I would rather not have another national conversation about race in America. But if we must, can we at least not have the same conversation about race in America?
Since the Supreme Court told Harvard that it can no longer use race to determine admissions, affirmative action policies (and even long-held working assumptions about race) have been called into question.
The U.S. Constitution, with its preference for all things local, is entirely compatible with the multi-race paradigm that characterizes a majority-free America.
Before the SFFA v. Harvard decision, the prevailing social paradigm held that everything in America was pre-determined by skin color, a lasting legacy of slavery. White people were the oppressors. Black people were the victims. No amount of hard work, intelligence, merit, family support, or prayer could ever change these roles. This theory explained much of U.S. history — as long as America remained divided into just two races. (READ MORE: Now We’re Misdiagnosing Chronic Kidney Disease for Racial Equity)
Enter the Hispanics. As of 2020, Hispanics made up 19 percent of the U.S. population, significantly more than Blacks, who account for 12 percent. Hispanic numbers are growing rapidly. They are re-making American cities like Miami in their own image and introducing the Spanish language, diet, and music into the culture. Not to put too fine a point on it, but how can the two-race paradigm account for the large and growing presence of a third race?
Enter the Asians. Up until recently, we had little data on Asians living within our borders because there were so few of them. However, since arriving in the United States in larger numbers, they have achieved admirable success in business, politics, and the professions, all in a very short period of time. In 2021, the median income of Asian households was $ 101,418, compared with $ 70,784 for all U.S. households and $ 80,000 for Whites. Asians are very visible in public life. They run a considerable number of technology companies including Google and Microsoft. Two out of the five Republican candidates running for president are of Asian descent. Asians have achieved this success without the benefit of white skin. Asian success in America cannot be explained by the two-race paradigm.
Exit the whites. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that whites will become a minority by 2045. Why would the white majority encourage immigration policies that reduce their numbers, not to mention the raw political power that flows from those numbers? Under the two-race paradigm, oppressors do not voluntarily give up their privileges. How to rationalize the apparently self-destructive behavior of white people?
I suggest that the civil rights movement has succeeded, far beyond anyone’s expectations, in the creation of a new multi-race paradigm. Under this new theory, all races are now protected by a body of laws, court cases, regulations, and corporate policies. As a direct result of these policies, the United States will soon become a majority-less country. Instead of a linear bi-polar society with whites at one end and Blacks at the other, the future looks more like a network of many points, where each minority looks at all the other minorities and sees a majority. For example, Asians, projected to be eight percent of the population in 2045, will still view themselves as a minority as compared to 92 percent of the country that is non-Asian — as will every other racial group.
The multi-race paradigm answers many puzzling questions about contemporary America.
Why are so many dark-skinned people migrating to the U.S.? Answer: They feel safe here because of the legal protections extended to them.
Why are so many immigrants succeeding here? Answer: There are no institutions or social mores holding them back, unlike the U.S. in the past, or for that matter, their home countries at present.
Why are whites voluntarily ceding political power? Answer: They are comfortable in the minority.
It may be helpful to pause for a moment and compare the U.S. to other countries. Is today’s America more racist than, say, Han supremacists in China? Try moving up in China with a Uyghur bloodline. Are we more repressive than the caste system in India? Are Muslims treated better in Russia than in the U.S.? How do Jews and Christians manage under Sharia law? Are millions of non-Han, non-Hindus, non-Russians, non-Muslims migrating to China, India, Russia, and the Middle East? Much to the contrary, more dark-skinned people immigrate to the U.S. annually than the whole rest of the world — combined. (READ MORE: Can a White Alum Write About a Black Alum at a Liberal Arts College?)
This is the true significance of the SFFA v. Harvard decision: the United States is no longer a country divided into just two races, white oppressor and Black oppressed. America is now a sophisticated multi-racial society that has grown in toleration and complexity well beyond these simple categorizations. Quotas, which started out as preferences to correct the inequities of the two-race paradigm, have petrified into bureaucracies designed to maintain the privileges of the people who run them. After Harvard, neither quotas nor bureaucracies are required to achieve a just society. The country has changed itself.
