The Problem of Judgment in Racial Inequality Today

An important concept relative to racial inequality and the judgment of people of color is Social Value. In The Color of Our Shame, Lebron defines the Problem of Social Value as “the fact that blacks do not occupy an equal place in the scheme of normative attention and concern upon which our society depends in the first place to justify the distribution of benefits and burdens, as well as to identify those who are deserving or appropriate recipients” (Lebron 46). In the quote above, Lebron elaborates on our society’s lack of recognition of critical racial judgments, specifically from a White perspective. Thus, this allows for the practice of Systemic Racial Inequality, which is essentially the automatic disadvantage that the Black community in particular, has of achieving their goals, in comparison to the advantages of the White community. As the text states, “Merely being born black is a reliable predictor of one’s future life prospects” (Lebron 47). It is completely inappropriate for our society to use one’s color of skin as a determinate of one’s treatment and array of opportunities. The continuous practice by our society of treating and judging people of color in a specific manner due to historical influences and practices should not be a consideration. I believe Lebron is right in that we who engage in such racial unfairness and harsh judgment should feel shameful. Nevertheless, in relation to truly knowing and being conscious of racial judgments, Lebron is correct in that we are sometimes simply unaware of our perceptions. This creates tension between ideal judgment (understanding the difference between right and wrong) and practical judgment (applying reasonable conceptions of right and wrong to action). How can one distinguish in the moment if their judgment is ideal or practical? What if a majority knows they are engaging with ideal judgment rather than practical but do not put an effort to take part in the latter? How can we then improve racial inequality with our society’s lack of effort and motivation?

3 am feels

            The notion of path dependence raises concerns about the nature of institutional development. According to Lebron, path dependence in regard to institutional reform refers to how an institution’s future prospects are limited by the past through several natural mechanisms. Path dependency plays a large role in the persistence of norms, identity, and character. In order to explain the persistence of racial biases, Lebron asserts that, “institutions can come to possess bad characteristics that are not easily shed, thus continue to produce outcomes consistent with bad character” (60).

            There are several obstacles encountered when advocating for institutional development. Mainly, social initiatives require a certain amount of social momentum—the ideas presented must be supported by many, the incentives must align, etc. However, once these social initiatives take place, they provide “learning effects,” (59) which reinforce these new ideas and make it more difficult to pursue other initiatives. This isn’t wholly bad—this actually suggests that once social initiatives overcome barriers (social initiatives that would combat implicit racism in some shape or form), they will remain stable. Lebron emphasizes, on the one hand, how this resistance to change can be a good thing. It is incredibly difficult to reform the constitution for good reason; the constitution provides fundamental principles that are not subject to the whim of whichever political party is in control. On the other hand, however, this resistance can be detrimental to the development of good national character in the context of today's institutions' bad character.

            Perhaps if one could hold companies and politicians to a higher standard, by evidencing their moral dissonance through shame, the “large setup costs” (59) of implementing new social initiatives could be overcome and institutional change could lead the way for new norms. An initial thought is that shaming politicians and executives through social media and news platforms could be extremely effective. Negative PR threatens support and sales. If we can convince a handful to support these reforms, the effects of them will influence all members of society. It also raises the question: how are socially corrupted members of society to “gather influence and backing, convince dissenters, and overcome competing entrenched interests” (59) if the initial institutional character, which is bad, produces and perpetuates bad character within society?

Will The Just Trojan Horse Be Effective?

            Lebron’s synthesis of the problem of racial inequality in the United States is spot-on. It is clearly a politically systemic issue of social value, an issue with our institutions and ourselves, and one that should cause us to feel shame. As a democracy, we have principles which we blatantly do not uphold when it comes to race. I do not take issue with his analysis. In fact, I do not take issue with his solutions, either. That said, I do not think that there will be a smooth transition at all, and I’m a little worried about the efficacy of them, particularly the Just Trojan Horse. To illustrate these worries, let’s look at his examples of hiring blacks to be part of the police force and at Whole Foods. I think the biggest transitionary issue will be that white people may assume that any black person working with them only had the job because of their race. Despite those misguided ideas, it is likely that the black person is just as qualified (or more so) for the job as the white person, yet I am worried that the aforementioned sentiment will prevail. This would seem to create the very social circumstances that Lebron notes in our society currently, which reinforce historical stereotypes and imprint themselves on the sociopsychology of everyone involved. Thus, I am worried that the Just Trojan Horse, while great in theory, will be ineffective in practice, or at least take a very long time to have a real effect. That is not to say, though, that it is not worth trying.

