Author: Andrew Sullivan
Publication: The Sunday Times,
UK
Date: October 27, 2002
Every now and again the politics
and culture of race in America simply take you by surprise. To coin a phrase,
what's black can sometimes seem white and what's white can sometimes seem
black. Racism goes backwards and forwards in dizzying degrees of cultural
complexity and perspective.
Last week was no exception. The
biggest news was that the Washington sniper had finally been caught. The
bigger news, buried in the main story, was that the sniper had already
been caught: on October 8.
Here's how The Washington Post reported
this part of the story: "Law enforcement sources said authorities may have
missed a chance to apprehend the men just six days after the shooting spree
began on Oct 2. At that time, authorities were searching for a white van
because witnesses reported seeing one at some shooting sites.
'The blue Caprice discovered today
was believed to have been approached in Baltimore by police who found Muhammad
and Malvo sleeping on Oct 8, the day after a 13-year-old boy in Bowie was
wounded as the eighth victim of the sniper, the sources said.
"The car was spotted in a parking
lot off 28th Street, near the exit ramp to Interstate 83. The two were
allowed to go, although their names were put into an information data bank
in Baltimore, the sources said.
"Everyone was looking for a white
car with white people,' said one high-ranking police source. Muhammad and
Malvo are black males."
Now think of the following scenario.
A sniper is terrorising the capital city. Police come across a white guy
in a car whom they suspect. They take his name but they don't arrest him
because they are looking for a black man. The suspect subsequently goes
on to kill several more people.
Wouldn't this be the basis for uproar?
Wouldn't the cops involved be fired? Wouldn't there be a massive investigation
into how such racial profiling could have happened?'
Ah, but this is America. No such
questions dominated the headlines the next day. The relief was so wide
and so deep and so understandable that the reverse racism that allowed
a mass murderer who had terrorised the capital city for weeks to go free
was largely ignored or wished away.
Now imagine the following scenario.
A white political activist and entertainer calls Colin Powell, the secretary
of state, a house slave to George W Bush.
Actually he says the following:
"In the days of slavery there were those slaves who lived on the plantation
and there were those slaves that lived in the house. You got the privilege
of living in the house if you served the master."
He adds: "Colin Powell's committed
to come into the house of the master. When Colin Powell dares to suggest
something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back
out to pasture."
Again, don't you think there would
be an outcry? This is clearly the use of a racist stereotype intended to
demean the most powerful and accomplished African-American in the history
of the US federal government.
But again, this is America. This
was actually said recently by Harry Belafonte, a former civil rights activist
mainly known around the world for being a calypso singer who made the Banana
Boat Song a hit.
Was he criticised? 'Yes, but gently.
And barely. He was, in fact, invited onto CNN's Larry King show, where
he defended his remarks and further criticised the secretary of state.
Despite this expression of bigotry,
he was the guest of honour last Thursday night at a huge banquet given
by Africare, a largely African-American charity that directs aid to Africa.
The national security adviser, Condi
Rice, was also invited to attend the event. But when Belafonte got wind
of her possible presence he threatened to bolt. So Africare disinvited
one of the most distinguished black women in the history of American government
in order to accommodate Belafonte.
Africare denied that she had been
disinvited, but Belafonte insisted she had been. In any event, Rice wasn't
there. And Belafonte was satisfied.
Was Belafonte's description of Powell
as a slave racist? Some argue no. They claim that Belafonte, because he
is black, cannot by definition be a racist. But that is, of course, a racist
argument itself.
It reduces someone's moral responsibility
and intellectual autonomy to a racial stereotype - that all blacks are
innocent victims who cannot be held responsible for their beliefs or arguments;
or that all blacks are so oppressed that any bigotry they utter is permissible.
In this scenario, no black person
really has a choice to be immoral because no black person has a choice
to be moral. They are, entirely because of their race, incapable of such
choice. I can't think of any better way to dehumanise a person, to rob
him of any control over his life's decisions.
Similarly, in the case of what's
called "racial profiling" by police, the reason it is always wrong to jump
to conclusions on the basis of race is that it denies every individual's
right to be judged as an individual first and as a member of a group next.
In fact, being deemed guilty in
advance because of an arbitrary characteristic such as race is pretty close
to a perfect description of injustice. It doesn't seem to me to make a
moral difference if that race is white, brown, black or any variation thereof.
For a "high-ranking police source"
to tell a newspaper that the cops were looking only for a person of a predetermined
race is an expression of racism. It's morally repugnant, whoever says it.
It just so happens that at the same
time Harry Belafonte was being feted in Washington and Americans were heaving
a sigh of relief that the sniper had been caught, I was sitting on a panel
at New York University with Christopher Hitchens debating the legacy of
George Orwell.
I reread Animal Farm on the plane
there. And somehow it seemed all too relevant. All races are equal of course.
But in some allegedly liberal minds some races are clearly more equal than
others.