Is Irrational Racism Really Hyperrational?

“Ye preachers of equality,

the tyrant-frenzy of impotence crieth thus in you for ‘equality’:
your most secret tyrant-longings disguise themselves thus in virtue-words!”
--Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

“There ain't a white man in this room that would change places with me.
None of you would change places with me. And l'm rich!
That's how good it is to be white.
There's a white, one-legged busboy in here right now...
that won't change places with my black ass.
He's going, ‘No, man, l don't wanna switch.
l wanna ride this white thing out.’”
--Chris Rock, Bigger & Blacker

People think that racism is a defect inherited from our past, a historical holdover from a previous production regime, and that over time it will go away by itself. But racism helps give white people advantages in our white supremacist society. It is rational for white people to keep alive the racism that gives them power. Privileged groups seldom relinquish power willingly.

Sociologists and critical race theorists have shown the rationales for black people to stick together to survive and to oppose white supremacy. But they have done less to show how white people might be motivated to end white supremacy. Claims that white people feel guilt and are dehumanized may be true. But they are not a convincing reason for white people to give up power.

White supremacy is a political order in which different groups get varying social and economic benefits. White people are favored over black people in the current system just like capitalists are favored over workers in capitalism and urban groups are favored over rural ones in industrial countries. Racial groups can be seen as similar to classes or sectors in that each responds to a particular set of interests, they form strategic alliances, and any given system has winners and losers. In this view, dismantling white supremacy is analogous to passing political economic reforms like lowering tariffs or privatizing state businesses. This essay uses the logic of economic reform to show how white supremacy is maintained. Once we understand the rational basis of white supremacy, we may be able to envision possible steps to take towards ending it.

Because ideas of racial superiority do not stand up to science, they seem irrational. But W.E.B Dubois saw that racism served as an excuse for white people to take advantage of people of color. In that sense, being racist is a rational way to act for white people. As Derrick Bell writes, even when we white people seem to allow progress toward racial equality, we are really just advancing our own interests. For example, if overt racism is causing too much social turmoil or is not good for the image of the US before the world, then we allow the appearance of change. We white people may even objectively improve circumstances for people of color in the short term, but only if it benefits us over the long haul.

The white supremacist system, as Ricky Lee Allen writes, is maintained through a bargain struck between well-off whites and poor whites. Well-off whites offer to poor whites the potential opportunity for individual poor-whites to become well-off. In exchange, poor whites have to accept being poor, just not the poorest. As part of the deal, well-off whites get to blame poor whites for racism and use them to blur the relationship between wealth and whiteness. This helps deflect claims of racial injustice brought by people of color. Because poor whites value whiteness over wealth, they decline to join forces with poor blacks. Dubois saw that white workers would not form unions with black workers because they did not want to risk becoming equal to blacks—even if it meant foregoing wage raises.

Psychological decision theory helps explain why remaining in league with well-off whites is more rational for poor whites than defecting and joining with poor people of color. As Kurt Weyland’s Swallowing the Bitter Pill showed for Latin American political reactions to neoliberal economic reforms, people often want to avoid risk more than they want to open the uncertain possibility of gain. Following this reasoning, poor whites may prefer remaining strategically wed to well-off whites because dissolving the political union could hypothetically make them worse off. In the terms of Albert Hirschman, poor whites maintain loyalty to whiteness, although they do not have much voice within the white alliance. And, by definition, they will never become economically equal to well-off whites.

Perhaps the decline of whites from numerical majority status in the US will cause poor whites to reevaluate the rationality of siding with the ever-smaller racial group and prompt their exit from the white alliance. But the logic of such a defection would have to be made readily evident. Poor whites would have to gain enough allegiance to the poor white group to solve the collective action problem and keep individual poor whites from occasionally accepting promotion into the upper echelon of the white hierarchy. Allowing individual poor white molecules to steam up into the realm of well-off whites is what keeps the pot of poor whites from blowing up; and this illusory blurring of whites is also what keeps poor whites and poor people of color from identifying with each other.

People of color also behave rationally under white supremacy. According to Frantz Fanon, colonization created an inferiority complex in black minds, so achieving an aspect of whiteness became very logical. Black people with French education and some limited access to white society act superior to other blacks, as they defend their tenuous claim to whiteness. Similarly, Dubois wrote about black people with lighter skin coveting the minor privilege their complexion gave them.

