Q: What is the most racist and least racist country? What explains the difference?
A: Many years ago when I was a race man, I attended a conference of black professors at MIT & Harvard. I went to one of the seminars and it was given by an old friend. Full disclosure, I used to be a national officer in the National Society of Black Engineers, so I knew a lot of academics, etc. This friend of mine had gone over the the UK to work with a new MP whom I believe was from Brixton. At any rate, the idea was to come up with an international standard for racism. The prospects were dim.
There is no country, as far as I know, that is willing to come up with one number or one set of numbers that will indicate the amount of racism in that country. It is a measurement that is inherently subjective. But even if it were objective and a number already collected, like the unemployment rate by race, the politics involved, not to mention the science, is unimaginably daunting.
So this is a question that has been asked at the highest levels, why not have a 'Dow Jones Industrial Average' for racism? But the answer is, it will not be a reliable number and across countries you will not be able to compare measures. Basically you have to guess, use common sense and your gut.
Here's the paradox at the heart of the matter. Most countries that care enough to do anything at all about racism have Constitutional guarantees that assure equality before the law without regard to race. Once you have that in place, everybody is largely free to pursue their aims, whether or not they have experience, motivation or education enough to do so. Over time you can look at various industries and occupations where racial bars existed and see how well integration is coming along. What was experienced in the US is that racial minorities mainstreamed themselves across a wide variety of endeavors. But you cannot say that those who pioneered are typical and that the racism they may have overcome is something that can be overcome by others. For example, the first black mayor of Los Angeles was Tom Bradley. He won several terms of office, serving for a total of 20 years. But in fact, he was mayor when Rodney King was beat by the LAPD and riots ensued. So is Los Angeles racist? If a city is non-racist enough to have a racial minority in its highest elected office and yet still horrible things happen to other racial minorities in the same city, how racist is the city?
As you can see it is practically impossible to answer for a city, much less a state or an entire country in order to make broad international judgments. Here's another example with a different dimension. Everybody knows that American Slavery happened in the Southern States like Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Everybody knows that states like Kansas, Washington and Idaho never had slavery. Why would any African American in 2016 want to live in a former slave state instead of a state that never had slavery or never had lynching? If you live voluntarily in a state with a history of racism, given other states have no comparable history, are you contributing to your own oppression, or does it mean that the legacy of slavery has actually been overcome?
There are a thousand subtle and obvious questions about measuring racism and nobody has all of the answers, and nobody is interested is making it their life's work to establish an international standard. Which means the same thing it has always meant. Every individual, family, community and institution is going to decide for themselves and consequently each must be judged on their own merits within the ambit of their own control.
As I publish these thoughts today, I am reminded of that old meme about black Harvard students. You can find a bunch of these pictures online, and ruminate about the first world problems of those folks. Of course this brings me back to my old saw about ‘six pounds of racism’. For some, six pounds of racism is enough to send them scrambling back to their therapist weeping from the trauma. For others, six pounds of racism is just weak sauce for their spicy diet.
As with the loudmouth Karens of the world, one has to take into account the egos of the people who make the point to complain, and in particular remember that every black student at Harvard didn’t participate in the #itooamharvard meme. So I bring up the old story that when I was looking to get into Harvard Business School, I attended a seminar presented by black students at HBS. The one at the podium rattled off a litany of disrespect similar to that in the above picture. The man sitting next to me told me to ignore her, as he ran a 9 figure division of Ford Aerospace, and by the way she’s aiming for an masters in public health so she can help poor people, thus her attitude.
It is always useful to have a bunch of different people to talk to about these subjects. Don’t let the memes fool you.