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What is responsibility?
The immediate impetus for the current post is this quotation from Florida's new anti-CRT law:
(taken from this opinion piece about Governor Ron DeSantis's political trajectory)
That sounds at first like an unobjectionable, anti-racist, anti-sexist sentiment. Individual blacks shouldn't be pre-judged based on what other blacks have done, individual whites shouldn't be pre-judged based on what other whites have done, individual Moslems shouldn't be pre-judged based on what other Moslems have done, individual Catholics shouldn't be pre-judged based on what other Catholics have done, individual men or women or NB's shouldn't be pre-judged based on what other men, women, or NB's have done, etc. Who could object to that? (Leaving aside the irony that this law uses exactly the same language of "discomfort" and "psychological distress" for which conservatives often mock liberals as "fragile snowflakes".)
The fly in the ointment is the word "responsibility", which in my experience has at least three different meanings (in the "something went wrong and needs to be fixed" context), which I explored here. In brief,
If all three of these are the same person (or corporation or whatever), the thing is likely to be fixed, and unlikely to recur because the person who caused it this time paid for that mistake. If they're three different people, the thing is unlikely to be fixed, and likely to happen again.
It occurs to me now that in some cases there's a fourth person:
So, let's look at the history of race in America, in particular its effect on socioeconomic inequality (which is tied up with educational inequality, neighborhood crime rates, etc.)
Who's to blame? Obviously, I didn't personally cause slavery in the 17th-19th centuries, or Jim Crow and lynching in the late 19th and 20th, or real-estate red-lining in the mid-20th. Indeed, only the most recent and ongoing examples of institutional racism (which really are much less bad than fifty years ago, or a hundred years ago, or two hundred years ago) have anybody living who could be "blamed" for them. If we expect the problem to be fixed by those "to blame", it'll never be fixed because those people are mostly dead.
Who stands to benefit from the problem being fixed? One could argue that every member of society would benefit from reducing inequality, in that the resulting society would be stabler, more peaceful, with less crime, etc. But obviously those who stand to benefit the most are those on the losing end, those descended from many generations of people who were poor and/or uneducated largely because of their race. That's not me either.
Who's capable of fixing the problem? Again, almost everybody has something to contribute to solving the problem, but the people most capable of fixing the problem are, as always, those with the most socioeconomic power -- precisely the people who don't stand to benefit from the problem being fixed. And it's such a huge problem that no individual, no matter how wealthy, is likely to be able to make much of a dent in it, which allows most of us, even the relatively wealthy, to excuse ourselves from it.
And finally, who benefits from the problem? Even though it's "not my fault", I benefit from slavery and subsequent racial discrimination. According to Ancestry, I have several ancestors who owned slaves (mostly in eastern Maryland), and their wealth presumably affected the socioeconomic and educational status of their non-slave-owning descendants, including me. Both absolutely (in dollars and degrees) and relatively (to the rest of the US population, particularly the black population), I am almost certainly richer and better-educated than I would be if my distant ancestors hadn't owned slaves, and if subsequent generations hadn't been on the winning side of government policies and societal norms that explicitly favored whites over blacks, Native Americans, Chinese, etc.
So who's "responsible" for the socioeconomic problems of race in the US? If you think of "responsibility" in terms of blame, you're probably off the hook because you're alive today. If you think of "responsibility" in terms of ability to fix it, you're probably off the hook because you're not a billionaire or a government. If you think of "responsibility" in terms of incentive to fix it, most of the people reading this post are off the hook because they're above average in income and education. Only in qui bono terms do you bear any responsibility. So if your goal is to absolve yourself of responsibility, it's critically important to avoid any discussion of qui bono, and that's the purpose of the law.
On the other hand, if your goal is to fix the problem, discussing "blame" is irrelevant and useless: the only way to get a problem fixed is to somehow align the people most able to fix it (which in this case is those who benefit from the problem) with those with the most incentive to see it fixed.
An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.
