Racism and Positive discrimination
Introduction
I first considered this point (once again) from a discussion I had over the Israeli – Palestinian conflict. My opponent (for want of a better word) accused Israel of being a racist state. However having been to Haifa and other cities, it was obvious Jews and Arabs get equal treatment. Also, there is not one law that is based on race in the whole state of Israel: except one. Israel’s immigration policy gives people with one Jewish grandparent an immediate passport, but for those without a Jewish grandparent, one has a similar asylem and immigration policy to other Western countries.
The point put to me was that Israel is therefore a racist state because it has a law that discriminates in favour of one race to the detriment of all the other races. However that law is the founding principal of Zionism and its entire purpose is to protect the Jewish community from global anti-Semitism. It was infact chosen by Hitler since that was the very criteria necessary to guarantee a place in the gas chambers of Auschvitz. It seemed to me that the law’s sole purpose was to fight racism and not be it.
The moral stakes couldn’t be higher. On the one hand, you have a policy which might be racist, which is the most disgusting ideology humanity has created which leads to immense suffering possibly even genocide, and on the other hand you have a policy which might be the exact polar opposite of racism as it tries to stop such suffering wherever it may be found.
I thought it would take only about five minutes to resolve this dilemma. Boy was I wrong.
So to simplify this problem, I decided to retreat behind a more clear cut example by trying to distinguish between an obviously bad racist action of funding an orginisation whose aim is to beat up black people on the streets, and an obviously good anti-racism action of funding an orginisation trying to stop such black people from being beaten up in the streets.
To my horror, even in this extreme situation, the problem did not go away. Those funding the anti racism orginisation were engaged in an activity that discriminated in favour of blacks to the detriment of all other races, and were therefore apparently being racist too.
What the hell was going on here? Is the difference between good and evil, racism and anti-racism, a fiction? Does the entire moral compass of Western Society fall apart? After all, it is our disgust of racism and our desire to stop it wherever it may be that separates us from the Nazis. Is David Cameroon a mini Hitler for trying to get more women and minorities into his party? Is Tony Blair? Is Martin Luther King nothing more than a racist bigot?
The Problem
Eventually I realised that to be anti-racist one has to try and stop one particular race from being victimised. It does not matter how you do it, you must spend a disproportionate amount of resources (time or money) on one race over another. This is discrimination in the same way that spending the education budged exclusively to white schools is discrimination as was done in Apartheid South Africa. So does that mean our entire moral compass collapses?
Eventually I hit on the idea of positive discrimination. Could it be that positive discrimination would cover all anti-racism and morally correct efforts whist racism (or negative discrimination) would cover all the racist and morally wrong actions?
If so, it would explain why both actions appear to be very similar, since they are both discrimination. But if this concept is to be anything other than an intellectual fudge, there must be some principal that distinguishes one from the other.
My solution
In this solution, I will use some of the following as illustrative examples.
a) i) an orginisation set up to beat up black people on the streets.
ii)an orginisation to protect black people from being beaten up.
b) i) an orginisation set up to give Jewish people better access to contacts of the successful members of that community.
ii) a synagogue.
c) i) disproportionate spending on education in majority Christian areas.
ii) disproportionate spending on education in minority Muslim areas.
iii) disproportionate spending on or against education in minority Jewish areas.
d) i) giving money to a Muslim charity.
ii) giving money to a charity in America designed to improve education in a Christian school.
e) i) an academic boycott of Jewish students in Nazi Germany.
ii) an academic boycott of white South African Universities in Apartheid South Africa
iii) an academic boycott of Israel, American or British Universities in consequence of their government’s foreign policy.
If I am right, then (excluding b and d) the i's should be racism and the ii’s should be positive discrimination. bi and ciii should provide interesting insight in its own right, and quite clearly b ii should not be described as racism.
There are two types of racism: firstly, where one race is specifically targeted for unequal treatment (which I will call ‘direct racism’); and secondly where one race is specifically targeted for favourable treatment (which I will call ‘indirect racism’).
