Re-thinking Race

Part two of the Rethinking Race series, written by John Root

The previous blog on ‘re-thinking race’ criticised the prevailing ‘orthodox’ view that inequalities of outcome between ethnic groups were a clear indication of racism in our society. Against this, ‘the new conversation’ added that there were several other factors that caused disparities—amongst others, specific ethnicity, social class, and patterns of parenting. Our understanding of race therefore needed to allow for this complexity and move from broad, usually critical generalisations to closer analysis of the very complex patchwork of ethnic outcomes that we actually find in our society.

Previously, I looked at three consequences:

1. Renewed emphasis on the unity of humankind.

2. Greater awareness of the specifics of ethnicity.

3. A more positive assessment of power.

What follows are three more.

4. A strong affirmation of agency.

Agency is the Achilles heel of the orthodox understanding of race. If disparities and inequality are uniquely the consequences of white racism, both personal and institutional, then ethnic minorities are merely passive observers, or simply strugglers against the white monster. Black Lives Matter could be construed in two ways. It could have been directed internally as a call to energise black people to take control of their own destinies – to ‘seize the time’ to quote Bobby Searle, a Black Panther of the 1960s. Instead it was directed externally. A call to white people to act fairly to improve the lot of white people. In other words, a ‘whinge’ to quote the journalist Matthew Parris. It was also internally inconsistent. As Professor John McWhorter, a ‘heterodox’ black academic, has pointed out, if white power is exercised with the brutal arrogance that militant blacks claim, then what political sense does it make to ask them to be good to you? In fact, the outcome of Black Lives Matter has had a positive impact on white people by encouraging them to face up to and seek to correct the racism in our society. But it has had negative consequences for black people by merely consolidating a culture of grievance and complaint.

An example was Professor Anthony Reddie’s lecture on 'From Sam Sharpe to Black Lives Matter: The Continued Struggle for Black Agency and Self-Determination'. It began with a powerful PowerPoint presentation of the boldness, heroism, courage and dignity of Sam Sharpe as he led and was then executed by the Jamaican colonial authorities for his part in the Christmas Rebellion of 1831. Reddie’s lecture then continued to underline the exercise of white hegemony and the exclusion of any black role in the abolition of slavery and the partition of Africa. He concluded with a couple of incidents: one concerning the failure to appoint a black person to a role where race was relevant, and the other concerning a white leader’s unilateral denial of an appointment to a black person. Elements of racism may well have been involved in both incidents, though it would not be unknown for white people to experience parallel forms of exclusion. But what was startling was not just the sparsity of Reddie’s actual references to Black Lives Matter, except as title-bait, but more particularly the absence of any reference to black agency after the time of Sam Sharpe. Black people were simply passive observers, and the recent anecdotes – dispiriting but not tragic – bore little connection to Sam Sharpe’s grievous suffering of injustice.

In short the grievance narrative for understanding race can seriously and negatively undercut a sense of agency. In a post on the Equiano Project website, Ada Akpala asked the question, ‘How does constant exposure to rhetoric centred on victimhood and helplessness impact one’s psychological well-being?’ By downplaying a sense of agency, it hinders rather than promotes black progress.

By contrast, a strong sense of human agency courses through scripture. Genesis 39 begins with Joseph having been sold by his brothers and ending up as a slave in Egypt. Yet his work ethic impresses his master, and he rises to a position of eminence, whereupon he has a second great setback and is falsely imprisoned after a false accusation of rape with a clear racist dimension: ‘See, my husband has brought among us a Hebrew to insult us’ (Gen 39:14).  But again, Joseph’s dynamic sense of agency enables him to escape from imprisonment and adversity, thus Pharaoh’s charge that ‘all my people shall order themselves as you command’ (41:40). The result is that Joseph is used by God to bless the brothers who had so shamefully abused him.

Similarly, when Jeremiah prophesied to the dispirited exiles in Babylon, he promised them as a people, not individuals, that they had ‘a future with hope’ (29:11). To quote Chris Wright, his prophecy ‘turned victims into visionaries. It enabled the exiles to look up, look forward and believe. They were not going to get the instant quick fix their prophets were dreaming of. But they could trust that God would be true to his promise and that there was a future for the coming generation of God's people’ (‘The Message of Jeremiah’, p 296).

5. A revised understanding of racial justice.

The ‘orthodox’ position on racial justice seems unassailable. If minorities are being discriminated against, then justice requires that we right that wrong and give them their due. Accordingly, we must not only oppose racism but ensure that minority ethnic people are promoted to senior positions. But once the situation is seen as being more complex then such initiatives risk being misplaced. Once significant internal differences between ethnic groups are recognised, then equity – that is, proportionately equal outcomes – becomes unachievable.  Rather, the vigorous pursuit of ‘racial justice’ leads to a number of mis-steps which work out to the detriment of minority groups.

Avoidance of self-interrogation.

Recognition of one’s own agency is a real aspect of ‘white privilege’. As a white person, if I fail to achieve particular ambitions or have a disappointing outcome, then, rather than blaming my race, the pressure is to look internally at myself and ask in what ways I am at fault and need to change. One of the damaging consequences of racism is that it can undermine the need for self-interrogation in response to disappointments. In 2008, when Barack Obama was running for president of the United States, the BBC interviewed some young black men in Chicago. Obama could never be president, they averred – ‘they’ would not allow it. In the event, of course, ‘they’ did. But did the reality that ‘they’ were not the all-powerful discriminatory force cause these young men to recognise that their prospects were not as constrained as they cynically assumed and that the future lay more in their own hands than they had realised?

