Jackie Summers reminds us that racism didn’t start as a moral problem. It started as an economic one.
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There’s been much public kerfuffle in the past week about LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling. In short, his “girlfriend” recorded him making overtly racist remarks, and then released the tapes to TMZ. The public outcry was loud, and the NBA response was surprisingly swift, and decisive.
Real–and faux–moral outrage aside, I find their decision fascinating. Despite having a long, well documented history as a racist, the NBA took no previous action against Mr. Sterling. Why not? They might not have had any actual recourse. His previous actions–however reprehensible–never gave tangible evidence of possible damage to the organization. Until yesterday, the constitution and by-laws of the NBA were proprietary information. No longer; they’ve been published and are available for viewing online. The general (legal) consensus is: NBA commissioner Adam Silver invoked the “Best Interest of the Association” clause.” $5 billion in merchandising just wasn’t worth sacrificing for one man’s indiscretions. The final verdict: A lifetime ban, and a fine in the amount of $2.5 million. He will likely be forced to sell his team–at great personal profit.
What’s fascinating about this is: the NBA didn’t take a moral stance. they took a FIDUCIARY one.
Adam Silver, you may have just solved racism.
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To be clear, when I speak of ending racism, I’m not talking about bigotry, or personal prejudice and discrimination. I’m talking specifically about institutional racism: a system of creating and maintaining wealth first embraced in the middle ages in Europe, which infects and permeates every nook and cranny of our society to this day.
How can you tell if you’ve been subjected to institutionalized racism?
• Has there ever been a law which gave another person the right–to own–and thereby kill–you?
• Has there ever been a law prohibiting your citizenship because you were considered part of “a subordinate and inferior class of beings?”
• Were there ever laws subjecting you or your ancestors to systematized economic, educational, and social disadvantages?
• Have you ever had to face systemic disenfranchisement because of the color of your skin?
• Did you or any of your ancestors had to fight for the legal right to exist?
If you answered no to the above questions, your personal experiences are moot. You have never been subjected to institutionalized racism. Institutional racism is distinguished from bigotry or the racial bias of individuals by the existence of systematic policies and practices within governments and institutions that effectually disadvantage entire racial or ethnic groups. It is structural, having been codified in our customs, practices, and laws.
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Let’s think about the origins of racism as a system for a moment. Race–the concept of categorizing people according to their physical appearance, instead of their cultural background or nationality–only came into existence around 600 years ago. In Europe, centuries of fighting for limited resources contributed to a semi-constant state of war. Then, somewhere around the 14th century, land owners had the brilliant idea of offering concessions to tribes who looked like them, to keep masses from uniting and overthrowing them.
The motivation for creating divisiveness among the multi-colored poor wasn’t moral, it was economic. It worked. The concept of race-based discrimination was born. And it didn’t go unnoticed.
Fast forward to 1452. Pope Nicholas V issues a papal bull which comes to be known as the “Doctrine of Discovery.” In short, it authorizes conquest and colonization, granting explorers the right to take possession of people, their land, and all of their personal property. Under this directive, Christopher Columbus could show up on the shores of the Americas and claim “divine rights.” Europeans were taught that native cultures weren’t just inferior; they were sub-human, a subspecies of human; mentally, physically, and morally inferior. The African slave trade is born. Racism–as defined by papal law–replaces tribalism. It justifies centuries of slavery, and the worst kind of crimes against humanity imaginable.
Given the fantastic resources of the “new” world–lands, gold, and unlimited free labor–the triumph of institutionalized racism isn’t moral, it’s economic. It preserved–and created–incalculable wealth.
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To their credit, the American founding fathers didn’t invent institutionalized racism; they simply inherited the concepts from Europe and applied them to their fledgling nation. As early as 1619, businessman in America began exploiting the financial benefits of slave labor. Laudable concepts of “liberty and justice for all” legally only applied to white male land owners. The Doctrine of Discovery becomes “Manifest Destiny:” a belief that the moral and genetic superiority of American settlers granted them not just the right, but the responsibility, to annex lands and property occupied and possessed by Native Americans. America expanded westward, with the moral authority to commit wholesale genocide. It made America an economic superpower.