The left still believes in the two-race paradigm and would like to expand the Black end of the spectrum to include all of the new dark-skinned minorities — plus women, gays, unions, illegal immigrants, Islamics, and progressive white men. That leaves a small number of White conservative men at the other end (roughly 19 percent of the population) who must find the time to oppress them all. The problem is this box feels a little cramped, filled as it is with people who have little in common: Muslims contemptuous of feminism, Asians who don’t identify as victims, Catholic Hispanics skeptical of the woke dicta on puberty blockers. These groups are too numerous and too conflicted to govern effectively. They look more like a bus stop than a coalition.
When paradigms shift, or Overton windows open (take your pick of the appropriate metaphor) there are always people who get caught out by the change.
Now comes the unfortunate Liz Magill, former president of University of Pennsylvania and glittering representative of the two-race paradigm. When questioned in a Congressional hearing about calls on her campus to exterminate the Jews, Magill couldn’t bring herself to condemn anti-Semitism. Unable to imagine Jews as anything but white oppressors operating within the two-race paradigm, Magill ducked behind vague generalities about “context” and free speech. Given the dearth of conservative voices within the Ivy League professoriate, this proved a bad choice. After a firestorm of criticism across all media outlets, she clarified her position. Predictably, she expanded her box of victims to now include Jews, neatly moving them from oppressor to oppressed within a twenty-four hour news cycle. Her tin-eared apology was unconvincing. Liz Magill became roadkill, left on the side of the road like her ideology. It may be true that nothing can stop an idea whose time has come. But it is equally true the nothing can make relevant an idea whose time has passed.
So what does life look like under the new multi-race paradigm? How are all these minority communities of whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and mixed-race groups going to get along? More to the point, what do smaller, but growing, subsets of Muslims, Mormons, Hasidic Jews, Pennsylvania Dutch, transexuals and the entire borough of Queens (the most diverse community in the country) have in common?
To answer these questions, it may be helpful to check in with the U.S. Constitution.
The founders had a fear of the majority that could charitably be described as paranoid. No sooner did they start the national government than they severely restricted it in favor of states’ rights. The Constitution limits the feds to eighteen enumerated powers. All other powers (and that’s a lot) accrue to the states, effectively limiting central authority. That’s why we had 700,000 full time local police officers (and 340,000 civilians) in 2020, but only 35,000 federal employees at the FBI. (READ MORE: When White People Start Believing Critical Race Theory)
Likewise, the Electoral College requires a state-by-state tally of presidential votes; in effect, the states act as speed bumps to slow down runaway national passions.
The terms of representatives, senators, and presidents are staggered so that we are not governed by the momentary excitements of the electorate at any given point in time.
The federal government itself is divided into executive, legislative and judicial branches, each jealous of its own authority. Any overreach by one is met by a challenge from the other two. Should an overly ambitious governor, state legislator, or judge get any ideas, the three-branch government is duplicated within each state — and then again at the municipal level.
Free voters sit in judgement over this elaborate network of checks and balances, providing oversight on them all.
The ultimate check on government is, of course, the private sector, which still controls more than half of the economy.
This is the American system, an eternal competition between the feds and sovereign states, between the states and sovereign counties, marked by the primacy of the small over the big, the minority over the majority.
Such a decentralized system works to the advantage of minorities, who can mobilize at the local level to protect themselves and pursue happiness as they see fit, each one free from the tyranny of a national majority. The inevitable conflicts between the minorities look more like local brushfires rather than a country-wide conflagration, a result very much intended by the founders.
The U.S. Constitution, with its preference for all things local, is entirely compatible with the multi-race paradigm that characterizes a majority-free America. It seems to me that the Constitution may have anticipated a nation of minorities. From this viewpoint, the multi-race paradigm is not so much a new vision of America as it is a renewal of an old one.
The son of Irish immigrants, Kevin Brady has launched several successful start-ups in the technology space and is the author of the acclaimed novel North End Boy.
