Racism: More Than a Mosquito

Cultural commentator John McWhorter uses the mosquito as a metaphor for racism. I'll include two portions from his recent column in the New Republic that mention this metaphor:

"Like mosquitoes, some small, irritating racist element will always exist in every society..."

"It is certainly not pretty that some people's take on Obama is likely mediated by racism. But the phenomenon is less a matter of open bigotry than a breach of civility. Who ever thought that all people would be civil at all times? And who ever thought, given the inherent imperfectability of humankind, that racism is somehow different from our other flaws and could be subject to complete elimination? No one pens doorstop volumes announcing that mosquitoes still exist. We know they do, and we assume they always will, because life isn't perfect. The issue is how close to perfect we can expect to get. Surely, healthcare, two wars overseas, and a deeply ailing economy are more important than mosquitoes -- or whether some people's feelings about Barack Obama are less than, yes, civil." (Read the whole thing here)

What I take from this column is that racism is an annoyance that we can live with and is not something to make a big fuss over especially when there are more "important" things to be concerned about. The use of the mosquito metaphor however, reveals a failure to recognize that neither all mosquitos, nor all forms of racism are equal. A malaria carrying mosquito for instance is far from a mere annoyance. Likewise, there are forms of racism that for many Americans are a life and death matter. Structural, or institutional racism for example, is a powerful social determinant of quality of life issues such as health. Structural racism refers to a social order which perpetuates inequities among racial groups. Here is some information about racial inequities in health from the Office of Minority Health from 2007 that illustrates this point:

Even though the Nation’s infant mortality rate is down, the infant death rate among African Americans is still more than double that of whites. Heart disease death rates are more than 40 percent higher for African Americans than for whites. The death rate for all cancers is 30 percent higher for African Americans than for whites; for prostate cancer, it is more than double that for whites. African American women have a higher death rate from breast cancer despite having a mammography screening rate that is nearly the same as the rate for white women. The death rate from HIV/AIDS for African Americans is more than seven times that for whites; the rate of homicide is six times that for whites.

Hispanics living in the United States are almost twice as likely to die from diabetes as are non-Hispanic whites. Although constituting only 11 percent of the total population in 1996, Hispanics accounted for 20 percent of the new cases of tuberculosis. Hispanics also have higher rates of high blood pressure and obesity than non-Hispanic whites. There are differences among Hispanic populations as well. For example, whereas the rate of low birth weight infants is lower for the total Hispanic population compared with that of whites, Puerto Ricans have a low birth weight rate that is 50 percent higher than the rate for whites.

American Indians and Alaska Natives have an infant death rate almost double that for whites. The rate of diabetes for this population group is more than twice that for whites. The Pima of Arizona have one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world. American Indians and Alaska Natives also have disproportionately high death rates from unintentional injuries and suicide.

Asians and Pacific Islanders, on average, have indicators of being one of the healthiest population groups in the United States. However, there is great diversity within this population group, and health disparities for some specific segments are quite marked. Women of Vietnamese origin, for example, suffer from cervical cancer at nearly five times the rate for white women. New cases of hepatitis and tuberculosis also are higher in Asians and Pacific Islanders living in the United States than in whites.

The racism as mosquito metaphor only makes sense if racism is understood primarily in emotional terms, as a reflection of the feelings of individuals towards others. As I have said before, the tendency to psychologize racism, to reduce it to a kind of mindset, encourages the kind of discourse exemplified in McWhorter's column. Racism becomes trivialized and easily ignored, minimized or denied. The Baha'i Faith teaches that racism is far from trivial and it is not purely a matter of the heart. Racism is an obstacle to world peace and the advancement of civilization itself:

"Racism, one of the most baneful and persistent evils, is a major barrier to peace. Its practice perpetrates too outrageous a violation of the dignity of human beings to be countenanced under any pretext. Racism retards the unfoldment of the boundless potentialities of its victims, corrupts its perpetrators, and blights human progress. Recognition of the oneness of mankind, implemented by appropriate legal measures, must be universally upheld if this problem is to be overcome." (The Universal House of Justice, 1985 Oct, The Promise of World Peace)

There is however good news:

"Racial and ethnic prejudices have been subjected to equally summary treatment by historical processes that have little patience left for such pretensions. Here, rejection of the past has been especially decisive. Racism is now tainted by its association with the horrors of the twentieth century to the degree that it has taken on something of the character of a spiritual disease. While surviving as a social attitude in many parts of the world -- and as a blight on the lives of a significant segment of humankind -- racial prejudice has become so universally condemned in principle that no body of people can any longer safely allow themselves to be identified with it." (The Universal House of Justice, 2002 April, To the World's Religious Leaders)

One of the great challenges of the 21st century will be transforming this universal condemnation of racism into a new social order that promotes racial equity. This will require clarity of vision regarding the nature of this problem which does not simply exist in the mind but in the fundamental structures of our society. Racism is more than a mosquito.