RELATIONS

THE DEPARTMENT OF LIVING/DEAD RELATIONS

WASHINGTON, D.C.

By : Mr. Franklin F. Tottenham, Chancellor of the Federal Department for Living/Dead Relations; J.D., Yale Law School (1989); Consulting Expert in Health Policy, The Brookline Association, Boston, Massachusetts (1991-2004); Deceased 2005; Vice President of the American Walking Corpse Federation for Fair Employment Opportunities in the Private Sector (2005-2008); Corpse (Living).

When President Barack Obama won the White House last autumn, he promised America “change we can believe in.” Unlike his predecessor, President Obama grounded his political philosophy in a society of inclusion, not exclusion. In short, President Obama ushered in a new day in American political life. Under President Obama, everyone has a chance to succeed in America. Everyone counts. The President’s own life story proves that anyone make it in this country. Minorities and historically-marginalized groups all over America wept for joy to celebrate Obama’s victory. For the first time in their lives, they felt real hope that America would finally make a place for them: African-Americans no longer felt that they were doomed to repression and “dead ends” in society; gay men dared hope that they, too, could marry; and immigrants proudly stood up to say that they had a place.

This is a new America. This is an America that believes in itself. This is change we can believe in. President Obama, you said: “Yes we can.” We say: “Yes we did.” We salute your commitment to the American dream for all Americans. You understand that everyone in America—even those without economic power or education—can contribute to our Nation’s success.

This is a significant achievement. All Americans means all Americans; that means both living and dead Americans. For too long, America has failed to consider the needs of the dead in political life. For too long, America simply buried its dead and moved on. It not only maliciously discriminated against dead people; it literally forgot about them. But President Obama understands injustice when he sees it. Freedom does not exist unless all people enjoy it. It does not matter whether a person’s cells have perished. It does not matter whether a person’s heart has stopped or his flesh has rotted away. It does not even matter whether a person died in 1694. Americans are still Americans—and Americans deserve freedom. That is why President Obama commanded Congress to pass the Dead Matter Too Act (DMTA). This act represents a gigantic step toward justice in the United States. For the first time in history, America told its dead: “You have a voice, too.”

Mr. President, as Chancellor of the Federal Department for Living/Dead Relations, and as a dead man, I salute you for your commitment to American ideals. I speak for every dead body in America when I say: “We will help you realize the dream.”

But despite all the recent gains, our road has not been easy. We cannot guarantee immediate progress. For centuries, America has stamped the dead with a badge of inferiority. The living lived as if they were the only ones here. For centuries, the law permitted them to bury us, burn us, toss us into ditches and even sink us to the ocean bottom without so much as asking our opinion on the matter. The living branded us with epithets that cut deeply into our collective self-esteem: stiffs, stinkers, stenches, funeral parlor bait, coffin crud… the list goes on. Laws not only authorized this unequal and demeaning treatment; laws did not even mention us. From a legal perspective, we were not even second-class citizens; we were nothing at all. Although the living spent money on headstones and even set aside land for us, they simply ignored us afterward, leaving us to slowly decompose six feet underground. To add insult to injury, they took away all our property and distributed it to grandchildren, estranged wives and even creditors. In sum, dead Americans face a legacy of State-sponsored discrimination. We have been purposely suppressed, marginalized, demeaned and forgotten. In some cases, we are completely gone. We ask the President to remember our dead brethren who faced cremation, obliteration, vaporization or worse.

But those dark days are over. We are turning a new page in American history. Now, the Federal government has finally recognized that we deserve a chance, too. Despite all the historical prejudice against us, President Obama recognized that we deserve a chance to influence policy in the United States. Through the DMTA, the Federal Department for Living/Dead Relations has two goals: (1) To help eradicate the practical handicaps created by historical discrimination against dead Americans; and (2) To make policy suggestions to living lawmakers concerning national legislative initiatives.

Today, I want to educate the public about our mission. Concerning our first goal, I want to remind all living Americans that dead people are people, too. We ask you to remember that President Obama promised a bright future for all Americans, whether black, white, Native American, Asian, immigrant, disabled, homosexual or dead. We recognize that it used to be “OK” to discriminate against the dead. In days past, polite people rarely invited dead neighbors over for dinner. Top-rate universities never accepted dead applicants. Living Americans assumed that all dead people smelled, were ugly, acted irresponsibly and looked like they were sleeping all the time. But that was pure bigotry. In 2009, we no longer make assumptions about people simply because they are dead. We evaluate people based upon their character and their achievements, not their cellular status or pulmonary/respiratory function. We do not stereotype about dead people, just as we do not stereotype about Hispanics or Asians. Today, every American deserves a chance.

