By Richard Hoste • 6/26/09
A review of Silent Racism: How Well-Meaning White People Perpetuate the Racial Divide, by Barbara Trepagnier. Paradigm Publishers 2006, 181 pages.
In 2007, public outrage greeted a mandatory freshman diversity training program at the University of Delaware. The program coerced students into accepting that all white people were the beneficiaries of a “white supremacist system” and pressured them to profess a willingness to date interracially. Fortunately, due to the intervention of a civil liberties group, the program was scrapped. But why was it started in the first place?
The answer ultimately lies in white cowardice: whites refuse to assert any kind of positive racial identity and have allowed radical multiculturalists to define them. In the book Understanding White Privilege, Frances E. Kendall quotes a young girl who tells a lecturer speaking about racism that she “doesn’t want to be seen as white.”1 In White Like Me, antiracist guru Tim Wise tells of a workshop exercise in which groups of non-whites and whites listed what they liked about their racial cultures. Non-whites listed their customs, their music, their strong family ties, and even their colors. However, the white list was very different:
When it was our turn we came up, finally, with a predictable list… We like not being followed around in stores on suspicion of being shoplifters; we like the fact that we’re not presumed out of place on a college campus or in a high-ranking position; we like the fact that we don’t have to constantly overcome negative stereotypes about our intelligence, morality, honesty, or work ethic, the way people of color do.2
Of course, whites are just as entitled to group pride as other races, arguably more so. After all, our family ties are considerably stronger than theirs—compare our rates of out-of-wedlock birth with those of blacks or Mexicans. White skin color is universally admired.3 Our cultural and scientific achievements are unrivaled. However, the clamor that would greet any assertion of positive white identity is so strong that the majority of whites prefer to equate whiteness with racism or not to think about race at all.
Into this void enters whiteness studies, an academic movement that is by no means at the fringe. According to a 2003 article in the Washington Post, classes on whiteness were offered at 30 universities, among them Princeton and the University of California-Berkley. Wise’s website tells us that he has not only spoken at over 400 college campuses, but has also trained teachers, military personnel, and law enforcement officials.
While readers of White America might want whites to develop some kind of collective identity, Wise’s version is probably not what they have in mind. In whiteness studies, the idea that there are meaningful biological differences among the races is considered a fiction. Therefore, racial gaps in income, crime, and everything else must be due to a system that privileges white people. Being colorblind is not a solution because it merely perpetuates the unjust status quo. Whites need to be aware of white privilege and strive not only to achieve political and social equality, but to rid themselves and everyone else of stereotypes and other impure thoughts about non-whites.
One thing we have to thank the antiracists, as they call themselves, for is clearly spelling out the world-view of the elites. Usually leukophobia, or anti-white bias, is implicit and covert, but in whiteness studies, it is explicit and blatant. And, let’s make it clear, loathing of whites has bipartisan support. You will be hard pressed to find a Republican of any prominence arguing against the basic axioms of whiteness studies: white pride is bad, minority pride is good, race is biologically meaningless, whites are advantaged, social disparities can be explained by social and historical factors. An “extremist” like Tom Tancredo would probably only take issue with the second and fourth propositions. Indeed, the only debate is about the degree of white culpability for non-whites’ failings and the amount of repentance that is required for it.
Barbara Trepagnier, a true believer in this theory of whiteness, is a sociology professor at Texas State University-San Marco. According to her website, she also works for the for the “Task Force on Racial Disproportionality,” which is sponsored by Texas Child Protective Services. While it is unclear how much power this position entails, it is frightening that this woman is employed by an agency that can intervene in family affairs.
Trepagnier’s book Silent Racism is not aimed at the cross-burners, the readers of this site, or even ordinary conservatives, but rather those whom academics of her ilk deem “well-meaning” whites. The book is based on a series of group conversations among white women aged 18 to 76 who responded to fliers calling for “women against racism.”4 The conversations were designed to expose whites’ hidden biases and show them how they benefit from white privilege. Through this therapy, the study participants were supposed to learn how to recognize and purge their impure thoughts, befriend minorities, and strive towards equality.
