A most provocative thesis advanced by many blacks is that blacks cannot be racist. What makes this thesis so provocative is that it seems so incredulous. How, one rightly asks, did it turn out that any and everyone can be racist except blacks. Being mere mortals, themselves, what possible consideration might lend one iota of support to the thesis that blacks cannot be racist? As I shall show, although there is a very strict sense in which the thesis might be true, blacks cannot take any comfort in that truth.
If by definition a racist is someone who thinks that people are morally or intellectually inferior in virtue of their ethnic make-up, then it is arguable that whatever the attitude of hostility that many blacks have towards whites might be, that attitude cannot be rightly labeled racist. Why? Because it is not generally believed by blacks that whites are either morally or intellectually inferior in virtue of being white. Blacks could believe this; and it has sometimes seemed that this is in fact what the Nation of Islam actually believes. Still, it has to be acknowledged that for the most part blacks believe no such thing.
But if by the strict definition above it follows that most blacks are not racist towards whites, what also follows, however, turns out to be, at once, quite disturbing and quite illuminating.
Racism is one kind of hostile immoral attitude that people can have towards others. It is by no means the only kind of hostile immoral attitude that people can have towards others. So from the fact that a group of people are not racist, given the strict definition above, it does not by any means follow that they merit being put on a moral pedestal.
It has seemed to me that many blacks have invoked the thesis that blacks cannot be racist as a kind of moral leverage—a way of invoking a kind of moral superiority on the part of blacks. But this line of reasoning is fundamentally mistaken if it is true that racism is but one of many forms of quite hostile immoral attitudes that a person may have towards others.
Serial rapists, for example, are generally not racist; for they typically rape members of their own ethnic background; though surely nothing changes if they rape members of every race and, morever, they rape females and males indiscriminately. I need not tell you, I trust, that the serial rapist has one of the most hostile attitudes imaginable that one human being can have towards another, no matter how indiscriminate they are with regard to race and gender. If I had to choose between being a racist or a serial rapist, I would without an ounce of hesitation opt to be a racist.
There are indeed social attitudes that are much more despicable than those attitudes that comprise racism. In fact, a racist can be quite paternalistic; whereas nothing of the sort can be said of a serial killer.
Blacks, like people of any ethnic group, can be driven by untold bitterness and viciousness. None of this need have a racist component to it (if by racism we mean viewing the other as inferior in some way or the other). Yet, the absence of a racist component does not in any way whatsoever take the sting out of the bitterness or the viciousness. This absence does not make either the bitterness or the viciousness more redeemable.
And if blacks use the idea that strictly speaking they cannot be racist as an excuse to be blind to the wrongs that they do to others, then in their evil manner blacks rival racists. For what we have is none other than two horrendous forms of moral blindness.
Alas, it is a fact about the world that people have used their pain as an excuse to wrong others. I once taught a blind-student who was so talented that one had to remind oneself of her blindness. I can say the same about a deaf student whom I taught. By contrast, I have taught others with handicaps whose manner required me to remind myself that I did not cause their handicap.
The serial rapist stands as an ever present reminder that without an ounce of racism one can be unbelievably vicious. If this is right, then the real interest question is not whether blacks are racist or not. For I am strictly speaking prepared to grant the claim that blacks are not racist. Rather, the real question is whether blacks are morally upright. And, as the serial rapist so poignantly reminds us, from the truth that one is not racist what does not in any way follow is that one is morally upright.
If we who are black are so besotted with the truth that we are not racist to see this moral reality, then it is very conceivable that we who are black are doing more harm than good both to ourselves and others, using our moral innocence in one area as an excuse for the wrong we do in other areas. And that moral trajectory goes by the name evil.