We want to set the record straight about dead Americans. We are not sleeping. We do not smell. We are not ugly, even if we may have decomposed in whole or in part. Despite our appearance, we have achieved great things. Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity and he is dead. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and he is dead. Dwight Eisenhower defeated the Nazis in Europe and he is dead. Henry Ford introduced mass production and revolutionized industrial society; he is dead, too. Thus, there is no substance to the claim that “all dead people” are irresponsible or lazy. To the contrary, many dead people have achieved tremendous things. Babe Ruth, for instance, is one of the greatest baseball players in American history. And he is dead. We believe America should open its mind to the reality that dead people have done—and will do—great things. We must move beyond superficial generalizations. We believe the Federal Department for Living/Dead Relations will help living Americans cast aside their historical prejudices against the dead. After all, you likely have dead relatives. You wouldn’t treat them with disrespect, would you?

When Americans learn that the dead are people just like you, we are confident that dead Americans will overcome the practical roadblocks that have held them back for so long. When Americans learn that dead people do not just “sleep” or “smell,” we are confident that private employers will proudly offer them jobs. We are confident that dead Americans will prove their worth by their own merit and intelligence. For that reason, we do not advocate mandatory quotas to forcibly assimilate dead Americans into the workforce. We do not believe this because we fear that the United States Supreme Court will rule against us. Rather, we do not need quotas because dead Americans have the ability to succeed without additional assistance. Many dead people achieved success during life. There is no reason to think that minor impediments such as death should bar them from resuming their winning ways. All Americans face adversity. All Americans can overcome adversity. Death is no exception. A determined American dead person can get any job he or she wants, as long as she has the talent, drive and ambition to get it. In short, we are confident that dead Americans will soon be respected, productive members of American society, just as they were when they were alive.

Dead people want to work. They want to be responsible. They want to send their children to college. They want to pay taxes. We believe they should have the chance to prove themselves on a level playing field. Although we acknowledge the concern that living people may lose their jobs to the dead, we point out that death affects us all. Living people, too, will one day be dead. While a living person may feel stung to lose a job or university seat to a dead person, we merely note that for centuries the dead had no opportunity whatsoever either to work or study. In that light, we believe that living people can bear some incidental burdens to compensate dead people for centuries of unrestricted social exclusion. Colloquially, we also note that “what goes around comes around.” When a living person sacrifices for a dead one, he or she should do it cheerfully, for one day she, too, will be dead. Once she is dead, she will want all the same opportunities she had when she was alive. In this sense, it is only fair that both living and dead Americans enjoy equal access to every advantage in American society. And fairness is important in America.

Dead Americans also have a right to participate in the democratic process. The Federal Department for Living/Dead Relations gives substance to this right. Under the DMTA, the Department has authority to advise Congress concerning all legislative initiatives. This does not mean that the dead will dominate the national debate; it merely means that the dead have a right to be heard in legislative decisionmaking. This is not revolutionary. To the contrary, the dead have special insights into practical problems. Taken as a whole, dead people possess boundless wisdom. We have seen everything under the sun. This collective experience will translate well into prudent legislation.

Yet we cannot effectively consult on legislative matters until Congress recognizes that dead people have needs, too. We agree with Congress that health care must be reformed. But we will not solve the health care mess by ignoring the dead. We must take steps to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable health care, including American corpses in various states of decay. How is it just that only wealthy living people have access to top-notch treatments? How is it just that lower-income living people and every dead person cannot even visit a doctor when they need to? Both the economy and the government depend upon people. Without a healthy population, people cannot effectively serve either the economy or the government. We must find a solution to the health care mess that delivers compassionate, high-quality care no matter whether the patient is a wealthy living banker or a bankrupt dead day laborer. And we must do so in a fiscally responsible manner.

We believe that dead people can help end the health care impasse in many ways. For one, dead doctors can volunteer their time to treat living patients. Contrary to longstanding social prejudice, dead doctors can perform examinations, administer medications, write prescriptions and oversee surgery just as well as—if not better than—living doctors. In fact, many living doctors learned what they know from doctors who are now dead. Additionally, dead doctors have simpler salary requirements, do not require lunch breaks and do not suffer as much fatigue as living doctors. Second, dead financial advisers can help iron out solutions to funding national health care programs. Many well-respected dead financial advisers have key experience needed to balance the unique fiscal risks inherent in any national health program. We should harness that experience. Third, dead office personnel can handle the tremendous administrative burden that surely will accompany any national health plan. Millions of dead Americans lived their lives managing charts, organizing files, pulling patient records and stapling medical documents for hours on end. We should put their experience back to work to guarantee well-administered national health care for all. In a word, dead people have varied talents. And they all can help write America a clean bill of health.

