( 134 ) Black Rights/White Wrongseven conservative commentators to use the term “plutocracy,” it might be
that there has not in decades been a more favorable environment for such a
political appeal than today.^29
Of course, some might feel, understandably enough, that there is some-
thing ignoble, perhaps even demeaning, about such arguments and that the
case for racial justice should be made on moral grounds alone. I am in sym-
pathy with such a feeling, but I want to differentiate two ways of present-
ing these arguments: (a) the demand for racial justice cannot be justified
on purely moral grounds, and (b) the motivation for the white majority to
join in the struggle for racial justice cannot be activated on purely moral
grounds. Endorsing the second does not commit one to endorsing the
first. The struggle for racial justice is indeed a noble struggle, and on moral
grounds alone its advancement is indeed justifiable. But unfortunately—
whether as a general truth about human beings or a more contingent truth
about human beings socialized by racial privilege— I do not think the
historical evidence supports the view that many whites will be effectively
motivated purely by such considerations. Derrick Bell’s “realist” “interest-
convergence” thesis seems a more accurate diagnosis and prognosis, that is,
that most whites support such movements only when they perceive them
as being in their own interests.^30
I want to conclude by pointing out a possible obstacle to interest- based
theoretical optimism about the possibilities for the realization of a non-
racial social order— that is, an obstacle apart from the obvious ones of tran-
sition costs as a factor in one’s calculations, the temptations of free- riding,
and the simple preference for the comfortable familiar rather than the dan-
gerous unknown. The multi- dimensionality of the payoff from whiteness
means that it is possible for the benefits to come apart and be in opposi-
tion to one another in a way not found in straightforward working- class
computations of gain under socialism. Material benefit does not necessarily
include any relational aspect to others, but benefits of a political or status
or cultural or “ontological” kind do. (They are what are termed “positional”
goods.) In other words, if it has become important to whites that they be
politically dominant, have higher racial social status, enjoy the hegemonic
culture, and be positioned “ontologically” as the superior race, then the
threatened loss of these perks of whiteness may well outweigh for them the
gains they will be able to make in straight financial terms in a deracialized
system. One can only be white in relation to nonwhites. So some or many
whites may calculate, consciously or unconsciously, that by this particular
metric of value they gain more by retaining the present system than by try-
ing to alter it, even if by conventional measures they would be better off
in the alternative one. It may well be, then, that apart from all the other
http://www.ebook3000.com