Fasten Your Seat Belts! Eco-Apocalypse Skepticism, democratic regress, and racial status

If we are living through a real eco-apocalypse, then there is no getting beyond it. Everything will be over for human beings because we cannot survive without the natural environment. But the reality of eco-apocalypse is disputable not only because we are still surviving, but because the idea is transcendental. The idea of eco-apocalypse is transcendental because it refers to total collapse or the end of the eco (ecological system), which cannot be confirmed because it hasn’t happened yet, and no one will be around to confirm it after it has happened. The idea of eco-apocalypse posits something with the implicit qualification, “everything is happening as though.” That is, to say we are living through an eco-apocalypse means that everything is happening as though we are living through an eco-apocalypse.  To posit an “as though” in this way does not preclude other “as thoughs”, nor empirical explanations and predictions that do not require such posits.  Still, impending ecological degradation and varied collapse is an ongoing series of real events that create a universal existential condition. It is a rolling global disaster. The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that a global disaster provides X-ray vision of pre-existing inequalities and subjects for social justice. Climate change will provide opportunities for progressive efforts on behalf of the neglected and marginalized. But opportunities to correct social inequalities on the assumption of eco-apocalypse will result in further conflict and resistance. The resistance will likely develop via uninformed populism that will continue to erupt (pop up), meeting counter-resistance. Philosophers and other theorists can continue to strive for understanding, although the real dangers will require a reset in habits of thought and analysis that have so far been disappointing for changing the world for the better, that is, for real and enduring progress. There should be deflation in progressive methodologies, to soberly address the real disruptions. I advocate contextualized empirical approaches to totalitarian threats to US democracy and to white supremacy, as well as for eco-apocalypse. That is, the present totalitarian threats are bound-up with white supremacy and eco-apocalypse, both transcendental and empirical, and I am suggesting empirical approaches to all of these ills. We need to “fasten our seatbelts” for protection against real dangers and for stability in the face of temptations to high transcendental theories, exaggerated generalizations, hyperbolic fear, and over-vaunting optimism about new opportunities for bringing about racial equality.

[1] See: E. L. Quarantelli, “What Is Disaster? The Need for Clarification in Definition and Conceptualization in Research,” Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware, Research, Series Report, Article 177 (1985): 41–73. and E. L. Quarantelli, P. Lagadec, and A. Boin. “A Heuristic Approach to Future Disasters and Crises: New, Old, and In-Between Types,” in E. L. Quarantelli, ed., Handbook of Disaster Research, Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. New York: Springer, 2007.

We need to think about the old problems in new ways that are more compatible than normative outrage about the reality of undemocratic thought and action that are now embedded in our democratic government and society. While progressives view disasters as opportunities for creating greater equality, regressives strive to deny and tighten oppression. That is, there are natural problems and social and political problems. Contagious viruses and climate change are natural problems, but they are not the factors prompting some to fear apocalypse. Those factors that are the real problems are human reactions to natural events and conditions, such as denial instead of preparation in the face of an impending pandemic and refusal to reduce fossil fuel emissions in the face of climate change. Following E.L. Quarantelli, it is indisputable that reactions to disasters are integral parts of those disasters [1]. Thus, isolation and mental illness from lockdowns were part of the COVID-19 disaster. And suffering from dislocation will continue to be part of the climate change disaster. 

But the problem is deeper than Quarantelli’s analysis suggests. Denial, failure to prepare, and defiant responses to mitigation are the wrong reactions to disasters. Such wrong reactions, because their agents are uniformed, irrational, malevolently mischievous, or unwilling to change their behavior when necessary, are the real problems contributing to the existential condition of apocalypse. This overhanging condition is not solely natural dangers, but the morally wrong and impractical responses to them. The first part of this essay is an example of deflationary progressive political analysis. The second part is an exploration of the idea of racial status that is intended to temper optimism that disaster may be an opportunity to create racial equality. The two parts are connected insofar as the wrong reactions to disaster included heightened white supremacist racism and pre-existing inequalities mean that minorities already have less resources and thereby less resilience to disaster.  