Blackness as Failure

I became particularly interested with Lebron's explanation behind the systematic oppression that black children face in America. In his example of second-generation West Indians, he outlines how teens distance themselves from the idea of American blackness to establish that they are almost "a different stock" and even go so far as to cultivate an accent in preparation for a job interview in an effort to show employers that their values are not aligned with those of black Americans (66).

While reading chapter two, I became reminded of a popular video that shows how black children have adopted values that influence them into believing that being born with white skin is almost obviously superior than being born with black skin. In the video, they associate traits such as beauty, intellect, and positive behavior with white skin color. At around 7:30, however, one black child finally seems to show a preference for her own color when she points to a white doll after being asked to identify which is "bad". Yet, after being asked to provide further clarification, the black child admits that she believes the white doll is bad because the doll has a history of making racist comments toward other dark-skinned dolls. According to the black child, a white child is at risk of exhibiting negative behavior only when they call attention to the assumption that black children deserve a lesser place in American society.

Characterizing Non-People

Usually, when we think about variations of goodness and badness, we think about people being good or bad. We think "Donald Trump is a selfish person", "The Dalai Lama is a pious person", etc. Lebron characterizes not only people but also institutions as having character. He writes: "Institutions display bad character when: (1) they distinctly and systematically marginalize some citizens; (2) and do so under the auspices of and sometimes in the name of democratic values" (61). Of course, there are other ways that institutions can display bad character, such as failing to uphold contracts or infringing on other people or their property, but Lebron's argument is that any time an institution ticks the two boxes above, it displays bad character. When examining the social contract, it makes sense that any government rules under the auspices of democratic values. While there's definitely a debate over what constitutes consenting to a government, that government nevertheless has an obligation to its citizens' well-being.

Lebron applying the same morals to both people and institutions is nothing short of profound. A gut-reaction worry about making a moral evaluation of a large institution is that the judge makes a hasty generalization; examining each person on a case-by-case basis should provide a more accurate answer. Lebron justifies his application, arguing that "...what allows us to apply the idea of character to institutions is that (1) they display dispositions and (2) exhibit agency resulting in (3) behaviors that are susceptible to moral criticism or praise." (60) Essentially, institutions can intrude on a key human rights, marginalize citizens, and commit other crimes, and Lebron argues that it is fair to apply terms like "goodness" and "badness" to these institutions. On the generalization worry, Lebron primarily weighs how such an institution affects those living under it, for better or for worse. While membership of an institution changes as time goes on - in the United States' case, whether the Republicans or Democrats control the branches of government - systemic racism has remained constant. The bottom line is that if the model we use to evaluate whether or not an institution deserves shame is its results, Lebron is free to pass moral judgment on instiutions.

The Question of Wealth and National Character

A main tenet of Lebron's argument is that we must target national character primarily in order to have a properly effective political theory. He says, "justice talk must shift away from being talk about goods, and instead, about the heart of our national character" (125). His argument for this point is well founded, as it is the problem of social value and national character that will enable lasting changes with our disconnect between our democratic values and how our institutions function in practice. However, later in chapter 5, he distinctly says, "I mean to emphasize [distributive justice's] limited ability to account for and respond to social ails outside of the bounds of material concerns..." (142). So, my question is, can Lebron's theory of democratic perfectionism produce the kind of results that he desires without fundamentally incorporating some distributive justice into its implementation?

We all know that the issue of income inequality has become more and more pressing in recent times, and that low-income families are disproportionately comprised of people of color. But what is not as well known is the disproportionate distribution of wealth. "The wealth of white households was 13 times the median wealth of black households in 2013, compared with eight times the wealth in 2010, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances" (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great-recession/). The problem with this is that generations of oppression and marginalization which all started with the disenfranchisement of African American slaves has allowed a huge amount of wealth to accumulate in the white population's hands. This means that even if we were to immediately apply Lebron's complete proposal of democratic perfectionism, it is not clear that we would be able to achieve the rise in social value that is necessary for perfect racial equality. 

