Memorials to Lost Causes

Welcome friends!

Seems this week we were treated to the spectacle of a president of the USA springing to the defense of what I’m sure all good American recognize as the famous basket of deplorables Ms. Clinton tried to warn us about: the KKK, Neo-Nazis, Neo-Confederates, and other random racists, nativists, and xenophobes belonging to various other crazy fringe groups.  Apparently they descended upon a small liberal college town in the US state of Virginia to engage in their usual rabble rousing and intimidation but were met with local counter protestors prepared to stand their ground.  General mayhem rather predictably ensued climaxing in this case with the murder of a young lady by a Midwestern Neo-Nazi who drove his car into the counter protesters very much in the manner of some recent attacks by Islamic terrorists.  (However, one should not necessary assume any particular affinity with Islamic terrorists.  Turns out our own domestic conservative websites and media outlets have been running stories encouraging people to run over their political opponents in the street for some time now.)  The president’s rather unhinged performance was just the latest in a long list of rather embarrassing spectacles the likes of which I never thought I would see in my lifetime.  The shocking thing is we really have to expect more of the same at least for the foreseeable future.  According to a recent Monmouth University poll over sixty percent of the Americans who support Mr. Trump say they can’t think of anything he could do that would make them disapprove of him.  (That figure goes up to over seventy percent for his female supporters.)  They will support him blindly and robotically no matter what he may do.  Mr. Trump once boasted he could shoot someone on the streets of Manhattan and not lose any of his supporters and on that point at least it seems he was absolutely correct.  His conservative base has given him carte blanche to do whatever he likes in very much the same way the same sort of people gave Adolph Hitler carte blanched to do as he wished many years ago in Germany.  It’s all really rather horrifying and nothing at all like the America I thought I knew.  But of course knowledge is always good.  In order to fight conservatism we must see it for what it is.  Anyway, a flashpoint in the development of this new low, twisted, violent version of America the Republican Party is conjuring from the dark recesses of their imagination is the fate of some statues put up years ago by the racists and nativists of the day to honor the generals and statesmen of the failed Confederate States of America (CSA) and their attempt to preserve the abhorrent system of racism and slavery upon which the economy of the old agrarian American south relied upon for so long.  Most of the story of the statues is run of the mill conservatives versus liberals of the sort I’ve been talking about a lot recently.  Indeed, I wasn’t sure I had anything in particular to say about it this week but then I read something that got my mind working just a little bit.  It involved someone with an ancestor who had died fighting for the Confederacy.  He or she was concerned that removing statues and symbols glorifying the Confederacy equated to insulting his or her dead ancestor. It got me thinking it’s not an unusual sort of issue and not all that obvious either.  Perhaps something worthy of few moments discussion and contemplation?

Humanity being what it is we’ve had our share of wars and in each case or most cases anyway one side has won and one side has lost.  But of course the ancestors of those who fought for the losing cause don’t just evaporate from the face of the earth. They live on in the new system that has melded with or at least reconciled with the winning side.  One ends up with people one likes well enough, countrymen, whose ancestors fought for discredited systems that have long since disappeared.  We have the American Civil War, many European nations have the fascist states of WWII, other countries have their own various civil wars and traumas.  This situation brings up the awkward question of how to honor these people’s dead ancestors.  What makes the issue awkward of course is we have always multiple dimensions of potential approbation and disapprobation to contend with.  Someone may have fought for what we would now consider a rather disreputable system but may be considered honorable along some other dimension.  Perhaps they did their duty to their nation, or government, or king, or dictator, or what have you.  Perhaps they fought with unusual valor or humanity.   The point is simply these people may have exhibited some things we consider worthy of some degree of respect along with some other things we don’t.

To take it out of a war context let’s say some criminal, Joe Schmo, is robbing a house and has just slit the throats of the sleeping adult owners of the property but upon discovering he has inadvertently set the house on fire runs into a burning bedroom to save the baby sleeping in the crib.  Yes, he’s a conscientious sort of murderer who draws the line at offing babies.  It’s called a thought experiment.  Philosophy 101.  OK, so the guy risks his life to save the kid.  Is he a hero?  It’s not very hard to see the problem when we set things up like this is it?  We can’t say one way or the other without a little more specificity.  A hero with respect to what?  He’s certainly not a hero in some global sense defined and united by his personhood because he murdered innocent people in their sleep, which is not a particularly heroic sort of action in anyone’s book.  But on the other hand I suppose it was pretty heroic to run into a burning room to save the kid.  With respect to one action the guy was a scoundrel and with respect to the other a hero.  When we discuss this sort of thing in words and can spend all day long setting up the scenario it’s not difficult to sort it all out.

Things would get a bit more difficult if we decided to commemorate the man using some sort of statue or memorial.  Why?  Well, I suppose because it’s just hard to get very specific with those sorts of objects.  They tend to be interpreted as referring to the person in general rather than a particular person activity combination.  This is not to say it’s logically impossible to memorialize a person activity nexus in this sort of medium.  One could I suppose do a statue of Mr. Schmo running with a baby in his arms and maybe show the clothes with little burn holes or whatever.  One might in that case suppose the statue must be commemorating the role Mr. Schmo played in some dramatic event involving babies and burning clothing but there still seems to be some room for confusion.  One might reasonably assume based on this action that Mr. Schmo must have been a real stand up kind of guy and this baby scenario was the highlight of a life filled with heroism.  Might be a little annoying to the parents or offspring of the people he had murdered in their sleep wouldn’t you say?

Might be hard to clear up this potential confusion through the medium of a more elaborate statue.  I suppose we could depict Mr. Schmo running past a bed holding some murdered people and maybe holding a razor in one hand and the baby in the other or show a cop in hot pursuit but I think that might confuse the heck out of a casual observer.  I think for something this messed up we’d have to resort to some verbiage somewhere.  I suppose we could do a plaque explaining the statue is to memorialize the actions of Joe Schmo in saving the life of baby Cutie Pie on whatever date.  But I guess that wouldn’t get us all the way there would it?  One might still suppose Mr. Schmo was rather a better sort of person than he really was.  How about a plaque that lays out all the potentially relevant details adding to the previous statement a statement to the effect that although Mr. Schmo saved the baby he was later convicted of having murdered ninety-nine people in their sleep and was incarcerated for life for his crimes?  I guess that would pretty much do it right?

Now let’s take up the case of a memorial of someone who died fighting for the CSA.  On the one had, fighting for the Confederacy does not necessarily equate to slitting someone’s throat while sleeping but of course I suppose equally doing what one may have felt was one’s duty doesn’t exactly equate to running into a burning room to save a baby either.  The point is this person will combine some things we consider worthy of respect and some things perhaps less so.

If we’re talking about private memorials and gravestones and so on the issues isn’t really very important.  We have a general belief in this country one should at least try to be charitable to the dead including those who may have done some things we would find conventionally reprehensible or difficult to understand because they can’t speak up for themselves and also out of respect for their ancestors who many have done nothing wrong but may have mixed feelings.  So I don’t suppose too many people would mind even the most committed racist soldier having his or her gravestone and so on.  I suppose if we were talking about someone famous for outrages and atrocities that might not hold but in general I think that would be the case.

