Racism: Corruption and Malignant Motivations

My son, Osprey H. Brown, and I prepared this article together.

A racist, for the purposes of this article, is merely a person who has some attitude towards or about people and their physical features; this makes most people “racists.”  Many of the reasons we have these attitudes are benign.  If the motivations for these attitudes—on the part of the racist—are not pernicious, it is unlikely that these racist attitudes will lead to occurrences of racism.  The harm of being a racist is the malignant motivations that lead to occurrences of racism—the deprivation of some earned right.  Different motivations matter if we want to properly redress the harm of racism and prevent similar occurrences in the future.

On the one hand, there are situations in which a racist is motivated by political or economic gain.  On the other hand, there are situations where the racist disregards economic and political reasoning, the racist’s actions have another motivation and may indeed injure the racist politically or economically.  These other motivations can be anything from deep psychological conditioning, true hatred, or illogical belief.  How could we possibly hope to identify and eliminate these motivations and pathologies?  What becomes apparent is that racism for the purpose of political or economic gain is simpler to understand and redress than racism that has other motivations and even defies economic reasoning.

In my view, racism for economic or political gain is corrupt. Corruption is dishonesty for a dishonest gain.   A harm motivated by corruption is a set of falsehoods perpetuated for the purpose of—in the case of racism—depriving a certain person categorized under a particular group from a privilege earned.  For example, Judge Sotomayor, having served for decades on the federal bench, longer than any Supreme Court nominee in 70 years, earned the privilege of being nominated for Supreme Court justice.  Pat Buchanan, it seems, for the purposes of dividing whites and minorities, thereby uniting a conservative white constituency, tried to deprive Sotomayor of her privilege on the Rachel Maddow Show {clip}. Not only that, he went on to attempt to deprive blacks and Hispanics of their role in building Our nation.

This kind of racism is overt, transparent—motivated, in my view, by white male privilege— but more simply by a political agenda.  Racism motivated by corruption is perhaps the simplest kind to combat: it does not require any special laws to punish; the motivating factors are easy to disentangle.  By punishing people politically and economically through the law, we can completely disincentivize this behavior. If anything, Pat Buchanan only hurt his own cause by, as Maddow pointed out in the interview, dating himself and his views in a world where all races have elected the first black president.

Other occurrences of racism may have more subtle motivations at play.  The arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates demonstrates an odd intersection of corruption and other factors.  Corrupt cases of racism typically follow some economic or political agenda, often based in greed.  On the one hand, this incident smacks of the ordinary attempt to maintain a power imbalance along racial lines.  As President Obama indicated, there is a history of African Americans and police abuse.  Where Buchanan tries to unite his constituency by fragmenting political unity along racial lines; officer Crowley, similarly, tried to maintain a long-standing historical imbalance between black citizens and armed police, both men relied on historical tensions it seems{Police report}.  Crowley attempted to deprive Gates of his right to the quiet enjoyment of his home, arresting the professor only after identifying him as the lawful resident, therefore losing probable cause to arrest Gates for unlawful entry.  Crowley’s true motivations for arresting Gates are not clear, but surely he was not motivated by any political or economic gain.

In my own life, I have encountered cases where racism runs counter to economic reasoning. Consider another example of racism from a case I handled a few years ago.  A builder constructs housing developments in the suburbs of a major city marketed to upper-middle class homebuyers. An African American family seeks to buy a certain model in a development located in a majority black neighborhood of an affluent suburb. The same model is offered in a majority white suburban neighborhood at roughly the same price, at apparently similar terms. The household income for both neighborhoods is nearly identical. So far, all appears equal.

However, in the majority white neighborhood, home buyers are offered a choice of eight colors for their countertops, in the African American community, home buyers are offered only white and beige. The majority white community offers various colors and types of bathroom tiles, while home buyers in the majority African American community are offered only white. Indeed, numerous choices and upgrades were available to homebuyers in the majority white neighborhood that were not offered in its majority African American counterpart.

When the African American family requested the upgrades for the house they were buying in the majority black neighborhood, the builder was willing to oblige.  But, because the upgrades were not offered in the majority black development, they were considered “custom” additions; payment therefore was required in advance. Thus, in the predominantly white neighborhood, any buyer of any color could purchase with a $5000 deposit the exact same house that required an $80,000 down payment, (given the cost of upgrades), in the majority black area.

Though I recognize the loss disproportionately borne by African Americans who chose the majority black neighborhood, and that something corrupt underlies that loss, I cannot fathom any gain to the developer.  And what is the falsehood at issue here: that African Americans do not want to color coordinate; that blacks folks want or require fewer decorating choices?  How does it result in a gain to the developer to decline to offer a profitable feature to someone able to purchase it? How does it help the builder’s bottom line to make it more difficult for a qualified buyer to purchase a more expensive home?

So, the housing communities composed mostly of whites were given a wider variety of color options in their new homes than was offered in new black housing communities. So what?  Well, here’s what. The racism in this instance seems more structural or institutional since builders do not want to deprive any eligible buyer from purchasing their products. But perhaps that also makes it more intransigent. As I try to make sense of these circumstances, it seems that the answers are necessarily as simple and as complex as the answer to why White male republican Senators would openly denigrate a Supreme Court nominee whose appointment they have no hope of preventing, or why a police officer would arrest a man whom he knows has committed no crime and poses no threat, only to see the charges dropped.  Is white supremacy that petty? Their answer is, at least in part, that those actions were justified, possibly by history or experience. But, of course, I disagree.  Buchanan proved he knows nothing about history and I think we are justified in questioning Crowley’s experience.

History and experience teach me that such actions are based on falsehoods.  What is troubling might be this: those with racist attitudes having corrupt or pernicious motivations, while attempting to benefit by perpetuating racial falsehoods, fail to attain their petty benefit.  Racists with corrupt and pernicious motivations end up harming their own cause where they might have gained had they played it straight. So while I believe that I am right about this, there is no comfort to be had, no victory to be declared, because we all lose.

But I believe in the legal redress of racial harms. While we may not change the attitudes, we can prevent the occurrences of racism and their material harm.  And just so you know, we sued the builder because the law gives us the right to make our injuries whole. We can effectively punish the corrupt racists by attacking those benefits they sought to gain by cheating minorities: their economic bottom line and public image.  They settled and changed their ways.