Fanon, and to some extent Dubois, claimed that it is irrational for black people to put race first—both because it emphasizes racial distinctions that ultimately bolster white supremacy and because it denies the possibility of individual self-interest to people of color. After all, why should white people be the only ones afforded the luxury of pursuing self-interest? But such divisive tactics seem irrational, if the goal is ending white supremacy.

Dubois did suggest that the only possible way to tear down the system of white supremacy is first maintaining the integrity of the black alliance. African-Americans have demonstrated this understanding in their political decision making: they have overwhelmingly voted in unison in US elections. According to Michael Dawson’s Behind the Mule, black people in America figure that their fates are linked much more to their racial group than their classes. In this vein, black people can draw on their common history and shared destiny to create the kind of credible commitments necessary for economic and political organization. Therefore, it is rational for black people to subordinate their class interests to racial solidarity.

Since our white supremacy society is defined by white people asserting privilege, the major question remains: how can it be rational for well-off white people to give up our advantage?

Dubois, Fanon, and Bell all claim that maintaining white power and opportunity comes at a tremendous cost to well-off whites. They claim that we white people lose our humanity and must deal with profound guilt. But these moral allegations are largely asserted and not shown empirically. Maybe white people are unaware of the emotional tolls that maintaining white supremacy entails. Or maybe we do not care—thinking it smarter to support the racist system and get our unearned benefits.

Relying on white people coming to moral conclusions has never done anything to end white supremacy. So there is no reason to expect a different result now, especially in this age of moral relativism and individual economism. Effecting real change demands identifying plainly rational reasons for well-off whites to end white supremacy. However, our goal should not be to design a way for the white group to profit from social justice for people of color. We should reject playing by the convergence principle. Instead, we should figure out a way for white people to perceive the abolishment of whiteness as unambiguously rational.

Dubois noted that racist practices arrest the full development of black people’s ability to contribute to humankind. He suggested that white people would gain from the positive externalities of black emancipation. Thus, one rationale for ending white supremacy is that opening unbridled opportunities to people of color would increase the number of smart and educated people that could help solve problems that affect everyone, including well-off white people.

Another rationale could center on efficiency gains. Just as much of current health care costs go to the unproductive process of denying insurance claims, much of white people’s energy goes into upholding white supremacy and occupying our privileged position. Defending the indefensible and rationalizing the irrational require great investments of effort. To topple white supremacy, it must be made abundantly clear that this exertion is inefficient and that investments in antiracism would ultimately yield higher returns. Well-off white people have to be persuaded that the overall pie would grow, so there would be no need to preserve our claim to the largest slice.

Maybe getting the ball rolling toward ending white supremacy can produce enough new winners to offset the protests of the short-term losers. In Re-forming the State, Hector Schamis has shown that economic reforms can produce new constituencies—assembling previously diffuse groups around newly arisen common interests. So if an incipient antiracist project benefited enough poor people of color and poor whites, they might begin to organize together, defend initial gains against backsliding, and work together for further advances.

Derrick Bell might say that any such new institution that pretended to equalize would invariably work to consolidate white privilege. Yet nascent political institutions do not always produce the results intended. In Politics in Time, Paul Pierson writes that, given the complexity and dynamism of social reality, institutional effects can be wholly unanticipated—departing drastically from the original preferences of those privileged actors who designed the institutions. If policy makers do not always succeed in “getting the institutions right”, how can Bell be so sure that white elites will always “get the institutions white”?

Eventually some novel reforms—which whites intend as superficially progressive and substantively conservative—may backfire and inadvertently lead toward racial equality. Of course, such unintended consequences would likely meet backlash from whites seeking to regain undeserved power.

Nevertheless, in light of the logic of economic reform, it does seem feasible that some new institution opposed to white supremacy could create unimagined consequences and build an unprecedented constituency of poor people of all races in a new antiracist alliance set on defending the end of whiteness.

Until such an outcome occurs, we need to keep our focus on the rational underpinnings of racism. Critical race theorists should elaborate on strategies for incentivizing well-off white people to abandon white supremacy. Emotional appeals about alleged guilt and dehumanization have never and will never put a dent in white supremacy.