Bethel Antiracism and Reconciliation
Conceptualizing Racial Conflict in Minneapolis: Some Preliminary Thoughts to the "Black and Blue " Discussion
by Timothy Essenburg
University of Minnesota
Law School
November 4, 2002
Timothy J. Essenburg
Professor of Economics
Bethel College, St. Paul, MN
651-638-6296
E-mail: esstim@bethel.edu
I am indebted to Glenn C. Loury (1977, 1995, 1998, and
2002) and Andrew Sung Park (1993, 1996)
for articulating concepts and
arguments that I find persuasive. This paper draws heavily on their work.
Please do not quote or copy without author's permission.
Introduction
Thank you for the invitation to be part of your discussions on "Black and blue: Moving away from racial conflict toward healing a wounded community." The title is an intriguing one. The themes of racial discord and resolution for the wounded remind me of my commitment to shalom, the synergy of peace, justice (inclusive of distributive and restorative justice), and the enjoyment of relationships (Wolterstorff 1983). What is unclear, unless one is knowledgeable about the racial dynamics under discussion or a decoder of the term "blue", is which races are in strife. "Blue" is not a racial designation and thus could not lead to racial strife unless those in blue are of another race and/or the representatives of another race's bidding, but more on that later.
So that you get a feel for me, let us start with a few "I am's."
I am an economist who is animated by actions that seek shalom.
I am a cultural mix of a Tokyo childhood, a small-town, Michigan adolescence, a Lookout Mountain and Knoxville, Tennessee young adult life, and now find myself in the second decade of a symbiotic relationship with a multiracial and multicultural neighborhood in South Minneapolis known as the Phillips Neighborhood. Phillips, as you may know, was the poster child of dysfunctional communities for the Twin Cities during the early to mid-1990s. And we continue to have our difficulties (see Anderson 2002).
I am a white person, a European American, a Caucasian, the implications of which did not become intelligible to me until my third decade of life. My classroom education, kindergarten through graduate school, did little to educate me, to give me terms, history, and a framework for understanding race in the United States in the post-Civil Rights era.
I plan to discuss race, for I think we better understand the racial "melee," as the StarTribune put it (Tevlin 2002), in the Jordan Neighborhood using this specification. If we move quickly to "new and improved" community activism and policing as the answer to the symptom, then we risk a misdiagnosis, discovering a bloody scrape when in fact under the scrape there is a melanoma, but having a whitish hue.
Specifically I will address the issues of racial conflict and community healing by: 1) placing the August 2002 incidents of the Jordan Neighborhood in our greater historical context, and 2) offering some theoretical observations on moving forward.
We begin with a definition of race and then move to a couple of ideas.
Race is a "cluster of inheritable bodily markings " that can be observed by others with ease, that can be changed or misrepresented only with great difficulty, and that have come to be invested in a particular society at a given historical moment with social meaning" (Loury 2002: 20-21, emphasis deleted). "Race" is socially constructed, not essential (i.e., not an innate characteristic of humans causing the observed "social disadvantage of African Americans" and advantage of European Americans), and has resulted in –racial stigma," the white " awareness of the racial "otherness" of blacks – such that the group " suffers a "spoiled collective identity"" (Loury 2002: 5, 67).
With this in mind, let us turn to the ideas offered for your consideration.
Ideas for Consideration
Idea #1: Racial "discrimination in contract" was institutionalized in the United States, yielding a system properly understood as racist (Loury 2002: 95).
If we conceive an institution as having three characteristics (Neale 1987: 1182)
–"there are a number of people doing"
–"there are rules giving the activities repetition, stability, predictable order"
–"there are folkviews – explaining or justifying the activities and the rules"
then we more easily comprehend that racial discrimination was legally institutionalized (people doing, rules for this, and folkviews justifying the rules and activities). And this resulted in discrimination of contract, "the unequal treatment of otherwise like persons on the basis of race in the execution of formal transactions–the buying and selling of goods and services – or interactions with organized bureaucracies, public and private" (Loury 2002: 95). Examples include housing covenants, segregation in transportation and education, discrimination in mortgage financing, laws against intermarriage, and maintaining the color line in employment opportunities (see Arrow 1998).
Let us again briefly attend to a historical timeline, albeit selective, as a means to solidify this first idea.
Today we know that racial discrimination of contract (as understood in the 1950s) is illegal, that it still occurs (see relevant articles in Journal of Economic Perspective, 12[2], Spring 1998), but at significantly reduced levels.