Trepagnier’s definition of racism comprises more or less everything that a white person can possibly think or not think, say or not say, or do or not do when it comes to matters of race. Most whites associate the term “racist” with the Klan or Nazis. According to Trepagnier, this definition is harmful because it allows them to put themselves in the “not racist” category and get themselves off the hook. Whiteness studies will have none of that. Instead of being racists or non-racists, whites can only be more or less racist.
Trepagnier puts whites on a continuum with explicitly racist whites at one extreme. As you move along the line, you first meet colorblind racism, which is basically modern conservatism. At the other extreme is silent racism, which is the best whites can hope for. As Trepagnier explains, “There are two primary manifestations of silent racism: stereotypical images that set black Americans, as a group, apart from white Americans, and paternalistic assumptions that denote a sense of superiority in some whites in comparison to some blacks.” So whites who notice race differences and those who do not, or at least try not to, are both racists. Even whites who explicitly endorse multiculturalism do not get off the hook: they are guilty of aversive racism, which “occurs when negative feelings toward blacks are denied in order for well-intentioned whites to maintain a self-image as ‘not racist.’” Multiculturalism, explains Trepagnier, leads to a “fascination with differing cultural identities and a celebration of tolerance, a term that implies that minority groups deviate from the white norm and must be put up with as an act of charity.” The squirming of the liberals and antiracists does not save them; it just improves their position on the continuum of evil, moving them closer to the sacrosanct moral ideal embodied by people of color, to whom not a single impure deed or thought is attributed in the whole book. The women in Trepagnier’s studies, and the author herself, are, of course, racists the silent variety.5
This book deals only with blacks and whites. As a lame excuse for the absence of any consideration of Hispanics, Trepagnier says that attitudes towards Hispanics might have been “tainted” because of the political atmosphere in California during the 1990s, when these conversations took place. The bias of whiteness studies towards white-black relations is peculiar. One reason for it may be that practioners in this field wish to adopt the heroic mantle of the civil rights movement—after all, they call themselves the “new abolitionists.” Also, this limitation has the virtue of making things easier on whiteness studies scholars, as taking other ethnic groups into account would make the analysis much more complicated. Finally, one suspects that more successful minorities are not mentioned because it is harder to fit them into a picture of America as the land of white oppression.
In the conversations, Trepagnier explores the psyches of her progressive white female subjects and encourages them to engage in a kind of Maoist self-criticism. Trepagnier asks them whether they have ever done anything they considered racist, whether they have non-white friends, what they do when they hear a racist joke, and other questions of the sort. The author herself and other women in the group then expose and analyze supposed instances of stereotyping and paternalism in the answers.
The most common such “stereotype” about blacks is predictable. A woman named Jean recalls the following incident, which took place when she and two friends were walking to a hotel:
An African American man with an airport van waved, offering us a ride. I went into a panic… I really thought about that, you know, like, did I have a reason to be afraid?…If he had been white, would I have felt differently about it? It made me think for weeks after that, trying to come up with an answer.6
When a woman named Joan is asked why she fears black men, she explains that her unease comes from “reality, to a certain extent.” But this cannot pass. After all, one of the axioms of whiteness studies is that all stereotypes about blacks are unfounded: “Stereotypical images are based on misinformation about blacks prevalent in the culture.”7 Another woman in the group steps in:
Violet spoke to Joan, making the point that “statistically, victims of crime are predominantly people of color, not white women. Black-on-white crime, especially concerning white women, is very [rare]…. I have that kind of fear too but I classify it as irrational.”8
There are so many mistakes here that it is hard to know where to begin. First of all, a very large majority of crime victims in the US are whites. According to the National Criminal Victimization Survey, in 2006 there were 4.8 million white victims of personal crimes—violent crimes and theft—but only one million black victims and 264,000 victims of other race. Nor is black-on-white crime particularly rare: in 2006, blacks committed 680,000 crimes of violence against whites, or 15 percent of all violent crimes that had white victims.9 Besides, crime rates are so staggeringly high among black men that is perfectly justifiable to steer clear of them. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a full 32 percent of black men will enter prison in their lifetimes. Shaming whites for being afraid of black men is deeply irresponsible and harmful, as doing so encourages whites to put themselves at risk of crime.
