The Greatest Sin of White Liberalism

In a conversation after church this past Sunday, I actually started a sentence with:

The greatest sin of white liberalism...

As a white liberal, that's a tough place to be. Before I tell you what I think the greatest sin of white liberalism is, let me tell you how I got into a position to start a sentence like that. A few friends of mine were talking about the Civil Rights movement, when one of them wondered why, by the end of the 1960s, there were so few white clergy involved any longer.

It was suggested that the black community had "grown up" by then. That they were ready to "take over," and didn't "need us" anymore. This suggestion was not meant to be racist, and probably has some truth to it. At the very least it points to a paternalistic attitude that many white liberals still take toward blacks. (On this very blog, a commenter said, in reference to liberal loathing of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, "White liberals show their viciousness when their darkie won't perpetuate their system of condescending patronage.")

Issues like affirmative action are so difficult not just because in attempting to reverse the effects of race-based discrimination they in fact do discriminate (see this post for important distinctions between kinds of discrimination, lest you mistakenly believe that I am arguing here that affirmative action is wrong because it amounts to a kind of discrimination), but also because some argue that any favoring of blacks by a long-racist white society is simply another form of racism, which undermines black self-determination.

In that context, then, I could have easily said that the "greatest sin of white liberalism" is its often-paternalistic attitude. But it isn't. Condescending paternalism (and by no means do all white liberals fall into this attitude) may be ugly, but it is accompanied whenever it appears by a desire, a need, to be morally responsible for the fate of the other, and that sense of moral responsibility and connection is to be encouraged. That sense of moral responsibility - even if it does not always recognize the need for the other to also be a responsible and relatively autonomous moral agent - recognizes the deep interconnection that exists between the historical oppressor and the historical victim of oppression. So, the "greatest sin of white liberalism," as far as I'm concerned, can't be paternalism, though that is something that we who work for the liberation of the oppressed should always be on guard against.

As I read history, it wasn't just white paternalism and the need for black self-determination that caused a rift in the Civil Rights movement. Rather, it was another great sin of white liberalism, the sin that on Sunday, in a fit of rhetorical something-or-other, I declared the great sin, the greatest sin, of white liberalism, that as I read history forced the rift. This great sin is the worst sort of political realism, manifest in the tendency of white liberals to say things like:

Of course, I agree with you, but... the country (or the state, or the church, or whatever) just isn't ready for...

Of course liberals - like any other political group, movement, or ideology (though it is doubtful that the word "liberal" is at this point so sufficiently defined that it could really mean any of those things) - need to be politically realistic. We need to pursue policies that have some hope of practical political success. But we also need to distinguish between issues of political policy subject to the need for realism and fundamental moral issues, issues of inalienable rights. And, on such issues we need, as best as I can tell, to toss realism aside and engage in a more prophetic politic.

In the conversation at church that got me so riled up that I spewed out "the greatest sin of white liberalism," there was a lesbian who quietly recalled a conversation she had with a former civil rights leader. She said that she appreciated the need to build up the black family, but must that be done at the expense of gays and lesbians. As she recalled, he said something like "We, as a country, just aren't ready to have that conversation yet." She said that she thought she knew how that same man must have felt, so many years earlier, when a well-intentioned white preacher probably said the same thing to him.

Our country may not, in this dark day, be ready to have a serious conversation about the fundamental rights of gays and lesbians to have their most cherished relationships recognized by a society that is inexplicably frightened by them. We may not even be ready to have a serious conversation about the linger effects of our racist legacy, and the more subtle forms that racism takes today, when it is less fashionable but no less uncommon. But, as I understand it, the greatest sin of white liberalism - and a sin that has, in my friend's experience, moved well beyond the bounds of the white community - is a refusal to lead prophetically on issues "we" just aren't "ready" for.

An Important Distinction

The debate here over the recent Supreme Court decision ruling Louisville's and Seattle's public school desegregation plans unconstitutional (irony # 458: the Louisville plan the court struck down was put in place when an earlier Supreme Court ruled that the city wasn't doing enough to integrate - so, essentially, a plan ordered by the Supreme Court was later ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court!) has forced me to consider an important distinction that needs to be made.

Just as, earlier (in a discussion on the theology of James Cone - see the whole series here) I argued for the need to make a distinction between the violence of oppression and the violence of the oppressed in response to their oppression, here I will argue that we need to make a distinction between kinds of discrimination.

Much has been made of this line in Chief Justice Roberts' majority decision:

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

On the surface it makes perfect sense. The thinking behind it led to Roberts' equating of desegregation plans which consider race, and as such, in some way discriminate on the basis of race, with the forced segregation that was (at least legally) overturned in Brown v. Board of Education. If what was wrong with segregation was that it was a legal form of racial discrimination, then racial discrimination of any kind must be both wrong and unconstitutional.

But the question we have to ask is this: Are all kinds of discrimination on the basis of race equal? Is the discrimination of Jim Crow equivalent to the discrimination of public school integration plans that consider race? I have to say NO!

Our country has a long history of racism and social injustice. This racism has placed many groups at a significant (and unnatural, as it has nothing to do with the inherent nature of the disadvantaged groups) disadvantage. Perhaps the single most disadvantaged group (with all due respect to the indigenous population that was nearly wiped out with the arrival of Europeans) is the group we call "black." Stolen from their native lands and forced into slavery, this group has been consistently dehumanized, to the point where our court system ruled once that blacks have no rights that whites are bound to respect.

The persistent legacy of racism - and of this there is no doubt - has long limited the educational and economic opportunities and outcomes for blacks. As such, they have been explicitly excluded from full participation in American culture, despite their great contributions to American culture, without which it would make no sense to speak of a distinctly American culture. (Jazz, blues, rock and roll - these are distinctly American forms of music, but their roots are black.)

Because blacks have been explicitly excluded from full participation in American culture; because they are the victims of a persistently racist social structure; they must be explicitly included, and such inclusion looks a great deal like the discrimination of favoritism. This brings me to the first distinction that needs to be made when talking about discrimination:

We must make a distinction between discrimination which favors or advantages a group, and discrimination which excludes, harms, or puts a group at a disadvantage.

Of course these kinds of discrimination are related. It is difficult and often nonsensical to distinguish between these kinds of discrimination in certain cases. In a society in which "white" is considered the normative form of humanity, the favoring of whites cannot be distinguished from the excluding of non-whites from full participation in humanity. White privilege disadvantages blacks. This is why, in addition to distinguishing between favoring a group and marginalizing a group, we must make another kind of distinction:

We must distinguish between discrimination that perpetuates past inequities and discrimination that aims to level the metaphorical playing field.

Simply put, outcomes matter. Any discrimination that favors an already favored group or that pushes an already marginalized group further toward the margins has a very different outcome from a discrimination that recognizes past inequities and tries to create a more just and equitable society. It is with this in mind that I'd like to revisit the Roberts quote:

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

I don't necessarily disagree with it. However, in our effort to "stop discrimination on the basis of race" we must recognize the many expressions of harmful discrimination, of white favoritism and black marginalization, inherent in our society. Absent that, ruling desegregation programs unconstitutional, and equating them with the discrimination of Jim Crow laws, does not "stop discrimination on the basis of race." Rather, it robs those who wish to end harmful discrimination of a valuable tool to fight discrimination.

The discrimination of integration in public schools is not the same as the discrimination of segregation. In slightly favoring a disadvantaged population it helps create a more just and equitable society, which is very, very different from the discrimination of entrenched white privilege and racism.