A deflated progressive political analysis 

[2] Parts of this section draw from a paper I gave, “Racism in Democracy – Progress and Status,” at the Conference on Racism, College of Law & Business in Ramat Gan, Israel, June 1, 2021.

[3] J.S. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, XIX: 478.

We need to understand how strange our current form of politics and populism is (at least in the United States) in order to brace ourselves for political reactions to “eco-apocalypse.” Since the French Revolution, the development of democracy has been progressive. Over the nineteenth century, ideas and activism shifted from ideals for democratic government structure to movements for equality within society, including universal suffrage, the abolition of slavery, and women’s rights [2]. The twentieth century refined this movement      with focus on progress for those with disadvantaged social identities––racial and ethnic minorities. The labor union movement has woven in and out of these trends. But progress has had frequent regress and the summer of 2021 in the United States will have been one of those moments (in the hindsight of history), especially concerning beliefs among the electorate. Since the ancient world, political theorists have emphasized the importance of an informed and educated electorate, especially in democracies. The focus has been on what the electorate knows, rather than how they know it. Arriving at knowledge through logic and facts has been assumed to be universal or pervasive enough among the electorate. In the modern period, since J.S. Mill extolled the virtues of representative government, it has also been assumed that important public policies would be crafted by those who are already politically powerful, to be presented to the wider electorate to choose [3]. 

[4] For specifics, see Molly Ball, “The Unsung Architect of Trumpism,” The Atlantic, Mar 20, 2017, and Molly Ball, “Kellyanne’s Alternative Universe: Will the truth ever catch up with Trump’s most skilled spin artist?” The Atlantic. For wider discussion see Naomi Zack, Reviving the Social Compact: Inclusive Citizenship in an Age of Extreme Politics, Rowman & Littlefield, October 2018, chap. 3. “The Political Creation of Class.”

[5] Joshua Barbosa et al., “Outcomes of Hydroxychloroquine in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19: A Quasi-Randomized Comparative Study,” submitted to New England Journal of Medicine, Scholar One, June 15, 2020.

[6] Melissa Block, “Can The Forces Unleashed By Trump's Big Election Lie Be Undone?” Politics, NPR, Jan. 16 2021,

However, in this age of populism, the dynamic of propaganda has changed. Classic propaganda was ideology issued from the government that had control of media. Today, the content of propaganda can arise from anywhere in the population. It gets tested informally on social media or extremely partisan mass outlets. If it is popular enough, that is, if public opinion polls show that it is widespread or spreading rapidly, then politicians and elected officials take it up as their political message to broadcast, officially. But popular opinion is the engine of contemporary populism. The success of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign was predicated on a finding that white male, non-college graduates would come to the polls if immigration fears were made a major issue [4]. A small specific example after the success of this strategy was hydroxychloroquine, the bogus COVID-19 cure touted by President Trump on the basis of dubious anecdotal evidence [5]. And a bigger example is the Big Lie about the duly counted, recorded, and recounted 2020 US presidential election results, wherein Trump and his followers have denied Biden’s win with unfounded claims that the election was stolen [6]. 

[7] Reality Check team and BBC Monitoring, “The Kraken: What is it and why has Trump's ex-lawyer released it?” BBC News, 28 November 2020.

Government officials scramble to get in front of the parade and the resulting quasi-official, or at least party-led, government propaganda gains messaging that they know has pre-existing acceptance. We cannot predict what will become popular and emotionally charged in this grassroots-up ways, not because of normal constraints on prediction, but because crazy ideas can suddenly pop up and flourish politically, for example, the ravings of QAnon followers about the “Kraken.” [7] Still, here as elsewhere, there is a gap between what politicians tell the people and what they do under the cover of their popular rhetoric. There are two further aspects of populism in our time that are disruptive to democracy––the religification of politics, and the inclusion of undemocratic goals by those who would be expected to uphold democracy.

[8] See, for instance, Mark Hulsether, Religion, Culture and Politics in the Twentieth-Century United States, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007, esp. pp. 190-199.

