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1. Selling Race and Racism to the Pub(l)ic
I began by reading two best-sellers, How To Be Anti-Racist written by Mr. Abram X. Kendi and The Bell Curve, by Charles Murray and Richard J. Hernstein. Both authors have written on race and racism from opposing viewpoints. The former is oriented politically towards the left, the other, to the right; one is purporting to be a political analysis using socio-historical methods, the other, purporting to be scientific using socio-biological methods. Both are attempting to communicate to the public, not only the facts and fictions of race and racism but how to direct personal and public policy with regard to their methods and findings. Elsewhere, I have written a review of Kendi’s book (to be published shortly on Medium)
Since the end of World War II, the fall of the Nazi regime, and the establishment of U.N.E.S.C.O., the public has become used to an onslaught of such best-sellers; each taking us through the revolving door of theories and policy proposals; each providing us with the preparatory conditions for understanding race and racism, only to find their arguments easily refutable, misunderstood, and misread by the debutant and savant alike.
Various developments, not only in the contemporary scene but in the long and complicated history of race and racism, reveal symptoms of an inherent difficulty in writing about the subject. These difficulties are manifest in the hostilities that often greet anyone who attempts to speak or teach anything about race or racism in public. Murray and Herrnstein write:
The dangers of the misinformation are compounded by the nature of the contemporary discussion of race just beneath the surface of American life, people talk about race in ways that bear little resemblance to the politically correct public discussion. Conducted in the workplace, dorm rooms, taverns, and country clubs, by people in every ethnic group, this dialogue is troubled and often accusatory. [ The Bell-Curve, p.297]
It is worth examining why this is the case and what prevents an effective approach to race and racism in public today.
