Lecture 10 Racism

1
Lecture 10Racism
2
The attack on Fort Dix
It all began on a frigid January day in 2007 with
10 bearded Muslim men huddled in the parking lot
of a Circuit City debating who would go inside to
have a copy made of a tape showing them firing
guns and praising jihad. Eventually, the group
selected two men who went inside. They handed the
teenage clerk a mini-cassette tape from a
camcorder and asked for a 20 transfer to be made
to DVD. When the teen went to a back room to do
the conversion of the tape, he saw a group of
bearded men wearing "fundamentalist attire",
screaming "God is great!" and shooting "big,
fing guns". At first, the teenage clerk didn't
know what to do. He frantically told his
co-worker "Dude, I just saw some really weird
s. I don't know what to do. Should I call
someone or is that being racist?"
3
What is racism?

• The right tactic with racism, if you really want
  to oppose it, is to object to it rationally in
  the form in which it stands the best chance of
  meeting objections. (K. A. Appiah, Racisms in
  L. Harris ed., Racism, 1999, p. 4.)
• Racism any action, practice, or belief that
  reflects the racial worldviewthe ideology that
  humans are divided into separate and exclusive
  biological entities called races, that there is
  a causal link between inherited physical traits
  and traits of personality, intellect, morality,
  and other cultural behavioral features, and that
  some races are innately superior to others.
  Britannica Online
• Racism the tendency to think worse of some
  people (e.g., in regard to their character or
  abilities), or to treat them worse than others,
  merely on account of information about their race
  or ethnicity. (T. Pogge, in askphilosopher.org)

4
The four components of racism

• The Morphological ComponentHuman groups have
  different genetic ancestries, which make them
  differ statistically with respect to a number of
  morphological characteristics (skin color, hair
  texture, etc.).
• The Psychological ComponentGenetic differences
  between these groups make them also differ with
  respect to some psychological, socially important
  traits (e.g., intelligence, personality traits,
  criminality, etc).
• The Differential Treatment ComponentIt is
  sometimes legitimate to treat members of these
  groups differently merely because of their group
  membership.
• The Moral Condemnation ComponentRacism is
  morally unacceptable.

5
The relation between the four components
1. Morphological component
2. Psychological component
3. Differential treatment legitimate
CONTRADICTION?
4. Racism is morally unacceptable
Moral intuition
6
The moral condemnation component

• Most people who discuss racism take it for
  granted that it is an evil. (R. Hare, Objective
  Prescriptions Other Essays, 1999 p.179)
• To describe a policy, law, movement or nation as
  racist is to condemn it.(P. Singer, Is
  Racial Discrimination Arbitrary, Philosophia
  1978 p. 185)
• No account of what racism is can be adequate
  unless it at the same time makes clear what is
  wrong with it.(J. Garcia The Heart of Racism,
  Journal of Social Philosophy, 1996 p. 6)
• Recently racism has come to be used to mean
  something that is necessarily morally
  objectionable.(K. Baier Merit and Race,
  Philosophia, 1978 p. 127)
• You would have to be eccentric to think that
  racism is not wrong. (A. Appiah, History of
  Hatred, New York Times, 2002)
• While there is no generally accepted
  understanding of racism, there is at least a
  general agreement that racism is in some way
  wrong or objectionable. (J. Arthur, Race,
  Equality and the Burdens of History, Cambridge U.
  P., 2007, p. 8)

7
Discrimination legitimate or not?
FACT 1 Individuals A and B ostensibly differ
only with respect to an irrelevant M-trait
CONCLUSION It is OK to treat A and B differently
Wrong?
FACT 2 The irrelevant M-trait is correlated with
a relevant P-trait
8
The evaluative component

• Racism by definition includes attributing to some
  racial group(s) some generally undesirable
  characteristics (like a lower IQ, predisposition
  toward anti-social behavior, etc.)
• Isnt it obviously and entirely irrational to
  make such an attribution to groups that are
  identified by some superficial and normatively
  neutral characteristics like, say, skin color?
• Well, not necessarily. It all depends on whether
  these superficial and normatively neutral
  characteristics are associated with these other,
  generally undesirable characteristics.
• The association may exist or it may not. It is an
  empirical question. It cannot be decided by moral
  reasoning or political condemnation.

9
The moral condemnation component

• Racism is usually regarded as morally
  unacceptable and also as stupid (or
  unreasonable).
• Since it is quite clear that skin color is in
  itself a morally irrelevant characteristic, it
  could seem that any negative opinion of groups
  defined by skin color must spring from an
  arbitrary hatred of these groups. Such a hatred
  is clearly a moral defect.
• But racists are not moved by skin color only. In
  fact, they believe that skin color is associated
  with certain other, socially important
  characteristics, and this is the reason they have
  different attitudes toward groups with different
  skin color.
• Their defect (if it is a defect) is cognitive,
  not moral.

10
Empirical claim with wrong normative
consequences
(E) Racial psychological differences exist
(N2) Group inequality OK
(N1) Differential treatment OK
Unacceptable!
Unacceptable!

• If (E) leads to (N1) and/or (N2), the moral
  outrage will tend to transfer from the consequent
  to the antecedent.
• The moral condemnation, which can meaningfully
  apply only to those who defend (N1) or (N2), will
  now perversely attach even to those who just
  embrace the empirical claim (E).

