Racism, reverse-racism, and anti-racism

 Originally published to Facebook October 22, 2020

On racism, reverse-racism, and anti-racism:
In California we're voting on a proposition to allow race to be an explicit factor in college admissions for the first time since it was banned over 20 years ago. In San Francisco there is great debate over changes to merit-based admissions to a prestigious public high school. In both cases, proposals have been labeled "racist" by opponents, because of the perception that certain people would be given an advantage over others due to their races, arguably a textbook definition of racism.
As I have been studying, listening, learning, and reflecting on both our nation's history and our present of racial inequity and injustice, I've found that definition to be too simplistic. The problem is that definition focuses solely on the intention behind thoughts, attitudes, and actions, and does not take into account the outcomes.
Here's a definition I've been trying to work with: "A system, policy, philosophy, attitude, or action is 'racist' when it's application consistently produces outcomes that are disproportionately inequitable along racial or ethnic lines." Similarly: "An action, choice, or philosophy can be defined as 'anti-racist' when it's application reduces or eliminates inequitable outcomes along racial or ethnic lines in existing systems or circumstances."
Both of these definitions focus on measuring the outcomes rather than focusing solely on intentions. In the case of deciding whether to label a proposed change to admissions policies for public universities or even to a public high school as "racist" or "anti-racist", it is too simplistic to merely consider whether a proposed change will consider race or ethnicity as a factor. One needs to see if the system as it presently exists consistently produces inequitable outcomes, and then see if the proposed changes would likely produce outcomes that are less inequitable.
If a particular racial or ethnic group is over-represented when comparing proportion of admissions to their proportion of the general population, for example, then evidence that a proposed change may reduce the numbers from that group in future admissions is not enough to brand the proposal as "racist" (or, as this is often called, "reverse-racism"). If the proposal brings both over-represented and under-represented groups closer to numbers reflecting the general population, then I would argue it is more appropriate to label the proposal as "anti-racist".
At the heart of my current thinking is a shift away from primarily considering intent and rather holding outcomes as the key factor when evaluating systems and policies as either "racist" or "anti-racist". I believe that in a lot of areas we have become (or rather, have been and remain) complacent to focus only on individual animosity toward a racial group while ignoring systems that produce racist outcomes in the absence of demonstrably racist intentions.
In many cases, the first and most critical steps toward anti-racism are actually not very hard. They can be just not reflexively fighting to keep systems that produce inequitable outcomes. If someone show evidence that a system you are invested in produces inequitable outcomes you don't have to feel guilty or get defensive. You can express genuine sorrow and listen with an open-mind to ideas for changes to that system, and give your approval and support if the changes show promise of producing more equitable outcomes.
Of course, in many cases the difference between racism and anti-racism is not so clear. What do you do when a pandemic is disproportionately killing off oppressed minorities, but an economic lockdown is disproportionately financially devastating those same groups? In these cases I find that my best course is to pay special attention to the voices of those most directly affected, and when I find that people from marginalized communities tend to disagree with my point of view, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that our disagreement is rooted in my ignorance and limited perspective. I also try to keep paying attention and be open to having my conclusions change as I learn more from folks who are in a position to actually know better how policies and actions are producing racially inequitable outcomes than I am. I admit that I don't do as well as I should or even as well as I know I can. I am trying to do better.

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