After stereotyping, the second sin of the redeemable racists is paternalism. Though superficially benevolent, paternalists treat blacks in a protective, parental manner that implies they are children who cannot fend for themselves. As an example, one of the women recalls that she ordered ice cream for her black friend, who indignantly retorted, “I can order for myself.” Trepagnier gives her own family as another example of paternalism. In her childhood, a young black man named James would do odd jobs for her family. James was eventually accepted as “part of the family.” However, this was treating him as “good Southerners treated their slaves.” “That’s the kind of racism I was brought up with,” concludes the author. James himself seems not to have minded paternalist treatment, however, and even to have welcomed it.10
It’s a Catch-22. If you exclude blacks from your family circle, you are a racist, but if you include them, you are a racist, too.
The irony of Trepagnier’s crusade against paternalism is that there is nothing more paternalistic towards blacks than the whiteness studies worldview. Nowhere in this book does the author give any indication that blacks are moral agents responsible for their actions and destinies. Their lot depends exclusively on what goes on consciously or unconsciously in the heads of whites.
This assumption of black powerlessness is particularly absurd because, as the author concedes, white Americans today revile and even punish people for explicit racism, and anti-discrimination laws and affirmative action policies designed to help blacks are in place. If Jews succeeded in early 20th century America despite blatant discrimination against them, is it credible that blacks are powerless to help themselves in an environment that is so much friendlier? Isn’t it, in fact, insulting to think this way?
Another axiom of whiteness studies is that blacks are incapable of being unreasonable. Whites are expected to take all of their complaints seriously, even ones of doubtful validity. For example, one of the discussants tells the following story about travelling with a black family:
When we pulled up to a hotel I sort of assumed that the mother would make the arrangements for the hotel room because it was her family and I was just along as a guest. But it was more or less unspoken on their part; they were surprised that I wasn’t getting out of the car right away. They had to explain it to me. They said, “Look, you would get a better room, so why don’t you go make the arrangements?” I thought, oh, wow, talk about privilege!… I even had nightmares—I thought, “What would it be like every single moment of every day, being reminded that you’re not good enough—for no particular reason.”11
It is highly dubious, to say the least, that hotels in contemporary America have a policy of giving blacks worse rooms than whites. Certainly, hotels have no incentive to discriminate in this way, as doing so would court trouble from the NAACP and other black advocacy organizations. Yet the possibility is never raised that the perception of the black family is unreasonable. The same is true throughout: blacks are just incapable of being wrong.
If white people are guilty for failing to notice racial dynamics in some circumstances, they can also be blamed for noticing them in others, another Catch-22. One woman recalls:
I had an incident right after the Los Angeles uprisings [again, following the not-guilty verdict in the Rodney King beating case]. I talked to a black friend of mine [Ralene] and in the conversation…I said “I’m so sorry about what happened in L.A.,” as if somehow this tragedy was worse for her than for me [or other whites]. I found out later that Ralene had been hurt to discover that I perceived our relationships to the event in L.A. differently simply because I am white and she is black, that being the only difference between us.12
So what exactly about this incident makes it one of those times when we are not supposed to notice race? We are not told. The only rule that whites have to go by is that blacks are always right.
One of the reasons the women display such patience with black bellyaching may be that they are projecting their own morality onto the black psyche. As recently discussed on this site, the races appear to differ not only in intelligence, but in their modes of moral reasoning. One consequence of these differences may be that whites assess blame in a more principled manner than blacks. When whites complain, they usually have something to complain about; the same is not true, however, of blacks. As testament to blacks’ paranoia, take a gander at some of the conspiracy theories that are rampant among blacks. Whiteness studies, however, requires that whites not only treat blacks as their equals, but actually as their superiors. If whites talked such transparent nonsense, other whites would not hesitate to tell them to shut up!
The everlasting sensitivity and patience that Trepagnier requires of whites are more likely to be found among women than men. John Derbyshire has observed that the whole diversity movement runs on estrogen, so it is revealing that Trepagnier specifically chose women for her conversations. To their credit, men would likely not make fit subjects for such exercises in antiracist confessionalism.