The US constitutional separation of church and state, the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, is supposed to ensure freedom of religion from the government, that is, from politics. However, the freedom of the government and politics from religion has never been well established. To bless and legitimate itself, every presidential administration since George Washington’s has invoked God and by some implication or other, Christianity, usually Protestant Christianity (only two Catholics have been elected president). Recent decades have caused concern about Christian Fundamentalism as a regressive element in the ongoing culture wars. Progressives can easily dismiss this influence as merely religious and therefore epistemically ungrounded. But this fails to note that some Christian fundamentalists not only interpret the bible literally but insert the will of God into their accounts of the very political founding of the United States and its ongoing government. Their freedom of religion has, in effect, united church and state [8]. For Christian fundamentalists, the apocalypse both makes politics more intense and is structured by politics. The apocalypse intensifies politics because the very idea of end times is a religious idea. This idea is structured by politics that for them is already religious, already a creed.

[11] Jacques Rancière, Hatred of Democracy, Steve Corcoran, trans. Verso, 2007

[12] Brennan Center for Justice, “States have already enacted more than 20 laws this year that will make it harder for Americans to vote — and many legislatures are still in session,” Voting Laws Roundup: May 2021.

[13] Amy Gardner, “Many state Republicans are moving to take more control of election results,” Seattle Times, March 26, 2021.

Jacques Rancière famously signaled hatred of democracy as a continual problem because in democracy, literally anyone can have a say in government [11]. However, this egalitarian democratic threat presupposes a conception of democracy that includes equality. There have been plenty of democracies through history in which not everyone, but only members of elite groups, have had a say or influence in government. At this time, progressives insist on egalitarian and universal conceptions of democracy as the core, correct meaning of ‘democracy.’ Thus, when legislation on state levels limits voting access in ways that make it more difficult for racial minorities and elderly and disabled people to vote, it looks as though democracy itself is being threatened. But in the context of historical reality, it is an attempt to return to, or in some places, retain, a more exclusive conception of democracy [12]. A more fundamental threat to democracy (not that I don’t think voter suppression is a serious injustice) would be political party control of vote counting and recording, which would mean that elections would no longer be free. In early 2021, the legislatures of several states reassigned duties of voting certification and the determination of electoral college votes, from non-political civil service workers, to elected political state legislatures [13]. The problem identified by progressives in such undemocratic strains within a democracy is whether their contemporary conception of democracy can be retained, or more to the point, in some places, furthered. 

That is, the concept of democracy is vague and different conceptions of it have been actualized over time. The overall arc of conceptions and their actualizations has bent toward greater equality, but there is no historical or empirical guarantee of a smooth trajectory. 

[14] Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, Random House, 2010.

In the past, progressives assumed that the hatred of democracy stemmed from the potential for the oppressed to rise. But progressive themselves may now come to hate democracy given ‘proof of concept’ legislation for voter suppression and vote counting under dominant political party control on state levels. Doubtless these efforts will be challenged judicially and through federal oversight, but if the counting of votes becomes partisan in a polarized two-party federal system, its main effect may be that Democratic states within that federal system cannot become Republican, or vice versa, over one election cycle. This will make US elections more predicable in the short term and may perhaps make the choice of state residence a political priority for some voters. Indeed, the Great Migration of as many as six million African Americans from Southern states to North and Western cities from 1915 to 1970 was in part to escape from Jim Crow political oppression that included restrictions on voting rights, as well as quests for better jobs, housing, and family circumstances [14].  

In a federal system, greater party power on a state level does not necessarily mean that national or cumulative democratic government, that is, the whole of state electoral and internal votes, is less democratic. Insofar as voters choose state legislators and state legislators choose electors, that process is democratic. But of course, when the less progressive and less egalitarian party expands or solidifies its power, progressives view that as an attack on democracy. Historically speaking, it is an attack on their conception of democracy, a conception that includes a more egalitarian society than regressives value. It is important not to conflate democracy itself with a conception of it that one cherishes. Many countries, including the United States from its founding until the mid-twentieth century, have considered themselves and been considered democracies, even though their societies have not been egalitarian.