As dead people, we just want to be heard. We acknowledge that there are certain questions in the national debate we may not be fully qualified to handle. For example, the death penalty perplexes us. After all, what good does the death penalty do for offenders who are already dead? In our view, the death penalty is no penalty at all for a dead American. Yet we acknowledge that we are not qualified to debate this issue. We are fully prepared to defer to our living colleagues to handle it.

All in all, we are happy to live in an enlightened era. For the first time in American history, we have achieved equal opportunity. We finally matter. We are not just forgotten relics. We are confident that we can contribute to American society. We salute President Obama for his commitment to freedom for everyone, including the dead. No longer are we condemned to a bleak future in caskets and urns. No, for the first time in American history, we have a chance to speak. We have achieved so much. And so has America. We truly now live in an era of freedom.

It is 2009. Discrimination is dead, not us.

THE CONSTITUTION IS NOT "COLOR-BLIND"

AN ESSAY

Yesterday I used satire to illustrate the foolishness in typical conservative reasoning about race in American life. I especially targeted the conservative exasperation with “affirmative action programs” that allegedly “keep old questions alive” by focusing on “past discrimination” against disadvantaged groups in American society. According to conservative reasoning, the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution bars governmental distinctions based on race, no matter whether those distinctions aim to help or hinder minorities. My satire attacked this reasoning on a simple premise: When discrimination affects whites, they have nothing to complain about. While it may hurt a white person’s feelings to lose a job or university seat to a black man, the fact remains that African-Americans do not have the same practical opportunities in American society as whites. History shows that “real racial equality” in American life is at best a farce, no matter what the law says. History caused the problems; and it will perpetuate them. Contrary to conservative rhetoric about race, racial problems did not disappear when the Civil War ended, nor did they disappear when the Supreme Court abolished state-sponsored segregation in 1954. Legal fiat does not produce practical reality. Yet this is precisely what conservatives believe: They think that legal equality translates immediately into practical equality. And when they see blacks arguing that life is still unfair for them, they say: “Haven’t we given you enough? Get over it, will you?”

Telling black Americans to “get over the race problem” in America is like telling an incurable cancer victim to “get over” cancer. Racism and race-based prejudice are alive and well in America. This country was born in racism and has lived its life in racism. Racism sustained our economy before the Civil War and mutual recriminations about racism have dominated our outlook ever since. Contrary to every conservative assertion, history has everything to do with continued racial problems in America. Until 1865, African-Americans were not legally “people” under the Constitution. Killing a slave resulted in a property damage suit, not a murder prosecution. After Emancipation, blacks in the South achieved illusory “legal equality” but still faced summary lynchings and mob justice. And as a practical matter, they faced every imaginable disadvantage in society. They could not live where they wanted. They had no skills and no education to win favorable employment. In short, they "advanced" from slavery into a permanent economic and racial underclass. Although Congress and the States made determined efforts to equalize the playing field for African-Americans, it does not take a genius to see that an average black man’s life circumstances barely resemble an average white man’s life circumstances in America. Blacks occupy prisons in far greater proportions than whites. They live in generally much worse housing. They generally earn far less income. And they are generally homeless in greater proportions than whites, too. These problems are endemic; they are not going away, no matter what Congress does. Our law has apologized for “official” racism. But its legacy—and its evil, practical cousin, actual racism—lives on. Just walk into a “black neighborhood” in an American city. Why are the “black neighborhoods” so poor? Why do they breed so much more poverty, hopelessness, joblessness and crime? Why is virtually every homeless person in New York City and Chicago black? Why is virtually every violent crime suspect on television black? The eye does not lie. Legal equality has not solved the race problem in America. There is something much more pernicious going on here.

