The role of racism

Duke’s campus is driven by pain, a fair amount of which arises from race-related issues. America has a bad track record on race—from slavery until the 1860s to progressivist eugenics in the 1910-20s to Jim Crow through the 1960s. Now at Duke, while many of us hope that racism is behind us, we continually confront it and are horrified and traumatized. Last year, racial issues on our campus reached a climax after the noose incident and the defamation of a Black Lives Matter sign. When I first came to Duke as a freshman, I was told during orientation week that the narrative of the campus divide was “everyone versus the fraternities.” But now it seems as if the controversy centers around the BSA and Duke Enrage. Why?

While we all believe that racism is bad, we don’t all understand racism in the same way. While I have lived as a minority for a cumulative eight years in Europe and Africa, I am still a Caucasian and can’t speak to the minority experiences in America with any authority. The only experience I can claim is that I have seen racism in many different contexts. I know little. But the swirling controversy and wide range of thought on this subject compels me to try to understand. And so, what I offer will not be from a profound experience of race and racism, but from what I think about the nature of right, wrong and the reality of the human condition. I don’t want this to be political (though it will have political implications); I want to rethink our constructs of racism and moral responsibility. Even though these incidents have faded into our campus’s history, they still influence our present. The demands made to President Brodhead have resulted in the formation of the Task Force against Hate and Bias, whose members will try to address these issues. But if we truly seek to solve these problems, we need to make sure we understand them in the first place.

Is racism a wrong action or thought or a less desirable social condition? Assuming a transcendent moral framework exists, it is a genuinely wrong thought or action. What that means is that it cannot be completely eliminated through education and social conditioning since it arises from humanity’s inherent self-centeredness and propensity to do wrong. How, then, do we understand institutional racism? If an institution is a "stable, valued, recurring pattern of behavior,” institutional racism is the codification and normalization of racism in society. No matter how prevalent you believe racism and institutional racism are today, the key thing to keep in mind here is that both racism and institutional racism ultimately come from people. It doesn’t matter if you are a part of the majority or a minority; you still have a propensity to be racist.

It has been argued that the acts of racism by minorities are irrelevant because the racism by the majority has had a significantly more damaging effect. And it is true that racism by those who hold power has been more historically and universally damaging. This truly speaks to the evil of racism when it is combined with power. However, it should also be noted that the lack of bad effects does not mean something inherently wrong is morally acceptable.

At the foundational level, what’s wrong with the “Duke, You Are Guilty” slogan is that it rests on the postmodern construct of oppressors and victims. The postmodern thought that drives our society says that if you have been hurt and wounded, then you are a victim. Victims are inherently blameless, and those who are not victims or their allies are by default guilty oppressors. Although we tend to romanticize victims as underdogs and heroes, the pitfall of this construct is that it precludes true justice by allaying individual moral agency and responsibility for both victims and oppressors. If every human being has a propensity to do wrong and has done wrong, then every person is both a victim of wrongdoing and an oppressor of others on either a macro or a micro level. True moral responsibility occurs and true justice is possible when we take into account both how people have been wronged as well as the wrongdoing they have done.

When we are fighting against racism, the fight is not ultimately against a machine or an establishment; it is against the evil that is in every person and in every human heart. Education may have the power to inform, but it cannot transform. While laws and behavioral regulations can mitigate the effect of evil, they cannot eradicate evil, because evil will always find a loophole. The only way to produce sustainable change is to transform the very source of racism, which is the heart.

Another problem with the victim-oppressor dichotomy is that it draws each side into self-centeredness. “Victims” demonize a broad category of “oppressors,” and “oppressors” angrily lash back as both sides settle into their spiraling trenches of self-righteous segregation. So far, this has not transformed hearts or brought healing to our campus.

But Jesus proposes another way, with which I challenge you and myself. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” He addressed these words to Jews who had been beaten down for years by brutal Roman rule. His call is to change hearts by overcoming evil with good and counting others more significant than ourselves. Do we dare to do what our campus is scared to do?