As always, I find a great deal of wisdom in your writing. I do take exception to one of your sentences: "America’s problem is less racist cops than just cops, and other figures of authority like Jonathan Ross, entrusted with firearms and ominously comfortable with killing people who frustrate them." Lumping all law enforcement in the same category as I.C.E. seems illogical. We are constantly being told that I.C.E. officers are being recruited and hired with significantly fewer requirements and decidedly less training than that received by most local law enforcement. (For example, in Seattle, police go through a significant application process, including interviewing references, several different tests, physical ,intellectual, psychological. Then go through four months of the state academy and I think three months of FTO, before being officially hired. And then they are on a probationary year.
Approximately 347 police were shot in 2025 which led to 45 fatalities. Sixty-seven ambush style attacks. Of course, there are bad cops, bad shootings. However, to assume that this number can be zero or close to it may be unrealistic when guns are so available and so often used in criminal activities.
Of course, you are correct that had Renee Good been Black, her tragic and unnecessary death would be reported differently. (I have seen commentaries that the shooter was obviously "homophobic" but there seems no basis for this.) Nonetheless, discussion of it might be more accurate if it looked specifically at all the issues involved with I.C.E. rather than with all law enforcement writ large. Seems like two separate discussions.
There is extensive empirical evidence of ongoing discrimination against women and minorities in employment—likely as a result of implicit bias. I am NOT talking about the gimmicky IAT but about correspondence studies in which employers are sent matched resumes sending the message that an applicant is black or white.
One thing I noticed in most discussions of discrimination in employment concern only jobs that require a college degree—whereas most Americans, who are not college graduates compete in a different segment of the job market. (Whereas the correspondence studies, for the most part, test hiring for entry-level positions that don’t require a degree) I’m an academic and I’ve been through many hiring processes for my department. I do not believe that women or minorities face any discrimination in hiring for academic jobs. And I suspect the same is true for most other ‘elite’ jobs. It is for ‘non-elite’ jobs that discrimination figures and for which, I’d argue, affirmative action is required—not to promote ‘diversity’ (which, I believe, is of no value) but to ameliorate ongoing discrimination.
I’ve always wondered why virtually all discussions I’ve read on discrimination and affirmative action focus on jobs for college graduates—or admission to colleges and professional programs—why no one pays any attention to the jobs most people do. Maybe it’s the all cats equally gray assumption—the assumption that all ‘bad’ jobs are equally bad for all people. More likely I think it’s a matter of ‘those who speak don’t know’. The speakers are members of the ‘elite’ who see themselves and others like them in the market for jobs in management and the professions. They don’t believe that they themselves, their children, or anyone with whom they socialize will be competing for jobs that don’t require a college degree.
If employers perceive that it's more difficult to terminate an underperforming employee if they are of a certain group due reputational or litigation risk, some employers, particularly smaller ones, will incorporate that cost when evaluating competing applicants. Even if we solved implicit bias, that sort of discrimination is difficult to eliminate.
This applies to older employees also, not only to racial, ethnic, sex- and gender-based groups. Older people have some legal standing to claim discrimination, and so are a higher risk than the average regarding litigation.
There's a more general version of this dynamic, one that applies to everyone: the more resources it takes a manager or a company to lay off or fire someone (because of general employment law), the higher the company's bar for needing another employee before they will hire someone. Conversely, the easier it is to fire someone, the more people will likely be hired.
The question is what at will / regulation tradeoff to shoot for.
Fair and granted. Employers are reluctant to hire women in some positions not only because because they worry about the consequences of firing them but because they they worry about potential charges of sexual harassment. Now I don't know how to avoid the consequences of policies that make hiring women or minorities a risk while at the same time counteracting ongoing, largely unintentional, discrimination which there is reason to believe is ongoing.
I'm always a little puzzled when Latinos are lumped in with populations that are suffering from the effects of slavery and what came after. When exactly was it that Latinos were brought to America in chains and enslaved? Did I miss something?
Great article, especially since it talks a bit about my primary frustration - most of the discourse is about past grievances, and very little about how we want to the future to look. Will we ever eliminate all prejudice based on race? Still looking for the approved term for “prejudice based on race” now that the word “racism” has joined the euphemism treadmill and redefined as, “only the powerful, aka white, can be racist”.
Anyways, is it a good strategy or idea to claim that phrases like “America is the land of opportunity” or “Pick yourself up by your own bootstraps” are racist, while there are so many people struggling to get to the US, and then succeeding?
