So in my last post, I spent quite a bit of time parsing the definition of systemic racism. I want to use this post to shift a bit and focus on how one can start to think about making progress in the face of systemic racism. But I think having a clear definition under our belts is critical for actually examining solutions to systemic racism. It is much easier to point out the flaws and errors in the various strategies currently being deployed to address the issue:
Focusing on Personal Bias will not Fix Disparities.
I think the first point this leads me too in is that focusing on how to reduce bias does not automatically solve the problems of systemic racism. Much of the anti-racism movement's energy focuses on training, often corporate training seminars, that can try to rectify bias, using tools like the implicit bias test. There are many reasons posited as to why these pieces of training seem to be ineffective. Still, to me, the most obvious one is that their theory of change is heavily reliant on the assumption that what is blocking progress is racist actors in the system. As I said in my last post, which is a very plausible real issue in a lot of places, and thus, could theoretically help.
But this strategy runs into two problems: 1) This training often do a poor job of getting actors within the system to change their minds, often, they make them defensive and feel blamed for social problems. And 2) often, the real issue is that the system is set up in such a way that produces unequal racial outcomes, not that there are bad actors in the system. And so even if you are successful in getting people to acknowledge their bias, they may be so focused on their interpersonal interactions that they may ignore the unequal outcomes in the large systems.
I think this critique applies to a very different mode of anti-racism than the corporate seminar one: Twitter mobs. Many people online have taken to heart an imperative to fight racism and bias they see on the internet. And in many ways, this is good: there is a lot of very nasty racism on the internet. But many have also noticed that the phenomenon that we increasingly live in a world where seemingly innocuous comments can unleash. I cannot help but think that part of what is happening is misplaced energy: people believe that individuals' bias can explain all of the disparate outcomes in society. Thus, they both end up seeing hate where there is none, and they end up trying to confront that perceived bias with the honest belief that they can fix social inequalities by confronting that bias. This kind of online vigilante justice is often counter-productive in creating a backlash and is usually ill-designed to change systems.
Now again, I do think it is essential to assume that there are individual racist actors within various systems, and I do believe there are places where anti-bias efforts can produce fruit. Churches and other civic associations that naturally make comradery and solidarity can be fruitful grounds for taking people with a strong bias (explicit or implicit) and helping them relearn their attitudes. Churches, who operate under the call to disciple people to be more like Jesus Christ, can even explicitly exhort people in a way that they will receive with openness.
Quick Fixes Usually Don't Work.
So how can we make progress when there are systems with unequal outcomes? Well, its good to return to examining the seemingly race-neutral process that produced the unequal impacts, and take a more in-depth look at it. Canadian Philosopher Joseph Heath uses this example to illustrate what that can look like:
"The Toronto Police used to have a minimum height requirement for officers. This obviously involved disparate treatment of short people, but at the time I suppose this was considered justifiable, on the grounds that officers should have an authoritative presence. In any case, as the population become more diverse through immigration, the rule turned out to have the untoward effect of excluding most East Asians from the service – and thus had disparate impact upon a particular racial group. This raised the question whether it could be considered a bone fide occupational requirement and the conclusion that it wasn't (or that whatever gain in efficacy the police force enjoyed by being tall and imposing was outweighed by the disadvantage of having practically no Asian officers). So the rule was abolished."
In this case, it was a relatively straightforward analysis: the height requirement was the part of the process causing disparities. Given that little trade-off could be expected from scraping it, change was relatively easy. Often, however, there is no apparent silver bullet to solve the problem of disparate impact. Unlike explicitly racist laws/policies, where you can undo the unequal treatment, disparate impact requires you to do a pretty thorough examination of the system in question to identify the source of inequality, and what trade-offs would be involved in fixing it. This kind of complex analysis is essential because sometimes attempts to rectify racism can make the system worse.
For example, in the last ten years, many progressive activists have pushed for states to "ban the box," making it illegal for employers to ask for the criminal records of applicants to jobs. A big part of the rationale for this was that because the criminal justice system has a disparate impact on young men of color, the existence of these questions leads to discrimination in the labor market. However, economist Jennifer Doleac has done an analysis that shows that these policies make disparate treatment worse. It turns out.; employers have a very material concern when they hire folks with records: liability. Research shows that the threat of lawsuits scares companies away from knowingly hiring someone with a criminal history. Because employers have this justifiable concern, Doleac's research shows that the policy has led to businesses hiring less black and brown men without college degrees. These businesses make the statistical assumption that these men are more likely to have a record, and thus discriminate against them as a whole group.