Even if, through formidable equality of opportunity that will develop for blacks as the implicit racism in institutions and people melts away, we see a rise in average black income, this will not fix the problem of wealth. Let's say there are two workers at a company making the same salary-- one of them is white, the other is black. Though they make the same amount of money, the white worker is more likely to have more discretionary income to invest into financial gains than the black worker is. This could be possible through a situation as simple as the white worker's parents leaving money in their will. Thus, though the black workers would be making as much as their white counterparts, they may not be able to climb the socioeconomic ladder beyond middle to upper middle class in great enough numbers for us to see more racial equality in the wealthiest of our nation. If this is the case, how far can Lebron's proposals raise the social value of blacks before it hits a wall? If those holding the most wealth in our country are not equally (or proportionately) representative, it seems there will still be an institutional implicit bias that blacks are inherently worth a lesser social value. How can Lebron avoid this without directly incorporating some kind of distributional justice into his scheme? 

The Justification of Moral-agency Perfectionism

Lebron justifies moral-agency perfectionism in two ways as he claims: theoretical justification and political justification. It is not clear which part is strictly theoretical and which part is political because the two are mixed somewhat, but it is clear that Justification I is a negative justification (a little problematic) whereas Justification II is a positive Justification (same as his main idea across the book).

For the negative justification, autonomy is the core. Autonomy is essential to liberals because it is the hallmark of individuality and secures political voice, which is fundamentally important for granting the state and its institutions legitimacy (128). As long as one’s behavior is legal, one may choose to do whatever one wants. But Lebron claims that one’s behavior is not autonomous if one does not have justifiable reasons for it. Further, he says that autonomy is achieved by revisiting one’s reason again and again. According to Lebron, it is fundamental to autonomy that there is a direct relationship between one’s freely affirmed principles and one’s reasons for acting and believing (128). But notice if one acted based on Lebron’s claim, one’s legitimate autonomous actions are constrained to those options that one might/would have chosen but not what one often does. Therefore, Lebron’s justification is problematic in the way that perfectionism is not compatible with autonomy because perfectionism leaves less options for people to act and behave, and de-legitimates any behaviors without considerate reasons.

The positive justification is better and more coherent with his idea throughout the book. Both people and institutions suffer from bad characters – blacks to do not hold an equal place in our scheme of normative value as persons holding other identities, namely whites (130) – according to Lebron, and it unjustly influences different aspects of the society. Further, the moral-agency perfectionism is justifiable under two conditions. It is aspirational because it helps to tighten our actions and our principles; at the same time, it is realistic because it depends on the resources we already possess. The positive justification is more appealing than the negative one.

We Dissent

During last semester's protests, the Claremont Independent posted a widely-circulated article titled We Dissent. For me, the most poignant paragraph of the article reads:

"Lastly, we are disappointed in students like ourselves, who were scared into silence... We are no longer afraid to be voices of dissent."

Lebron says that shame can be both introspective and extroverted. For Lebron, shame - pointing out how someone's "how" is not in line with their "why" - and outrage - denouncing someone's "why" are two separate concepts. While it's difficult to imagine outrage against oneself, Lebron talks about how people can be disappointed in their own behaviors afters self-evaluation. While the reliability of introspection is definitely questionable, Lebron also offers the example of Socrates when evaluating shame. In asking the difficult questions, Socrates asks as the voice within - the personification that helps his subject uncover his own shortcomings.

While Lebron might disagree with the message of We Dissent, he would agree that its strategy - self-shaming - is effective. We Dissent acts as both introspective and extroverted shame. When we talk about shame, sometimes it's difficult for us to imagine separating the stigma of shame and mere self-evaluation. Lebron thinks that you can imagine one without the other.

Ideologies and Talking Horses

1. Marx and Lebron
While I was reading the section on historically evolved power, much of what Lebron was arguing seemed to echo the sentiments of Marx. Lebron argued that, in "group-based social hierarchies," the dominant group "articulate[s] a justifactory narrative and subsequently institutionalize[s] it as the shared common narrative. Initially [the dominant group] are ascendant because they seem to possess or at least are willing to exercise the valuable skills that place them in a position of leadership (they are functionally valuable)" (56-57). Similarly, Marx argued that the purpose of political ideologies were to create a narrative or rationale for justifying the elite or dominant class. Further, often the real reason for elite status was arbitrary and/or a result of what the means of production valued (whatever is 'functionally valuable'). Do Lebron and Marx's arguments overlap? That is, is Lebron illustrating Marx's criticism of ideology in our own time as it relates to race?