Individual humans are complex, and groups of them even more so. Statistics do provide some insight, but mostly external. Racism is one cause of issues shared by people who share statistical similarities. The real way to fix the problems is to get a clear idea of what the primary causes are, and deal with those. Blaming some ill-defined term like “systemic racism” doesn’t help. Just as an example, improving educational outcomes is a much more concrete & achievable goal that reducing something that vague.
"One example, typical in my experience, is a report by the Economic Policy Institute that requires that reparations include not just apology and payment, but 'commitment to structural change designed to prevent future racial injustice'—as in, even after the payments, 'It’s not over!'
I think that the Economic Policy Institute gets the issue half right-- and it's not the half about "apology and payment". If specific living people can be identified who suffered measurable damages caused by other living people on account of race, I'm in favor of compensating those people. But most of the reparations debate has seemed to me to be about payoffs to the putative descendants of people long dead for wrongs committed against those ancestors by other people also long dead, paid for to a great extent by living people with no connection to the original malefactors. I see nothing right about that, and in those circumstances, an "apology" that couldn't help but be insincere would just be an additional insult.
On the other hand, there is no doubt in my mind that structural racism still exists in the United States, and still has the ability to blight lives. This is processes, governmental and economic, that have become so familiar to us that they seem colorblind on their face, but were created in a time when racial discrimination was policy and still embody it. Anyone who has read Richard Rothstein's book "The Color of Law" about discriminatory residential zoning, or "Dispossession" by Pete Daniels, about depriving Black farmers of their land during the mid-20th Century, knows what I have in mind. We all have a responsibility as a society to support policies to identify and correct these structures wherever they are, and to make it a priority.
Racism is clearly still an unresolved problem in the USA (Trump was at it again yesterday - as part of his senile, narcissistic ramblings yesterday at Davos he made a remark about Somalis having a higher IQ than he expected), but it's also important that you raise the issue of class as well. In the 19th century in Britain, for example, the word "race" was used to describe those in the lower classes.
Thanks for this inspiring and reflective text. America is better today in general compared to the 1960s and there are many things to be improved, as regarding poverty reducation and human security.
As always, I find a great deal of wisdom in your writing. I do take exception to one of your sentences: "America’s problem is less racist cops than just cops, and other figures of authority like Jonathan Ross, entrusted with firearms and ominously comfortable with killing people who frustrate them." Lumping all law enforcement in the same category as I.C.E. seems illogical. We are constantly being told that I.C.E. officers are being recruited and hired with significantly fewer requirements and decidedly less training than that received by most local law enforcement. (For example, in Seattle, police go through a significant application process, including interviewing references, several different tests, physical ,intellectual, psychological. Then go through four months of the state academy and I think three months of FTO, before being officially hired. And then they are on a probationary year.
Approximately 347 police were shot in 2025 which led to 45 fatalities. Sixty-seven ambush style attacks. Of course, there are bad cops, bad shootings. However, to assume that this number can be zero or close to it may be unrealistic when guns are so available and so often used in criminal activities.
Of course, you are correct that had Renee Good been Black, her tragic and unnecessary death would be reported differently. (I have seen commentaries that the shooter was obviously "homophobic" but there seems no basis for this.) Nonetheless, discussion of it might be more accurate if it looked specifically at all the issues involved with I.C.E. rather than with all law enforcement writ large. Seems like two separate discussions.
There is extensive empirical evidence of ongoing discrimination against women and minorities in employment—likely as a result of implicit bias. I am NOT talking about the gimmicky IAT but about correspondence studies in which employers are sent matched resumes sending the message that an applicant is black or white.
One thing I noticed in most discussions of discrimination in employment concern only jobs that require a college degree—whereas most Americans, who are not college graduates compete in a different segment of the job market. (Whereas the correspondence studies, for the most part, test hiring for entry-level positions that don’t require a degree) I’m an academic and I’ve been through many hiring processes for my department. I do not believe that women or minorities face any discrimination in hiring for academic jobs. And I suspect the same is true for most other ‘elite’ jobs. It is for ‘non-elite’ jobs that discrimination figures and for which, I’d argue, affirmative action is required—not to promote ‘diversity’ (which, I believe, is of no value) but to ameliorate ongoing discrimination.
