No More Mr. Nice Guy!

We're from the government and we're here to label you...

A recent Keith Knight cartoon, reprinted in many alternative newspapers, shows a policeman viciously whacking a civilian over the head with his nightstick. The caption reads: "California's Prop. 54, if voted in, bans state agencies from collecting race-based data vital in tracking health, education & discrimination issues..." The obvious implication is that the Racial Privacy Initiative will give cops free reign to practice racial profiling. The twist is that the cop in the cartoon is black - because he happens to be Ward Connerly, the initiative's proposer.

This raises some questions that may not have occurred to Knight. In many states and cities, the police are required to keep records of the "race" of every driver they stop. But shouldn't the "race" of the officer also be recorded? If a black cop stops a black driver, does that count as racial profiling? What about a Hispanic cop and a gringo driver? In any case, don't the police have a tough enough job without having to make arbitrary and subjective categorizations of everyone they encounter, and keep track of the extra reams of paperwork that result? Is it fair that they're burdened with the presumption of racist intent when they're just trying to do their jobs? Yes, there are some bad apples, but the next time you're driving down the freeway at night, ask yourself: what "race" is the driver in front of me? Can't tell? Too bad! You're guilty of racial profiling.

The worst part of this racial data bureaucracy is that, as I previously wrote, "race" is a scientifically meaningless concept. The crude division of humanity into "black", "white" etc. doesn't even begin to hint at the complexity of human genetics. All it does is perpetuate division and resentment.

Many people claim that racial data is essential for equitable health care for minorities. This argument is bogus. With regard to the vast majority of medical conditions for which racial data is collected - infant mortality, diabetes, obesity, etc. - socioeconomic status is a far better predictor of risk factors for the condition in question than a checkmark next to a box labeled "black" or "white". In most cases, people don't suffer diabetes or obesity because they have been categorized as black - it happens because they eat too much junk food and don't have a nutritious diet, which in turn very often happens because they are poor.

In the land of the "rugged individualist", it's remarkable how obsessed we are in categorizing people by "race". At the same time there's an ever-present myth, supported by the unquestioning acceptance of all shades of political opinion, that the US is a classless society (even though in reality there is less income mobility in the US than in any other western country except Britain). To draw attention to class divisions, even when they stare us in the face, is strictly taboo. A poverty issue will always  be reported in the media as a race issue. We use race as a proxy for class. This is lazy and intellectually dishonest, but we always seem to find it easier to label people and put them in little boxes than to deal with them as individuals. Once we classify a man by his skin color, we fool ourselves that we know his opinions on any given issue, so we needn't actually talk to him. After all, he is interchangeable with anyone else who has been similarly labeled.

But by taking the lazy way out, and compiling endless statistics which deal with people as skin colors rather than as citizens, we end up hurting the people we claim to help. Accusations of racial profiling in Cincinnati and several other cities have led to the police reducing their patrols in black neighborhoods, with a consequent upsurge in crime. Even worse, it was a provision in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, requiring most Southern states to record the "race" of voters next to their names in the voter rolls, which made it trivially easy for Jeb Bush to disenfranchise tens of thousands of black voters in the 2000 presidential election.

With Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa as case studies, any thinking person should recoil from the prospect of the government keeping a database of the "race" of its citizens. Yet no country expends more resources on doing so than the "land of the free". Even when it is done with the best of intentions, the law of unintended consequences invariably kicks in. And when those in power have evil intentions, "race" data is their most potent weapon.

The California Racial Privacy Initiative is a first step in the right direction. Sure, it may initially make life a little harder from the racial data bureaucrats who are used to checking boxes mindlessly. It may actually force them to deal with people as individuals. Is that such a terrible thing?