Idea #2: We are left with "raced" social patterns and "racial stigma," both of which impede the ability of African Americans increasingly to seize the opportunities found in our social, economic and political systems and hinder European Americans in strengthening their commitments to "race-egalitarianism" and diminished racial prejudice (Loury 2002: 112).
By the late 1960s the legal edifice of racial discrimination was dismantled; however, destructive social patterns and prejudices remained, leaving us with "discrimination in contact," the "unequal treatment of persons on the basis of race in the associations and relationships that are formed among individuals in social life, including choice of social intimates, neighbors, friends, heroes, and villains" (Loury 2002: 95, 95-96). Our government would now choose to restrain discrimination in contract, but would not apply itself as vigorously in restraining discrimination in contact, as this would impinge upon the polity's commitment to an individual's "liberty and autonomy" (Loury 2002: 96). We must understand that the "civil rights struggle, which succeeded brilliantly in winning for blacks the right to be free from discrimination [in contract], failed for the most part to secure a national commitment toward eradicating the effects of discrimination which already had occurred" and which are passed on through discrimination of contact (Loury 1998: 121). The right to be free from discrimination in contract did not carry over to discrimination in contact, social patterns tied to those set forth under legalized racism.
The concept of path dependency is relevant. This expresses the idea that change is a "process of cumulative causation where the dominant feedback loops are self-reinforcing rather than self-correcting [and that an] existing path may have been determined by a chance event in the past or by the cumulative effects of past actions, and this means that the path we are on may or may not be desirable; more likely it is desired by some and not by others" (Atkinson and Oleson 1996: 609). We no longer have a raced society de jure, but we have it de facto. Racial discrimination in contact is seemingly self-reinforcing. This inhibits whites and blacks in achieving greater racial progress. Some in the Jordan Neighborhood live with the legacy of racial discrimination in contract (e.g., chattel slavery, failed reconstruction, Jim Crow) and racial discrimination in contact (e.g., public housing, suburban development, K-12 public education in a metropolitan area, congregations of houses of worship, and friendships/acquaintances).
When we speak of "raced" social patterns, or racial discrimination in contact, we understand this to be addressing the reality of our racilialized society, a society where "we are never unaware of the race of a person with whom we interact" (Loury 1995: 196), "a society wherein race matters profoundly for differences in life experiences, life opportunities, and social relationships" (Emerson and Smith 2000: 7), "a society that allocates differential economic, political, social, and even psychological rewards to groups along racial lines, lines that are socially constructed" (Bonilla-Silva and Lewis 199: 474). A few demographic comparisons may prove helpful.
The term "social capital," first introduced by Glenn Loury (1977) in the late 1970s, has gained currency with many social scientists, including a few economists. Let us think of social capital as the "networks of social affiliation among families and individuals, while most often not the consequence of calculated economic decisions" which nonetheless "enable members of a neighborhood or social network to help one another, especially in relation to education, economic opportunity, and social mobility" (Loury 1995: 103, emphasis deleted; Ferguson and Dickens 1999: 5). If we reflect upon this notion, this idea that social relationships, exert a profound influence upon " the development of the productive capacities of human beings" (Loury 1995:103 emphasis deleted), then for most of us we will disabuse ourselves of the myth of "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps."
I offer to you the view that understands that many African Americans who live in neighborhoods such as Jordan live a life that is inextricably tied to the institutional patterns of life legally implemented prior to 1960. They represent one facet of this discrimination in contract legacy and now discrimination in contact patterns of life in a racialized, class-based society. This view also understands that most European Americans, inclusive of white police officers, are socialized into patterns of discrimination in contact, hindering their commitment to race egalitarian initiatives and progress on diminishing racial prejudice. Most white people have been socialized to be unmoved by the demographic discrepancies we just heard. What we witnessed a few months ago in the Jordan Neighborhood is not anomalous, but in fact a predictable part of our social life together in the United States.
Idea #3: Our national attempts to rectify racial injustice by de-legalizing racial discrimination in contract have fallen short because, in part, our society has not completed an inward "transmutation," leading to non-discrimination in contact and a vigorous commitment to race-egalitarianism (Park 1996: 100).
In other words, "authentic [racial] reformation" of our legal structures must be complemented with the "transmutation" of the inward aspects of the person, community, and culture. Only when there is a "genuine merger of the two [will] people see a community vision and begin to actualize it" (Park 1996: 101).
