By way of a conclusion, we must address this question: Is it possible to eradicate the scourge of racism/ethnicism? The answer is yes and no.

The ability of racists to discriminate against victims rests on the possession of power via the monopoly of political and/or economic means. The term racism, it is important to emphasize, does not cover xenophobia, the paranoid fear of and/or hostility toward strangers based on race or ethnicity. Whereas xenophobia is generally “curable” via education and amicable contact with those one fears, racism cannot be “cured” in this sense. As an ideology, racism has a specific rational function: to facilitate discriminate against victims in order to obtain and/or retain monopoly over access to resources and services in society. Consequently, racism is ultimately rooted in terms of its genesis in economic factors; and, therefore, the strategy for fighting the ideology of racism depends on a number of concrete material actions—not psychiatric treatment as in the case of xenophobia. These would include:

(a) Instituting a dialectical relationship between legislation that prohibits discrimination (whether in education, housing, government, or any other area of public life) and the economic and political empowerment of the victims of racism via concrete measures (e.g., affirmative action programs) that address the injustices of the past.

(c) Breaking the chain of socialization that permits the ideology from being passed from one generation to the next by outlawing all manifestations of racist ideology in public life—including, and most especially, in the media--traditional media and social media.[1]

(e) Consistent,persistent and spirited leadership from the highest levels of government and other public and social institutions in condemning racism and racial discrimination. (In the United States and in Britain, for example, it is not a coincidence that the resurgence of virulent racism in the 1980s, and later again around 2016 and beyond, came with the election of government leaders with racist proclivities.)

It is important, here, to stress two points. First, that the institution of the types of measures just indicated are aimed at undermining—but not eliminating—the mechanism by which the racist ideology performs its socioeconomic and political functions (see below): the cultivation of a mythology of racial superiority that is imbibed by both victimizer and victim. The victimizer proclaims his/her racial superiority to justify all racially-inspired injustices inflicted on victims, while victims are rendered impotent against racist tyranny—until exceptional consciousness raising circumstances surface— because of a racist-inspired (‘blame the victim’) inferiority complex. It is a complex that rests on a dialectic in which the inferior material conditions of the victim are explained by the racist victimizer on the basis of the victim’s supposed inherent inferiority, rather than the racist discrimination that is responsible for the inferior material conditions in the first place. Given this critical function that the mythology plays in racist ideologies it should be noted that its cultivation is not consequence of irrationality and ignorance. Hence, not surprisingly, anti-racist strategies that depend on debunking the mythology stand little chance of success. Only “political” measures such as those just mentioned can undermine racism. In fact, the enormous amounts of time and energy spent on debunking the racist mythology are simply a waste of time and may even play into the hands of the racists.

Spaces of Racial Respite

Second, the foregoing should not imply that measures such as those indicated above will lead to the complete elimination of racism at the institutional level. That is simply not possible in any society that also relies on racism as an important means of capitalist accumulation (limitless acquisition of wealth by the capitalist class, that is the bourgeoisie). It is simply not possible to eliminate institutionalized racism under conditions of capitalism. What is possible is to make racism bearable for victims of it by blunting the more egregious aspects of racism at the institutional level (e.g. in employment, housing, education, policing, etc.), and by reducing racial and/or xenophobic friction at the interpersonal level. This last strategy should not be scoffed at. While, yes, it is impossible for a single individual or even a group of individuals to eliminate institutional racism under conditions of capitalism; it is possible to eliminate interpersonal racism at the individual level, especially in capitalist democratic societies, depending upon place and circumstances (two good examples of which are interracial marriages, and interracial adoptions of children). In other words, the best we can hope for is creating what may be called spaces of racial respite where enlightened and decent individuals overcome racism at the individual interpersonal level to create a fair and friendly environment for everyone in those spaces—in the classroom, in the workplace, in families, etc.

(Text continues below, however, you must study the image(s) too.)

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NOTES

[1] Such a measure, in the United States for example, will rankle with those who are (or claim to be) opposed to all forms of censorship; however, they have to be reminded that freedom from racist discrimination that violates fundamental human rights of victims takes precedence over freedom from censorship. Inability to comprehend this simple point is indicative of the fact that such people have simply misunderstood the purpose of First Amendment rights, or they are in actuality “closet racists”—especially considering that, not surprisingly, those who oppose muzzling racists from advancing their gutter ideology in the media (on grounds that the U.S. constitution protects the dissemination of such ideology under the First Amendment rights) invariably, tend not to belong to the group that is being victimized. Surely, if all speech was beyond prohibition, then why are there laws concerning libel (defamation through print, writing, pictures or signs aimed at injuring a person’s reputation) and slander (defamation through oral speech)? Clearly, freedom of speech is not absolute—except, one has to assume, when it comes to inflicting racist injury on victims. 

Racism was determined to be a crime against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials, yet those who advocate and champion the practice of such a crime are deemed to be protected by First Amendment rights! Such rank hypocrisy is only possible under conditions of pervasive racism where even normally intelligent people momentarily abandon their intellect in favor of meaningless slogans that racists have seized upon to smuggle in their gutter ideology. To be sure, there must be vigilance against censorship, but in the West, especially in the United States, the struggle against censorship has been marked by much hypocrisy and ignorance. For example: there is no campaign visible anywhere against the monopolization of the mass media by a handful of giant transnational corporations—which has resulted in a pernicious and pervasive censorship of alternative political viewpoints via the “normal” operation of the market and the “normal” politics of media ownership (he who pays the piper calls the tune). There is no campaign anywhere to force the media to hire, employ, consult writers and commentators with ideological viewpoints different from those of the owners and controllers of the media (e.g., commentators who are not enamored of capitalism and neoimperialistic relations with the PQD ecumene).

The struggle against censorship requires a balanced perspective on what is truly worth fighting for (e.g., against censorship of information that expose the true corrupt nature of the capitalist class and its allies, or information that expose the governmental misuse of taxpayers’ money and/or the mandate of the citizenry to govern for purposes of undertaking nondemocratic and corrupt clandestine projects—like obtaining assistance from drug lords to overthrow legitimate foreign governments) and what should not be fought for (e.g., against censorship of racist propaganda aimed at hurting and psychologically destroying other human beings, as well as fomenting race hatred among the vulnerable—such as working-class youth.) To defend racists who use words to attack and wound people simply because their skin color is different from theirs by arguing that racist speeches and writings are constitutionally protected is a gross perversion of the intent of the First Amendment. What about the rights of the victims? Don’t victims have a right to be protected from the verbal abuse of bigots (who derive their strength, like the typical cowards they are, from the fact that they have the power of numbers, being in the majority); abuse that produce in victims all kinds of mental anguish ranging from shame through anger and from defensiveness to withdrawal; abuse that undermines their self-worth and esteem? Champions of anti-censorship on any grounds may be surprised to learn that the United States is, perhaps, the only country in the Western world that offers governmental protection to bigots and hatemongers. (See Matsuda [1989] for more on this issue; see also Wiener [1990] who discusses this matter in relation to bigots and racists on university campuses.)