It started with this post by Dean Esmay, where he talks about racism in Chicago but the subject widened out in the comments and a number of bloggers got involved.
I’ve been amazed at the response (there were more than forty comments to Dean’s post and over a dozen trackbacks), and by the range of perspectives the discussion now encompasses. People have been swapping comments and links, trawling their archives for relevant material and writing directly about their personal experiences.
There’s a lot of stuff out there, but there was one piece that particularly caught my attention.
Cobb returned to the comments at Dean’s World to post a link to an article by Glenn C Loury. I’m grateful that he took the time and trouble to do so, because Loury’s essay is the clearest exposition of the problem I’ve come across.
What is sometimes denied, but what must be recognized is that this is, indeed, a race problem. The plight of the underclass is not rightly seen as another (albeit severe) instance of economic inequality, American style. These black ghetto dwellers are a people apart, susceptible to stereotyping, stigmatized for their cultural styles, isolated socially, experiencing an internalized sense of helplessness and despair, with limited access to communal networks of mutual assistance. Their purported criminality, sexual profligacy, and intellectual inadequacy are the frequent objects of public derision. In a word, they suffer a pariah status. It should not require enormous powers of perception to see how this degradation relates to the shameful history of black-white race relations in this country.There are some things he writes that I don’t agree with, such as when he says:
The dream that race might some day become an insignificant category in our civic life now seems naively utopian.Some of us still believe in that dream, and I think most people would like to believe in it. It’s certainly a long way off, but I’m still trying to work towards it and I’m not yet ready to be labelled naïve.
I could take issue with a number of other small points but that would just be quibbling. I’m in full agreement with much of what Loury writes here.
I also agree with his criticisms of affirmative action. I remain opposed to it and, in contrast to Loury, I support Proposition 54. But there are two things we clearly agree on: affirmative action only slaps at the problem and Proposition 54 won't help to solve it.
I have only ever said this once before; I don’t use the words lightly: Go read the whole thing.