[15] The idea of sustainable capitalism or green capitalism emerged in the first decade of the twenty-first century. See: Basavadatta Mitra, Saagar Gadhok, Shivam Salhotra,, and Sakshi Agarwal, "The convergence of sustainable capitalism". 2011 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference. (2011). pp. 1–7. doi:10.1109/IPCC.2011.6087226. ISBN 978-1-61284-779-5 and Matthias J. Pickl, “The renewable energy strategies of oil majors – From oil to energy?” Energy Strategy Reviews, Volume 26, November 2019, 100370. Also, big business has displayed a conscience about profits from states with new voter suppression legislation. See: David Gelles and Andrew Ross Sorkin, “Hundreds of Companies Unite to Oppose Voting Limits, but Others Abstain, Amazon, Google, G.M. and Starbucks were among those joining the biggest show of solidarity by businesses over legislation in numerous states.” NYTimes. Published April 14, 2021, Updated May 27, 2021,

It should be emphasized that in the past, the problem for progressives, especially those who thought from Marxist perspectives, was the influence of powerful capitalists on government. Now the problem comes from the demos itself, from the people. The paradox is that freedom of speech is showing us that it has the power to kill democracy through misinformation, falsehood, and fabrication. A large segment of the US public disdains common standards for reasoning and truth, that is, for logic and facts as tools for collective consensus. If the political candidates who campaign with the words and ideas of those who exercise their free speech to say and demand whatever they like win, then they may or may not align themselves with capitalist leaders. However, when political policies are too destructive to the environment or the well-being of their consumers, capitalist leaders have increasingly been willing to step in. (Marxists need not believe that such innovation and intervention comes from motives of moral responsibility. It is enough to recognize that big business needs an environment in which it can continue to function, with live, well, and financially solvent consumers who are able to buy their products.) Thus, the big oil companies now look for sustainable sources of energy and big sports and consumer product producers leave or speak out against US states with new voter suppression laws [15].   

[16] Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Vintage Books, 1973/1993 p. 13.

The present situation is an inversion of what Dostoevsky described in Notes from the Underground. There, the narrator is a self-constructed intellectual who rebels against the progress of science and reason. He proclaims:

My God!  but what do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes four? To be sure, I won’t break through such a wall with my forehead if I really have not got strength enough to do it, but neither will I be reconciled with it simply because I have a stone wall here and have not strength enough. [16]

The underground man assumes that the ordinary man accepts the stone wall. In The Grand Inquisitor interlude of The Brothers Karamazov, the institution of the Catholic Church is justified as a means for guaranteeing human happiness by removing freedom. The Grand Inquisitor describes the common man as rebellious and incompetent. He asserts that the accord of freedom to him by Jesus (who the Grand Inquisitor has imprisoned) is unrealistic because it assumes that the common man is braver and wiser than he can ever actually be. Thus, the irrational rebellion that Dostoevsky ascribes to the cultivated underground man is now located in the common people. 

[17] Abigail Censky, “The Boiling Resentment behind the Foiled Plan to Kidnap Gov. Whitmer,” NPR, October 10, 2020.

In reality, this shift has occurred historically, in our own time. Throughout the twentieth century, cultivated intellectuals railed against the so-called objectification and objectivity of science. But when confronted with real skepticism against science, in recent popular and political denials of scientific consensus about first climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, and again and ongoing, climate change, well, suddenly science is good enough for us. Moreover, there has been a difference in tone. The intelligentsia’s earlier objections to science were theoretical, phenomenological, academic, and restrained. By contrast, the contemporary rejection of and resistance to science in some parts of the demos is emotional and expressive. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, resistance to lockdowns in Michigan were expressed by armed militia members who brought their long guns into the state capital legislature while it was in session. And some of those protestors became part of a plot by the “Wolverine Watchmen” to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer and hold her for ransom (there was also talk of executing her) [17].

