The Prejudices We Don’t Recognize

My first article for Ethika Politika, on whose board I’m now serving: Jeremiah and the Enlightened Racist. It begins:

“The problem,” writes Nicholas Kristof, “is not so much overt racists. Rather, the larger problem is a broad swath of people who consider themselves enlightened, who intellectually believe in racial equality, who deplore discrimination, yet who harbor unconscious attitudes that result in discriminatory policies and behavior.”

This problem seems obvious to me, but many people among those who consider themselves enlightened continue to claim that racism is no longer a problem in America and imply that what racial disadvantages remain are black Americans’ fault. Many who don’t deny the reality of racism suggest that it is no longer a problem by directing their attention and indignation in any racial controversy to anything but the problem, instead criticizing opportunistic race hustlers like Al Sharpton, for example, or talking solely about how far the nation has come, or treating any concern with racism as white liberal self-flagellation.