In addition we all know in this kind of conflict some people are rather more committed to the cause than some other people.  Some confederate soldiers may have been fighting in passionate support of racism and slavery but some others were probably fighting more for hearth and home and perhaps wouldn’t have cared too much about the big issues one way or the other or perhaps they even disapproved of those particular aspects of their system.  Again, we’re typically willing to give dead people the benefit of the doubt on this sort of thing as far as private monuments go.  In most cases we don’t really know why someone was fighting for a particular side and we don’t really want to know.

Finally, when we’re talking about a private memorial of this sort it’s hard to envision it as a public endorsement of a movement.  Local or national authorities didn’t come in and install it.  It’s not situated in front of a court house or some other public space.  Well, maybe a cemetery is a public space but if so it’s a public space for private memorials and markers.  Even a grave marker emblazoned with the stars and bars flag of the Confederacy would I think tend to not bring much to the mind of most people beyond that that person apparently died fighting for the Confederacy.

Now when we move on to public statues and monuments and so on we’re in a rather different sort of situation.  We usually slap statues of people in public places because we want to suggest there was something particularly laudable or inspirational about something that person did.  In many cases a famous personage will be famous for some feat or action and one supposes that must be what we’re talking about.  We have a statue of George Washington because he famously led the fledgling US army during the revolution that established our democratic nation.  Maybe he also did some other things that weren’t so great.  He may have owned slaves for example.  But one would have to be rather obtuse indeed to suppose we placed a statue of the man on the lawn because we’re impressed with his slave holdings.  Many wealthy early Americans owned slaves.  They don’t all have statues.  They aren’t all considered fathers of our nation.

It all seems a bit more complicated when we’re talking about a statue of a Confederate general or statesman.  These people are typically famous for their activities in service to the CSA.  That’s really their claim to fame.  That’s why people know them.  I suppose one could argue it’s not really their association to the CSA but really something more general.  Perhaps we have a statue of Jefferson Davis because he exemplified a hard working public servant.  (I don’t believe he really did but it doesn’t matter here.)  Perhaps we have a statue of Robert E. Lee because he was arguably a great military leader.  I suppose that might work but one must admit it’s a bit of a stretch.  I suppose as was the case for our fictional Mr. Schmo we could construct a sufficiently explanatory plaque that would probably clear up much of the ambiguity for those who took the time to read it.  We’re honoring General Bigbeard despite the fact he was fighting for the discredited cause of racism and slavery because of his unusual bravery or honor or kindness to civilians or whatever at the Battle of X.

However, when one sees statues of a long list of high level CSA generals and statesmen one can’t help but suspect there’s some intended connection to the Confederacy itself.  We’ve had a lot of generals and a lot of politicians.  It would be a little odd if a great number of those we chose to honor with public statues just happened to come from the CSA during the four years of the Civil War one hundred and fifty years ago.  And this is the sort of thing  I think we’d all like to be pretty clear about because the values of the CSA are inconsistent with those of the modern USA.  Wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong end of the stick on something like this.

Turns out many of these statues were erected not immediately in the aftermath of the Civil War but during a resurgence of racism and bigotry in the early years of the twentieth century.  It’s hard not to suppose any confusion about their purpose or significance was entirely intended.  Although ostensibly to honor notable dead people it seems rather likely the purpose was just as much or more to affirm the racist theories and policies of the CSA.  Whatever the source of this confusion it has led generations of American southerners to believe the USA or a large segment of the USA endorses the values of the CSA and that the Civil War is widely recognized as a famous tragedy in which the forces of good were put down by the force of overreaching federal aggression.  It’s past time we set this narrative to rest.  Let’s clear up this confusion.  We should commemorate the Confederate dead in cemeteries.  We should use our public statuary to commemorate those who lived inspiring lives without awkward moral ambiguity so they can inspire us all to greater things not leave us scratching our heads in confusion or stomping off in disgust.  Let’s look for figures that represent our common and shared values not divisive characters of unknown or questionable moral beliefs from an at least partially unwholesome culture and system that has long since passed from this world.  Let’s celebrate the USA, not the CSA.

References

Fox News, Daily Caller delete posts encouraging people to drive through protests.  Tom Kludt.  August 15, 2017.  CNN. http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/15/media/daily-caller-fox-news-video-car-crashing-liberal-protesters/index.html.

6 in 10 people who approve of Trump say they’ll never, ever, ever stop approving.  Ryan Struyk.  August 17, 2017.  CNN.  http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/17/politics/trump-approvers-never-stop-approving-poll/index.html.

The Real Story Behind All Those Confederate Statues.  Kevin Drum.  August 15, 2017.  Mother Jones.  http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/08/the-real-story-of-all-those-confederate-statues/.

American Conservatism and Nazism: The Economic Dimension

Welcome friends!

I suppose you may have noticed the flurry of articles comparing the political movement of our president-elect Donald Trump and his conservative Republican Party to that of Adolph Hitler and his Nazi Party so many years ago in early twentieth-century Germany?  I suspect it’s probably rather difficult to avoid noticing certain similarities.  Of course conservatives themselves have been preemptively calling their political opponents fascists and Nazis for some time now so I suspect some people must assume it’s all a bit of tit for tat but I really don’t think so.  I thought this time out I’d discuss yet another point of similarity this time involving economic ideas.

If you’re interested in history at all you may recall the little mustachioed monster of fame originally rose to power in Germany the conventional democratic way.  Yes, like vampires of film he only managed to wreak his havoc after having been duly invited in.  Of course in his case the havoc didn’t literally involve sucking blood but rather dismantling the democratic institutions of the nation and going on to murder millions of his countrymen and various other people besides.  By all accounts the initial impetus for his rise was a rather severe economic depression and the inevitable social divisions and in particular racial divisions the economic meltdown and social instability dredged up from the darkness of ages past.

In this context I think it’s important to realize one of the great and abiding mysteries for economic conservatives everywhere is why they don’t always do as well as they feel they ought to do under free markets.  It’s not much of a mystery or issue for liberals and leftists who believe markets don’t always perform that well anyway, which is to say markets can break down and exhibit instability, many types of markets have undesirable characteristics and results (monopolies, monopsonies, oligopolies, oligopsonies), certain common conditions render even gold-standard perfectly competitive markets problematic (externalities, information and other power asymmetries), and markets of any description do not necessarily do a very good job distributing goods and services to the people one might think should have them under any particular theory of social justice.  No, the problem for liberals and leftists is the relatively straightforward although obviously still quite daunting issue of how to fix the problems with markets to make things turn out better.

Conservatives are in a different mental place altogether.  They accept the free market as a panacea for all the material and distributional issues a society may face so if problems remain despite the presence of an apparently free market that’s really a rather remarkable state of affairs.  The primary way conservatives have historically attempted to explain this great mystery is that yes, market systems are inherently flawless and fantastic and so on, but someone is “rigging” the market behind the scenes as it were to make it not work out right.  Sabotage or I suppose as conservatives might say sabatoogie.  For Hitler and the Nazis the shadowy culprit was international Jewry.  One can imagine this wasn’t the most difficult sell in the world at that time and place given the rather obvious otherness of Jewish people in the context of self-adoring European nationalists and racists, the troubled history of Jewish people in Europe since the Middle Ages, and more prosaically the fact some Jewish people had managed to do pretty well for themselves under the prevailing market system.  Make no mistake about it.  Although the Nazis fashioned themselves “socialists” and talked a lot about collectives in certain cultural and military contexts when it came to economic matters they were pretty much conventional economic conservatives.  They didn’t challenge the economic elite of the nation and in return the economic elite of the nation didn’t challenge them.  They were all about keeping labor in line and leftist labor agitators out.  Their goal was an unholy merging of big business, (undemocratic) government, and the military machine.  Hitler won the support of most of the upper classes in the Germany of the day because he basically represented a potential money making opportunity for them.  Obviously it didn’t end too well.  Can’t do much with smoking rubble and a big pile of corpses.  But by the time they figured out which way the wind was blowing there wasn’t a whole lot they could do about it.