The women’s willingness to constantly accept blame for racism may appear masochistic, but another instance of paternalism that Trepagnier cites suggests a different motive:
Another participant, Mary, told about going to lunch with a Chicana friend who picked her up at work. Mary acknowledged the following about her realization that coworkers would observe her with her friend. She said, “I found myself thinking how proud I was of myself that I have this woman of color coming to see me and that she’s a friend—and I realize that I’m thinking this. It was a real humbling experience. I think there are a lot of us who think, when we’re hanging around with our friends who are people of color, ‘I’m so cool.’” Mary made that comment with a great deal of race awareness, which is an important step toward lessening the paternalistic assumptions.13
We have here a clear case of what Ian Jobling has called “diversity snobbery,” in which openness to diversity is taken as a sign of tolerance, open-mindedness, courage, and intelligence. Having a Hispanic friend makes Mary feel “cool,” and her recognition that this feeling is paternalistic makes her even cooler in the eyes of Trepagnier. Antiracism may well be motivated more by snobbery than masochism, as whites try to prove themselves more open and sensitive than their peers.
For someone with a clear perception of reality, Silent Racism is a depressing read. However, some glimmers of sanity can be detected in the book like live embers glowing through a heap of dusty ash. It is encouraging that, as we saw above, some of the women still admit to being afraid of black men; one of them is even willing to brave disapproval by stating that her fears are based on “reality, to a certain extent.” Despite being indoctrinated with the ideology of racial equality, white women still know in their gut that black men are dangerous.
In The Myth of the Rational Voter, Bryan Caplan develops a theory of what he calls “standby rationality” that is illuminating here.14 In the Soviet Union, Caplan notes, Marxists insisted that Western science had been corrupted by capitalism and developed their own novel communist theories of the workings of nature. When it came to genetics, the Marxists rejected the Darwinist theory of evolution, replacing it with a convoluted notions based on discredited, pre-Darwinist biology. “Lysenkoism,” as it was called, resulted in harmful agricultural policies, but did not threaten the survival of the regime. However, when it came to physics, the outcome was very different. Some Soviet ideologues argued for a novel communist variety of physics that would reject bourgeois fallacies like quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity—at least until a scientist explained that the Soviet Union would never succeed in developing a nuclear bomb unless scientists used Western physics. “The ‘Lysenkoization’ of Soviet physics never came.” In sum, Soviet leaders put ideology over reason until doing so resulted in a serious threat to their interests.
A similar pattern is apparent in American attitudes about race. It’s easy to suspend reason and vote Democrat, speak out against racism in class, attend antiracist workshops, have all the right opinions, and feel morally superior. But when it comes to our own safety, standby rationality takes over and we act, however unconsciously, on the stereotypes we publicly reject. Perhaps evolution endowed us with a tendency to accept fashionable lies in order to fit in socially, but to act on what we know to be truth when our interests are seriously threatened. Anyway, lurking beneath the surface of egalitarian attitudes, a basic sanity may persist that race realists can appeal to.
Other glimmerings of realism in the book should be noted. One woman wonders if low black achievement might have biological causes.15 Another woman asks, with good intentions, whether Marcus Garvey was right that blacks would be better off if they left America so that they would not have to deal with racism anymore.16 The author, of course, finds this suggestion repulsive, but wouldn’t this be a reasonable course if the antiracist worldview is accurate?
If these journeys into the white subconscious prove anything, it is that what Trepagnier calls “racism” is probably here to stay. If the enormous differences between blacks and whites in rates of criminality and educational attainment persist, no amount of indoctrination can brainwash us into not noticing them.
Moreover, for those interested in promoting a race realist, pro-white movement, it may be that the negative, guilty racial identity promoted by whiteness studies holds more potential than the conservative doctrine of race-blindness. After all, writers like Trepagnier encourage whites to see themselves as a group. If they are successful in this task, perhaps whites will start to display other attributes typical of group identity, such as group pride and a desire for group rights.
Finally, whiteness studies may be beneficial to race realists because it makes the absurdities of racial egalitarianism so obvious. The field is so flagrantly unfair to whites that it cannot help but provoke some pushback. Let’s hope that our opponents become more absurd, not less so, and thereby aid us in awakening the sleeping giant that is white racial consciousness.
Richard Hoste runs the HBD Books blog.