(taken from this opinion piece about Governor Ron DeSantis's political trajectory)
That sounds at first like an unobjectionable, anti-racist, anti-sexist sentiment. Individual blacks shouldn't be pre-judged based on what other blacks have done, individual whites shouldn't be pre-judged based on what other whites have done, individual Moslems shouldn't be pre-judged based on what other Moslems have done, individual Catholics shouldn't be pre-judged based on what other Catholics have done, individual men or women or NB's shouldn't be pre-judged based on what other men, women, or NB's have done, etc. Who could object to that? (Leaving aside the irony that this law uses exactly the same language of "discomfort" and "psychological distress" for which conservatives often mock liberals as "fragile snowflakes".)
The fly in the ointment is the word "responsibility", which in my experience has at least three different meanings (in the "something went wrong and needs to be fixed" context), which I explored here. In brief,
- Who's (most) to blame? Who caused the the thing to go wrong?
- Who's (most) capable of fixing the thing?
- Who stands to benefit (most) from the thing being fixed?
If all three of these are the same person (or corporation or whatever), the thing is likely to be fixed, and unlikely to recur because the person who caused it this time paid for that mistake. If they're three different people, the thing is unlikely to be fixed, and likely to happen again.
It occurs to me now that in some cases there's a fourth person:
- Who benefited (or expected to benefit) from the thing going wrong?
So, let's look at the history of race in America, in particular its effect on socioeconomic inequality (which is tied up with educational inequality, neighborhood crime rates, etc.)
Who's to blame? Obviously, I didn't personally cause slavery in the 17th-19th centuries, or Jim Crow and lynching in the late 19th and 20th, or real-estate red-lining in the mid-20th. Indeed, only the most recent and ongoing examples of institutional racism (which really are much less bad than fifty years ago, or a hundred years ago, or two hundred years ago) have anybody living who could be "blamed" for them. If we expect the problem to be fixed by those "to blame", it'll never be fixed because those people are mostly dead.
Who stands to benefit from the problem being fixed? One could argue that every member of society would benefit from reducing inequality, in that the resulting society would be stabler, more peaceful, with less crime, etc. But obviously those who stand to benefit the most are those on the losing end, those descended from many generations of people who were poor and/or uneducated largely because of their race. That's not me either.
Who's capable of fixing the problem? Again, almost everybody has something to contribute to solving the problem, but the people most capable of fixing the problem are, as always, those with the most socioeconomic power -- precisely the people who don't stand to benefit from the problem being fixed. And it's such a huge problem that no individual, no matter how wealthy, is likely to be able to make much of a dent in it, which allows most of us, even the relatively wealthy, to excuse ourselves from it.
And finally, who benefits from the problem? Even though it's "not my fault", I benefit from slavery and subsequent racial discrimination. According to Ancestry, I have several ancestors who owned slaves (mostly in eastern Maryland), and their wealth presumably affected the socioeconomic and educational status of their non-slave-owning descendants, including me. Both absolutely (in dollars and degrees) and relatively (to the rest of the US population, particularly the black population), I am almost certainly richer and better-educated than I would be if my distant ancestors hadn't owned slaves, and if subsequent generations hadn't been on the winning side of government policies and societal norms that explicitly favored whites over blacks, Native Americans, Chinese, etc.
So who's "responsible" for the socioeconomic problems of race in the US? If you think of "responsibility" in terms of blame, you're probably off the hook because you're alive today. If you think of "responsibility" in terms of ability to fix it, you're probably off the hook because you're not a billionaire or a government. If you think of "responsibility" in terms of incentive to fix it, most of the people reading this post are off the hook because they're above average in income and education. Only in qui bono terms do you bear any responsibility. So if your goal is to absolve yourself of responsibility, it's critically important to avoid any discussion of qui bono, and that's the purpose of the law.
On the other hand, if your goal is to fix the problem, discussing "blame" is irrelevant and useless: the only way to get a problem fixed is to somehow align the people most able to fix it (which in this case is those who benefit from the problem) with those with the most incentive to see it fixed.
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Assigning blame, even if it's absolutely clear who's at fault, is seldom productive: it's almost impossible to discuss blame without putting people on the defensive, which turns things into a dominance game rather than a problem-solving exercise.