Here in the USA we have a roughly similar sort of dynamic going on right now.  Conservatives have been talking up the magic of the marketplace as they have been these past two centuries or so but as was the case in Germany in the early twentieth century some workers just aren’t doing all that well financially.  Liberals are trying to explain why that might be the case in terms of technological change and the rise of more effective international competition and more generally just trying to get people to think realistically about the distributional issues associated with market systems but of course conservatives aren’t having it.  They’re too busy looking for the scoundrels who have been rigging the markets to make them not function as they should.  They know it can’t be the economic elite or captains of industry because under conservative philosophy those are the people responsible for all good things in the world and the most deserving of our respect.  It must be someone else.  You can tell they have something like this on their minds because they’re always talking about taking the country back from someone.  But who?  And how did they get hold of the country in the first place?

I suppose a few American conservatives accept the traditional antisemitic line endorsed by the Nazis but not very many.  We just don’t have the history for that sort of thing to really take root.  We didn’t have medieval pogroms or Christian crusades.  We have lots of immigrants from all over the place and always have had.  We like to talk about religious freedom.  Some nativist groups have gotten on that wagon over the years including the neo-Nazis and KKK but it’s a bit of a hard sell for the man in the street.  No, in an American context the much more tempting and satisfying scapegoats are the so-called “black” people, the descendants of the slaves the old-timers kidnapped and brought over to work in their fields and who did a lot to build the country into what it is today.  That despicable but surprisingly long-lasting labor and social arrangement generated a type of social cancer that has proven quite difficult to eradicate or sometimes simply to contain: racism.  According to this theme markets are not working properly because our darker hued compatriots and possibly their illegal immigrant allies (and misguided liberals of course) have captured the government and are using it to wreck markets and funnel resources to the undeserving.  As I’ve noted before the story doesn’t entirely make sense to me according to the available facts because poor “black” people have been doing just as badly as poor “white” people and I think even a little worse and most illegal immigrants are struggling economically as well.  But I suppose the theory is that even though they’re trying to wreck markets and funnel resources to themselves they must not be very good at it because all they’ve managed to do in practice is wreck markets.  So in the eyes of conservatives the solution to our problems is to take the political system back from the people who have captured it, “black” people and their foreign allies, and put it back under the control of people who understand how the market is meant to work and will presumably not mess with it: rich old “white” people.  They would like to find a permanent solution and are forever thinking of ways to limit and shrink democratic government and correspondingly expand the power of the autocratic economic elite but they can only do so much at one time.

Of course, one must admit our conservatives are not nearly as bad as their historical counterparts.  No one has suggested carting anyone off to death camps in the countryside.  Not yet anyway.  I would find that reassuring were it not for the fact we’re not really comparing apples to apples.  Germany in the era of the Nazis went from the social turmoil of a lost war through an epic economic depression to the upheaval of total war.  One supposes these conditions must have had some influence on the complete moral meltdown we all remember today.  Here in the USA we’re having it relatively easy right now.  We have some economic problems that are particularly acute in some areas of the country but overall we’re not doing so badly.  We have some ongoing military conflicts but not really anything beyond what is more or less normal for us these days.  We’re basically on a pretty even keel right now and yet the person the American public chose as their president was Donald Trump. One can’t help but wonder if Germany in the 1930s had been doing as well as we are today would Hitler and his party of dimwitted goons have gotten anywhere near the reins of government.  Or would they have spent their lives railing against the system in some Bavarian beer hall?  Or flip it around.  Let’s say Trump’s economic incompetence and anti-regulatory zeal unleashes a major 1930s style depression.  People in the so-called “heartland” are out of work.  They’re going hungry.  They’re fearful for the future.  What will their philosophy suggest was the cause of the calamity and what do you suppose they will see as the solution?  Or let’s say a major war breaks out.  I mean a big one.  Nuclear.  Biological.  It’s us against them and our backs are against the wall.  But who is us anyway?  Does it include the people conservatives formerly suspected of attempting to steal the country from them?  Will we need to come up with a final solution to the enemy within?

Let’s not let our arrogance get the better of us here.  We’re not immune to the forces that blighted Germany in the not so distant past.  History can repeat itself and will unless we fight tooth and nail to make sure it doesn’t.  All pepped up and ready to argue with all your might against the ignorant and destructive forces Mr. Trump has ridden to political power and clearly plans to nourish and encourage the next four years?  Ready to stand up for our American way of life and our shared values of democracy, reason, kindness, and humanity?  Good.  Let’s meet the new year head on and fight the noble fight together.

Profiling and the Ethics of the “Free Market”

Welcome friends!

I was just reading an article on what sounds like a rather interesting book with the whimsical title Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil.  It got me thinking not only about racial profiling but also and more generally about the ethics of unregulated markets so I thought I’d say a few words about that this week.  I suppose I may be neglecting the antics and inanities of conservative presidential candidate Trumpo the Clown, who apparently is now tied with Hilary Clinton in the polls.  Remarkable in a way but just nothing very interesting.  I suppose it’s entertaining in the way reality TV is entertaining but it certainly presents one with precious little to think about.  It’s not like the man represents anything in particular.  He doesn’t really have a serious platform as far as I can tell.  Just some things he sometimes says and sometimes denies plus a lot of pouting and posturing.  Actually I suppose it’s more like a cheap horror movie.  I see stupid people.  Wait, that was actually a pretty good movie.  Well, you get the idea.  How about this one?  Only two things scare me!  One is nuclear war.  What’s the other you ask?  Stupid people!

Anyway getting back to my topic for today the subject of Ms. O’Neil’s book is the way certain formal or informal mathematical algorithms and models can have a rather large effect on one’s life even though one may not realize they even exist or know how they work or might find their use morally repugnant.  She’s talking about things like the models some banks use to set rates for loans that often include all manner of considerations such as one’s neighborhood, the models some employers use to determine suitable candidates for promotion based on personality tests and various other quantifiable characteristics, and the models some judicial systems apparently use to determine appropriate prison sentencing based on various characteristics of convicted perpetrators including not only prior convictions and previous police encounters but again their neighborhoods and the criminal records of family and friends.  Ms. O’Neil finds these common uses of statistical algorithms and models unfair and believes they perpetuate poverty along racial lines because they stack the deck against people living in certain neighborhoods.  Of course, she notes these algorithms can theoretically be used for good as well as bad so we can’t really fault mathematics or model building in general.  No, the problem lies in how we choose to use them. Basically the same situation we have with technology and other artifacts of human ingenuity.  We might have a hundred hate filled carnivals of stupidity in the conservative blogosphere but then we have my own blog in the liberal blogosphere like a shining beacon of light in the darkness.  The problem isn’t the existence of blogs; it’s what we make of them.