This requires a closer analysis of an existential reality, how we view each other. Andrew Sung Park states that "seeing, especially when it carries the meaning of recognition and understanding, contains a warm intention and can yield constructive transformation." This happens too few times across racial boundaries. More frequently there is "staring [that] has nuances of ill will [or indifference] and may engender harmful consequences" (Park 191996: 139). One could argue that the staring by whites arises from the racial stigma affixed to blacks by whites who are themselves uncritically socialized into the white system. Greater numbers of white people must choose the path of seeing. And this seeing must bring, in part, a commitment to racial equality, "the approximately equal [economic, social, and political] provision" across the races and "equal respect in the eyes of one's fellow citizens" (Loury 1995: 22).
Affirmative Action finds less legal support today and increasingly discourse offers a commitment to the notion of race-blindness. Race-blindness, "the practice of not using race when carrying out a policy" (Loury 2002: 133), is one way to address our raced history and is wedded to the libertarian notions of the individual, to the relative exclusion of race dynamics. The trouble here is that this commitment will not result in race-egalitarian outcomes precisely because race is a social construct with social dimensions. It is not about the individual but the group. Loury writes that "it may be reasonable to assert in a general way that past racial discrimination in contract, together with present day discrimination in contact, disadvantages blacks by impeding their acquisition of skills" (Loury 2002: 125). In a racialized society a commitment to race-blindness will more likely recreate the status quo, as opposed to creating a society of racial equality.
But there is still another matter that asks for our attention and is explained by the Korean word han. Andrew Sung Park defines han as the "critical wound of the heart generated by unjust psychosomatic repression, as well as by social, political, economic, and cultural oppression. It is entrenched in the hearts of the victims of sin and violence, and is expressed through such diverse reactions as sadness, hopelessness, helplessness, resentment, hatred, and the will to revenge" (Park 1993: 10). In part what we see in the Jordan Neighborhood is han. Loury, evidently without knowledge of Park's writings, articulates similar sentiments: "to reverse the effects of generations of brutal, violent, humanity-denying racial oppression―effects manifested in the bodies, minds, and spirits of the victims of that oppression―it may be necessary to mount communal self-help efforts" (Loury 2002: 97). I find this collective angst to be true of enough African Americans and Native American Indians to warrant societal attention. This han needs healing.
Institutionally legalized discrimination in contract is a relic of our infamous past. And we must be ever vigilant to enforce this legal reality. But for the lower-income African Americans such enforcement does not necessarily lead to social, political, and economic enfranchisement. African Americans must still negotiate their racial stigma, and lower-income African Americans must also negotiate the realities of class, frequently resulting in them being socially isolated. This isolation will result in access to minimal amounts of social capital and thus hinder their attempts at seizing the plethora of opportunities that we may take for granted. Unless the existing social patterns in our society change, unless the racial stigma imputed to blacks by whites dies, then we should expect little progress in the social dynamics that provide fertile soil for the melee in the Jordan Neighborhood.
White society, inclusive of white police officers, must increasingly see African Americans as existentially equal to their own humanity. It must follow through on our country's commitment to the individual's inherent worth. Here we have an opportunity to demonstrate police actions that belie Park's notion of seeing. But before doing so I will be the first to say that policing neighborhoods like Phillips or Jordan is difficult work.
When
| –a police officer awakens me at 2 a.m. by use of his megaphone while sitting in his car only to drive away after realizing he has the wrong address, never acknowledging the inconvenience to me and others on the block; |
| –a police cars drive through local parks; |
| –an officer intimates "If you live here, then what else should you expect but prostitutes, shootings, and open air drug markets"�; |
| –a police officer, as if a game show host, shouts to the crowd of people standing behind the yellow tape waiting for word on the two people who were shot, "Anyone want to solve a murder"�; |
| –police officers discount the protests of four African-American men whom I know to be upstanding citizens but allow my white wife to barge through and garner their attention; |
| –a police car pulls alongside a convertible of fun-loving African-American youth, having done nothing to warrant this, and the driver is asked to show his license all while no police officer has exited the squad car; |
| –a police officer fails to make eye contact with me as I politely relay a concern over neighborhood policing policies |
then I interpret this to be staring and not seeing, looking in ways unhelpful to the process of "moving away from racial conflict toward healing a wounded community." And if I interpret these actions as expressions of ill will or indifference, then one can easily imagine how many African Americans in low-income neighborhoods could interpret these.
