Abstract
Shortly before his death, Mike Royko got into trouble. In one of his last columns for The Chicago Tribune, he made an egregious error. After having mentioned the unusual first name of an African-American athlete, he went on to ask, “What is this thing with black names anyway?” For raising this question, he was almost immediately pilloried by a media-wide posse. Crusading and outspoken critic though he had always been,1 within two days he was forced to issue a retraction wherein he begged forgiveness for his indiscretion. To suggest that there was something peculiar about black names clearly had to be due to an unconscious bias. It implied that there was something wrong with them and this was an impression he wished to rectify.
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Notes and References
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On college campuses a double standard has come into existence with black students accorded the right to criticize even their most experienced professors. See: Kors, A. C. & Silverglate, H. A. (1998). The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses. New York: The Free Press.
I was both relieved and alarmed to discover the extent of this chilling effect as elaborated upon by Kors, A. C. & Silverglate, H. A., op cit.
The extent of “high-minded,” albeit foolish multiculturalism in classrooms is documented by: Bernstein, R. (1994). Dictatorship of Virtue: Multiculturalism and the Battle for America’s Future. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
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Many white fear the balkinization of their country. See: Schlesinger, A. M. (1992). The Disuniting of America. New York: W. W. Norton; Skrentny, J. L. (1996). The Ironies of Affirmative Action: Politics, Culture, and Justice in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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All subsequent quotations from Wolfe can be found in: Wolfe, A. (1996). Marginalized in the Middle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
The cognitive aspects of stereotyping are more complex than usually allowed. See: Hirschfield, L. A. (1996). Race in the Making: Cognition, Culture, and the Child’s Construction of Human Kinds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
For an openly Marxist analysis of the same phenomenon, see: Carr, L. G. (1997). “Color-Blind” Racism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. In Tuch et al. the same phenomenon is labeled “laissez-faire racism” and seems to refer to the proposition that those who do not ascribe to the activist race policies of the authors must in this very “passivity” be racist. See: Tuch, S. A. & Martin, J. K. (Eds.) (1997). Racial Attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and Change. Westport, CT: Praeger. Amy Elizabeth Ansell takes a similar position, describing those with whose policies she disagrees, as exemplifying a “new racism.” See: Ansell, A. E. (1997). New Right, New Racism: Race and Reaction in the United States and Britain. New York: New York University Press. See likewise: Waller, J. (1998). Face to Face: The Changing State of Racism across America. New York: Insight.
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Their conclusions may be controversial, but their basic numbers are not disputed, hence see: Herrnstein, R. J. & Murray, C. (1994). The Bell Curve: The Reshaping of American Life by Differences in Intelligence. New York: Basic Books.
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The trends in expressed attitudes are unequivocal. For instance, where once whites were almost unanimous in their disapprobation of interracial marriages, almost 90% now express their acceptance of these alliances. See: Sniderman, P. M. & Carmines, E. G. (1998). Reaching Beyond Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Schuman, H., Steeh, C, Bobo, L. & Kysman, M. (1997). Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations. Revised Edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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A case study from Chicago is presented by: Cayton, H. R. & Drake, St. C. (1946). Black Metropolis. London: Jonathan Cape.
Usually oblivious to their own paternalism, even liberals can treat blacks like children who need protection. See: Sleeper, J. (1997). Liberal Racism. New York: Viking.
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In: Thernstrom, S. & Thernstrom, A. (1997). America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible. New York: Simon & Schuster.
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For what is probably the most influentuial cultural interpretation of the black family see: Frazier, E. F. [1939] (1960). The Negro Family in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
For a denial of the connection, however, see: Guttman, H. G. (1977). The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925. New York: Vintage Books.
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Cruse, H. (1967). The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership. New York: William Morrow.
Despite almost universal condemnation, hierarchy is a universal human phenomenon, found in every society and every era. See: Hurst, C. E. (1995). Social Inequality: Forms, Causes, and Consequences, 2nd Edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon; Kerbo, H. R. (1996). Social Stratification and Inequality, 3rd Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.
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Stephen Carter, a professor of law at Yale University, expresses his ambivalence at being helped to get into college because of his race. He is particularly concerned to defend his own abilities as responsible for his success. See: Carter, S. L. (1991). Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby. New York: Basic Books.
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Jennifer Hochschild argues that as long as discrimination remains, the American Dream is denied to even middle class blacks. See: Hochschild, J. (1995). Facing Up to the American Dream. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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For an overview of the relation between blacks and the legal system see: Kennedy, R. (1997). Race, Crime, and the Law. New York: Random House. For a passionate defense of jury nullification see: Butler, P. (1995). Racially based jury nullification: black power in the criminal justice system.” Yale Law Review, 105, 677.
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As an example, the long time advocate of integration, Christopher Jencks, has come to the anguished conclusion that policies he has advocated have not been particularly successful. See: Jencks, C. (1992). Rethinking Social Policy: Race, Poverty and the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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(1999). Extreme II: Radical Civil Rights. In: The Limits of Idealism. Clinical Sociology: Research and Practice. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-585-29601-2_6
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