What we’re talking about here seems to me to be simply another form of the “profiling” we discussed previously in a law enforcement context.  (See my post Race and Bad Cops from July 14, 2016.)  The fascinating thing about this issue to me is that as Ms. O’Neil points out the issue is not that the statistical inferences are wrong.  I assume they’re probably true.  If for example we’re just talking about banks making up numbers and willy nilly charging people in some neighborhoods unnecessarily high rates for their loans one wonders why some other banks or other financial institutions don’t find it worthwhile to enter those markets and undercut those banks.  The interesting issues occur when the inferences are spot on but we just don’t like when people use them.

Now I should say having had the good sense to be born with a suitably pale complexion and having never travelled to the Dark Continent or spent much time in the various other darker hued portions of the world I’ve never really faced racial profiling per se but I’ve certainly faced the general concept in other contexts.   One example off the top of my head is that I recall as a young man who had finally attained whatever the age of majority was at that time, 18 years I suppose, I was legally entitled to enjoy a nice beer with my pizza but after a year or two of gastronomic bliss some policy wonk discovered adults of my age were statistically more likely to be involved in alcohol related car accidents than were older people and I was unceremoniously dumped back into the category of underage drinker.  Had there been a  problem with my drinking and driving in particular?  No, not at all.  The problem was I had something in common with some people who did, specifically that we shared the same age, and I paid the legal price for that unfortunate chronological affinity.  It was profiling of course but in a guise that passed largely without comment in the social discourse of the time.  And the interesting thing is without a crystal ball or some other special technology to assess my individual drinking and driving habits the statistical inferences were assuredly correct.  Based solely on my age I’m sure I was more likely to have been involved in an alcohol related accident than some other people.  I’m sure I can find similar arguments that could be used against me today but I suppose that’s one of the benefits of age.  Try that sort of thing on me now and one might just find oneself falling into the very same category one day.  You know, I’m sure everyone is better off not drinking but if we’re going to start prohibiting people from doing things I’d much rather it was you than me.

So if the statistical inferences are correct what’s the problem with profiling anyway?  Well, the problem is clearly it contradicts the common ethical principles of individual responsibility and innocent until proven guilty.  As a young man I didn’t appreciate losing my ability to have a glass of beer because some other young idiot drove his or her car into a tree.  Along similar lines I doubt any of us feel very comfortable penalizing someone who scrupulously pays his or her bills on time because he or she has the misfortune of living in a neighborhood with a bunch of deadbeats.  The information may be fine.  The statistics may be correct.  We just don’t like using information that way.  I basically feel about profiling the same as I did when I wrote about it in a law enforcement context.  Haven’t changed my opinion at all.  I have no problem with profiling per se if what we’re talking about is using whatever information we have to stop crime.  The police should pay more attention to people who are statistically more likely to commit crimes for whatever reason.  However, that doesn’t extend to police actions that negatively affect innocent people who fall into that category.  I don’t support police stopping people or harassing people or behaving in any way differently toward people based on their statistical likelihood of being a criminal.  Innocent until proven guilty.  That’s my motto.  But if you want to investigate a robbery it probably makes sense to start with the unemployed young man with the gun in his car before moving on to grandpa sitting on the porch swing reading the evening news.  We can’t banish common sense but we can prohibit treating people like criminals when we know they might not be and in fact most likely are not.

This time out since we’re discussing these issues in an economic context as well it occurs to me the business about the loan rates illustrates a general point I’ve tried to make about so-called free markets in many other contexts.  Markets do what they do.  If there’s information relevant to making a buck then businesses in an unregulated market will use it.  Normally that’s fine but in some funny cases like the one we’re discussing right now it’s not.  Markets aren’t magic.  There’s no invisible hand making everything come out right.  If one doesn’t see any ethical issues with what’s happening in a particular market then great; no need to do anything.  If one does see some ethical issues then one will want to get in there and regulate or do something to make it come out in a way one finds more ethically appealing.  It’s the same general sort of issue I usually discuss in the context of distributional issues.  The market will certainly distribute good and services.  Don’t worry about that.  But what matters for the market doesn’t necessarily correspond or anyway fully correspond to what one may feel ought to matter.  I guess my point is only a fool bases one’s ethics on what happens in a market rather than assessing what happens in a market using one’s ethics.  I know we all have different ethical opinions and so on but can we at least agree we’re going to discuss ethics and not get sidetracked into supposing the issue involves some technical aspect of economic theory?  How about this plan?  Why don’t you jot down what you find ethically appealing or repugnant as the case may be about how our labor market and other relevant markets such as the stock market and so on distribute wealth in this country?  I’ll do the same and discuss it in a future post.  We can compare notes.  It’ll be fun.  Let’s see how far apart we really are on these issues.  Plus I won’t have to talk about why economic theory is not a suitable basis for a coherent theory of social ethics yet again.  Happy days!

References

Math is racist: How data is driving inequality.  Aimee Rawlins.  CNN Money.  September 6, 2016.  http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/06/technology/weapons-of-math-destruction/index.html?iid=TL_Popular.

The Museum of African American History and Culture

Welcome friends!

I was just reading a little news item on the imminent opening of the new Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC.  Have you seen pictures of it?  Interesting and attractive building if a bit somber in color for my tastes.  Anyway, it got me thinking a bit about ancestors and “race” and so on so I thought I might as well say a few more words about that this week.  

The first thought that crossed my mind was that “African American” is only one sort of American among many so can we expect to see similar museums for the other sorts as well?  I guess we already have a museum on the national mall for “Native Americans” so they’re covered.  What about “European Americans?”  I know we have a generic museum of American History but that’s supposed to cover everyone, right?  Actually I’m not sure all  “European Americans” had the same sort of experience.  My understanding of the bad old days is that some European immigrants faced a heck of a lot more difficult time than some others.  I’m thinking just now of the Irish and then later the Italian immigrants but probably others as well.  Indeed, I think for some time the USA had special restrictions on immigrants coming from the swarthier and less Protestant parts of Europe.  Are we going to now just lump all “European Americans” together or should we have separate museums for “Irish Americans,” “Italian Americans” and all the various other European subgroups?  How about “Hispanic Americans?”  They were here as long as anyone else or I guess in some parts of the country were actually here first.  How about “Asian Americans?”  We have a couple of very nice museums devoted to Asian art and culture but none specifically relating to the “Asian American” experience that I know about. And you know early “Asian Americans” in particular faced a lot of discrimination.  We had plenty of Chinese immigrants working on our early transportation infrastructure who I’m sure faced all manner of bigotry and commentary relating to their foreign ways when they first arrived.  And it’s no secret the US government rounded up “Japanese Americans” during WWII and sent them to internment camps in the desert just in case they had sabotage on their minds.  Didn’t round up any “German Americans,” “Italian Americans,” or “Spanish Americans” that I know about.  Weird.  Anyway, this line of thinking got me wondering whether there was something special about “African Americans” that made a museum to their history and culture more appropriate or anyway more urgent than museums devoted to the history and culture of some of these other groups.  After the requisite ten minutes of thinking I decided yeah probably.  If we’re going to start devoting museums to subgroups of US citizens African Americans seems an appropriate group to follow Native Americans, who must surely take pride of place as the group most adversely affected and maligned by the creation of our nation.  So let me talk about that for a few minutes.  Then I’ll say a few words about my use or I guess overuse of quotation marks and explain why I think we should be a little careful how we talk about subgroups and race and ancestry and history and culture and all that stuff.

