Blinded By Color

Never before in American history has racism been so roundly reviled, Witness all the embarrassed tuttutting at Mark Fuhrman's use of the "N word," an expletive now considered so profane that it reduces tough-talking reporters to euphemism. Yet even as the country, with self-congratulatory (dare we say "colorblind") gusto, proposes Colin Powell for president, troubling race-related questions remain.

Why, if racial animosity has diminished, are racial discussions so angry? Why is the "race card" so politically potent? Why, when countless racial barriers have fallen, does racial inequality endure? Why do we still fear-to put it bluntly-that America's inner cities might, at the slightest instigation, burst into flames?

With the fate of affirmative action and other race-based remedies hanging in the balance, American intellectuals are concentrating on race--churning out books and theories in numbers not seen since the 1960s. Some argue that prejudice is on the way out and that relations would be fine if only blacks would stop belly-aching about bigotry. Others believe that the fundamental problem is a pervasive white racism that most whites stubbornly deny. All agree that the nation stands at a crossroads as it reconsiders its racial decisions of the last several decades.

"In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently, "wrote U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun in 1978 in defense of affirmative action. Today, opponents of affirmative action argue that the time for treating people differently is past, that minorities are no longer owed any particular advantage, if indeed they ever were. Among the more provocative writers taking that position is Dinesh D' Souza, whose newly released "The End of Racism" (736 pages. The Free Press. $30) offers solace to those whites who wish to wash their hands of responsibility for black problems. Though billed as an examination of the "multiracial society," D'Souza's tome focuses primarily on whites and blacks, taking a notion broached by William Julius Wilson's 1978 book, "The Declining Significance of Race," to sometimes absurd conclusions. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that D'Souza cites my own "The Rage of a Privileged Class," as do some of the other works mentioned in this essay.)

As D'Souza sees it, white racism has all but vanished-not that it was ever as awful, or at least as indefensible, as some people assumed in the first place. In D'Souza's eyes, old-fashioned racism was not so much a sign of small-minded bigotry as of intelligent minds at work. "Far from being ignorant and fearful," he writes, "the early European racists were the most learned and adventurous men of the age, and their views developed as a rational and increasingly scientific attempt to make sense of the diverse world that was for the first time being encountered as a whole." He finds hope in the insight that racism stemmed from rationalism. And, since it had a beginning, it can also have an end.

It is an interesting point, convincingly made, and it might have led D'Souza to focus on the shape of a nonracist future. Instead it leads largely to a defense of prejudice by presumably intelligent people. He acknowledges that racial discrimination still exists but sees it largely as "rational discrimination." Since young black males are found disproportionately among the ranks of violent criminals, argues D'Souza, taxi drivers are being rational (not racist) when they ignore black males with outstretched arms. just as employers are being rational in not offering them jobs. It apparently does not occur to D'Souza that the universe of black men looking for work may be different from the universe of black men looking trouble-and that it makes no rational sense to discriminate against the former. Such lapses ultimately render D'Souza's argument unpersuasive.