Racial Culture: A Critique, by Richard T. Ford Essay

Over the last thirty years, critical race and gender theorists have questioned whether and if law can protect difference in a meaningful way, especially in the workplace. Richard T. Ford, a law professor at Stanford University, provides an interesting critique of the resulting â€Å"multicultural assumptions of difference† in his book RACIAL CULTURE. While he recognizes most refutations of these approaches come from conservatives with a political agenda of legal colorblindness, Ford explicitly asserts he shares the political and social goals of the progressive left. More specifically, he refutes colorblindness as a means of equality. Ford argues that racial identity politics have the liability of undermining their stated objective of eliminating racism in the workplace. The author is clear; his opposition to discrimination based on status does not mean that one is not ambivalent about the development of a new legal category of discrimination based on culture. His overarching concern is that â€Å"race,† which is socially and economically constructed, is given additional legitimacy by the assumption that every race manifests cultural similarities and that these cultural artifacts should be protected in the same manner as racism. [A]nti-discrimination law should be refined so as to recognize only those differences attributable to the production of formal status hierarchy, for the purpose of eliminating or reducing the ill-effects of such hierarchies. Difference discourse, by metastasizing status into a thick social identity, distracts from and confuses the vital task of correcting status hierarchy. Legal decision [*217] makers need to be aware of status differences and castelike social practices in order to correct the injustices that they do. But we should resist the temptation to write a speculative sociology of group difference into law or to enlist the state into a psychotherapeutic quest to validated â€Å"repressed† identities. Finally, Ford is concerned that in privileging racial culture we foster an environment of conflict and competition, without a thoughtful analysis of which cultures are most worthy of protecting. His assumption is that racial integration should be a dominant goal of society, with members of racial groups selecting for themselves which aspects of their culture are most worthy of preserving. Many readers may agree with aspects of his legal argument, without completely accepting his rejection of identity politics as â€Å"provincialism. † Ford offers instead a vision of â€Å"cosmopolitanism† in which â€Å"minority cultural practices will survive without legal protection, albeit often in an altered, fragmented and recombined form, and that such survival in an admittedly Hobbesian social competition is preferable to the distorted and blinkered version of group difference we should expect cultural rights to produce† . While Ford’s analysis is wide-ranging, well-written, and fascinating, there are several limitations to his argument. His own assumptions regarding employment discrimination law are disturbing. His reliance on current employment discrimination law as the best means for redressing racism ignores several factors that the â€Å"difference† discourse has revealed. One factor is the gap for women of color within the protections of Title VII. To demonstrate racial discrimination, women of color must show that others of their race were treated similarly, but if those similarly-situated are men, the discrimination may not be evident. To demonstrate gender discrimination, women of color must show that others of their gender were treated similarly, but if white women are those who are similarly-situated, such discrimination may not be apparent. Contemporary Title VII jurisprudence frequently does not allow for interactions between race and gender that are unique to women of color. The formal equality required by Title VII is limited in how well it can protect against explicit racism, let alone against the â€Å"proxies of race† illustrated by cultural practice. Another area that requires further development is Ford’s extension of cultural analysis to less comparable areas of employment discrimination law—in particular, sexual preference and gender. His premise that sexual preference should be protected as status, rather than as behavior or culture, ignores the lesser protection granted sexual preference under the law compared to racial discrimination. Ford does not address the unanswered question within the law of whether sexual preference is behavior or immutable characteristic. The current judicial acceptance of lower levels of scrutiny to protect sexual preference in the workplace means that a simple reliance on current employment discrimination law will not render the results he professes are necessary. Finally, his equivalence of gender discrimination to race is disappointing, especially in the area of pregnancy. While the right to difference literature [*218] builds on a century of analysis by feminist scholars, there are clear differences between the two. However, Ford perceives pregnancy as a form of gender culture, as braids or language can be for race. But this analogy does not work. Discrimination against pregnancy is not justified by employers solely on the basis of predicted workplace impacts of the actual pregnancy, but also because women have the potential to become pregnant. Since pregnancy is a biological reality, how can it be simply another cultural manifestation or behavior choice? A second difference is that, unlike forms of racial or ethnic culture, Congress revised Title VII to incorporate pregnancy into the definition of gender discrimination. 