Winning the Race

I had a short but thought-provoking conversation with Kevin Mac today about race in America. He was struck by the hyper-sensitivity to race, which has been noted in the American Idol competition. Mac maintains that if they'd picked two competitors of the same race (white or black) in both runs of the show, it would've prompted cries of racism from the other side. Are we really that Balkanized? Does a sample size of two become statistically relevant in our twisted scheme of equality? Apparently, yes.

Then, does that make us racists? No, not in the sense that the term is commonly used. Yes, we use race as a factor in someone's selection - whether for a victory in American Idol or for a cabinet-level position in the White House - but we don't use race consistently for some and against others. We're becoming a little like Canada, Nigeria, India, Jordan and a host of other countries where equity is based on representation of many groups, not solely on individual merit. This, of course, runs counter to American tradition, the Horatio Alger myth, and Dr. M.L. King's famous hope that his children would be judged by the content of their character. King did not ask for representation as much as he asked for equality.

My conservative readers are already frothing at the mouth - how can a truly equal society recognize race?! The answer, I firmly believe, is that it doesn't. The racial differences between Irish, Italian, Yankee, Jew, Scottish, etc, have basically disappeared in modern Bostonian society. Those were a big deal not so long ago. However, I equally firmly believe that ours today is not an equal society, and that to see racial differences and semi-conscious "quota-ing" go the way of the dinosaur, we have to see the differences in equality between black and white (principally) eradicated just as the inequalities between Irish and Yankee and Jew have all faded into the background.

Liberal elitists don't have the answer. They push society to become more race-conscious, more quota-based, and more punishing of overachievers. This will achieve nothing beyond race-consciousness, quotas, and punishment of overachievers. Notably, it will not achieve equality or ease of relation between races.

Conservative reactionists (yeah, that's you Gandhi) also lack the answer. They wish that we could become totally colorblind - it works, after all, for half-Indians. The case of Asian-Americans is often pointed to as evidence that if people are just treated as people, they'll do fine. However, the reason there is so little tension between Asians and whites is that their grounding is equal. If an Asian youth does well for himself and gets a good job, he isn't accused of betraying his race and acting white.

The real solution to 'race' in the U.S. is to equalize people, and then treat them as equals. Treating them differently based on race (the liberal solution) won't solve anything; nor will treating them the same and ignoring glaring differences. While the means of affecting change in our society is another discussion, I think we ought to be able to agree that racial inequality of opportunity is as un-American as racial quotas.