Have We Evolved Beyond Racism?

No.

First, consider the biological reason. The brain physiology underlying our minds has not evolved appreciably since the stone age. Not only every race but every tribe considered itself chosen by God to kill the others. There has not been enough time for our brains to have undergone significant biological evolution. We have their stone age brains.

Second, the cultural reason. Surely we have evolved beyond ancient mindsets by cultural evolution? I am afraid that the answer here, also, is no. Certainly, we have made progress in the past 150 years. But we have not left racism behind. Instead we have just pushed it into our subconscious minds. It still calls the shots in many cases, and often determines what we do, but we may not be aware of it.

The major example of which we Americans, and observers from around the world, are aware is the utter determination of the Republican Party (which is disproportionately white compared to the American population) to destroy Barack Obama. They were confident that Mitt Romney would win the 2012 election. When Obama won re-election, the Republicans went to Plan B: destroy Obama. I consider their subconscious motivation to be racism. Here’s why.

Obama is a lame duck. There is no political need to destroy Obama; if Republicans succeed, they will have President Joe Biden. (Similarly, Democrats held back from impeaching George W. Bush, not wishing to have President Dick Cheney.) If there is no political reason to destroy him, then there must be a personal reason.

How do we know that the Republican attacks on Obama are not merely politically motivated? We know this because we can scientifically test this hypothesis: If the Republican hatred of Barack Obama were politically motivated, then they would hate him less than they hated Bill Clinton. But, as it turns out, they hate him much much more.

And the evidence for this? There are, as I see it, three differences between Bill Clinton (while he was president) and Barack Obama. They are as follows.

First, Barack Obama has high ethical standards than Bill Clinton did as president. Instead of having a Monica Lewinsky hanging around him, Obama is a morally upright husband and father. The Obama family is the picture-perfect American family. (In this way Obama also compares favorably to John F. Kennedy.) This should be a reason that Republicans, who claim to be God’s representatives of purity and morality upon the face of this sordid planet, would like Obama better than Clinton. Therefore the ethical difference between Clinton and Obama cannot be the reason for Republican hatred of Obama.

Second, Barack Obama is more politically and fiscally conservative than Clinton. Republicans decry Obamacare as socialist, but it is much, much less socialist, and incorporates more market forces, than did the ill-fated 1993 health care plan proposed by Bill Clinton. Republicans reacted strongly against the Clinton plan, but not with the ferocity of their attack on Obama. Obama’s comparative fiscal conservativeness should be a reason that Republicans would like Obama better than they liked Clinton. Therefore the political difference between Clinton and Obama cannot be the reason for Republican hatred of Obama.

A third difference is race. Clinton is white and Obama is black (actually, biracial, but he identifies with his black heritage). This is the only reason that I can think of that would make Republicans hate Obama worse than they hated Clinton. And it is clearly a personal, intense hatred.

Of course, Republicans forced a government shutdown during the first Clinton Administration also. The federal government shut down all but emergency services twice: from November 14 through November 19, 1995 and from December 16, 1995 to January 6, 1996, a total of 28 days. As of tomorrow, the 2013 government shutdown will have reached the same number of days as the first shutdown, in November of 1995. Republicans appear resolved to continue the shutdown even if it means defaulting on contractual funds on October 17. And this time, we have all seen evidence of the extreme antipathy that Republicans have showed toward Obama. They have shown him the kind of disdain that slavery advocates—from the Union states, the confederate states having seceded—showed Abraham Lincoln in 1865.

As further evidence that Republican antipathy is not merely political, consider that the Republicans could achieve their aims in a constitutional manner. They could pass a bill repealing Obamacare in both the house and senate, and have the president sign it. He won’t, because he won re-election in 2012 largely on the issue of Obamacare. The constitutional way for Republicans to have their way would have been to win the 2012 election. Instead, they pass laws creating programs then refuse to fund those same programs.

