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most alcoholics, the most reliable solution is to stop drinking
entirely. Anecdotally, it is possible to find former
alcoholics
who can have a social drink once in a while, former nicotine addicts
who enjoy the occasional cigar, and former gambling addicts who
can put ten dollars into an NCAA basketball pool without going off
on a gambling binge. But for many other addicts or former addicts,
the safest and most effective strategy is to stop the problem behavior
altogether.
Many Americans, as individuals, are among the least racist people
on earth, but like many nations, we have a long history of racism.
And so, collectively, we are in a position similar to that of alcoholics
— some of us may be able to take just one drink, but many of
us are not.
Racial quotas for employment, minority set-asides for contracts,
and race-adjusted test scores for college admission often are well-intended.
Nevertheless, the inevitable side effect is to teach people to see
people not as individuals but as members of races or other groups.
And seeing human beings as members of groups is habit-forming. Once
people have learned to think in racist paradigms, who can be sure
that those paradigms will not have unintended consequences?
It is foolish to assume that only the well-intentioned will learn
to see people as members of groups. This assumption is refuted by
massive historical evidence — from recent complaints of racial
profiling by police, to racial segregation, to hatred of one minority
by another, to the tribal wars of Kosovo, to cultural genocide in
Tibet, to the Holocaust. If we have learned anything from the twentieth
century, it is that seeing people as members of racial or other
groups can be life-threatening. But have we learned anything?
As the song in South Pacific put it, "You've got to be carefully
taught" to think of people as members of groups, rather than as
individuals. Unfortunately, the majority of the U.S. educational
system has fallen into the hands of people who carefully teach racism.
National holidays are no longer marked by patriotic music. One school
celebrated Flag Day by having the students march with the flags
of the nations from which their ancestors came. We no longer teach
young people to be proud Americans or to observe Washington's and
Lincoln's birthdays. Why are we shocked that the future killers
at Columbine High School gave the Nazi salute and observed Hitler's
birthday? We extol the value of "ethnic pride" and have school children
describe for the class the ethnic and national origins of their
families. Why are we surprised when some kids feel more affinity
with Nazis than with Americans? We nod approvingly when demonstrators
shout, "Viva la raza." We weaken what holds us together while
strengthening what pulls us apart. We balkanize ourselves, forgetting
that Kosovo is in the Balkans.
Many of those who insist that we should see people as members of
groups also insist that the Constitution is a "living document"
— i.e., it has no fixed meaning and is to be interpreted to
meet "current societal needs." In other words, this "living Constitution"
is really a dead letter, for it imposes no limits on what one group
with a majority of votes in the legislature can do to a less powerful
group.
If legislators or judges can order quotas that favor certain groups,
what is to prevent them from ordering quotas that harm the same
groups? Today, civil-rights laws are perverted to require what they
plainly forbid: discrimination against whites and Asians. What is
to prevent twisting them the other way, with discrimination against
blacks and Hispanics?
For some alcoholics, detoxification programs include tranquilizers
to tide patients over the acute withdrawal phase. But these drugs
are not continued for the alcoholic's lifetime, and certainly not
administered to their children and grandchildren. Similarly, quotas
might, arguably, have been needed to tide society over its acute
withdrawal from discrimination. But quotas (including quotas dishonestly
labeled "affirmative action") have continued so long that they have
become addictive and destructive. A person addicted to tranquilizers
is no better off than one addicted to alcohol. Calling something
a "remedy" and having it prescribed by an authority figure does
not alleviate its addictive, destructive effects, whether it is
a drug or a quota system.
The surest way to stop suffering from alcoholism is to stop drinking,
and the surest way to stop suffering from racism is to stop discriminating.
We must consciously push ourselves to see every person as an individual,
with individual strengths and weaknesses, and not as a mere member
of a group. In order to control racism, it is necessary to stop
racist thinking, one day at a time.
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