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With this brief and ugly history lesson over, one might ask: what does any of this have to do with Donald Sterling and the NBA? After all, this was centuries ago. We’re all enlightened enough at this point to agree–at least on the surface–that racism is, essentially wrong. So why, if racism is so universally repugnant, is it still so prevalent, so popular?
Because racism, is profitable.
Exploiting a sub-class of unpaid laborers (cough–NCAA–cough) remains a viable way to create enormous revenue. This is one explanation for the explosion of the prison population in America: private contracting of prisoners–comprised largely of black and hispanic men–is essentially indistinguishable from slave labor. This has proved to be a veritable corporate gold mine, and has fostered soaring incarceration rates. The social construct of race has been a means of creating wealth and maintaining economic inequality for half-a-millennia. It is in our socio-political DNA.
So how do you wean people off the teat of race-based privilege?
You spoil the milk. You make racism unprofitable.
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The NBA banned Donald Sterling for one reason: he was bad for business. They tolerated his racism right up unto the point where it might have impacted revenues, at which point he became an easily dispensed-of liability. So what happens if–now that we as a society are “enlightened” enough to universally view racism as morally repugnant–we use economic sanctions to make the institution SO unprofitable as to be detrimental to any business?
With all due respect to the incredible work accomplished by Mandela, Ghandi and King, we will never be able to regulate hearts and minds. Concepts of genetic superiority are incredibly seductive. People will always find reasons–good or bad–to hate someone, somewhere. But what if–over generations–we use the entrenched system to deconstruct the reasons why race based inequality was created in the first place?
The reeducation process may take hundreds of years. Systems of institutionalized racism took centuries to build; they’re not coming down overnight. Trying to teach people not to hate–that no one is intrinsically better than anyone else–could take a very, very long time. In the meantime, let’s make racism unprofitable. Let’s attack racism and privilege at the molecular level. We may never evolve beyond the seemingly inherent human need to feel superior to the next guy. We’re probably not going to solve economic inequality; society seemingly always reverts to hierarchy. Imposing economic sanctions that attack entrenched systems just might deconstruct the reasons why the system has been so effective for so long, and then clear a path for greater human understanding.
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Image, colored fountain, public domain
Excellent summary. Thank you.
its funny though. Hitler is credited with industrializing racism and bigotry but he didn’t. He got his cues from America and other European nations from colonialism. Manifest Destiny came out and was an instant sensation, long before Mien Kampf..World War II was about colonialism. Hitler wanted to extend colonialism to its logical conclusion. He wanted to make the world over in the image of what he and millions of other Europeans(and Americans) had understood for decades,that blonde haired and blue eyed whites were the most perfect in the world. The horrors that were unleashed on the entire world because of… Read more »
@ J Crawford I have experienced the same problems from time to time. I do not visit the site as frequently as a result.The Berlin Conference in 1884 -85 did something that Africans and other indigenous peoples around the world did not do: Organize, based on bigotry and clearly expressed and defined ideas of racial supremacy conspire to murder, convert, enslave, steal, rape and extract nther peoples resources. The black people of the Congo did not invade Belgium and kill 10 million Belgium’s.
I love it when there is a truly intelligent and considered argument presented. So much more effective than the usual knee jerk righteousness we so often see. Great article.
Generally accurate recent history here, and it’s a history not enough people are aware of. The problem with this historical interpretation is that it is not as unique to Western Europe as this article suggests, and that means that people of all races have oppressed ancestors, some based on race, others based on earlier forms of systematic oppression. Of the bullet point questions, only the fourth one (“Have you ever had to face systemic disenfranchisement because of the color of your skin?”) is unique to the last 500 years. All the others describe most hierarchal societies since the dawn of… Read more »
Every Comment I have posted on several articles on this site have been deleted, and I have looked at policy. I picked out this : {Comments on the Good Men Project are loosely moderated. That means we don’t check every comment, but if it raises a flag it will be held in queue until a moderator makes a decision in it. If your comment gets “held for moderation”, it usually means you either used inappropriate language, are commenting on a potentially provocative post that is more heavily moderated, your post is unduly long, has multiple links, or you have violated… Read more »