So what makes “African Americans” so special?  ... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Race and Bad Cops

Welcome friends!

We’ve had an unusual level of lunacy here in the US the past couple of weeks so I thought I’d interrupt my previous chain of thought and talk about two issues that have been in the news a lot recently: race and bad cops.  I’ll talk more about the schism in economic conservatism generated by such issues as Brexit, immigration, and free trade next time.  I’d like to talk about it right now but I can only watch so much marching, arguing, shouting, and shooting before doing whatever I can to introduce a bit of reason to the proceedings.  That’s my way.  The Way of the Pen.  Pendo.  (Hey I like that.  I’ll have to remember to use that again someday.)

Let’s start with the relatively easy issue of bad cops setting aside the always contentious issue of “race.” ... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Cops, the CIA, and Russia versus Ukraine

Welcome friends!

Lot’s of things going on right now that really deserve some comment such as the newly ascendent Republican Party’s attempt to do away with regulations on their Wall Street patrons and those anti-Islamization marches in Germany and the funny reactions to them in the media.  However, since this is my last post for 2014 I thought I’d take a little time out and look at some current events I’ve been avoiding mentioning not because I don’t think they’re important but because they don’t seem to involve the sort of conceptual confusion I’m driven to sort out.  In other words, I’m just not sure I have much to add to the conversation.  But that’s never really stopped me before, has it?  So let’s make a clean sweep of it.

How about those recent instances of the US police using deadly force in questionable circumstances generally involving our swarthier compatriots?  Let me start with a few rather obvious observations if I may and then proceed on to what I consider a more dubious line of discussion.

First, it seems to me pretty clear to me that we may have to revisit how we train our police force.  Policing is a tricky and dangerous business at the best of times but particularly so here in the US where an alarming number of people carry guns about and where even those who can’t manage to pass our laughably inadequate background checks for buying guns can easily pick one up whenever they like by simply breaking into any house on the block and taking one.  The police response to this quasi-militarized state of affairs has been to adopt a doctrine of overwhelming force (or shock and awe lite I suppose might be a good way to think about it).  This doctrine postulates that the best way to keep things under control during any sort of potentially violent confrontation is to watch for any hint of a problem and if any such hint is forthcoming to apply sufficient force to end the situation quickly before things get out of hand.  The theory sounds reasonable on paper but I’m not so sure about the practice.  The problem of course is that when we train people to act like this we run the risk that we may get some small percentage of disproportionate responses.  Someone looks sideways at a cop and end up getting dragged to the pavement and strangled.  I appreciate of course that if one’s ethics run strictly along consequentialist lines might argue one cannot really evaluate this sort of thing without looking at the other side of the equation: how many unnecessary fatalities has this hair trigger response policy prevented?  However, I guess I don’t feel that does it for me.  I can’t help but feel there’s some question of duty involved as well.  It seems to me the police are there to protect and serve and when they arrive at a disturbance and make a bad situation much worse by killing someone unnecessarily that’s just a rather significant problem for me.  I understand they may feel they were just trying to do their job and sometimes accidents happen but that’s where I suspect we may part company because I think a big part of their job is avoiding those sorts of accidents.  Police work is not just a matter of rushing in and trying to resolve a situation any old way and letting the chips fall where they may.  I suppose the implication is that I feel we should accept the risk of things sometimes getting out of hand in order to avoid situations where cops unintentionally end up playing the role of the out of control aggressor even if that leads to some innocent people getting killed from bad guys that the police have failed to neutralize in a timely fashion.  I know, that’s a tough one but there you have it.

Second, I think we really need some accountability when police screw up, which they are liable to do no matter what sort of policies or training we may have in place.  This is a serious business.  It’s one thing to argue the police didn’t intend to kill anyone so it’s not really murder it’s just something unfortunate that happened during a violent altercation.  It’s something else entirely to say that being involved in this type of unfortunate event is professionally acceptable for a police officer.  To me a member of the police force killing an unarmed civilian is like a commercial airline pilot flying his plane into a mountain or a cruise ship captain running his ship onto a reef.  Never mind the issue of criminal charges, can we at least agree that the police officers involved in these incidents should be invited to find more suitable employment?  Something requiring a little less judgment?  People rely on the police for protection from thugs and murders.  How can one rely on them if one suspects they might accidentally kill someone themselves?

Third, of course if there are grounds for suspecting criminal negligence or even worse intentional murder we need someone like the FBI to get in there right away, investigate the hell out of it, and either bring charges or give us some confidence that no one on the police force has gotten away with anything.  Again, we all need to have confidence in our police force.  

Now let me take a quick look at what I described previously as a somewhat more dubious suggestion, which is that racism is a significant component of this issue.  I’m sure the statistics will show that most of the unarmed people being killed by police are “black” as we say here in the US.  However, I think what’s much less obvious is what that signifies.  The unfortunate fact of the matter is that for one reason or another a disproportionate share of the violent criminals in our country also fall into this category so one would naturally expect them to account for a disproportionate share of people involved in violent confrontations with police.  On the other hand, although I don’t feel we have anywhere near as much overt racism about as there was when I was young, I think one must admit we do have a historical legacy of racism that has probably survived in local pockets here and there.  Even when we don’t have actual racism we may very well have the related phenomenon that I’ve referred to in earlier posts as “culturalism,” which of course can be highly correlated with race in many places.  Obviously, whenever you have the police coming from one cultural background and the people being policed from another you run the risk of all sorts of strange things happening.  It’s not just the issue that some police officers may come to believe that people from certain cultures or backgrounds are more likely to be involved in criminal activity and thus be tempted to treat them differently consciously or otherwise.  It can also involve more mundane factors like people from different cultures interpreting behaviors differently so for example where one culture sees a dignified response to arbitrary authority another culture may see a suspicious lack of compliance with a reasonable request.  I guess the most I’d be willing to say about this particular issue right now is that someone should be looking into it and trying to ensure the police treat everyone properly.  The US is a multiracial and multicultural society and we simply cannot afford to tolerate any nonsense along those lines.

Not much of an analysis?  Well, that’s what I’m talking about.  That’s why I didn’t do a post on it.  So let’s move on.  How about the recent report about the CIA torturing people?  Another big issue but again I’m not sure I have anything useful to add to the discussion.  Actually I thought we had put this torturing people for information business behind us sometime around the start of the eighteenth century when we determined it generally results in the tortured party either making things up or telling people what they think people want to hear.  Of course if torture doesn’t get you any reliable information there’s little point to getting into the thorny ethics of the matter.  I guess one might still want to talk about torture in non-informational contexts.  For example, one could get into the issue of whether it’s morally preferable to punish people for legal transgressions with some brief torture like getting walloped a few times with a whip versus an extended time out in prison, which tends to be our cultural preference, but that’s not really what we’re talking about here.  Anyway, to get back to the issue at hand, this notion of torturing people for information, it turns out the issue was apparently not consigned to oblivion many centuries ago as I thought; no, the CIA believes right now that torturing people is an effective way to get information.  They’ve apparently said as much to the US Congress in official testimony.  Damn.  I guess we’re going to have to do this the long way.