I believe that in the long run American history will evaluate Obama the same way as it depicts Lincoln. At the time, many strong voices attacked Lincoln as a dictator who wanted to ruin the United States by giving black people the rights of citizenship. Today, those voices are buried in the dustbin of history under a patina of disgust. Similarly, I believe, the Republican voices of our day will be derided in the same way as are the 1865 voices in support of slavery. The party of angry old white men, and a few angry young white men, and a very very small number of angry Latinos and blacks, will dwindle into an insignificance from which their stockpiles of guns cannot resurrect them.

There are other ways in which Republican positions have racist effects. Global warming is caused by carbon emissions from human activity, for which white industrial nations are largely responsible. But most of the burden of famine and disease will be borne by nations dominated by people of color, especially in Africa. Republicans, I assume, do not hold their global warming denialism with racist intent. But subconsciously they might be thinking, who cares about a bunch of Africans?

Of course, Republicans will claim they are not racists. And they may honestly believe they are not. But I conclude for the above reasons that racism is operating in their subconscious minds. We are all cavemen in modern clothes, some of us more than others.

Republican Climate of Intimidation, Part One. A Sick Joke.

When Bill Clinton was president, Republicans disliked him strongly enough that they finally impeached him. But this was nothing like the raw fury and insult that they throw against Barack Obama, even though Obama is less liberal than Clinton was. The Republicans have kept up a constant barrage of name-calling against Obama. They call him a socialist, even though he is much less so than Clinton was. Clinton’s health care plan was a big quasi-socialist bureaucracy. Not so Obama’s. Why do they hate Obama more than they hated Clinton?

I suspect it has something to do with race. I am not saying all, or most, Republicans are racist. But I draw this tentative conclusion based on a consideration of some of the things Obama’s attackers say about him. The Tea Partiers, for a long time, kept up a constant stream of attacks on Obama’s citizenship, even after he released his birth certificate. Today, most Republicans have dropped the issue as a matter of fact. But they keep it alive by joking about it, thus contributing to a climate of intimidation without having to actually prove their point. They use humor as a back door to slip in false claims. Now, political humor has a long tradition, and I engage in it myself (watch here for the upcoming announcement of my new YouTube political humor channel). The problem is that political humor should be used, as I hope I use it, to alert people to problems, rather than to inject destructive and false misinformation into public discourse.

Just yesterday (August 24), Mitt Romney was in Michigan and said, “I love being home in this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born. Ann was born in Henry Ford Hospital. I was born in Harper Hospital. No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised.”

A Romney aide said that Romney was not questioning Obama’s American citizenship. He was just joking, apparently. But what kind of joke is it?

Romney is from Michigan, which is right next to Canada. How can you tell, just by looking, that Romney is not a frostback undocumented Canadian? Because he is white, no one is really concerned about his citizenship. But people of color often have their citizenship questioned. Despite the attacks on Obama, this does not often happen to black people. But in Arizona it is legal to challenge the citizenship of anyone who looks like a Mexican. This has to include Native Americans, since many Mexicans have a high quantum of Native American genes (Nahuatl, Zapotec, etc.). What would a Native American say, in Arizona, if asked to show his green card? Would he say, “My ancestors came here 14,000 years ago and you are asking me to show you my green card?” Citizenship status is not indicated on driver’s licenses or credit cards or anything else that people usually carry with them. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, who enthusiastically investigates the citizenship status of all people who look Mexican, announced in July that his investigators found evidence to prove Obama was not an American citizen. Even though no taxpayer money was apparently used in this investigation, one wonders what authority Maricopa County has over the determination of the president’s citizenship. They do not, and the only reason for it is to contribute to a climate of intimidation. It is no longer just fringe Tea Partiers who do this; Romney has joined the circus. Romney looks like an American; Obama and Hispanics and Native Americans do not, from a viewpoint that used to be fringe within the Republican Party but is becoming more mainstream.

Many Native Americans did not have United States citizenship until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. This was a long time after freed slaves obtained the right of citizenship. Even then some states prevented the implementation of this law. The last state to grant Native American citizenship was Utah, in 1956. Before 1924, Native Americans could become citizens of the USA only by giving up tribal affiliation, or joining the armed forces, or assimilating in other ways. My grandfather, who is listed on the Cherokee citizen rolls of the early twentieth century, was extremely proud to have the right to vote. Back then, it was necessary to pay a poll tax in order to vote. He could not, so he would work on road crew for free for a couple of days in election years. He was so proud of his right to vote that he proclaimed that he would not tell anyone, even his family, whom he had voted for, because he rejoiced in the right to a secret ballot. Nobody in our family now remembers whether or not he was born an American citizen, as some Cherokees were. I remember my Mom telling me this story, and as a result I recognize that the right to vote is a precious gift rather than a right to simply take for granted.

