So
much of our reasoning about race is both emotional and faulty. In ordinary, as
well as professional, conversation, we use terms such as discrimination,
prejudice, racial preferences and racism interchangeably, as if they referred
to the same behavior. We can avoid many pitfalls of misguided thinking about
race by establishing operational definitions so as to not confuse one behavior
with another.
Discrimination
can be operationally defined as an act of choice. Our entire lives are spent
choosing to do or not to do thousands of activities. Choosing requires
non-choosing. When you chose to read this column, you discriminated against
other possible uses of your time. When you chose a spouse, you discriminated
against other people. When I chose Mrs. Williams, I systematically
discriminated against other women. Much of it was racial. Namely, I
discriminated against white women, Asian women, fat women and women with
criminal backgrounds. In a word, I didn’t offer every woman an equal
opportunity, and they didn’t offer me an equal opportunity.
One might be tempted to argue
that racial discrimination in marriage is trivial and does not have important
social consequences, but it does. When high-IQ and high-income people marry
other high-IQ and high-income people, and to the extent there is a racial
correlation between these characteristics, racial discrimination in mate
selection enhances the inequality in the population’s intelligence and income
distribution. There would be greater income equality if high-IQ and high-income
people married low-IQ and low-income people. But I imagine that most people
would be horrified by the suggestion of a mandate to require the same.
American Contempt for ...Walter
E. WilliamsBest Price: $7.41Buy New $13.45(as
of 10:20 EDT - Details)
Prejudice
is a perfectly useful term, but it is used improperly. Its Latin root is
praejudicium — meaning prejudgment. Prejudice can be operationally defined as
making decisions on the basis of incomplete information. Because the
acquisition of information entails costs, we all seek to economize on
information cost. Sometimes we use cheap-to-observe physical attributes as
proxies for some other attribute more costlier to observe. The cheaply observed
fact that a person is a male or female can serve as a proxy for an unobserved
attribute such as strength, aggressiveness or speed in running.
In
the late 1990s, a black taxi commissioner in Washington, D.C., warned cabbies
against going into low-income black neighborhoods and picking up
“dangerous-looking” passengers whom she described as young black males dressed
a certain way. Some pizza deliverers in St. Louis who were black complained
about delivering pizzas to black neighborhoods for fear of being assaulted or
robbed. In 1993, the Rev. Jesse Jackson was reported as saying that he is
relieved when he learns that youthful footsteps walking behind him at night are
white and not black.
Here’s the question: Does the
wariness of Washington’s predominantly black cabbies to pick up
“dangerous-looking” black males or black pizza deliverers’ not wanting to
deliver to some black neighborhoods or Rev. Jackson’s feeling a sense of relief
when the youthful footsteps behind him are those of white youngsters instead of
black say anything unambiguous about whether cabbies, pizza deliverers and
Jackson like or dislike blacks? It’s a vital and often overlooked point —
namely, that watching a person’s prejudicial (prejudging) behavior alone can
tell us nothing unambiguous about that person’s racial tastes or preferences.
Consider
policing. Suppose a chief of police is trying to capture culprits who break in
to autos to steal electronic equipment. Suppose further that you see him
focusing most of his investigative resources on young males between the ages of
15 and 25. He spends none of his investigative resources on females of any age
and very few on men who are 40 or older. By watching his “profiling” behavior —
prejudging behavior — would you conclude that he likes females and older males
and dislikes males between the ages of 15 and 25? I think that it would take
outright idiocy to reach such a conclusion. The police chief is simply playing
the odds based on the evidence he has gathered through experience that breaking
in to autos tends to be a young man’s fancy.
Walter
E. Williams is the John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics at George
Mason University, and a nationally syndicated columnist. To find out more about
Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and
cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page.
Copyright © 2018 Creators.com
