Blinded By Color

Never before in American history has racism been so roundly reviled, Witness all the embarrassed tuttutting at Mark Fuhrman's use of the "N word," an expletive now considered so profane that it reduces tough-talking reporters to euphemism. Yet even as the country, with self-congratulatory (dare we say "colorblind") gusto, proposes Colin Powell for president, troubling race-related questions remain.

Why, if racial animosity has diminished, are racial discussions so angry? Why is the "race card" so politically potent? Why, when countless racial barriers have fallen, does racial inequality endure? Why do we still fear-to put it bluntly-that America's inner cities might, at the slightest instigation, burst into flames?

With the fate of affirmative action and other race-based remedies hanging in the balance, American intellectuals are concentrating on race--churning out books and theories in numbers not seen since the 1960s. Some argue that prejudice is on the way out and that relations would be fine if only blacks would stop belly-aching about bigotry. Others believe that the fundamental problem is a pervasive white racism that most whites stubbornly deny. All agree that the nation stands at a crossroads as it reconsiders its racial decisions of the last several decades.

"In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently, "wrote U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun in 1978 in defense of affirmative action. Today, opponents of affirmative action argue that the time for treating people differently is past, that minorities are no longer owed any particular advantage, if indeed they ever were. Among the more provocative writers taking that position is Dinesh D' Souza, whose newly released "The End of Racism" (736 pages. The Free Press. $30) offers solace to those whites who wish to wash their hands of responsibility for black problems. Though billed as an examination of the "multiracial society," D'Souza's tome focuses primarily on whites and blacks, taking a notion broached by William Julius Wilson's 1978 book, "The Declining Significance of Race," to sometimes absurd conclusions. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that D'Souza cites my own "The Rage of a Privileged Class," as do some of the other works mentioned in this essay.)

As D'Souza sees it, white racism has all but vanished-not that it was ever as awful, or at least as indefensible, as some people assumed in the first place. In D'Souza's eyes, old-fashioned racism was not so much a sign of small-minded bigotry as of intelligent minds at work. "Far from being ignorant and fearful," he writes, "the early European racists were the most learned and adventurous men of the age, and their views developed as a rational and increasingly scientific attempt to make sense of the diverse world that was for the first time being encountered as a whole." He finds hope in the insight that racism stemmed from rationalism. And, since it had a beginning, it can also have an end.

It is an interesting point, convincingly made, and it might have led D'Souza to focus on the shape of a nonracist future. Instead it leads largely to a defense of prejudice by presumably intelligent people. He acknowledges that racial discrimination still exists but sees it largely as "rational discrimination." Since young black males are found disproportionately among the ranks of violent criminals, argues D'Souza, taxi drivers are being rational (not racist) when they ignore black males with outstretched arms. just as employers are being rational in not offering them jobs. It apparently does not occur to D'Souza that the universe of black men looking for work may be different from the universe of black men looking trouble-and that it makes no rational sense to discriminate against the former. Such lapses ultimately render D'Souza's argument unpersuasive.

He writes passionately of the need to relinquish past notions of race, of the fact that changing attitudes and intermarriage are leading to the emergence of a "cafe au lait" society. Yet even as D'Souza offers ringing endorsement of colorblindness, he proposes a separatist for America's blacks. If blacks he argues, they should get together and "reform their community."

He thinks politicians could help by repealing anti-discrimination laws for private employers. If such laws were evenhandedly enforced (as they should be, believes D'Souza), companies would be prohibited from discriminating in favor of blacks. Getting rid of the laws would free companies to discriminate as they wished; and, in his view, many would prefer to hire blacks: "Today's corporate culture exhibits more discrimination in favor of blacks than against blacks." In D'Souza's mind, therefore, repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 becomes a way to maintain private-sector affirmative action. How such actions would amount to "the end of racism" is anyone's guess. In the end D'Souza's book is less an argument about the end of racism than about the end of the programs formulated in response to racism.

Queens College sociologist Stephen Steinberg's publishers are billing his new book, "Turning Back" (288 pages. Beacon Press. $25), as something of a preemptive strike at D'Souza. Steinberg sees arguments hailing the arrival of a colorblind society as a "spurious justification for maintaining the racial status quo." And from where he sits, the status quo is devastating to African-Americans.

Steinberg, who is white, wants Americans to "confront the legacy of slavery and resume the unfinished racial agenda." Since a significant part of that legacy is the existence of racist institutions and practices, he believes the solution lies in race-based policies. Steinberg acknowledges that the political winds are against him. He sees that as a reason not to abandon affirmative-action programs but to defend them-against, "race, baiting politicians" as well as dishonest intellectuals. He holds out little hope, however, that such a defense can be effective. America, he writes, "has never had the political will to address the legacy of slavery until forced by events to do so." And in recent times that has meant when "the nation's ghettos erupt in violence."

Between Steinberg's paean to black resistance and D'Souza's defense of discrimination lie a number of less pugnacious writings struggling to come to terms with America's continuing dilemma. In a 1994 article in the Teachers College Record, anthropologist John Ogbu wonders why inequality persists despite the opening up of opportunities. One reason, he concludes, is that blacks are still suffering the effects of past discrimination, which not only deprived them of opportunities but also lowered their aspirations. Also, blacks of all classes continue to expect and to encounter discrimination. "Public pronouncements aside, blacks still believe that there is institutionalized discrimination against them," asserts Ogbu. The result can be an alienation that is dispiriting and ultimately self-defeating.

Ogbu is uncertain how to eradicate such alienation and despair. Certainly exhorting blacks to "act white,' which is to say, to abandon "idiotic Back-to-Africa schemes and embrace mainstream cultural norm," as D'Souza advocates, will not solve much of anything. One path, suggests pastor and Prof. Michael Eric Dyson, author of the forthcoming "Between God and Gangsta Rap" (210 pages. Oxford University Press. $25), is through a religious faith that discourages cynicism. bell hooks, author of "Killing Rage" (277 pages. Henry Holt. $20), sees hope in American history's undeniable racial progress- and in the possibility that it will continue.

Whites must be principally responsible for eliminating the racial hostility and discrimination that "make it impossible for any African American to achieve the full promise of the American dream," assert University of Florida sociologist Joe Feagin and psychological consultant Melvin Sikes in "Living With Racism," a study of middle-class blacks. Such a proposition is rejected by those who believe that America's most pressing racial problem is the pathology of black culture. Still, so-called black pathologies cannot be divorced from the effects of the larger culture on black life.

Segregation created and continues to create a special set of conditions for blacks, observed sociologists Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton in an important 1993 book, "American Apartheid." More than a third of America's blacks, they pointed out, live in 16 metropolitan areas, packed, for the most part, "tightly around the urban core. In plain terms, they live in ghettos." No other group, including Hispanics, they noted, "comes close to this level of isolation."

That isolation, and the fact that it has been, for the most part, involuntary, nurtures hostility toward the larger society. To change such attitudes, they argue, would entail an assault on housing segregation-requiring, among other things, vigorous prosecution of discrimination complaints and programs to move poor blacks from housing projects into private housing. That is not likely to happen in the current political climate. Still, their argument brings into relief the conundrum at the heart of much current discussion of race: the difficulty of envisioning a colorblind society in the context of a still-segregated nation.

A truly colorblind society cannot exist as long as blacks and nonblacks live, in large measure, in totally different, color-coded worlds. Writers across the ideological spectrum surely can agree on that fact. The hard part is finding the political will and wisdom to change that.