My point is not that policy cannot fix disparate impacts. I think Doleac's research elsewhere has shown that implementing several other criminal justice can make a difference on this issue. There are policies on the front end (making it less likely that young men of color end up in the criminal justice system) and on the back (creating programs that can effectively achieve rehabilitation of those coming out of the system). However, these policies are often pushed aside for ideas that seem more radical but have not always been tested and vetted for potential impacts. My point is not to say that we should dismiss radical ideas (like police or prisons abolition). But it does mean that we need to make that the institutions that will replace them will be any better! We need to make sure we think through these changes and test them empirically to make life better.
Of course, there do exist scenarios where governments can dictate equal racial outcomes by fiat. Singapore has achieved a multi-ethnic nation this way by tightly controlling the ethnic makeup of the country's key institutions. Singapore uses its public housing system to ensure that both buildings and neighborhoods reflect the city's racial makeup as a whole. Likewise, the US military intentionally integrates units along racial lines and designs its officer training program to ensure that all racial groups have representation in leadership. In his book, Ibrim X Kendi's primary policy initiative is a government department that would regulate every institution in American life to make has demographics that represent the broader public, thus ensuring they are not racist. This standard would be enforced on a policy level by a panel of anti-racist experts, who would be analyzing new policies to see how they would impact these outcomes.
I do not have space to engage this proposal fully, but I will say: I have a great deal of skepticism that this will work on a society-wide level. Redesigning systems with only outcomes in mind all have huge trade-offs. Liberal democracies have long held the belief that fairness in a process is vitally important. The US constitution guarantees individual rights and freedoms even though they often lead to bad outcomes in the short run because they believe that these freedoms create processes vital to the long-running health of society. There is a long history of top-down designed social systems being built in the name of better outcomes, only to produce worse results because they ended up destroying locally organized, well-functioning processes. Experimentation has shown that even things as simple as a food distribution at food banks work better when using a decentralized approach, rather than a top-down one. Recall that policy as simple as banning the box created unintended consequences. We can thus expect that Kendi's vision will have vast amounts of unpredictable harmful effects, often falling on people of color.
The Necessity of Gradual Reform
So to me, I am left with the rather dull idea that the best solution to systemic racism in America is pursuing the slow work of piecemeal social reform. I do believe that by analyzing places in our society where there are unequal outcomes, vigorously examining and debating the processes that are core to those systems, and implementing incremental reform to those processes is the best way to combat racial disparities. I am by no means the first to suggest this. Richard Rorty, the great American philosopher (who I most certainly do not agree with on everything) wrote in his book Achieving our Country that:
“We should not let the abstractly described best be the enemy of the better. We should not let speculation about a totally changed system, and a totally different way of thinking about human life and affairs, replace step-by-step reform of the system we presently have.”
In doing this, I also believe it is critical to separate the need to end systemic racism from a specific ideological platform. This thought might be controversial to some, but because dismantling systemic racism involves both complex analyses, and experimenting with many different changes to processes in our society, it is not something that lends itself to one political perspective. Social Democrats can point out that we need to build a more robust welfare state, which will have a disproportionately positive impact on those marginalized by race. Libertarians will say that we need to have laws that restrict the scope of the government's ability to use excessive force against its citizens, acts of which tend to be disproportionately against Black and Brown citizens. Conservatives will say that the government should invest in churches, institutions, and families in communities of color, to give them the tools to enhance the work they are already doing on a local level. I would humbly submit that all of those perspectives contain some truth, but not the whole truth. So I think it is worth taking into consideration any good faith discussions around solutions.
Thankfully, I think we can pursue many policies right now with this kind of incremental policy change that can significantly push racial progress. One example I will passionately advocate for is ending exclusionary zoning. Many cities designed exclusionary zoning measures after the American court's striking down segregationist policies. These zoning rules were designed to be race-neutral measures in their language, but not race-neutral in impact. 75% of Los Angeles is zoned only for single-family homes. Even if the property owner wants to build more affordable housing (like a triplex, or a small apartment building), it is illegal to do so. This policy has an incredibly disparate impact on people of color because of the history of access to wealth-building tools in the US. This system not only perpetuates segregation and unequal access to good schools but also severely limits the land available to the city to build affordable housing.
Or course, the good news is that when you analyze exclusionary zoning from multiple political vantage points, you see there is a strong consensus that it is a process that should be changed. Social Democrats see it as a tool of inequality; the wealthy can protect their property values while denying the poor opportunity. Libertarians see it as a draconian government regulation that prevents individuals from doing what best suits there property. And Social Conservatives see how zoning often disrupts families and communities, by not allowing the growth necessary to keep family ties through geographic proximity. This kind of consensus can give us more security in pursuing racial equality while making a strong case that we won't be destroying a critical social process.
I firmly believe that there are many other incremental solutions to systemic racism exist. I hope to explore them in the coming weeks. But I hope I have also made a case for thinking carefully and debating those solutions robustly. I believe this is the only real path to true racial justice in our country.