So
my first criteria for an action to be ‘racist’ is that the policy must have a ‘victimised race’. To be a victimised race, that race must be subjected to a real and practical disadvantage to other races as a direct consequence of the policy. ‘Real and practical’ means, when considered with all other factors, that race has a disadvantage competing with other races. Simply having less of an advantage than it would otherwise have is not enough; it must put that race into a second class position. This covers direct racism.
So ai is a racist organisation because it means that black people will be more likely to be beaten up putting the black community at a real and practical disadvantage. However, aii is not racist because there is no victimised race. The whites aren’t disadvantaged in any way whatsoever.
However this is not enough to help with c. ci is a racist act, but it gives one race favourable treatment rather than victimising another. It is therefore indirect racism.
So it seems my first criteria can successfully distinguish direct racism from positive discrimination and indirect racism. Now one must find a second criteria to distinguish between positive discrimination and indirect racism. Allas this is even harder.
My first attempt for finding the second criteria is this: Is there a race that is put at an unfair advantage? By ‘advantage’, again, I mean a ‘real and practical’ advantage: simply having less of a disadvantage when all other factors are considered is not enough.
If we apply this to ci, we see that the spending gives the majority Christian real and practical advantage so it is indirect racism (it’s working!!). But in cii, since Muslim minorities in all countries in the Western World are disproportionately unsuccessful, at first glance it appears the Muslim Community would not have a real and practical advantage so it is not racism.
Further examples and unsolved problems
Up until now, this has worked. But problems start to arise with ciii
. The Jewish community is disproportionately successful in all communities in which it settles). This is because the desire to work hard and learn and never give up are immensely strong in Jewish culture. Whist it would be good if all cultures have this work ethic, they don’t. Clearly the Jewish community (at the moment) would be given a real and practical advantage if disproportionate money was invested in their education. But what happens if the government compensates for this by underfunding Jewish community education (direct discrimination)? Alternatively, one could argue that equal funding gives the Jewish community a real and practical advantage and it is therefore indirect racism. But surely anything but equal treatment is clearly racism? Dealing with the indirect discrimination point, one can say the advantage of the Jewish community is not unfair since there is nothing stopping other cultures from having a similar work ethic. The solution is thus not to bring the Jewish community down but to bring other cultures up so it is not indirectly racist. However I am totally stumped regarding the direct discrimination problem.
There are other unresolved issues to. di and dii could be considered racist, or positive discrimination. But at the same time, could it not be said that people have a right to support their own community?
I suspect the answer to this lies by suitably defining the word ‘unfair’. Perhaps there could be a closed list of advantages which would be considered to be ‘fair’. The word ‘unfair’ could also be inserted into the first criteria for direct discrimination. But I admit, beyond this, there is still fog. However what I have presented can distinguish between right and wrong in 95% of cases.
bi and bii I will analyse in a later post, but essentially they give the Jewish community an advantage of social networking over the other communities. Of course this could apply to the Muslim community and the Christian community as well. But one only needs to step onto a University Campus to see that such organisations are widespread. Are they racist? If they are, then are places of worship racist? And if not, what separates such an organisation from obtaining a beach?
I will give these issues all more thought and hope to put up another post soon.
More Criteria
A third criteria that must be considered is whether the target race of the policy has a real and practical need which needs protecting. If so, then it is must be positive discrimination. This may not be necessary if the first two criteria (when finalised to iron out the above problems) becomes sufficient to make the distinction without need for this third criteria, but it could nevertheless be useful to make sure we have the correct solution.
Lastly, I want to talk about
the phantom factor of intent. One could try and say (as one does in the criminal law) that the difference between a legitimate and an illegitimate act is intent. However, even Adolf Hitler was only intending to make the world a better place. He might have said something like the German people were so oppressed by the Jewish conspirators that there was a genuine need for the final solution. One can only conclude that intent is irrelevant. An action is either racist or not racist and it makes no difference what the perpetrator was trying to achieve. This means that if an academic boycott is a racist measure, it does not matter that the people trying to propose this are only trying to do what they believe to be good. Afterall, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Does that mean that anybody proposing a racism measure IS a racist?
Hopefully, I will finish what I began and post a complete solution soon.
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<== current state of my brain