[18] The assault on democracy was a disruption of norms, but the guardrails of federalism, the division of powers, and freedom of the press held. See Elaine Kamarck, “Did Trump damage American democracy?” FIXGOV, Brookings, July 9, 2021

The Wolverine conspiracy was foiled by the FBI. The 2020 election was duly legitimized––by Republican state officials, the Republican Vice-President, and the Republican Majority Leader of the US Senate. The January 6th rioters are being criminally prosecuted. American democracy is more or less intact for the time being. If progressives continue to deflect such assaults on democracy, dire warnings about its demise are exaggerated [18]. History teaches that in political contests, the side with stronger scientific, technological, and military resources will win against those who are by comparison ignorant, superstitious, and lacking an organized military. Think of colonization and the force of Europe against Africa, the Americas, and parts of Asia. I don’t want to sound too Panglossian, but those who are mystified and disheartened by the epistemological collapse of the Republican party may be shocked to realize that the script has already flipped. The Republicans who would have carried on the tradition of colonizers suppressing “ignorant savages” have themselves become the “ignorant savages” who are vulnerable to oppression because they refuse to know how the natural world works. (This may extend to willed ignorance about how the social world works, but that is a different issue.) It is unfortunate that the mitigation of climate change has been politicized, but on that ground as well, there is cause for optimism, based on induction, that the resilient side will prevail. Nevertheless, every victor needs a hundred eyes to anticipate movement that threatens their power and impending hegemony. It would also be lacking in sobriety to mistake this present position of power for enduring control or to be too confidant in its ability to repel regression. 

The ecstasy of apocalypticism should be avoided because it is but the other side of rapturous denial and willed ignorance. The thrill of an ongoing “I told you so!” and gratification when the ignorant get what they deserve, exactly because their ignorance was willed and willful, can blind us to the reality of sad and bad things happening. Also, we on the virtuous political Left should not be too optimistic about the opportunities for progress that disaster can serve up.

Race and Eco-apocalypse

[19] For comprehensive discussion of the absence of independent scientific foundations for human racial taxonomies, see Naomi Zack, Philosophy of Science and Race, Routledge, 2002.

[20] The analysis following here builds on my discussion of racial status in Progressive Anonymity: from Identity Politics to Evidence-Based Government, Rowman & Littlefield, 2020, chap.4, “White supremacy and status: the racism of race.”

What’s race got to do with it? Race is an important aspect of eco-apocalypse, because all disasters affect those already disadvantaged most severely, and people of color were already, before COVID-19 and before climate change disadvantaged. People survive and thrive in disasters if they already have material and social resources, and the more of these, the better. People of color have less of these.  However, there is reason for skepticism that established cognitive arguments against racism can have practical meaning outside of pre-formed, informed, rational bubbles. That is, already, before the COVID-19 pandemic, which was before eco-apocalypse, cogent, rational arguments against racism often seemed futile, because they were not broadly disseminated and understood and used to motivate change. One such argument is that a taxonomy of races has no foundation that is independent of social categories, within the physical biological sciences [19]. Another is that racism is institutional, as well as intended and practiced by individuals. Often overlooked in studies of racism is the importance of racial status as attached to racial identities. Racial status is easy enough to describe in ways that even those with racist bias can accept. Indeed, they may find it flattering, depending on their insensitivity to its fundamental unfairness. The bottom line is that white people have higher racial status than nonwhite people [20]. It is important to understand white racial status because there is no reason to think it will diminish in eco-apocalypse.

[21] Concerning the experience of loss, see: Jackson, M. and Grusky, D.B. (2018), “A post-liberal theory of stratification”, Br J Sociol, 69: 1096-1133. Concerning assets compared to income disparities in the wealth gap, see: Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Harvard University Press, 2014.

[22] See ADL, “‘The Great Replacement’: An Explainer.” (Consulted June 2021).

