Dinesh D'Souza's Disquieting Views of Race, Racism and Culture

Dinesh D'Souza's Disquieting Views of Race, Racism and Culture.

In preparation for our October 11 Affirmative Action in Higher Education Teleconference, I spoke with controversial author Dinesh D'Souza. What follows are his views on some of the most vexing issues that face this country.

BLACK ISSUES: What's the biggest misconception about race in this society?

D'SOUZA: Probably the biggest misconception about race in this society is that race is a social reality, as Cornel West says, "Race matters," and therefore, there is nothing that we can do about it except to institutionalize it in education, voting, law, in hiring and in government contracts. I think, as a consequence, we are a more racialized society than ever, and the notion of transcending race becomes all the more distant.

BLACK ISSUES: How is it that respected scholars can disagree so vehemently about this issue of race?

D'SOUZA: Well, I think that the old racism, by which I mean the old word "racism," is hardly dead by any means. But the old racism was easy to argue about because the facts were on the table. You can debate what should be done about this, and how it should be fought, and so on.

The problem comes when you have universities like Berkeley, for example, which have a set of admissions requirements which are selective, and according to which some groups perform better than others. Clearly, the admissions requirements are race neutral on the surface, but their impact is disproportionate when you look at different racial groups. So, the question is, "Is that racism?"

That creates a fundamental conflict because we have two values in our society that we deem important: Rights for individuals and group representation. I don't deny that both are important values, but they are in conflict. And, so depending on which value one tends to attach more importance to, you are going to say, "Let Berkeley admit students based upon grades, based upon test scores, and let the chips fall where they may." Or you're going to say, "Listen, if Berkeley admits solely based on grades and test scores, the whole university, or the vast majority of students, will be white or Asian. That's not good for a state university, and so, in the name of diversity or inclusion or some other value, we need to attach some importance to race."

BLACK ISSUES: You tend to discount cultural affinity. In fact, you advocate that African Americans, Hispanics and others need to disassociate themselves from some of the negative aspects of their culture.

D'SOUZA: I think the real problem in many of our elite universities is not that you have bigots in the admissions office. The real problem, as I see it, is that groups are not equally competitive in our society, and African Americans, in particular, are falling behind other groups. In my opinion, this is not because of genes. It's not because of any inherited deficiencies. The Bell Curve is quite wrong on this point. If it's not genes, and it's not discrimination, it has to be culture. And by culture I mean things like broken families, I mean things like study habits.

So, it seems to me that instead of affirmative action, which is just an effort to camouflage the reality of group differences in performance, it's much better to attack the reasons for those differences which, in my view, are partly economic -- terrible public schools, not enough funding, etc. -- but partly cultural.

BLACK ISSUES: How would you differentiate that from, say, the strength that Jews tend to gather from focusing on the Holocaust and using it as a galvanizing force? How would you compare that to the African Americans who say, "I'm not going to forget about slavery and I'm not going to let anyone else forget about slavery because it still haunts us"?

D'SOUZA: Well, I think that to the degree that one can use the past as a basis for a strong, cohesive identity in the present, that's good. I think one would have to say, for example, that Jews as a group have not allowed the Holocaust in any way to distract Jews from academic achievement and economic performance, from achieving success as a group.

The question then becomes whether memories of the past in the African American community are proving to be a way for African Americans as a group to grapple with and more successfully confront challenges today? Or is it proving to be a diversion? In other words, if the Black parents think that the reason that their kids can't get into Princeton is because of white racists, then that calls for one set of strategies. On the other hand, if you think, "My kid's not doing enough homework," that's a different kind of strategy. So it seems to me that one has to think through how one can use the past to help you be stronger in the present.

BLACK ISSUES: Are the theoretical differences simply a matter of degree or is it more fundamental?

D'SOUZA: I suspect that part of the difference is the notion that issues of culture, which were raised by [Sen. Daniel Patrick] Moynihan 25 years ago and got him into a lot of trouble, have been submerged in the American public today. And I think one of the reasons even some of the Black conservatives are angry at me, is because I'm not an African American, and I'm discussing issues of culture in public. So I think that the argument is really about publicly recognizing these problems, which I think is a prerequisite for tackling them head on.

BLACK ISSUES: What criticism do you think is most unfounded and which has not troubled you?

D'SOUZA: Well, I think the criticism that upsets me the most is the criticism that is not intended to engage the arguments I make, but just to drive me out of the public debate. For example, one of the community activists around town called me "The Mark Fuhrman of public policy." Well, this is absurd. I have a 700-page book with 2,000 footnotes. I'm a defender of racial intermarriage. I say welcome to the cafe au'lait society. And, so this kind of epithet seems to me to be less intended to promote discussion than to say, "Don't listen to this guy. Let's not deal with these issues."

BLACK ISSUES: Suppose you're wrong. Suppose that everything that you say finds its way into public policy, into matters that seriously affect the lives of future generations?

D'SOUZA: I don't think we need to make any grand decisions that are unrepairable. I'm not in favor of saying, "Let's get rid of all our civil rights laws and let's see what happens." I think we should have high length initiatives and test various ideas. I think we should try various initiatives and whatever works we should then go with that.

For example, I'm unhappy to see a university like Berkeley have one-half or 1 percent of Black students. I agree that's a problem. I would not be willing to live with that in the long term solution. On the other hand, I think that Affirmative Action has many disruptive side effects. I think it's spreading a sense of balkanization in our society. So I think that we have to weigh the costs and the benefits at every stage. But, of course, if we're wrong, then we have to rethink what we're doing.

BLACK ISSUES: A lot of people think that Dinesh just doesn't understand the nature of racism. He's too young. He hasn't been here. He is an East Indian, Catholic, from Bombay.

D'SOUZA: Well, of course that's possible. I admit that having lived through the civil rights movement, the African American has a distinctive experience. It also seems to me that, I'm an immigrant, I find a lot of whites and Blacks are sort of trapped in the prison of race. Even normally sensible people lose their reason when it comes to racial issues. So I'm hoping that my relative youth, my critical distance, having grown up in a different culture, will give me some unique vantage point. I'm not claiming that it's the full story or the end of the story. It's a perspective that belongs in the debate. By being a multiracial society we have many voices. And I'm just saying that my voice is one.

BLACK ISSUES: Can you say that you personally have suffered from racial acts of discrimination?

D'SOUZA: Well, I certainly suffered from prejudice, from parochialism, from xenophobia, "foreigners go home," people who think that there are elephants that walk in the streets in India, that sort of thing. But, I will tell you in all honesty, that in my book I conclude that although people may not like Hispanics or Asians, for whatever reason, or immigrants for that matter, they don't suspect them to be inferior. I think it's the suspicion of inferiority that is the heart of racism. And that's why I concluded that racism remains, in some ways, a Black and white problem.

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‰Frank L. Matthews, Dinesh D'Souza's Disquieting Views of Race, Racism and Culture, Black Issues In Higher Education, 5 Oct 1995, pp. PG.