I submit to you that if substantial numbers of whites will undergo a transmutation, individually and as communities, which bring about a collective horror in response to racial discrepancies in, for example, unemployment, poverty, and correctional supervision rates, then the white population will bring to the table the appropriate commitment to "race-sighted," as distinguished from "race-blind" and "race-indifferent," public and private initiatives (Loury 2002: 136, 133). And when this is done then African Americans in low-income communities will, in time, graduate from college as routinely as us and without the heroic efforts frequently needed today. There will be a greater level of enfranchisement.
For those of you who are white, I want you to perceive the personal
challenge. If the work you will do is based on "race-indifferent" or "race-blind" laws, then you may not be taking seriously the aspect of
race under question. If you are part of the silent white majority who
wants to do just enough charity to appease its conscience, just enough to
lessen the future probability of another racial melee, to replicate the
racialized status quo by your private choices of where you live, the
friends you have, the literature you read, the theatre you attend, the
mosques, synagogues, churches or other houses of faith you inhabit, then
you may not be taking seriously the effects a racialized society has upon
low-income African Americans.
Summary
What am I arguing? At this point in our collective history we must refrain from thinking that events such as those observed in the Jordan Neighborhood are anomalous in an otherwise racially progressive society. Instead we should find these events, including the Police Federation's response to City Council person Natalie Johnson Lee's letter to her ward concerning the tragic shooting deaths of a police officer and a civilian, understandable and even to be expected. But they should not receive our approval.
In the United States the legal institutionalization of racial discrimination in contract ended circa 1965, close to 370 years after the "discovery" of the "new" world. What a triumph. But the discrimination in contract and contact set in place during these years continues to plague us. Our racialized society is path dependent. Many African Americans living in neighborhoods such as Jordan bear the racial scars of discrimination in contract and contact. They need healing from their han coupled with greater access to higher levels of social capital. The probability of breaking from this path rises when white people increasingly see African Americans as equal in humanity, continue unequivocally to support the restraint of racial discrimination in contract, break from our societal norms of discrimination in contact, and vigorously pursue race-egalitarianism in public and private initiatives.
Race, I have learned, is not a topic one takes up, especially in public, without risk of being misunderstood and without commitment to go the distance. And in this setting charity is needed all around. Race is not a safe topic, but one that should be part of our social conversations. The invitation to enjoin a dialogue on race raises the passions of all participants as the topic is emotive. And so I can not leave you only with the dispassionate presentation of the conceptual, the analytical, and the reflective.
You may recall that I began this discussion by noting that the themes of racial discord and resolution for the wounded remind me of my commitment to shalom. Shalom takes me to a place of ineffable well-being, a place I will likely not live to see. But I move forward because shalom compels me. It is good; it is right. Someone once said, "The future will belong to those who have passion, and to those who are willing to make the commitment to make our country better." And so I ask, "Would you commit yourself to racial shalom?" Will you engage race in such a way that the result, big or small, for you will be cognitive, affective, behavioral, and existential change, change for the good of our common humanity?
| The Racialization of U.S. Society |
| from |
| Straub, Deborah Gillan (ed.). 1996. Voices of Multicultural America: Notable Speeches Delivered by African, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American, 1790-1995. New York: Gale Research. |
| 1619 Chattel slavery of Africans comes to Virginia. |
| 1790 The first Naturalization Act permits only "free white persons" to become naturalized citizens. |
| 1830 Congress enacts the Indian Removal Act. |
| 1857 Supreme Court issues the Dread Scott decision (Blacks cannot become citizens and have no Constitutional rights. Congress cannot prohibit slavery in a U.S. territory.) |
| 1863 Emancipation Proclamation |
| 1864 Sand Creek Massacre |
| 1865 Reconstruction and 13th Amendment (Slavery is made illegal.) |
| 1868 14th Amendment (Blacks are recognized as citizens as are Hispanics born in the U.S.) |
| 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act (prohibits Chinese immigration and naturalization) |
| 1890 - 1965 Jim Crow Laws |
