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On August 7, 2020 Michigan
governor Gretchen Whitmer declared that racism is a public health crisis and signed
a bill requiring state employees to undergo “bias training” as a corrective.
Governor Whitmer is not the first to use the words “public
health crisis” when discussing racism and systemic racism. Several other state governors, public health organizations,
city councils, state legislators, news reporters and opinion columnists have used
the same or similar words.
I believe that this is a
mistake. Racism and systemic racism certainly
qualify as crises that affected large populations for hundreds of
years. Minority communities targeted by racist attitudes and behavior have long
been “in crisis.” They have experienced and continue to experience long,
unbroken periods of great difficulty, danger and suffering. If this is what is meant by the words “racism is a public health crisis,” then I have no grounds to disagree.
But this does not imply that the racists and racist institutions
that are the cause of the terrible effects of racism should be classified as a public health problem. If the primary charge of public
health organizations is to prevent the spread of disease and deliver therapy to
those who are ill, then there are no good grounds for
saying that what racists need is therapy or that systemic racism should be
rooted out and “cured” by public health officials.
Let me explain. A "health intervention or response" to a public health crisis is a response to illness, sickness, disease, unhealthiness or unsoundness. If the health
crisis is ‘public’ then the illness affects humans in one or more geographic
areas, confined to one locale, a particular state or country, or all areas on earth. Public health crises in the past include Spanish
flu (1918), H5N1 (bird flu, 2004), HIV/AIDS (1981-), SARS (Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome, 2002), and several diseases (such as cancer) caused by ingestion
of, use of or exposure to toxic products (for example, Thalidomide, DDT, asbestos,
nicotine).
We now have another example
of a public health crisis that is having an unwelcome devastating effect on almost all
countries on earth: The Novel Coronavirus Disease, COVID-19, which was
declared a 'pandemic' by the World Health Organization on Mach 11, 2020.
1. Definitions
Since the question is whether
racism and systemic racism should be classified as a public health crises, the first step is to put forward relevant definitions.
‘Racism’ means “a belief that
race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial
differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” A second, simpler
definition is “racial prejudice or
discrimination” (Merriam Webster).
‘Systemic racism’ is “a doctrine
or political program based on the assumption of racism and designed to execute
its principles” (MW). A stronger
definition recently offered by a graduate student says that systemic racism is "prejudice
combined with social and institutional power. It is a system of advantage based
on skin color” (Hauser, New York Times 10 June
2020).
2. Framing an analogical
argument
The second step is to create an
analogy between known public health crises and systemic racism. In the case of the current pandemic, there is a useful distinction between the disease name, the symptoms, and the causes of
the disease:
(a) Disease name:
COVID-19
(b) Symptoms: Fever or chills, cough, shortness of breath
or difficulty breathing, fatigue, muscle, and body aches, etc.
(c) Cause of the
symptoms: SARS-cv2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome
coronavirus 2).
If racism is a candidate for public therapy, then we should be able to make similar classifications for systemic racism. This is not an easy task. Using (a) - (c) as my guide, here is the best I can offer:
(a¹) Disease name:
Systemic racism.
(b¹) Symptoms: Unjust
legislation, practices and protocols regarding minority communities (e.g., creating laws that require public schools to be
segregated by race; sentencing Black persons to longer jail terms than White
persons for committing identical offense; arresting substantially more Black
people than White for committing identical offenses).
(c¹) Cause(s) of the
symptoms: Personal prejudice and an ideological and dominant culture which
rationalizes and justifies their superior position (Zatz,
Mann and Coramae, p. 3).
3. Problems with the analogy
I submit that the two sets of
classifications (above) are not sufficiently similar for the purpose of
qualifying systemic racism as an illness or disease.
First, the symptoms named in
(b) are not voluntary. The sick
persons who suffer from COVID-19 do not choose to have a fever and
shortness of breath. Fatigue and fever
are physical conditions that one undergoes not something one does.
The person who suffers cannot control the causal connection between disease and
symptoms of the disease. Attempts can be
made by a medical staff to mitigate the severity of the symptoms but the
symptoms themselves are beyond the control of the patient.
But the so-called symptoms
named in (b¹) are voluntary.
Legislators in the southern states who created and voted for Jim Crow
laws in the early twentieth century did not do so because they had no
control over their prejudices. We do
not think of these racist legislators as ‘sufferers’ or ‘victims’ of a disease.
Second, it is a category
mistake to call a belief or opinion a ‘symptom’. The relationship between a disease and the
symptoms of the disease is that of cause and effect. As argued by Plato 2,400 year ago, the
relationship between beliefs and behavior is not one of cause and
effect, but a relationship of reason to action (Phaedo, 95a – 105a).
If it is believed by White racists that Black persons are inferior to White
persons, this a reason for not a cause of their racist
behavior. A prejudiced opinion about the
natural superiority of White people is a reason for creating and voting
for a Jim Crow law, not a cause of these acts. If legislators are asked “Why did you vote
for that bill?” they would answer “Because it prohibits Black people and other
inferior minorities from using public toilets designated for their superiors”
not “I couldn’t help it. My beliefs made me do it.”
