There Are Not “Real Racists” and the Rest of Us

Six of the eight people killed in the recent Atlanta shootings—which include Delaina Ashley Yaun, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Paul Andre Michels, and the four others whose names have not yet been released—were women of Asian descent. The shooter, Robert Long, aged 21, is a white man. Such atrocious acts not only cause direct harm to the victims, family and friends, and all people of Asian descent but also reinforce the racist and oppressive practices that make acts like these possible and intelligible. Obviously, Long bears the most direct responsibility for the killings. However, consider that white people more broadly share some responsibility for maintaining those background conditions and practices that oppress people of color and provide myriad benefits and privileges to white people.

There are at least four criticisms of this claim. In brief, they are:

1. This view stretches the concept of responsibility to meaninglessness. How could I use the same concept to evaluate the actions of Long and other white people who were not there and would claim not to be racist? Call this the dilution view. Spreading responsibility so thinly to cover so many people dilutes its potency and effectiveness.
2. While people might be comfortable saying a group can be responsible for actions, what sort of group or association are white people? Once again, there is a stretching problem. White people do not form a singular unit like members of a fraternity, union, or church, for example.
3. This position engenders a form of helplessness. Let’s suppose this view is right. What, then are individual white people supposed to do? We cannot change the system and background conditions by ourselves, therefore there is nothing we can do.
4. This view rests on a paradox: If all of us are responsible, then none of us is.

These four criticisms are connected, but I will address each singularly.

The dominant account of responsibility involves what I call “the linked chain.” The chain comprises intentions, actions, and consequences. In the clearest and easiest cases, an individual has an intention and takes action on it, thereby bringing about consequences. Much of the weight of responsibility rides on the intentions of the actors: Did they intend to harm, intimidate, deprive, etc.?

Intentions are notoriously tricky in philosophy and real life. Intentions are not always fully formed and are unclear even to the individual who has them. Where intentions are weak or even mixed, this usually counts as a mitigating factor in the evaluation of an act. Actions tend to be more clear-cut: Did a person do something? And finally, consequences: What happened as a result of the action? Again, in the easiest cases, the consequences are easily identified and can be plausibly traced back to the action. When all three of the links—intentions, actions, and consequences—are obvious, it is easier to assign responsibility.

On this linked chain account, it is nonsensical to say that all white people bear responsibility for the conditions in which Robert Long acted. There were no intentions on the part of us who were not there. Furthermore, we took no action and therefore brought no consequences. The linked chain account provides cover and perhaps even a sense of succor for many white people. We can point to Long, be horrified by his actions, and judge him to be the "real racist." The linked chain account keeps the focus almost solely on the actions of particular individuals such that all of the common, ordinary actions that help to maintain a system of racist oppression remain obscured to us white people. It is a bitter irony that an account of responsibility lets far too many of us off the hook for the benefits we enjoy as white people.

In what sense are white people a group or collective? Unions, churches, and fraternities are groups of people organized around particular sets of interests, commitments, and most fundamentally, actions. In being a member of a group, individual people orient themselves around shared goals. An individual takes on the values and goals of the group. There is a recognition that those goals are best met with actions undertaken by the group as opposed to any particular individual’s actions. Philosopher Iris Young includes storming the Bastille, organizing a conference, and achieving women’s suffrage as examples of collective projects undertaken by a group.

However, white people are not a group in this sense. There are no shared goals nor that sort of collective agency involved in being white or claiming a white racial identity. However, just because whites are not a group in this sense, it does not follow that whites are not some sort of social and material association. Drawing from the work of Young, who argues women are part of a series/have a serial identity, white people are a part of a series. A series, according to Young,

is a social collective whose members are unified passively by the objects their actions are oriented around and/or by the objectified results of the actions on others... The unity of the series derives from the way that individuals pursue their own individual ends in respect to the same objects conditioned by a continuous material environment, in response to structures that have been created by the unintended collective results of past actions.

Being a woman does not depend on possessing any particular set of attributes or having the same set of experiences. Rather, those who are women must navigate within and around particular structures and practices such as the sexual division of labor and enforced heterosexuality. The ways that particular women can navigate within and through these structures and practices can vary dramatically depending on other factors such as race, class, ethnicity, and physical ability. These structures, practices, and our relationships to them comprise the serial identity of women.

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Race identity can also be usefully understood as seriality; whites in the United States belong to a series. It is in virtue of this serial identity that it is appropriate to talk about the responsibilities white people have for the continuation of racist systems of oppression that contribute to overt acts of racism. What is the background that provides for the unity of the category “white?” White identity is often equated with American identity; white people have had the power to legally determine who properly belongs in the category of American. Chinese workers built much of the transcontinental railway system in the 1860s and were horrifically treated. Chinese people were then subjected to The Chinese Immigration Act of 1882 that suspended Chinese immigration for 10 years and disallowed Chinese people from the naturalization process. In World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, U.S. citizens of Japanese heritage were forcibly moved to internment camps. White identity is predicated on the historical precedents creating institutions that confer legal and economic power to define groups as non-white.

Does having a systemic analysis of oppression entail that systems just continue to roll along, wrapping some of us in privilege while relegating others to the margins where we are powerless, and more vulnerable to exploitation and violence? None of us can change everything, but it does not follow that we cannot change anything. Systems of oppression are not static; they are constantly reinventing, reinforcing, and reinscribing themselves in new ways through individual acts and social practices. They are ultimately our creations; our actions can shape them in ways that may perpetuate them or may undermine them. The challenge isn’t that there is nothing an individual can do. The challenge is that there is so much each of us can do and one needs to pick a starting point. Claiming helplessness is not a morally defensible option. As a teacher, I will always start with education. Some suggestions:

Investigate the sharp increase of verbal assaults and other forms of violence against Asian Americans. Learn more about immigrants who have come to the U.S. and under what conditions. How did people from Laos help the U.S. military? Ask why many people believe Asians are “model minorities,” and how that reinforces stereotypes about Black, Native American, and Latino people. Read or listen to first-person stories about people who have been victimized. Listen without becoming defensive or completely guilt-ridden. Take action by participating in community-centered responses and events. Contact elected representatives about what they’re doing to end this surge of violence. Find out if there are community resources or victim services. Donate money to these services or through legitimate fundraising sites to help the families of the victims. Become more culturally knowledgeable by watching films, listening to music, and reading books by Asian Americans. Be ready to bear witness and intervene if necessary.

Start somewhere. Not starting because it feels too daunting is an exercise in privilege.