4 Part 2- How racial Identity affects an individual in society Individual youth who experience discrimination carry higher stress burden People’s beliefs that they are being treated badly because racial or gender bias increases their stress levels, and may lead to increased emotional and behavioral problems, according to a study of black and white youth. Understanding how race and gender affect youths’ well-being â€Å"is necessary not only for promoting optimal individual development, but also for meeting the nation’s social and economic needs,† says lead study author David L. DuBois, Ph. D., of the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. DuBois conducted the research while at the University of Missouri, Columbia. Previous studies have focused on older study participants, but little is known about how younger age groups are affected by discrimination or prejudice, according to the study, which is published in the September/October issue of Child Development. DuBois and his colleagues administered a series of questionnaires to 350 students in grades 5-8. This group of students included comparable numbers of blacks and whites, females and males. One survey, which included questions like â€Å"Were you called names or insulted at school about your race/ethnicity† and â€Å"Were you treated unfairly at school because you are a girl/boy,† was designed to measure discriminatory experiences and how study participants were affected by them, while others measured major life stressors, racial and gender identity, self-esteem and behavior. The researchers found significant differences among the student groups. Black study participants, both males and females, reported more experiences with discrimination and prejudice. The study setting, a Midwestern school district in which blacks were a minority in both student body and staff, may have contributed to these higher perceived levels, according to the study. â€Å"In this context many black youth may not have felt adequately supported in their efforts to deal with situations involving perceived victimization or unfair treatment on the basis of race,† DuBois says. The black students who reported higher levels of discrimination were more likely to have emotional problems, the researchers found. Such problems may stem from internalized anger, according to findings from other studies. The researchers also found that the black participants in their early teens reported feeling a stronger sense of racial identity than same-age whites. The new study and previous studies have found that at this age, blacks tend to have higher self-esteem than whites. DuBois and his colleagues found that a strong racial identity is important in helping to enhance the self-esteem of black youth. 5 How Racial Identity Affects School Performance of an Individual We investigated the sources of differences in school performance between students of different races by focusing on identity issues. We find that having a higher percentage of same-race friends has a positive effect of white teenagers’ test score while having a negative effect on blacks’ test scores. However, the higher the education level of a black teenager’s parent, the lower this negative effect, while for whites, it is the reverse. It is thus the combination of the choice of friends (which is a measure of own identity) and the parent’s education that are responsible for the difference in education attainment between students of different races but also between students of the same race. One interesting aspects of this paper is to provide a theoretical model that grounds the instrumental variable approach used in the empirical analysis to deal with endogeneity issues. 6 Our Racial Identity affects who we see in society The authors asked biracial participants (one Black and one White parent) to think about their Black parent’s ethnicity. After, they could spot the presence or lack of a Black face in a crowd of White faces with the same speed and accuracy as a monoracial Black person. The same held true when asked to think of their White parent. Although all detected Black faces faster than white faces, biracial students were affected by thinking about one half of their racial identity and then behaved as if they were monoracial. Black, white, and biracial participants performed the visual search task by looking at Black and White faces on a computer screen. To prep the biracial individuals, the participants were asked to write about their mother or father’s ethnicity. Black-primed and White-primed biracial individuals differed significantly in the searches, displaying the effects of the manipulation. â€Å"These findings demonstrate that visual perception is malleable to top-down influences, such as orientation provided by one’s racial group membership,† the authors conclude. References: 1. AAPA Statement on Biological Aspects of Race America Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) 2. http://genomebiology. com/2002/3/7/comment/2007 3. Alicia Fedelina Chavez, Florence Guido-DiBrito Racial and Ethnic Identity and Development NEW DIRECTIONS FOR ADULT AND CONTINUING EDUCATION, no.84, Winter 1999  © Jossey-Bass Publishers 39 4. Richard T. Ford. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Vol. 15 No. 3 (March 2005), pp. 215-218 5. Pamela Ippoliti, www. hbns. org 6. Eleonora Patacchini (eleonora. patacchini@uniroma1. it) (University of Rome â€Å"La Sapienza†)Yves Zenou (yvesz@iui. se) (IUI, GAINS, CEPR and IZA Bonn) 7. Joan Y. Chiao, Hannah E. Heck, and Ken Nakayama are at Harvard University. Nalini Ambady is at Tufts University. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. , May 10, 2006.