Yet conservatives think that legal apology is enough to right the historical wrongs of slavery and State-sponsored segregation. They think that problems experienced in past generations do not spill over into modern generations. This is fatally mistaken. Slavery and Jim Crow made indelible impressions on their subjects. Black people in the United States have come to expect bad treatment in life, as well as unfairness, poor opportunity and likely failure. The law used to “officially” brand them inferior. Now they are inferior “in effect” because they do not have the social capital to fully assimilate into a culture that rejects their values. White American society is profoundly judgmental. It expects certain values from its members; if they do not have these values, they can expect ostracism and condemnation. It expects deference, some education, politeness and a remotely “decent upbringing.” But these values represent generations of work and comfortable heritage; if an “outsider” does not meet the criteria, he can expect no sympathy from “mainstream” American culture. In essence, white American society institutionalizes racism on a subconscious level. Even if most white people consider themselves “progressive,” “liberal,” “open-minded” and even “solicitous about black problems,” they typically live in all-white circles and practice all-white values. They do not see black people in familiar settings, nor do they really understand what it is like to grow up in a society with no practical opportunity. If anything, they see black people as “foreign curiosities,” not social equals. They might even admire black Americans for some special talent. But they still live in a radically different culture. Most white Americans will never grasp just how much historical weight an average black American carries on his shoulders every day. After all, most white Americans grow up with a sense that “anything is possible” in life. Black Americans, on the other hand, generally grow up thinking that they are playing a rigged game. “Legal equality” sounds great. But when you grow up destitute, surrounded by crime, without an education or a stable home, achieving “proper success” according to dominant white bourgeois values is sheer fantasy.

Reminding black Americans that they are “legally equal” is something akin to opening a magic door suspended 1000 feet above the ground, then saying: “OK, now it’s up to you to get in there.” It just doesn’t happen absent a miracle.

But conservatives can’t escape their own perspectives. They think that as long as the law treats everyone the same, it doesn’t matter what historical burden you carry. They think everyone born in America is an “American” with exactly the same advantages and opportunities as everyone else. They think that our Constitution is “color-blind” and that “race does not matter anymore.” That is easy to think when you are born with all the real, practical social advantages that make success possible under the unforgiving white American bourgeois value regime, such as maintaining a stable family, getting an education and enjoying affluent living quarters. Against this background, they cannot evaluate the issues from an average black man’s social perspective. This is why they fundamentally misinterpret continuing racial ills in the United States. They do not think black people need help because they “law has already made them equal,” so there is “nothing more to discuss.”

Interestingly, this conservative myopia is not new. Since the Civil War, our Supreme Court has defined itself by grappling with the race problem in the United States. Most people know about Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), the case in which the Supreme Court held that State-sponsored segregation was permissible despite the Fourteenth Amendment’s “equal protection” guarantee because the Constitution did not guarantee “social, as distinguished from political, equality…[nor was it intended] to abolish distinctions based upon color.” Id. at 543-544. In conclusion, the Court reasoned that States could lawfully segregate the races as long as the facilities were “legally equal.” Id. at 551-552. Further, such distinctions did not imply that blacks were “inferior” to whites. Id. Justice John Marshall Harlan famously dissented from the Court’s reasoning. He wrote: “In view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.” Id. at 559. Segregating the races, according to Harlan, stamped black Americans with a “badge of inferiority,” which in turn violated the “equal protection guarantee” under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Many scholars applaud Justice Harlan’s resistance to the majority in Plessy. In law school, our professors always voiced their support for his refusal to certify the “separate but equal doctrine.” Years ago, I agreed with them. But now, I see flaws even in Justice Harlan’s position. His arguments about a “color-blind Constitution” and “equality before the law” have been misappropriated and misunderstood in the century since Plessy. In recent Supreme Court cases, conservative justices have used Justice Harlan’s rhetoric to actually invalidate State efforts to help black people win employment in public contracting. See, e.g, Richmond v. J.A. Croson, 488 U.S. 469 (1989); Adarand Constructors v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200 (1995). In short, conservatives on the Supreme Court have used Justice Harlan’s language—which in Plessy expressed sympathy for blacks in America—in order to strike down legislation for discriminating against whites. For these conservative justices, a “color-blind” Constitution is a two-edged sword: It means that government cannot discriminate against anyone, even if it is trying to help the very groups that have traditionally suffered discrimination in American history.

This infuriates me. No one likes discrimination, but when discrimination falls upon whites—in order to remedy the gross historical wrongs inflicted on blacks—I see no problem. And I disagree wholeheartedly with the contention that the Constitution is “color-blind.” If the Constitution were color-blind, the Fourteenth Amendment would have been unnecessary. This country fought a Civil War over slavery because the racial problems it created stood in hypocritical contrast to the bold “equality principle” that supposedly defines us. By 1861, America could no longer argue in good faith that “all men were created equal” when it made some men property. The Civil War acknowledged that slavery represented an injustice in a country committed to justice—at least on paper. The Fourteenth Amendment represented an attempt to remedy past wrongs by helping black Americans find their way into American society. In essence, it was a discriminatory amendment; it assumed that Congress and the States would pass laws intended to help black Americans escape their historical disadvantages and make progress toward true equality. In that sense, Justice Harlan was wrong to suggest that the Constitution is “color-blind.” The Fourteenth Amendment implicitly required government to consider race to erase the entrenched legacy of racism in the United States. It implied that race was relevant in America. And it implied that government could not solve the problem without making some distinctions based upon race. The Fourteenth Amendment, then, is essentially remedial; it aims to remedy the legacy of slavery. More to the point, it even empowers Congress to enforce “the provisions of this Article…by appropriate legislation.” See U.S. Const. Amd. XIV, § 5. Such “appropriate legislation” includes favorable discrimination intended to carry out the Amendment’s remedial purpose.

