Claims of systemic racism can also be attacks on democracy itself. In fact, if overdone, such claims may themselves be racist. The situation would then be that of racists holding democracy ransom in the mistaken belief that the whole must be consistent with the interests of one of its parts to be legitimate; otherwise, the democratic principle of majority rule is itself presumed to be invalid. The case of the change of a street's name in Kansas City, Missouri, can serve as a case study.
On November 5, 2019, voters in Kansas City voted overwhelmingly (nearly 70%) in favor of restoring the name of a street to The Paseo (inspired in 1899 by Mexico City’s mayor, Paseo de la Reforma). A mere two months before the vote, the City Council had changed the street name to honor Martin Luther King, Jr, an American civil-rights leader in the turbulent 1960s. Members of the Save the Paseo movement said that their motive was historical preservation rather than racism. According to one member, the Paseo was “historical I people’s memory” rather than just on paper.[1] The members “were upset that the council [had] made the change without input from those who [lived] along the street.”[2] A city statute required such input, according to the members. The mayor admitted that the city had not engaged with “enough different community members.”[3] The key word here is different, for the campaign to change the street’s name to that of the civil-rights leader had been led by black pastors. So the city council made the change based on the advocacy of a segment of the population with a vested interest in the change, rather than reaching out to first ascertain whether the sort of unity that Martin King had preached could be achieved on the measure. In short, the council had put a part ahead of the whole.
For its part, the part, represented by Rev. Vernon Howard, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City, claimed that racism was the main motive of the opposition to retaining the King name. “This is a white-led movement that is trying to dictate to black people in the black community who our heroes should be; who we honor; where we honor them and how we honor them,” Howard said. “This is the pathology of white privilege and that is the epitome of systemic structural racism,” he added.[4] In other words, the pathology of white privilege is the epitome of systemic structural racism. Had the reverend sought to provide a religious rather than a psychological account, he might have claimed that certain social structures are evil whereas others are sacred. A Unitarian minister in my hometown had once insisted to me that certain social structures (i.e., egalitarian systems) are sacred. I countered that a human claiming that a human artifact is divine constitutes self-idolatry.[5] He dismissed my counter-claim instantly, as if he presumed that he could not be wrong whereas I must be so. Had he also insisted that societal structures that contain inequality are pathological, I would have pointed to the over-reach of his religious basis onto psychology.
I submit that in dismissing the meaningfulness of The Paseo to people generally in Kansas City, Howard’s reductionism to racism is erroneous. Essentially, he was claiming that cases in which majority rule does not dovetail with his interpretation of black interests, the democratic principle itself is culpable as part of systemic structural racism and thus is pathological in nature. In other words, the particular interests of one segment of the whole must be consistent with the majority for the democratic principle of majority rule to be devoid of the stain of racism and thus valid.
Furthermore, in so closely relating “white privilege” to systemic racism, the reverend overlooked or dismissed outright the racism in the black community. On the morning following the vote, for example, I endured fifteen minutes of racist insults from a black woman on a local bus in Phoenix, Arizona. Her voice could be heard throughout the bus as she claimed that “whites are ugly when they age, whereas black people age good.” Furthermore, whites are red-necks whose “dominance will end someday.” As she declared herself to be a racist, I noticed that the driver, also a black women, was refusing to stop the woman. Such passive aggression can be considered tacit racism. That was not the only instance in which I had observed black racism on a Phoenix bus. Once a driver had decided not to intervene as a black woman shouted insults at a Caucasian man until the woman called the driver a racist for not having kicked the man off the bus! The reputation of the local bus drivers in the phoenix metro, including Tempe, was sordid in terms of their attitudes and bad in terms of their driving, and accountability at least regarding the latter was deliberately obstructed by First Trans, a sub-contractor of Valley Metro. The subcontractor was in denial concerning the role of its pathetic hiring of people with bad attitudes to drive the buses. Such a flawed system enabled black racism (as well as reckless driving, such as in going from 40 or 50 mph to zero in a turn lane). Put another way, systemic structural racism can be due to black privilege (and facilitated or enabled by a corrupt, incompetent organization).
The reverend’s partial account can be taken as confirmation of being a part within a whole not reflecting the whole or its interests. Holding majority rule subject to such a partial perspective is not in itself in the interests of a whole. In Kansas City, the municipal government followed a flawed process (of input) in changing the street to Martin Luther King Jr Blvd. Such a flaw is not racist even if the segment that benefitted from the flaw no longer benefits once the flaw has been corrected by the voters. In fact, for an electorate to correct its delegated government is laudable from a democratic standpoint, as the People, as the popular sovereign, is the basis of a republic. For that basis to somehow be held ransom by a part thereof undermines the foundation of democracy, whether direct or representative.
[1] William Cummings, “Kansas City Voters Overwhelmingly Approve Mesure to Drop Martin Luther King Jr.’s Name from Street,” USA Today, November 6, 2019.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