Part of the motivation of newly emergent white nationalism and racism can be understood as a blame response to newly perceived loss. In the twenty-first century, many in the United States and throughout the world have experienced loss. There has been widespread loss of income compared to earlier periods of prosperity, loss of opportunities for upward mobility, and loss of traditional livelihood and employment. Part of this loss is the result of historical changes in capitalism whereby large corporations have global choices for the means of production, such as outsourcing labor or substituting machines for it. (The expansion in remote digital work during the COVID-19 pandemic is a further example of mechanization.) As wages are stagnant but assets in stock shares and real estate rise in price, the rich get richer and economic inequality increases, to the disadvantage of erstwhile comfortable white workers and small business owners [21]. For some, there is a disconnection between the causes of their loss and how they understand them. Others simply cannot make sense of their losses using ordinary empirical analysis, due to a lack of cognitive tools that pre-exists the actual loss. On individual levels, paranoid conspiracies substitute for more ordinary cognitive explanations. For instance, old anti-Semitic ideologies of “replacement” of whites by nonwhite immigrants and others may provide narratives that gratify resentment by explaining perceived or feared loss [22]. Whatever reasons are given, the condition seems to be that white people are losing status and they claim that is unjust, if only because it upsets them.

[23] Max Weber, “Status Groups and Classes,” in The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans A.M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons, New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1947/1975, pp. 424-429, quotation from p. 427.

Status and status systems are distinct from socioeconomic class and class systems, although in reality the two are interrelated or ‘intersect.’ Max Weber’s distinction is useful here. A class is defined by its situation, that      is, the likelihood of being provided with goods, certain external conditions of life, and subjective satisfaction of frustrations. A class is a group of people in the same class situation. The main types of classes are determined by property holdings, opportunities for the exploitation of services on the market, and a structure consisting of interactions with individuals in the same class, who transmit their class situations to their children. In contrast to class, a status is a claim to positive or negative privilege in terms of social prestige that rests on a mode of living, education and training and its modes of life, or the prestige of birth. Status may be based on class situation, for example, the poor have negative class status. Or status may determine class situation, for example, poor students may have middle class status, despite their poverty [23]. Racial status is given by birth.

[24] See: Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of our Discontents, Random House, 2020.

In much of contemporary social science, studies of social goods, including income, wealth, and education, are further broken down by racial identities, according to which minorities fare worse than whites, on almost all measures. These disparities are further complicated when blacks from the same socioeconomic class as whites do not equal whites in those class-related goods of life. Such racial inequalities are usually explained in terms of either institutional or structural racism or else interpersonal racial discrimination. A ‘caste system’ that perpetuates itself in the metaphorical structure of the United States may be posited [24]. 

 The disparities attached to racial identities persist even though structural equality was formally secured with the legislation of the 1960s civil rights movement and even though few, except for avowed White Supremacists (capitalized), have been willing to self-report as racists. Structural or institutional racism may account for differences in socioeconomic class, but it cannot account for differences within the same class. Interpersonal racial discrimination is a plausible posit, but it is difficult to prove when most whites claim that they are not racist in the hearts-and-minds sense, and it may not be evident in individual cases. 

[25] Hawkins, Stephen, Daniel Yudkin, Míriam Juan-Torres, and Tim Dixon, “Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized.” New York: More in Common, 2018.

The soul-searching among whites who examine their own race privilege is supererogatory because these whites are not deliberately racist or even otherwise aware of their racism in the normal course of events. And yet, it makes sense to understand that these whites are white supremacists (lower case) insofar as they benefit from what is overall a white-dominant system. Racism is thus attributed to the white-dominant or white supremacist ‘system,’ by progressives who emphasize institutional racism. But many traditionalists and conservatives, as well as political liberals, may not believe that ‘the system’ really is responsible for racial disparities in life success. A 2018 study found that the majority of Democrats, as well as Republicans, rejected the idea that the system or institutional racism is responsible for disadvantages associated with nonwhite race. Overall, the majorities of both parties surveyed were more interested in practical benefits from government, than in the ideologies at the extremes of their respective political parties [25]. 

[26] Derald Wing Sue, Christina M. Capodilupo, Gina C. Torino, Jennifer M. Bucceri, Aisha M. B. Holder, Kevin L. Nadal, and Marta Esquilin, “Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice,” American Psychologist, Vol 62(4), May-Jun 2007, 271-286.

[27] For recent census changes, see: Hansi Lo Wang, “National 2020 Census To Keep Racial, Ethnic Categories Used In 2010,” January 26, 2018, NPR. For historical census changes, see: Tanvi Misra, “A Complete History of Census Race Boxes,” CityLab.