11
Overlapping groups

• Whichever two racial groups one takes, and
  whichever sociably desirable characteristic,
  there will always be many members of each group
  that are better with respect to that
  characteristic than most members of the other
  group.
• In other words, it will never be true that all
  members of one group are better than all members
  of the other group.
• Racial groups always overlap to a large extent,
  and this is frequently taken as a refutation of
  racism.
• It does refute one kind of racism (an empirically
  very implausible version of racism). But does it
  refute every kind of racism?
• What about a belief that racial groups differ in
  average values of certain socially desirable
  characteristics?

12
Statistical differences

• The average IQ in whites is 100, in American
  blacks it is 85, while among North-East Asians
  (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans) it is higher than
  100.
• If we consider the same three groups, the rate of
  crime is highest among blacks and lowest among
  Asians.
• These are hard empirical data, and they are
  beyond dispute.
• But a question remains about the explanation of
  these differences. Are they the result of genetic
  or environmental causes? Or perhaps of the
  combination of the two?
• If they are genetic (or partly genetic), there
  will be a tendency to regard these differences as
  somehow intrinsic characteristics of these
  groups. Is this justifiable?
• Would this support racism?

13
Groups and individuals

• According to a very influential argument, a
  difference in group averages would be totally
  irrelevant for judgments about individuals, and
  therefore even if these differences existed (and
  even if they were genetic in origin) they would
  have no social implications.
• Would that were true!
• People would have to be either saints or idiots
  not to be influenced by the collective
  statistics (Genovese 1995 333).
• The statistical information about groups is
  relevant for judging individuals. In fact, the
  less we know about a given individual, the more
  important is the information about his group
  membership.
• The reason ignorance makes all information more
  valuable.

14
The problem of a taxi driver

• A taxi driver prefers not to take black
  passengers because the proportion of muggers
  among blacks is significantly higher than among
  other groups.
• This looks very much like racism and seems to
  deserve moral condemnation. The driver is
  behaving differently towards different people
  only on the basis of their group membership.
• He is not treating people as individuals. This is
  very unfair toward those black people (most of
  them!) who are law-abiding citizens.
• But the driver argues I have to take care of
  myself, and if I dont take race into account I
  will increase the probability of being mugged
  (and perhaps even killed).

15
Rational racism?

• Is the behavior of the taxi driver rational?
• In some sense it seems it is. If the drivers who
  take race into account are mugged less frequently
  than those who dont, then this type of behavior
  has some justification.
• Some writers discussing this type of situation
  started to talk about rational racism.
• What shows that the drivers behavior is not an
  example of stupid and irrational racism is the
  fact that black taxi drivers often behave in the
  same way. They also tend to take in black
  customers less often than it would be expected by
  chance.
• Jesse Jackson " There is nothing more painful to
  me at this stage in my life than to walk down the
  street and hear footsteps and start thinking
  about robbery. Then look around and see someone
  white and feel relieved."

16
A sophistical argument against racial profiling

• Police forces have found that racial profiling
  doesn't work. Race is too broad a category to be
  useful. Every cop will tell you what's important
  is suspicious behavior, Harris says. If you
  focus on race, the eye is distracted from
  behavior and moves to what is literally skin
  deep. Customs Service agents used to stop blacks
  and Latinos at vastly disproportionate rates to
  whites. Then they switched and began using
  information and behavior as their criteria. They
  looked at where and how tickets were bought, did
  background checks, watched whether you stuck to
  your bags at all times. As a result, they
  searched fewer people and found many more people
  who were running drugs.
• F. Zakaria, Newsweek, 18 July 2002

17
Crime, gender and race statistical data
 
18
A threatening characteristic E

• Suppose that there is a threatening
  characteristic E, which is much more often
  present in murderers than in the rest of us.
• Suppose that 20 percent of murderers have E,
  whereas only 0.2 percent of the others have E.
• If we meet someone who has characteristic E, how
  worried should we be? How likely is it that he is
  a murderer?
• We know that p(E/M) 0.2, but what is p(M/E)?
• It might seem that group membership is irrelevant
  here.
• If p(E/M) is the same (0.2) in both groups
  (whites and blacks), how could it make any
  difference whether a person with characteristic E
  is white or black?
• But in fact it does.

19
Calculation for whitesp(M/E) 0.005 (1/201)
E 1 (20)
M 5(5 in 100,000)
Not-E 4
E 200 (0.2)
Not-M 99,995
Not-E 99,795
20
Calculation for blacksp(M/E) 0.04 (8/208, or 1
in 26)
E 8 (20)
M 40(40 in 100,000)
Not-E 32
E 200 (0.2)
Not-M 99,960
Not-E 99,760
21
Conclusion

• If most terrorists are Muslims (though most
  Muslims are not terrorists!), then being a Muslim
  becomes a relevant (though not a decisive)
  consideration for judging whether someone is a
  terrorist or not.
• Example two suspiciously behaving people at the
  airport.
• In the world of imperfect information, group
  membership often represents relevant information.
  It may be politically incorrect to take it into
  account but it is not irrational!
• Of course, if you have complete (or very
  detailed) knowledge about all relevant
  characteristics of a given individual, group
  membership fades into insignificance.
• God does not need to rely on statistical
  information! But we, mortals, living in the world
  of limited knowledge, cannot afford the luxury of
  neglecting these probabilistic cues.