Nails and hammer

A professor of law at the University of California (Berkeley), Ian Haney López is one of the leading figures of the Critical Race Theory, an academic movement that emerged about thirty years ago and is characterized by the criticism of law as a constituent element and mode of reproduction of a system of racial subordination. It first became known for a brief but innovative work, White by Lawdevoted to the definition of “white” identity in the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of the United States, at a time when only white (or black) immigrants could access naturalization (1870-1952). It showed that, ultimately, only members of groups recognized as such by the average American were declared legally white. Thus, common sense and popular wisdom took precedence over pseudo-anthropological statements then considered scientific as a criterion for the legal determination of racial identity. More recently, following others, the author has looked at the forms of political communication intended to activate a latent racism (racial priming) and by it renamed dog whistle politicswhich see the speaker use coded vocabulary to implicitly evoke racial stereotypes, given the fairly broad disapproval of racism. As for his latest book, reviewed here, it is above all an intervention text with an explicitly prescriptive rather than analytical vocation. Its somewhat emphatic title bears witness to this. This is also borne out by the order in which the laudatory remarks concerning him appear, reproduced before the title page, which sees the lawyer Kimberlé Crenshaw and the political scientist Gary Segura give way to a pollster, a trade unionist and a media figure of the American left (the actress Jane Fonda), among others.

Haney Lopez’s remarks are part of an American political context marked by the increased concentration of voters with racist and/or anti-immigration leanings in the Republican camp. Once slowed by President Clinton’s efforts to satisfy them through more repressive social and penal policies, this electoral reconfiguration accelerated thanks to Barack Obama’s two terms in office and the ethno-racial diversification of the American population, regularly highlighted in the media and for some anxiety-provoking. It was made manifest by the terms of Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. As the author rightly notes, this victory is only the culmination and maximum visibility of a process that has lasted several decades, which has seen the Republicans multiply the signals more or less subtly addressed to the most racist fringe of the electorate and collect their votes in return. Over time, these signals have simply become less and less subtle. In the area under consideration, Trump stands out above all for his increased verbal violence, cynicism and systematic strategy of making remarks that expose him to accusations of racism, which can themselves be converted into rhetorical resources capable of fuelling, to his advantage, a mobilization hostile to the “liberal” elites who utter them.

Once this diagnosis has been made regarding the growing polarization of the American political field, in order to bring back to the fold the fraction of white voters from the working classes who have deserted the Democratic camp, the author’s project is very simple. In the wake of Derrick Bell’s demystifying analyses on the convergences of interests between Blacks and Whites as the primary determinant of the successes of the Civil Rights Movementit is a matter of appealing to the well-understood interest of these lost sheep. Racism being nothing other than a “divisive tactic” in the service of “the rich” (p. xiv, 5) – the teachings of Marxist sociology thus being reduced to their simplest expression – the rebirth of the left and even “the salvation of the United States” (p. xxiii) would pass through the formation of a new “interracial alliance” (ibid.). This would be made possible, among other things, by an ecumenical framework characterized by a non-hierarchization of class and “race” relations, which should be equally and simultaneously taken into account in the development and implementation of public policies of egalitarian orientation. This is at least the conclusion of the survey conducted on a national scale by the author and his team in 2017 and 2018, based on surveys and focus groups in particular, with the support of the Open Society Foundation. Indeed, “progressive” political messages explicitly articulating the racial and “social” (in the French sense of the term) dimensions of the issues raised would generate more support than messages playing on concerns inseparable from racist stereotypes (dog whistle politics), but also those exclusively focused on a redistribution indifferent to “race” (“ color-blind economic populism “) (p. 9). Moreover, and quite unexpectedly, this differential would be observable within each of the three main reference groups (Whites, Blacks and Hispanics); it would therefore not be explained by a tropism specific to members of minorities. From this interesting result, Haney López deduces the electoral superiority of such a platform for the Democratic camp.

Not being a specialist in political communication or in the methods and techniques for collecting and interpreting public opinion, I will refrain from examining the work from this angle. The interest of the subject is however limited by the fact that the author avoids any in-depth discussion of the concepts used in order to focus solely on the persuasive effectiveness of this or that “element of language”. Thus, concerning racism, Haney López passes over in silence the numerous criticisms emanating from philosophers, economists or sociologists and emphasizing the overly heterogeneous nature of this all-encompassing category with an accusatory character, which, in its contemporary uses, tends to designate individual prejudices as well as collective representations, speeches as well as behaviors, processes as well as results. This fundamental objection, according to which the insistent denunciation of so-called “systemic” racism obstructs the uncovering of specific mechanisms jointly generating racial inequalities, is never truly taken into account. It is only because “the word (“racism”) would be “explosive and endowed with multiple and audience-dependent meanings” that it would “probably be wise to abandon it” for rhetorical purposes, the author concludes (p. 12). This is a bit short – and everything is in keeping with it. However, to take just one example, it is the disinterest in – or the implicit rejection of – these critiques of a certain sociological conception of racism that authorizes Haney López to extend the meaning of subliminal racism (” dog whistle racial fear “) to the following remarks:

Our leaders must prioritize our security and ensure that hardworking Americans have the freedom to succeed. It makes good sense to think twice before admitting people from terrorist countries that want to do us harm or from places ravaged by drugs and crime. So does cracking down on illegal immigration, so that our communities are no longer overwhelmed by floods of immigrants who evade our laws (p. 53).

And the author is surprised by the paradox that would see “people of color logically called upon to reject (this) message describing them as a threat to society” (p. 54) instead adhere to it in the majority, since approximately 60% of Hispanics and more than half of Blacks approve of it. However, this artificial paradox, which Haney López notes with relish, only results from the racializing reading grid that he arbitrarily superimposes on the message here pinned down cheaply, without first confronting the main question: what are the criteria for delimiting all the remarks relating to “subliminal racism”? What is it that justifie the affixing of this infamous label to this or that statement? In this regard, one cannot rely on evidence or on the presumed common intuition. Some will easily join the author in his categorical judgments. Others will say that everything looks like a nail for those who only have a hammer.