[28]  For discussion of race, specifically black race, as exactly that kind of a wild card which is more disruptive than an ‘intersection’ see: Naomi Zack, Reviving the Social Compact: Inclusive Citizenship in an Age of Extreme Politics, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018, chap 2, “The Junction of Race,” pp. 27-42.

Adding to overall opacity concerning varied racial gaps, reluctance to discuss their own racisms by possibly a majority of white people is widely reported in discussions of microaggression [26]. This reluctance, in combination with the other discrepancies suggests that something is being left out of the typical progressive analysis that searches for concealed, subtle, and inexorable racisms as the primary cause of disparities in white and nonwhite human well-being. What has been left out in discussions of American, and indeed, world racism thus far, is that race is not a biological kind, or even a stable or uniform social kind, not a uniform system of prejudice and discrimination, but a status. Race is not a biological kind because there is no independent foundation for human racial taxonomy in the biological sciences. As a social kind, racial identities, for example, who is considered black or white, or whether Latinx peoples are considered a race, vary from place to place and over history––the US Census that identifies respondents in terms of their self-reported races has continually changed official racial categories since its inception in 1790 [27]. And some of the strongest advocates for equality for racial and ethnic minorities have been whites. The concept of status is an important methodological mediating term, and it is necessary, because it allows for analyses in which race is on the same conceptual level as class, instead of a kind of mysterious, random wild card that intervenes with class situations at different times [28].  

[29] W. D. Jordan, “Historical Origins of the One-Drop Racial Rule in the United States,” Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies, 1(1). 2014.

[30] For a more dramatic presentation of racial status in terms of desire, see Lewis R. Gordon, “Race, Sex, and Matrices of Desire in an Antiblack World: An Essay in Phenomenology and Social Role,” in Naomi Zack, ed., RACE/SEX: Their Sameness, Difference and Interplay, Routledge, 1997, pp. 117-132.

 An account of race as status amounts to this. Racial identity is a location in a social status hierarchy of race. Racial status is a positive or negative charisma based on family descent and physical appearance. At this time, physical appearance, specifically skin color, is the leading racial identifier, although at other times, for example when passing for white was considered a major social transgression in the United States, ancestry had more importance [29].  White people have white racial status, which is the best, that is, the highest, racial status [30]. They have not earned this status and it is not justified by the facts of human nature and achievement, but there is scant reason to believe that expressions of racial equality or demands for it are sufficient to dislodge that status. 

[31] For a brief account of this history, see Zack, Progressive Anonymity, pp. 87-95.

White racial status is the racist residue that would remain after institutional racism were corrected and racial hatred and other forms of emotional racism were abolished. Racial distinctions and differences are not mere varieties, they never have been, and there is no reason to believe that they ever will be. (Of course, there are relatively “decent” and polite, as well as abusive forms of white status, but that is not the point, here.)  White racial status has ranged from colonialism, slavery, state-mandated second-class citizenship (Jim Crow in the United States), to post civil rights-movement backlash against remedies for racial inequality. It arose with the modern European sciences of biology and anthropology, with considerable support from famous philosophers and other academic luminaries [31]. The persistent net effect of all the now-debunked science of race is the persistence of the status hierarchy of race––whites on top and blacks on the bottom, with varied ranks for Asians, indigenous groups, and others whose position may be ambiguous, such as people who are mixed race. Today, the importance of white racial status perhaps comes to rest with microaggressions in otherwise egalitarian liberal society. 

Analyses of racial inequality should not rely exclusively on racism but require the factor of status. Racism involves beliefs and actions, whereas status is a state, a lifelong condition. White people do not have to say or do or think anything to retain their white status within a system of races. White racial status generates advantages and privileges without conscious intent or awareness. A comprehensive examination of racial status would require multi-disciplinary efforts across the humanities and social sciences, a project as vast and complex as studies of racism have been. I will say more about the specifics of racial status, in a moment, but first, because COVID-19 is a harbinger of eco-apocalypse, let’s see how it has worked during COVID-19.