As far as the ethics of torturing people for information goes it seems to me we’ve got all kinds of things going on. One rather well known strand is the potential conflict between consequentialist and deontological (that would be duty based) ethical thinking relating to this issue.  A consequentialist may say of course it’s unfortunate that we would ever need to torture anyone but if doing so resulted in information that allowed us to prevent two other people from being tortured or killed or whatever then we’d still be coming out ahead in some sense.  The duty based argument would run more along the lines that it’s just wrong to torture people for information and it’s better to hold onto your ethical beliefs and let the chips fall where they may, including on top of other people, if the alternative is to sell your soul to the Devil to get all allegorical about it.  I don’t know the answer to that one.  Sounds complicated.  I probably lean toward the duty based approach myself because I just can’t help but feel if one gets too consequentialist one might end up engaging in all manner of questionable behaviors.  However, I also suppose there are other things going on.

Two other potentially relevant issues to me are that not all torture is equal and not all information is equally important so we probably have a lot of room for discussion relating to those issues.  Are we talking about torturing people in the sense that they’re uncomfortable at the moment but fine again later (including being fine in the head of course)?  That might still be unacceptable but it seems somehow less bad than if we were talking about permanent injuries or psychological scars.  As far as information goes I would think the potential value of the information might have some sort of significance.  Can we get the information some other way?  Do people’s lives depend on it?

Another potentially relevant issue to me involves the characteristics of the victim.  If one really feels someone is withholding information that would help one prevent someone else being tortured or killed then that person isn’t really what anyone could reasonably call an innocent victim.  He or she would be complicit in some way in the torture or death that one is trying to get information to stop or avoid.  The implication that these people are guilty of something to some degree raises the issue of whether we’re able to maintain the conceptual distinction between torturing people for information and torturing people as punishment.  Is it more acceptable to torture someone for information if that person arguably deserves to be tortured because he or use is complicit in the torture or death of someone else?  If that’s the case then it seems to me there’s a lot riding on the degree of confidence one has that the person actually has the information in question and is holding out on one in the manner I just suggested.  So what about the case where one thinks someone might or might not have the information?  Where does one draw the line?

Listening to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s views on the matter really brought these issues home to me.  He was in the media recently spouting off about how he was more concerned about guilty detainees getting released to fight again than about detaining (and implicitly torturing) “a few that in fact were innocent.”  That pretty much turns on its head the so-called Blackstone’s Formulation, which proposes we should prefer ten guilty people to escape than for one innocent person to suffer.  Never heard of the principle?  Well, neither did I.  However, apparently it’s a principle that people who know about such things consider a bedrock of Western jurisprudence and that has been cited a number of times by the US Supreme Court.  And we’re not talking about an academic dispute here.  Innocent people are definitely involved.  The CIA torture report estimated that up to the twenty-five percent of the people we’re talking about may have been captured as a result of mistaken identity and one such fellow, Gul Rahman, actually died under torture.  One can’t help but wonder whether Mr. Cheney’s cavalier attitude toward apparently innocent victims like Mr. Rahman has to do with the fact that they are foreigners from the Middle East.  One suspects Mr. Cheney might revise his moral views if the innocent person being detained, tortured, and possibly accidentally killed were someone more like Mr. Cheney himself.

Well, I certainly can’t resolve anything right now.  My point is simply that this is a hugely complicated issue that needs some serious social debate.  Too bad we mostly tend to get sensationalism and political grandstanding.  We all know torture is wrong in some vague general sense but during an emergency when lives are at stake we somehow all contrive to be looking the other way although we sure raise a ruckus later on, don’t we?

Enough of that.  It’s giving me the creeps.  How about Ukraine?  Hey, I have no idea!  Sorry.  Obviously I feel countries should respect one another’s borders but on the other hand as a historically and geographically challenged American I have no confidence at all that I understand any of the considerations that play into this conflict.  I must admit I always thought Ukraine was a region of Russia but I suppose that’s because when I was growing up we tended to equate the entire USSR with Russia.  But still; Kiev isn’t Russian?  It’s in a different country where they speak their own language?  Seems strange.  Are we talking about real countries with real borders that have some sort of historical or intrinsic significance or did someone just make them up a few years ago?  As you can see I’m still struggling with the basic facts of the matter so you can forget about me thinking through any thorny territorial disputes.

Nevertheless, let me just review what I’ve gleaned from my rather casual attempt to keep abreast of the issue thus far.  We went from the USSR to Russia and Ukraine (and lots of other countries) but we somehow ended up with a bunch of ethnic Russians living in eastern Ukraine and some important Russian military installations being located in Ukraine, then we had some political turmoil resulting in the hasty and possibly legally questionable departure of Ukraine’s pro-Russian leader, then we may or may not have had ultranationalist Ukrainians telling the ethnic Russians to get the hell out, then we had the Russian Ukrainians (?) deciding they wanted to carve out their own little country or territory or whatever it is, then we had the Russian military trying to help them out but not wanting to admit as much of course, then someone shot down a commercial airplane, then ... OK, I have to stop; I’m getting one of my headaches again.  Look, I like Ukraine well enough given that I don’t know anything about the place and I’m trying to like Russia as well although they sure don’t make it easy, do they?  (And not just on this issue.)  I wonder, is to much to ask that they get together and come up with some solution that doesn’t involve embroiling the world once again in some ridiculous decades long territorial dispute?  It’s just too damned far away for America to sort it out and one shudders to think of the Europeans trying to sort out anything at all.  How about this?  Russia: remove your military, stop arming the separatists, and respect Ukraine’s borders.  Ukraine: create some effective protections or political institutions for your ethnic Russian population and make a deal with Russia so it can keep its naval installation or oil deal or whatever the hell it is they’re so agitated about.  We’re past that already?  Fine.  Just do it the old fashioned way and shoot one another.

Time for one more?  How about ISIS?   They sound like a bunch of murderous thugs to me but of course they’re not the first group of murderous thugs to come out of that part of the world.  I suppose if people in the region want some help fighting them we probably have a moral responsibility to help them out.  But we can’t sort out everyone on our own, can we?  I wish we could but there’s just not enough money and time in the world to do that.

Well, that’s my annual end of the year rubbage sale of unhelpful commentary on random news of the day.  Hmm, maybe I should end on a positive note.  How about the Nobel Peace Price going to Mala Yousafzai of Pakistan for her work getting local women some access to education and to Kailash Satyarthi of India for his work relating to child labor.  So gratifying to hear about someone trying to do something positive in that part of the world.  I salute you both!

That’s it for me for this year.  See you in the next.

References

Anthony Zurcher.  Cheney: ‘No problem’ with detaining innocents.  BBC.  December 15, 2014.  http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-30485999.

Greg Botelho.  Malala, Satyarthi accept Nobel Peace Prize, press children's rights fight.  CNN.  December 10, 2014.  http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/10/world/asia/nobel-peace-prize-awarded/index.html?hpt=hp_t2.

Respect My Authority!

Welcome friends!