Reluctance to learn from the outside.

Cultures flourish and develop through incorporation – a major reason why regions where travel is favoured by geography have flourished the most. European scientific and technological development required the abandonment of the use of ‘indigenous’ Roman numerals and the importation of ‘alien’ Arabic ones. By contrast, defensiveness and insularity can hinder as much as geography. There is a reason why Chinese development stalled for several centuries. The ‘orthodox’ view of race hindered adaptation. Whilst emphasis on ‘black pride’ is a proper response to racism’s devaluing of black culture and identity, it can also ossify into a racial defensiveness that prevents learning and adaptation

Inappropriate appointments.

The death of George Floyd was an important stimulus to get mainstream organisations to check whether their leadership was sufficiently diverse. The black American legal scholar, Winkfield Twyman, has referred to the ‘We must have a . . . .’ policy – the pressure to make an appointment based on a perceived underrepresentation rather than simply on merit. It led to a series of what might be called ‘George Floyd appointments’ - appointing a black person primarily for presentational reasons. This was focused in the United States on the appointment and then resignation of Claudine Gay, from a wealthy Haitian family, as the first black president of Harvard. After only six months, Gay resigned, immediately over her mishandling of complaints of anti-Semitism on campus during protests against Israel’s attack on Gaza, but within a wider context of allegations of plagiarism in her work, and her lack of substantial publishing and academic achievement that ought to be the hallmark of a person holding one of the (if not ‘the’) most prestigious posts in American intellectual life.

A related saga was the collapse of the Boston University Centre for Antiracist Research, headed by the dreadlocked figurehead of anti-racism, Ibram X Kendi, and which following the death of George Floyd had been gifted $43 million dollars - mostly from large corporations, including a $10 million from Jack Dorsey of Twitte - but which had yet to produce any major pieces of research, and was alleged to be poorly managed.

Quite simply the naïve assumption that it is virtuous in itself to appoint a black person can lead to outcomes which damage the reputation, and quite possibly the self-esteem of black and minority ethnic people.

A devaluing of black achievements.

The inevitable corollary of making inappropriate black appointments is to devalue the success and achievement of all black people. The taint that they were appointed because of their colour rather than their abilities hangs over their careers. Glenn Loury, professor of economics at Brown University made the point in an impassioned recent blog: ‘African Americans in any field who meet and exceed the standards of that field will have to deal with condescension and undeserved suspicion regarding “how they got here.” That is insulting, and it casts a pall of illegitimacy over their achievements. It compromises how their integrity is perceived, and through no fault of their own. Indeed, affirmative action actually penalizes high-achieving African Americans, since everyone knows that all black people at the elite level in the US benefit from affirmative action, whether they want it or not.’ (30/01/2024). That is to say a false, albeit often moralising understanding of ‘racial justice’ quite simply produces racial injustice. 

6. Neglecting social justice.

The Parliamentary Education Select Committee commissioned a 2021 report on ‘The Forgotten: How White Working-Class Pupils Have Been Let Down, and How to Change It’. But it is a question of justice that needs serious attention. The proportion of white boys on free school meals who proceed to higher education (by age 19) is 14.6%. This is slightly over half the number of the next highest group, ‘Mixed’; slightly a third found with black boys, and slightly over one-sixth of the number of Chinese boys from poor families who go on to higher education. In ‘Against Decolonisation’ Professor Doug Stokes spells out the pervasive downgrading of the disparities affecting the white working class set against the race-focused attention on other groups. He notes that the Labour Party rule book of 2022 refers 104 times to the need for increased minority ethnic participation and just twice to the need for working-class participation. (An analysis of the statements of Anglican bishops on the question of senior representation would probably yield a not-dissimilar imbalance.) Sunder Katwala of the British Futures think tank is quoted in the Sewell Report as saying, ‘We are doing better on race than on class’. ‘Race’ has so taken up the bandwidth of concern about injustice that serious inequalities about affecting poor white people are pushed off the agenda.

A further ingredient in the mix is region. Ethnic minorities are disproportionately London-centred, and so too are those who form policies and shape agendas. The ‘red wall’ Conservative victories in 2019 registered working class disillusionment with the middle-class progressivism of the Labour Party; just as the subsequent skimpiness of the government’s ‘levelling up’ policies has heaped up the disillusionment. While this affects all ethnic groups, the neglect of the North and Midlands bears most heavily on white working-class people.

A theology that rightly cares about injustice needs a sharp eye to see where injustice is greatest. But there can be an ‘anti-racist’ conspiracy of silence about white deprivation. Thus, Kehinde Andrews writes, ‘Panic around the failure of so-called ‘White working-class boys’ is so dishonest it can only be labelled racial science’ (‘The Psychosis of Whiteness’, p 105). But Andrews gives no evidence for this bizarre claim and seems to think that the phrase ‘so-called’ works as an intelligent argument.

In conclusion, challenging this sort of simplistic ‘orthodox’ view of race in Britain today calls us to reassess a Christian response to race and racial disadvantage.

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John Root is a retired Anglican clergyman, living in Tottenham. He has been vice-principal of a Cambridge theological college and was for thirty years vicar of an ethnically ’super-diverse’ church in Wembley. He has also lectured part-time in early colonial history. His wife is Indian, from Malaysia and they have an adult son. You can read more of his work here.