| 1917 Asiatic Barred Zone Act prohibits immigration from Asia and India. |
| 1921 Limits on number of immigrants set for the first time. |
| 1942 Executive Order 9066 authorizes the evacuation of Japanese Americans (including citizens) on the West Coast to detention camps. |
| 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Topeka |
| 1964 Civil Rights Act |
| 1965 Malcolm X is assassinated, Voting Rights Act, Race Rebellion in Watts, Los Angeles |
| 1967 Race rebellions in various cities, including Newark and Detroit |
| 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy assassinated, American Indian Movement (AIM) founded with the help of Clyde Bellecourt, Kerner Commission report |
| 1971 Supreme Court rules that busing students to achieve racially integrated schools is constitutional. |
| 1978 Supreme Court issues Bakke decision. |
| 1986 First national Martin Luther King Jr. holiday celebrated |
| 1988 Civil Liberties Act grants redress to Japanese Americans sent to Internment Camps. |
| 1992 Race rebellion in Los Angeles |
| 1995 Supreme Court declares unconstitutional the practice of using race as the major factor in drawing legislative districts. |
| Black-White Discrepancies |
| (http://www.census.gov/) |
| (http://www.census.gov/) |
|
(http://www.nber.org/palmdata/indicators/unemployment.html#Allcivilianworkers) (http://www.nber.org/palmdata/indicators/unemployment.html) |
| (http://www.bls.census.gov/cps/pub/1997/int_race.htm) |
| Law Enforcement (Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 2000) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Poverty Rates |
1970 |
2000 |
| Black | 32.2 | 21.2 |
| White | 8.1 | 7.8 |
|
Median Family Income (in 2001 dollars) |
1970 |
2000 |
| Black | $24,789 | $34,616 |
| White | $40,411 | $54,509 |
|
Unemployment Rates |
1970 |
2000 |
| Black | 7.6 | |
| White | 3.5 |
|
Bachelor�s Degree or Higher; Age 25+ (March 1997) |
|
| Black | 13.2 percent |
| White | 24.6 percent |
|
Yes, sometimes afraid |
|
| Black | 42 percent |
| White | 16 percent |
|
Great deal/quite a lot |
|
| Black | 31 percent |
| White | 63 percent |
| --O-R ratio | = percent sworn officers who are black/percent population which is black |
| = 6.2 percent/18.2 percent | |
| --Out of 62 largest cities in the United States Minneapolis is last. |
| --29 categories ranging from murder to embezzlement to disorderly conduct |
| --Blacks overrepresented in 27 of 29 |
| --Whites overrepresented in 7 of 29 |
| --Blacks: 9.0 percent [1 of 11] |
| --Whites: 2.0 percent [1 of 50] |
Bibliography
| Anderson, G. R. Jr. 2002 "On the Corner." City Pages. 23(1118). May 8. |
| Arrow, Kenneth J. 1998. "What Has Economics to Say About Racial Discrimination" Journal of Economic Perspectives. 12(2). Spring. Pp. 91-100. |
| Atkinson, Glen and Ted Oleson. 1996. "Urban Sprawl as Path Dependent Process." Journal of Economic Issues. 30(2, June). pp. 609-615. |
| Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo and Amanda Lewis. 1997. The �New Racism�: Toward an Analysis of the U.S. Racial Structure, 1960s―1990s. Unpublished manuscript. |
| Emerson, Michael O. and Christian Smith. Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
| Ferguson, Ronald F. and William T. Dickens (eds.). 1999. Urban Problems and Community Development. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. |
| Ferguson, Ronald F. and William T. Dickens. 1999. "Introduction." in Ferguson and Dickens (eds.) Urban Problems and Community Development. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. pp. 1-32. |
| Loury, Glenn. C. 1977. "A Dynamic Theory of Racial Income Differences." In P.A. Wallace and A. Lamond (eds.). Women, Minorities and Employment Discrimination. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. |
| ____. 1995. One By One from the Inside Out: Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America. New York: Free Press. |
| ____. 1998. "Discrimination in the Post-Civil Rights Era: Beyond Market Interactions." Journal of Economic Perspectives. 12(2). Spring. Pp. 117-126. |
| ____. 2002. The Anatomy of Racial Inequality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. |
| Neale, Walter C. 1987. "Institutions." Journal of Economic Issues. XXI (3). September. Pp. 117-1206). |
| Nelson, Richard R. and Sidney G. Winter. 1985. Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change. |
| North, Douglas C. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. |
| Park, Andrew Sung. 1993. The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin. Nashville: Abbington Press. |
| ____. 1996. Racial Conflict & Racial Healing: An Asian-American Theological Perspective. New York: Orbis Books. |
| Robson, Britt. 2002. "Trouble Shooters." City Pages. 23(1135). September 4. |
| Schweitzer, Mary. 1999. E-mail post on FEMECON forwarded to AFEEMAIL, July 21. |
| Tevlin, Jon. 2002. "Experts: Distrust Makes Another Melee Likely." StarTribune. August 24. |
| Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 1983. Until Justice & Peace Embrace. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. |