For some reason, the conservatives do not understand this. Instead, they pry Justice Harlan’s mistaken “color-blind” language from its contextual moorings to argue that government can never consider race, even when it is attempting to fulfill the Fourteenth Amendment’s avowedly remedial purpose to help blacks. Justice Scalia often cites Justice Harlan’s “color-blind” shibboleth to support his position that “State and local governments” may never “discriminate on the basis of race in order (in a broad sense) ‘to ameliorate the effects of past discrimination.’” Richmond v. Croson, 488 U.S. 469, 520 (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment). He thinks that any racial discrimination—even to advance the “benign purpose of compensating for social disadvantages,” and no matter whether it falls upon blacks or whites—is categorically impermissible. Id. Thus, if government believes that blacks need assistance in a social area in which they have suffered historical discrimination, government cannot adopt legislation intended to improve the situation, because that would “discriminate against whites.” And according to Justice Scalia, the Fourteenth Amendment does not tolerate discrimination against whites in just the same way it does not tolerate discrimination against blacks.

I think this reasoning fails to comprehend the Fourteenth Amendment. Congress and the States ratified the Amendment because they recognized that America had a one-way race problem: Whites dominated blacks and subjected them to every imaginable disadvantage. To correct that imbalance, the Amendment authorized government to adopt legislation intended to help blacks, even if that meant discriminating (in a literal sense) against whites. Despite all huffing and puffing to the contrary, whites have never lost their dominant position in American society. They never will. The fact that they must suffer some “abstract” discrimination once in a while will not change their dominant position. Yet Justice Scalia seems to think that any discrimination—even if it is abstract and has no bearing on white people’s unassailable dominance in American society—violates an Amendment that impliedly authorized “abstract” discrimination against whites so that blacks could stand at least a chance to achieve some practical equality in America. Considering the issue in this light, it may seem fantastic that Justice Scalia believes this. But he is not alone: At least three other Justices have expressly signed on to his deeply flawed belief that the Fourteenth Amendment is “color-blind.”

Neither our Constitution nor our society is “color-blind.” And contrary to Justice Harlan’s assertion, the United States does “tolerate classes between citizens.” Although the law does not make black Americans “property” anymore, it is evident that black Americans still do not enjoy the same average advantages as white Americans. Legal equality does not translate into practical equality. Worse, I believe that the United States has no interest in securing equality for all. This is why I believe that Justice Harlan’s rhetoric about “a classless, color-blind society” is totally unfounded. No one wants to be equal in America. Americans want to outdo one another. They want to be unequal in wealth, power and status. They want to be “better” and “more privileged” than their neighbor, not “the same.” Whether or not black people achieve equal advantages means absolutely nothing to an average white man who just wants to make money and go home at night. For most white Americans, the fact that blacks have “technical, legal equality” is more than enough. They can “sort through the rest” on their way to success. This, of course, completely overlooks the monumental social handicaps blacks still face in our country. White Americans might empathize with these handicaps, but they really don’t care all that much about them. After all, whether a black man suffers does not affect whether a white man keeps working at his career. White Americans simply say: “They do not live like us, and it makes no difference to me. I need to get to work.” That indifference allows them to turn a blind eye to continuing racial inequality in America. It just really does not matter to an average white American.

If equality were really a concern, black Americans and white Americans would all go to prison in the same proportion. Black Americans and white Americans would live in relatively comparable housing and there would be just as many “bad white neighborhoods” as “bad black neighborhoods.” Black Americans and white Americans would all score about the same on standardized tests, and both races would earn roughly comparable incomes. Yet blacks and whites are not equal in these practical realms. Legal equality has not translated into practical equality. Classes do break down along racial lines. America does tolerate “classes” and “castes.” Sadly, those “classes” and “castes” reflect a fundamental racial divide more than 140 years after a Civil War intended to mend it. No matter what Justice Scalia says, racism is alive and well in America. And it affects blacks in a way that no white American can ever imagine.