Tough couple of weeks, right?  With all the mayhem going on in the world I hardly knew which way to turn, but after a feverish five minutes of careful consideration I decided it might be most appropriate to say a few words about the recent social unrest in Missouri.  (For my foreign friends, we’re talking about one of those sparsely populated conservative states in the vast wilderness between the west and east coasts of the US in what people here somewhat facetiously call the heartland of the country, somewhere near Kansas or Nebraska I should imagine.)  If you’ve been out of touch with the News from America for the past few days it’s another one of those cases where a cop has gunned down an unarmed young man and race may or may not have been a factor, which isn’t really all that unusual, but I think I’ve only talked about race relations once before so maybe this is another good opportunity.  I was tempted to talk a bit about Richard Dawkins latest attempt to enlighten us via oracular “tweet,” this one involving a supposed moral mandate to abort fetuses with disabilities, but maybe I’ll save that one for another time.  I just did a post on a funny Richard Dawkins tweet and it seems that could very easily become a full time job if I let it.  I also thought briefly of saying something about the Arabs and Israelis murdering one another (and one another’s kids) in Gaza but really that’s just more of the same isn’t it?  It’s a tragedy of course, but apparently they’re going to do what they’re going to do, the future be damned.

So let’s just have a quick recap of what we’re talking about this time out.  Apparently we had a couple of what we used to call dead end kids walking down the middle of the road in some lost city out on the prairie somewhere, a cop drove by and told them to get to the side, one thing led to another, and the cop ended up shooting one of them six times including twice in the head... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Zimmerman Opens the Door

Welcome friends!

I guess I’ll have to put off the follow-up piece on hyper-egotism and nationalism yet again because I just can’t seem to resist spouting off on that Zimmerman case that was all over the news a few weeks ago.  (Maybe I’ll just stop mentioning the hyper-egotism follow-up for a while, OK?  I’ll get to it when I get to it; but probably next time.  No, really.)

So just a quick recap of what we’re talking about this time.  If you recall, George Zimmerman was the neighborhood watch guy who was walking around his neighborhood one fine evening with a gun in his pocket, saw a black teenager named Trayvon Martin walking down the street, didn’t like what he saw, accosted the kid, exchanged words and apparently blows, and to make a long story short shot the kid dead... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Stand Yer Ground

Welcome friends!

A few weeks back I wrote a little piece on racism (March 20, 2012), so I thought I might as well follow up with a few thoughts on a case that has been in all the papers recently involving a white guy (or maybe he was Hispanic but anyway that generally counts as “white” these days in the US) who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager in the US state of Florida.  In addition to the racism angle the story is interesting to me because it also touches on the issue of gun rights and what I see as some general characteristics of conservatism in the US... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Racism For Beginners

Welcome friends!

My work has been a little crazy recently but it looks like I finally have a moment to pontificate so I thought I’d celebrate by going way outside my comfort zone and saying a few words about that most fraught of American cultural issues: racism.  Now I’m sure there are all sorts of interesting issues involving race relations in the US: does racism exist, how prevalent is it, what causes it, what are its effects, what should we do about it, etc.  And of course anything involving race is sure to be contentious given our racial diversity and rather checkered history in that respect.  (I guess it’s no big secret that for the first hundred years or so of our country’s existence the economy of a large swath of it relied on slave labor, and you can double that if you want to include the period before we gained our national independence.  I always have to laugh when I hear conservatives getting all mushy about the so-called founding fathers.  Wise old men my ass.  Well, let me amend that.  I suppose they were actually pretty wise about some things, but they were apparently pretty clueless about some other things.  Sort of like anyone else, I suppose.  Anyway, one hundred and fifty years after the Civil War officially did away with slavery in the US and fifty years after the civil rights movement did away with some of the more obvious residual effects we’re still working through that little gift from the past.)  However, to return to the point, I thought that since I haven’t said a word about any racial issues to date I’d just start with a very general and rather philosophical discussion of what I think we’re talking about when we discuss racism.  I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunity to bring up more specific issues some other time.

So let me get into my own views on the whole racism issue.  First of all, I think we have to start off with some idea of what we mean by “race.”  Now the definition of a race seems to me to be entirely a matter of convention, which is to say, I think a race can be whatever we define it to be.  Humans obviously have all manner of inherited genetic characteristics depending on the environment in which their ancient ancestors spent most of their time and some of those genetic characteristics involve superficial physical differences such as hair color and shape, eye color and shape, skin color, body build, and what have you.  If you want to group some people together according to some of these inherited physical characteristics and say they belong to the same “race” be my guest.  However, a couple of points to keep in mind.  First, my understanding is that whatever observable characteristics you have in mind make up a very, very small percentage of the total genetic material of any given human being.  Basically, we all share 99.9 percent (or whatever, I’m just saying a very high percentage) of our genetic material, so talking about race can very easily lead to a tail wagging the dog sort of situation.  Second, I think we need to keep in mind a race is simply a collection of individuals sharing certain selected genetic characteristics.  That’s all.  A race isn’t an actual entity that thinks things or does things.  You can talk about an individual doing something.  You can talk about a group of people doing something, although if you’re conscientious you’ll probably want to start taking into account differences among the members of the group.  You can even talk about a community of people doing something, although in that case there are liable to be some very large differences in what any given member of that community is thinking or doing.  But the idea of an entire race thinking or doing something is just ridiculous.  People of a particular race might very well be living in entirely different countries, talking different languages, belonging to different cultures, and so on.  They aren’t getting together over a glass of beer somewhere and deciding to do things.

OK, so now we know what we’re talking about when we talk about race, let me just say I don’t think any mention of race necessarily implies one is a “racist.”  For example, I think medical researchers have discovered one’s likelihood of developing certain medical conditions depends in part on one’s genetic susceptibility to that condition, which in some cases is related to the same genetically inheritable traits that are associated with one’s appearance and hence typically get implicated in discussions of race.  For example, I believe they’ve found “black” people are at relatively greater risk for hypertension than “white” people.  That’s not racism.  That’s just the way it is.

Now I can’t think of any prima facie case why other physical, mental, or psychological characteristics might not also be related to race in the same way.  I remember a few years back some researcher on human intelligence published a paper suggesting a genetic component to IQ.  I think he claimed to have found some small difference in the average test scores of people from different races.  I’m not sure I can remember al the details but I think on his racial average IQ scale he had Asians, then whites, then blacks.  (Yeah, I know Asia is actually a location, not a color, but I’m just following American convention.  I suppose to be consistent we should talk about Asians, Europeans, and Africans, or maybe about blacks, whites, and some other color, maybe tans.  Well, I guess at one time people in the US associated Asians with the color yellow so we could go with that, but it seems a little far fetched to me.  Anyway, I’ve never seen a yellow colored Asian person and I’ve met quite a few people of Asian descent.  Actually, I guess even tan wouldn’t really work very well.  I’ve seen some pretty pale Asians and some pretty swarthy white people.  And don’t even get me started on the red American Indian / Native American classification.)  Anyway, to get back to my story, I recall at the time there was this huge uproar that the guy must be a racist.  Now I can’t comment on whether his research was any good or whether the data showed what he thought it showed but I have to say the hysterical tenor of the criticism set me a little on edge.  I mean, it’s essentially a scientific issue and we can’t be so precious that we can’t talk about science.  Along the same lines, I think I also read somewhere that aggression might have a racial component.  Heck, I suppose all kinds of things might have a genetic component and thus be related to race in some way.