Today all Americans, of whatever ethnicity, have full citizenship rights. But some Americans have to keep proving over and over that they really are Americans. How many times does Obama have to keep proving his American citizenship before Republicans will quit attacking him, if only in the form of jokes? And when will a law enforcement official ask Mitt Romney to prove his American citizenship?

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It’s Official: Republicans Reject Altruism

I now bring you late-breaking news about altruism. (By late-breaking I mean less than a week old. I usually get month or year old news to you.)

President Barack Obama made a statement that sounds like a completely non-controversial, common sense description of altruism as it plays out in our communities and in our nation. Here is the original quote. Obama was talking to small business owners: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

I cannot imagine that anyone would object to this. Businesses do not teach their employees how to read and write and add and subtract. Some businesses build their own private roads, but those roads connect to highways that are built by counties, states, and the federal government. If you’ve got a business, you did not build the schools and roads. (I plan to operate a small business myself soon, so I can say soon that Obama’s statement reflects the common sense beliefs of a small business owner.) Businesses and families can thrive only within stable communities, bound together by altruism, which is facilitated by reasonable regulations and reasonable taxes.

Altruism, as I have written in my books and other blogs, is doing well by doing good. One animal (such as a human) does good things to and for another animal of the same species, and both of the animals prosper as a result. There are innumerable examples of altruism, confirmed by observation and (thanks to people like Martin Nowak) mathematics. It is one of the clearest components of evolutionary theory. And it is intuitively obvious to all of us.

Mitt Romney, however, had to attack Barack Obama for this statement. Obama clarified that he meant that if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build the schools, roads, and bridges. On August 13, Romney attacked even more vigorously, saying that this context was even worse than the original statement. Perhaps Romney, and therefore the mainstream of the Republican Party, envision a future in which America consists of individuals who do not help one another out but just fight and struggle with one another for dominance. Gated communities that are entirely self-contained? I cannot believe that Republicans are stupid enough to believe this. I suspect that Romney simply attacks anything Obama says without even thinking about it. If Obama said the sky is blue, Romney would say that this is Obama’s Democratic bias, and that the sky is really Republican red. Long ago John Donne wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself,” and until now pretty much everyone accepted this as true. Welcome to the Republican vision of what America should be like. Or not; as I said, I think Mitt spoke without thinking.

Mitt Romney is not the only one to speak without thinking. When Joe Biden said, this week, that the Republicans want to put people (he was speaking to a largely black audience) back in chains, he easily won the Stupidest Statement Award. Where did Obama find this clown anyway? Biden is the same one who emailed all of Obama’s supporters and said that if Obama did not win the election it was their fault for not giving more money. As one of those followers, I emailed my response: that this was an offensive statement. But while Joe Biden is destroying altruism by clownish incompetence, it appears that Republicans are destroying it deliberately.

If Mitt Romney makes a big deal about attacking Obama on the issue (previously, non-issue) of altruism, I can only wonder if he has any ideas of his own. Perhaps American businesses can prosper by investing their money in overseas banks the way he does? If Romney makes the rich richer, will this automatically lift up the middle class? The rich have been getting richer, and the middle class has been getting poorer (especially by debt burden). Raising up the rich has not raised up the middle class in recent years, and there is no reason to expect that it would in the future.

This is just one more example of Republicans taking on what should be a non-partisan topic—something confirmed by science—and attacking it. Evolution, global warming, stem cells, and now altruism. As a biology instructor, what can I do? Do I need to ask the Republican Party whether carbon atoms really exist before I teach about molecular structure? The Bible does not, after all, say that carbon atoms exist. I can only hope that this example is extreme; but I would never have guessed that altruism would be treated as a dangerous theory either.

Good luck to all of you altruists.