I’ve always wondered why virtually all discussions I’ve read on discrimination and affirmative action focus on jobs for college graduates—or admission to colleges and professional programs—why no one pays any attention to the jobs most people do. Maybe it’s the all cats equally gray assumption—the assumption that all ‘bad’ jobs are equally bad for all people. More likely I think it’s a matter of ‘those who speak don’t know’. The speakers are members of the ‘elite’ who see themselves and others like them in the market for jobs in management and the professions. They don’t believe that they themselves, their children, or anyone with whom they socialize will be competing for jobs that don’t require a college degree.
If employers perceive that it's more difficult to terminate an underperforming employee if they are of a certain group due reputational or litigation risk, some employers, particularly smaller ones, will incorporate that cost when evaluating competing applicants. Even if we solved implicit bias, that sort of discrimination is difficult to eliminate.
This applies to older employees also, not only to racial, ethnic, sex- and gender-based groups. Older people have some legal standing to claim discrimination, and so are a higher risk than the average regarding litigation.
There's a more general version of this dynamic, one that applies to everyone: the more resources it takes a manager or a company to lay off or fire someone (because of general employment law), the higher the company's bar for needing another employee before they will hire someone. Conversely, the easier it is to fire someone, the more people will likely be hired.
The question is what at will / regulation tradeoff to shoot for.
Fair and granted. Employers are reluctant to hire women in some positions not only because because they worry about the consequences of firing them but because they they worry about potential charges of sexual harassment. Now I don't know how to avoid the consequences of policies that make hiring women or minorities a risk while at the same time counteracting ongoing, largely unintentional, discrimination which there is reason to believe is ongoing.
I'm always a little puzzled when Latinos are lumped in with populations that are suffering from the effects of slavery and what came after. When exactly was it that Latinos were brought to America in chains and enslaved? Did I miss something?
Great article, especially since it talks a bit about my primary frustration - most of the discourse is about past grievances, and very little about how we want to the future to look. Will we ever eliminate all prejudice based on race? Still looking for the approved term for “prejudice based on race” now that the word “racism” has joined the euphemism treadmill and redefined as, “only the powerful, aka white, can be racist”.
Anyways, is it a good strategy or idea to claim that phrases like “America is the land of opportunity” or “Pick yourself up by your own bootstraps” are racist, while there are so many people struggling to get to the US, and then succeeding?
Individual humans are complex, and groups of them even more so. Statistics do provide some insight, but mostly external. Racism is one cause of issues shared by people who share statistical similarities. The real way to fix the problems is to get a clear idea of what the primary causes are, and deal with those. Blaming some ill-defined term like “systemic racism” doesn’t help. Just as an example, improving educational outcomes is a much more concrete & achievable goal that reducing something that vague.
"One example, typical in my experience, is a report by the Economic Policy Institute that requires that reparations include not just apology and payment, but 'commitment to structural change designed to prevent future racial injustice'—as in, even after the payments, 'It’s not over!'
I think that the Economic Policy Institute gets the issue half right-- and it's not the half about "apology and payment". If specific living people can be identified who suffered measurable damages caused by other living people on account of race, I'm in favor of compensating those people. But most of the reparations debate has seemed to me to be about payoffs to the putative descendants of people long dead for wrongs committed against those ancestors by other people also long dead, paid for to a great extent by living people with no connection to the original malefactors. I see nothing right about that, and in those circumstances, an "apology" that couldn't help but be insincere would just be an additional insult.
On the other hand, there is no doubt in my mind that structural racism still exists in the United States, and still has the ability to blight lives. This is processes, governmental and economic, that have become so familiar to us that they seem colorblind on their face, but were created in a time when racial discrimination was policy and still embody it. Anyone who has read Richard Rothstein's book "The Color of Law" about discriminatory residential zoning, or "Dispossession" by Pete Daniels, about depriving Black farmers of their land during the mid-20th Century, knows what I have in mind. We all have a responsibility as a society to support policies to identify and correct these structures wherever they are, and to make it a priority.
Racism is clearly still an unresolved problem in the USA (Trump was at it again yesterday - as part of his senile, narcissistic ramblings yesterday at Davos he made a remark about Somalis having a higher IQ than he expected), but it's also important that you raise the issue of class as well. In the 19th century in Britain, for example, the word "race" was used to describe those in the lower classes.
Thanks for this inspiring and reflective text. America is better today in general compared to the 1960s and there are many things to be improved, as regarding poverty reducation and human security.