2. Assimilation and Identity
In the section on socially embedded power, I found the Black Identities example particularly interesting and disturbing. The example, of comparing the attitudes and beliefs of first- and second-generation West Indian immigrants, reminded me of Book 4 in the satirical work, Gulliver's Travels. In Book 4, the main character, Gulliver, finds himself on an island where the dominant, rational creatures are talking horses called houyhnhnms and the primitive, subjugated creatures are called yahoos. The yahoos are essentially humans, in the state of nature, roaming the island like wild animals; the houyhnhnms, on the other hand, have created a society based on reason and dominate the yahoos like we do to horses. Gulliver, being a civilized human from Europe, finds kinship with both the houyhnhnms and the human like yahoos. Along Gulliver's journey, he struggles to choose whether to identify with the houyhnhnms (being civilized and capable of reason) or with the yahoos (for he was indeed the same species) and thereby saw himself "through multiple lenses" as Lebron would say of the children of West Indian immigrants. Gulliver, not wanting to be associated with the primitive and lesser valued Yahoos, exerts the vast majority of his energy assimilating into the culture of the houyhnhnms, attempting to distinguish himself with fancy clothes, language, and reason. Ultimately, Gulliver becomes estranged to the yahoos and assimilates into the culture of the houyhnhnms. While Gulliver's Travels is fantastical and hyperbolic, the themes of identity mirror an interesting dynamic behind Lebron's argument. It is an interesting dynamic that, to break free of the disadvantageous power of corrupted normative values individuals must distinguish and alienate themselves from a disenfranchised identity. It reminds me of a similar discussion we had with 'passing' when we read Cheryl Harris' argument for whiteness as property. This dynamic has the ability to strengthen and solidify social norms - rather than 'successful' members of a disenfranchised class identifying with their class and thereby strengthening its normative value, they often estrange themselves and assimilate into the dominant class, just like Gulliver. Can Lebron's democratic perfectionism really mitigate these profoundly negative effects on the concept of self? While Education is a good step towards breeding understanding (hopefully at an early age), how can reasonable propaganda and boondock institutions breed a positive concept of self? Are these methods susceptible to perception problems? That is, is it possible - to any degree - that the government taking active steps to promote racial justice could, as a result of perception, create backlash? How can these programs be implemented so as to avoid undermining the very ends they are trying to achieve? Some hold the view (regardless of its veracity) that affirmative action creates the perception that minorities who are hired or are accepted into certain programs only were able to because of their minority status. If this view is widespread, it actually perpetuates the normative devaluation of minorities. How can we avoid this sort of problem?

The Impact of Traffic Laws

An important concept Ripstein brings to light is that of Traffic Laws. In fact, throughout the reading Ripstein states, "Traffic rules are neglected because of an implicit consensus about how to think about them: they are matters of convenience and coordination" (233). This statement has allowed me to delve into deep thought and as a result has altered my perspective on Traffic Laws. Notice how Ripstein emphasizes the words "convenience and coordination." Without traffic rules there is a lack of structure. Coordination is lost leading to an unsatisfied public. We must not abolish traffic laws, rather we must continue to improve them for the benefit of the public. Traffic laws should be valued and views as essential to people's well beings.

Public Welfare as a Public Power

When talking about public health, Ripstein writes the following: "The state's mandate to protect public health follows from its mandate to see to its own preservation.” (261) The state’s provision of national defense and public health “are required to sustain a rightful condition.” (260) If this is the basis for whether or not a government should provide a service, should public welfare not be included?

Taking cues from Jacksón and Kyla’s posts, the abundance of roads means very little without the means of using them – if you don’t have a car and can’t afford the bus, the worth of liberty provided by the roads is limited to the pace of your gait. Other “public powers” provided by the government, such as the hospitals that are essential to public health, are similarly out of reach because if you can’t afford a car or the bus, you likely can’t afford the monthly payment on an insurance plan, much less the deductible on an ambulance ride. In this situation, you are likely to be reliant on whatever private charity exists (free clinics and a means to get there). Thus, you are still at the whims of someone else, and therefore not free.

The point of the extrapolation of the example here is that without the means to take advantage of the public powers provided by the government, I would imagine that many would feel significantly disenfranchised. Therefore, shouldn’t public welfare count as a public power? The least well-off in this scenario, if they are enough in number (and I would imagine they would be, since the system makes no attempt to correct for inheritance), would be a threat to destabilizing the system. So, “to see to its own preservation,” shouldn’t the government adopt the difference principle and fair equality of opportunity? Or at the very least, free buses and hospitals?