However, a few points, if I may.  First, I think one has to keep an eye on the actual differences we’re talking about.  I seem to recall that the IQ study, for example, was finding some pretty small differences in the average IQ score of different racial groups.  Indeed, it wasn’t at all obvious to me what practical implications, if any, followed from those differences.  One can’t get so hung up on the issue of whether there are any detectable differences at all that one forgets to consider the issue of the practical significance of any such differences.  Second, when you think about the practical implications of this type of study you also have to think about the issue of interpersonal variation.  For example, I’m quite sure the study I mentioned earlier did not imply every Asian was smarter than every white person and so on.  That’s obviously not the case.  So one has to be a little careful with these types of studies when one is drawing out the implications for individuals.  Third, the normative or value issue of what we should do, if anything, in response to these types of differences between the races, if indeed they exist, is an entirely different issue from the scientific issue of whether those differences exist in the first place.  For example, the fact we can find these types of differences between races, if we can find them, would not imply one race is more laudable in some global sense than another race.  In the IQ example, I suppose smart is good in some contexts, but smart isn’t the be all and end all of human values, is it?  Some smart people are also lazy, sneaky, mean, dishonest, egotistical, selfish, shallow, and who knows what else.  There are plenty of other traits that are important as well, so even ignoring the other issues I’ve already mentioned, trying to decide which genetic makeup is best in some global normative sense is clearly a fool’s game.  And even if you came up with what you personally considered the optimal mix of characteristics and you did manage to relate it race I think you would find determining the ethical ramifications of such a ranking quite problematic as well.

So that’s what I think is not racism even though it involves talking about race and probably makes some people think of racism.  So what do I think actually is racism?  Well, to me racism involves making some of the errors in thinking about race I’ve just been talking about.  That is to say, racism to me is a word describing ignorance in the context of thinking about race.  Again, I don’t think simply talking about race necessarily makes one a racist; however, talking about race in certain asinine ways does.  So just to give some examples, I think one type of racism is when one imagines “races” as active agents that are thinking things and doing things.  Another type of racism fails to acknowledge the practical significance of the typically minute differences between racial averages or the much larger interpersonal variation among individuals of different races.  (Hey, I’m from race X, I’m special.  Yeah, you’re special, but not in the way you think.)  Another type of racism latches onto particular genetic traits and tries to exaggerate their normative significance to conclude a given race is better in some global normative sense than another race.  Another type of racism tries to draw unjustified value judgements and dubious ethical propositions from racial differences.

Then let me just comment briefly on the distinction between race and culture.  Now I’ve noted that in the US when people think they’re talking about race they’re often actually talking about local cultures.  These are easy to confuse because when you have a high degree of racial segregation as we still do in the US (I mean voluntary, not legally mandated as was the case in the past), it’s quite easy for people of different races to form local communities with somewhat distinctive cultures.  However, a discussion of these local cultures isn’t really about race, per se, because the characteristics one associates with people from one local culture wouldn’t necessary apply to people from that same race but a different local culture.  So, for example, if you’re talking about some type of general American black culture based on the totality of our troubled history of race relations in this country (which I think is about as big a local culture related to race that it would even make sense to contemplate talking about), then you should keep in mind that whatever cultural characteristics you’re talking about would be entirely foreign to, say, an African of the same race.  In other words, if you really mean to talk about race then fine, talk about race.  But if you actually have in mind a local culture related to race then don’t talk about race, talk about local cultures.

Now when it comes to talking about local cultures related to race many of the same issues that pertain to talking about race also apply.  So let’s talk through this quickly.  As with race, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to talk about local cultures.  If you can identify a local culture and you don’t like certain elements of it then by all means talk about it.  There are plenty of local cultures I don’t like and avoid like the proverbial plague.  However, you have to keep an eye on certain errors in thinking that can lead to racism or whatever the equivalent would be when applied to local cultures (local culturalism?).  So, first of all, one shouldn’t imagine that just because everyone in some local culture is of race X every person of race X therefore belongs to that local culture.  Do you actually even know what defines the local culture you have in mind?  Because if you think it’s just race then you’ve probably missed the mark.  Second, you should have in mind the actual size and practical significance of whatever differences you perceive in local cultures.  Maybe you think a certain local culture predisposes those who belong to it to criminal activity.  Well, how prevalent is criminal activity in that local culture and how different is that from other local cultures?  Are you looking at a small difference between different cultures and blowing it up in your mind to monumental proportions?  Third, you have to consider interpersonal variation within local cultures.  Are you treating everyone from culture X as a criminal and everyone from culture Y as an upstanding citizen even though plenty of people from culture X are upstanding citizens and plenty of people from culture Y are criminals?  That would hardly be fair, would it?

Well, let’s just end with a humorous black and white example because I know how amusing that can be.  (Joking, joking.  I’m sure plenty of people will find my little attempt at humor patronizing, irritating, racist, and who knows what else, but I started talking about racism and I’m going to finish it come hell or high water.)  OK, so let’s say you’re a white man living in a small town in Kansas.  Just kidding, it can be wherever.  But especially someplace like Kansas.  You see a black man walking through your yard.  You’re more concerned than if you had seen a white man walking through your yard.  Are you a racist?  Not necessarily.  I suppose in some local communities the odds that a black man is a criminal are probably at least slightly higher than the odds that a white man is a criminal.  (Of course in other communities the opposite may well be true.)  Now you’ve seen a lot of young black kids on the corner listening to rap music, selling drugs, and occasionally shooting one another, so you know all about local black culture.  This guy is older and dressed differently but what’s the difference?  OK, now you’re getting into racist territory.  You may know something about the culture of the black kids selling drugs on the corner but do you know anything about the local culture of this particular black man?  Well, you think to yourself, I read all the scientific magazines and I know black people are genetically more aggressive than white people so most likely this guy is getting ready to crash through my front window and attack me at any moment.  Well, that would probably belong in the racist category.  I suppose there could be some genetic component to aggression, which would suggest it could be related to race, but if there is such a connection then the differences are likely to be insignificant in any practical sense and swamped by interpersonal variation.  In this example, it would certainly not establish that the guy is probably getting ready to crash through your front window although it might establish the probability of the guy doing so is marginally higher than of someone of another race doing so.  You decide to take preemptive action so you run into the yard and whack the guy on the head with a stick.  Now you’re definitely in racist territory.  Again, even if there were differences in the probabilities of people of different races being up to no good in this particular scenario the vast majority of black men walking through your yard would be most likely just trying to get to the other side, so the odds would be you just ran up and whacked an innocent man on the head, which is against our cultural mores of individual responsibility and innocent until proven guilty.  You get arrested.  When you get out of jail you’re so irritated at the black race for walking through your yard and selling drugs on the corner that as soon as you get out you take a plane to Africa and punch the first black person you see on the nose.  Now you’ve actually broken the crazy racist meter.  The guy you punched doesn’t understand a word you’re saying and even after finding a translator has no idea what you’re even talking about.

Well, that’s it: my amusing exposition of what I think qualifies as racism and what I think does not.  It wasn’t all that amusing, you say?  A little irritating more like?  I understand.  I promise I won’t talk about race again for a long time, so take a deep breath and try to relax.