This Week:

Quote of the Week

The Unfunded Promise of Civil Rights

The Psychology of White Racism, Part 1

Greetings,

Well, it looks like we may have reached critical mass for the Context Club. Since all of you who responded are electronic subscribers (versus paper subscribers), and since you are a relatively small number, I think I will put you all on a special list for E-mail, and we can work out the logistics and other planning there. That way we will not unduly burden the other readers of the Notes with stuff that would have no meaning for them. This is not to say that some reports, ideas, quotations, and who-knows-what-all from the meetings of the Club will be banished from the pages of the Notes. But the boring stuff will be. Plus I will no doubt publish weekly reminders with locations and times for the future readers who may wish to join us. So, you Context Clubbers will be hearing something shortly.

I am aware that many so-called "baby boomers" are reading Nygaard Notes, so let me emphasize that the abbreviation I use this week, "CCR," stands for the Commission on Civil Rights, not for Creedence Clearwater Revival. OK, we've got that straight.

Reader E. Ortiz reminded me that next week will be the 100th issue of Nygaard Notes, which I guess is worth noting. Who woulda thunk it? Maybe I'll do some sort of special edition, although I don't know what that would look like. Anyway, isn't every edition special? The beauty of a special edition, though, as any journalist will tell you, is that it's a lot easier to produce than the usual original work, making it kind of like a week off. Hmm...the idea is starting to appeal to me. Or maybe Nygaard Notes Number 100 will just be more of the usual Pulitzer-quality journalism that you are all so used to. I haven't decided yet, just like I never decide until the deadline is upon me. Hope that's OK.

I have been hearing from some of my more distant readers this week, from Florida, California, and Nicaragua. I love your comments, and I hope it's warmer wherever you are than it is here in Minneapolis!

See you in #100,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

From the draft report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, "Funding Federal Civil Rights Enforcement: 2000 and Beyond," released this past October:

"In 1995, the Commission concluded that ‘both the President and Congress have retreated from their obligation to ensure that adequate resources are provided for civil rights enforcement.' This current study demonstrates that this abandonment has continued and funding for civil rights enforcement remains insufficient.

"From 1994 to 1999, the number of full-time-equivalent positions in the six federal civil rights enforcement agencies discussed in this report has declined by approximately 10 percent. As a result of inadequate funding, the nation's civil rights laws remain, in large measure, ‘unfunded mandates.' These agencies' budgets have been reduced at a time when their enforcement responsibilities have grown substantially. In the face of rising workloads, inadequate funding and staff levels continue to endanger our national enforcement of civil rights laws."

The full report is summarized below.

The Unfunded Promise of Civil Rights

In Nygaard Notes #97 I mentioned a tiny 58-word mention in the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) entitled "Civil Rights Agencies' Funding Wanes," which said only that "the number of full-time employees in six major federal civil-rights agencies dropped by 10 percent between 1994 and 1999, as did the amount of congressional funding for those agencies." The item from the "National Digest" mentioned that this information came from "a report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights." Since I thought this was a big story, I called up the Commission and asked them what the deal was. Here's what I found out.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (CCR) released an extensive report on the subject of civil rights enforcement in 1995 which found a pattern of de-funding and understaffing of the federal government's civil rights enforcement and compliance capabilities going back for more than 20 years. The draft of the current report, released in October, shows that the trend has continued or accelerated since 1995. Far from being a result of reduced demand for action on the part of the feds, the report points out in its very first sentence that "inadequate funding levels for federal civil rights enforcement have occurred simultaneously with growing workloads at the agencies responsible for enforcing civil rights laws."

There are six major federal agencies in charge of civil rights enforcement and compliance, each one in charge of enforcing or assisting in compliance with some of the more than 20 major civil rights laws in existence in the United States. In each and every case, the report concludes that the funding for civil rights enforcement (and they actually include under "enforcement" such things as education and technical assistance aimed at compliance and prevention of civil rights violations) has either declined in real dollars or failed to keep up with inflation and/or increased demand for the services. Since civil rights enforcement is highly labor-intensive, CCR also reported on the numbers of full-time employees working in each agency.

I will briefly summarize the situation of each one in turn.

• In the case of the Department of Education, their Office of Civil Rights has suffered a staffing decline of 14% since 1994 and their funding is below the level of that year. This has occurred despite the fact that the numbers of civil rights complaints are higher than they were in 1994, and are "dramatically higher" than they were during the 1980s.
• The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has seen its budget increase since 1994, but not sufficiently to keep up with increased workloads due to new legislation and the expansion of existing statutes. As with the Education Department, the number of complaints received by the EEOC was "dramatically higher" in the 1990s than in the 1980s. One of the results is that a complaint that took 3-6 months to process in 1980 took more than 10 months to process in 1998. Processing is just the first step; complaints don't come to a hearing for almost 2 years, and appeals take almost three years. CCR concludes by saying that these delays "undermine the fairness and effectiveness of the federal enforcement system and discourage people from coming forward to seek restitution for well-founded complaints of discrimination."
• The Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCCP), whose work affects the 28 million workers who contract with the federal government in some way, saw its budget decline steadily from 1978 until 1997, and staffing levels have yet to recover even to 1994 levels. Again, "these budget and staffing reductions come at a time when OFCCP's enforcement responsibilities have expanded," which has "adversely influenced the effectiveness of OFCCP's work."
• The Department of Justice has a Civil Rights Division (CRD) which enforces all sorts of laws having to do with everything from voting rights to housing to public accommodations to immigration to police brutality. While the funding of CRD is higher in the current year than in past years, that is partly because the levels were so low in past years. As acting Assistant Attorney General Bill Lann Lee stated in July, the current year's funding increase "has not made up for the fact that for many years, the CRD has basically been running on empty."
• The Department of Health and Human Services has an Office for Civil Rights (OCR) which is working with a budget that "is over 60 percent below the real spending power of the 1981 budget," having faced consistent decreases in its funding for years. Even if the issue were budget constraints – an argument that can hardly be made in the current Age of the Surplus – the OCR budget only makes up 0.0054 percent of the overall department's budget.
• The Department of Housing and Urban Development has an Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO), the staffing levels of which have decreased by 22 percent since 1994. During that same time the number of complaints has increased by 15 percent, to a level more than double the number of complaints received annually during the 1980s.