4. Five unwelcome consequences
of classifying systemic racism as a disease
If we insist on using the
disease model for racism and systemic racism, then the institutions of social
control will respond with therapy as the appropriate response to these so-called
diseases. “The logic of sickness implies
the logic of therapy.” (Morris, 382). Here are five implications.
4.1 No fault responses. If racists and the cultures in which they
reside are believed to be sick, then therapists will say that they are not
at fault for their racist behavior. Their behavior is only a manifestation
of a mental illness that is beyond their control. If we do not blame
corona-virus victims for being fatigued, running a high fever and coughing ,
then so we must not blame racists for their overt racist behavior.
4.2 Compassionate and
beneficent responses. Therapy
implies that one must make a compassionate response to racism, not anger or
accusations. Therapists only see people
as suffering and their response is to do whatever will relieve the pain. The
compassionate response to the disease of systemic racism is to quarantine
racists when there is a threat that they might spread the disease and attempt
to find and administer a cure of the disease from which the racist is
suffering.
4.3 No proportionality of
cure to behavior. “With therapy, attempts at proportionality make no
sense.” (id., 484)
Proportionality of a response belongs to the logic of punishment, not
the logic of therapy. The doctors who
treat corona-virus victims might treat identical patients for a week or several
months before they dismiss them, depending on the status of their health, not
on how much they might have harmed others by infecting them. By analogy, it
would be permissible to force feed one racist with anti-racist pills and let him
go home after one week while confining another to a mental asylum for a lifetime.
4.4 No reason to wait for therapeutic
intervention. “In a system motivated solely by a preventive and curative
ideology there would be less reason to wait until symptoms manifest themselves in
socially harmful conduct” (id., 485).
If a person has symptoms of COVID-19, then the strong desire of
therapists is to prevent that person from spreading the disease to others and
to treat the disease with hospitalization if necessary. By analogy, if racist
conduct is construed as a symptom of an underlying disease, then there is no
good reason to wait until the racist harms others.
4.5 Derogation in status
of protests not to be treated. Those
persons who are found to have a disease might not want to submit to a cure for
their disease, if a cure is available.
If a preventative is developed in the form of a pill or vaccine, then they might not want to take it. Their protest might be listened to but
regarded as signs of a selfish concern for themselves rather than a concern for
the health of others.
5. Alternative responses to racism and systemic
racism
I began this short essay with
a news report about Governor Whitmer's promotion of a bill requiring public employees
to take courses in ‘bias training’. She and other governors either assume that bias training is a therapeutic response to racism, or they see the public health system as having education as one of their responses
to public health crises.
If bias
training is a type of therapy, then racists should be regarded as people who cannot help their
racist beliefs and attitudes. This has
all of the unwelcome consequences I have outlined earlier (4.1 – 4.5).
If the public health system uses education
instead of therapy as a response, then I would have no complaint about this, as
long as enrollment is voluntary and the educators do not cross the boundary between
teaching and brainwashing.
Governor Whitmer’s bill requiring state employees to undergo bias training is a matter of education, not therapy. To respond to bias with education is to assume that appeals to reason will lead to the elimination of bias. Even if state employees are required to attend bias classes, it is up to them whether they will receive anti-bias education with an open mind and eventually change their minds about what they believe and how they will act in the future.
The right to be treated as
persons implies that there should be no impediment to racists (and sexists, heterosexists, ageists) making their own choices about whether they want to cling to their racist views, attitudes and behavior or to give them up. They have the right to freedom of thought and expression as long as they do not harm or otherwise violate the equal
rights of others. If racists are made aware of the importance of equal rights under the law as they enter into rational discussions of the moral foundations of constitutional democracy then perhaps racist
behavior and institutional racism will finally become relics of the past.
_____________________________________
1999. “Images of
Color, Images of Crime: Readings.” Crime, Law and Social Change 32,
279–281 https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008328019994
Socrates
is portrayed by Plato as sitting in jail waiting for the executioner to
appear. Socrates tells his friend Cebes
that if the philosopher Anaxagoras was
asked “Why is Socrates sitting in jail?” he would give a mechanistic account of
the position of Socrates’ bones and muscles.
Anaxagoras mistakenly takes the question to be about the cause of
Socrates’ sitting position instead of being about Socrates’ reason for
sitting, which has already been answered (“I am waiting for the executioner to
appear”).
Most
of the observations in this section about the definition and implications of
therapeutic interventions are taken from Herbert Morris’ groundbreaking journal
article “Persons and Punishment”. (FYI - Professor Morris was my mentor and
dissertation director at UCLA in the mid-1960s.
He is 92, in good health and still writing books and essays on
philosophy, arts and literature).
There is a contemporary event that stands as a
powerful example of how some ‘therapists’ are attempting to cure their patients
by changing the beliefs and attitudes of the entire cultural group to which
they belong, with the aim of wiping out their identity. The cultural group is the Muslim Uighurs of Xinjiang and
the therapists are agents of the Chinese government. A leaked memo obtained by BBC News says that
thousands of Uighurs are being detained in prison camps and are “subject at
least to psychological torture because they literally don't know how long
they're going to be there… [D]etainees will only be released when they can
demonstrate they have transformed their behavior, beliefs and language.” (https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/cpz1y9ney3mt/uighurs
)