COVID-19 was said to give us X-ray vision in revealing pre-existing inequalities. It did this by showing how those with such inequalities or disadvantages suffered most during that disaster. For instance, in the United States, African Americans died of COVID-19 at twice the rate of whites. George Floyd had his life extinguished by a white police officer and 15-26 million took to the streets in protest. As at other times, protestors and their advocates enthused that “this time it is different and there will be real change.” But not so fast. Police reform legislation could not pass in Congress and even if it had, the 18,000 police departments throughout the United States would have had to comply, itself a scattered, drawn-out, uncertain process.

So now, to conclude with further consideration of racial status. Racial status has effects through social manners as shaped by norms. Much of that activity consists of subtle expectations and deference. A smaller subset plays out as criminal violence and some of that may be legally protected, as is hate speech and unjustified police homicide. During times of general social stress, such as a pandemic or weather-related disaster, the racial status system distributes harm unequally. Those with lower racial status face these situations with greater pre-existing vulnerabilities because resources are required for successful resilience. People with lower racial status have less mobility, money, and access to vital services.

[32] Black legal scholar Patricia Williams recounts how in the course of buying a house in a white neighborhood, when she disclosed her race, her mortgage negotiations became more difficult because her presence in the neighborhood lowered real estate values there. See: Patricia J. Williams, Seeing a Color Blind Future: The Paradox of Race, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997, chap. 3, “The Distribution of Distress,” pp. 31-46.

In addition to resilience, racial status shapes how opportunities can be taken up and more power attained. Racial status partly determines an individual’s external social position and appropriate place. That is, racial status is more pervasive and fluid than both discrimination and institutional racism. It simply clings to concrete human beings in society and plays out through many thousands of structures and situations. Thus, a person of color may gain entry to a prestigious institution but once admitted, lack access to prestigious positions that have traditionally been occupied by whites. A person of color may buy a nice house in a nice neighborhood that is mostly occupied by whites, but without overt discrimination, their ownership will not be an asset to the general value of real estate in the neighborhood [32].  

[33] Claude Steele, “Stereotype Threat and African-American Student Achievement,” in David B. Grusky, Social Stratification: Class, Race, and Gender in Sociological Perspective, Westview Press, 2008, 3rd ed. pp. 678-683.

Racial status clings to people in ways that can be recognized to signal that a person of color is out of place. Thus, many white people are still surprised to encounter black lawyers or doctors. Many more reacted to the reality of a black president of the United States as a terrible mistake of some kind and the “birther” movement ensued. Microaggressions may not be intended to remove the person of color who is perceived to be out of place, but simply remind them that they are out of place. The pre-existing racial status system does all of the work in such cases. In addition, individual internalization of racial status may automatically be triggered to hamper performance through what is called “stereotype threat.”  For example, in one study, highly qualified African American students received a stereotype threat that an assigned task was “diagnostic” of intellectual ability, and they performed worse than equally qualified white students. Less qualified black students were not affected by the same stereotype threat [33]. This suggests that the stereotype threat reminded the highly qualified black students that it was not their ‘place’ to perform well on the task, even though they were able to do so. It also suggests that the less qualified students who were not affected by the stereotype threat had already internalized it earlier on in their education, which rendered them less qualified.  

What looks like institutional racism or caste can be corrected with egalitarian legislation. But the correction of racial status will require a specific rise in status for those of lower status, that is, an elimination of the status aspect of race. Another alternative is the elimination of racial taxonomy through education and benevolent propaganda. It is difficult to speculate beforehand which project would be more difficult to accomplish or how many years it would take.

Again, exactly what has this discussion of racial status to do with apocalyptic plans, fears, and discourse? It is a cautionary reminder that no amount of building back better or otherwise using crises and disasters as opportunities to change the social world for the better will do more than ameliorate racial inequality. Unless racial status can be addressed––and it must be recognized first––such opportunities for correcting newly apocalypse-revealed social injustice cannot be taken at the flood to lift all boats. Racial status is a social, rather than a material asset or resource. It has and can be used to manipulate material resources and that is likely to continue throughout eco-apocalypse.