That's all six of the principal federal civil rights agencies. This week's "Quote" of the Week summarizes the dismal situation quite well.

Last week I said that the Clinton-Gore administration's failure to take a strong stance in the interests of their core constituencies was a huge part of what cost Gore the recent election (I know, I know, he actually won the popular vote, but the failure I'm talking about is the failure to win decisively enough to keep the courts out of it.) In the case of Florida, voter intimidation and other apparent violations of the voting rights of African Americans arguably cost the Vice President 25 electoral votes. Isn't this, in part, a predictable outcome of the de-funding of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division -- which has jurisdiction over voting rights violations in all of the states -- that has occurred under the Democratic Clinton-Gore administration? In that sense, Gore's recent humiliating loss was, in the words of Malcolm X, a case of the chickens coming home to roost.

The final report from the Commission, "Funding Federal Civil Rights Enforcement: 2000 and Beyond," is at the printer and due to be released within 4-6 weeks.

The Psychology of White Racism, Part 1

A couple of recent issues of Nygaard Notes have been devoted, in part, to race and racism as it appears in the news (NN #96 and #97). I mentioned racial bias in the costs of insurance, the recently-settled racial discrimination suit against Coca Cola, racial profiling in New Jersey, racial consequences of the federal "war on drugs," an African American police officer in New York being fired for talking about racism in the department, and a national report stating that communities of color "bear the brunt of the abuse" meted out by draconian law enforcement policies nationwide. These are only a few of the items in the news recently cataloguing the daily realities for people of color in today's United States.

In a separate article this week I will expand on one of the stories I briefly mentioned last week – the de-funding of Civil Rights enforcement by the Federal Government – but this essay is intended as the first part of an attempt to shed some light on the psychology of white racism. I think this may suggest some steps that"white" people might take as we attempt to elevate racism to the level it deserves in our public discourse.

The Usefulness of Guilt

Earlier in my life I worked briefly as a family therapist, specializing in sexual abuse and chemical dependency. One of the things I learned in that period was the crucial difference between shame and guilt. In a person with healthy self esteem (I didn't see too many of these in my work), the feeling that we call "guilt" typically serves a useful purpose: it lets us know when our behavior is out of line with our values and beliefs. When such a person commits a moral or legal transgression, the internal message is "I feel guilty, because a person like me (a "good" person) doesn't do that sort of thing."

For a person with low self esteem, on the other hand, such a transgression sets off the following internal message, "See? Here is more evidence to show what a bad person I am."

The difference in this internal dynamic often results in different external behaviors in response to the mistake. For the person with a healthy self esteem, a mistake triggers guilt, which results in admission of the error and the taking of action to set right what one has done. In this way, guilt frequently leads to an INCREASED engagement with the world.

The Disabling Effects of Shame

For the shame-based personality the dynamic is quite different. Since the transgression is perceived as evidence of the basic inferiority of the self, the initial response is to DETACH oneself from the incident, as a child might slink out of the room after breaking a glass. A typical statement associated with detachment might be "I know nothing about that." If one can't detach oneself, then there may be an attempt to DENY. This may involve simply denying responsibility for an acknowledged problem ("No one knows why these things happen, so there's nothing we can do," or "That's just the way it is; there's nothing you can do about it.") or it may involve an actual refusal to acknowledge the problem ("That didn't happen," or "It rarely happens," or "I never saw anything like what you're talking about.")

If the transgression was witnessed by others, there will frequently be RAGE -- "What are YOU staring at?!?" – accompanied by a SHIFTING OF THE BLAME to others, as in "If you hadn't done so-and-so, this never would have happened!" If all of this fails, then there is often a return to the attempt to DENY, and it is amazing to see the things people will do to deny what is plainly visible to all. Shame is an amazing thing.

The effect of such shame on the internal landscape can be devastating. One cannot reveal much about oneself, nor allow one's actions to be witnessed, for that would reveal the awful truth about oneself. In order not to be seen, one withdraws from the world, emotionally and sometimes physically. As human interactions are increasingly distorted or avoided, opportunities to counter the internal message of inadequacy and self-hate are lessened. This can result in increasing psychic isolation, and ultimately depression.

The exact origins of shame, on the individual level, are complex and arise from a variety of sources. One thing that seems to be true, in my experience, is that the individual shame dynamic is put into place at a very young age. I don't believe that there is anything that a child can do that is "shameful." That is, there is no opportunity for the adult to go back and make amends or otherwise address – in the world – any transgressions that the child might have committed that today might be perceived as shameful. The individual therapeutic journey of escape from shame will usually consist of re-visiting the messages that the child received from others and the resultant actions taken by the child, with the aims of re-interpreting the messages as the responsibility of the others and re-interpreting the child's actions as understandable attempts to adapt or survive. Adaptation and survival responses are not things to "make amends" for, but rather to revise or discard depending on their utility in present-day life.

What does all of this have to do with racism? That's what I'll talk about next week.