Culture is the determining factor, not race

  

Culture, Choice, and the Consequences That Compound

I do not believe that one race is inherently superior to another. I believe that every human being is created in the image of God and therefore possesses equal human dignity and worth. Race does not determine character, intelligence, morality, or destiny. From that truth we should not conclude that all cultures are equally successful at producing human flourishing. Culture is not skin color. Culture is what families, communities, churches, schools, governments, and other institutions teach us to value. It establishes expectations regarding work, education, marriage, children, responsibility, charity, crime, saving, self-control, and how we should respond when life treats us unfairly and most importantly, culture influences choices.

Our Language Makes Distinctions

There is a subtle example of racial distinction in the language used by our national media. In 2020, the Associated Press decided to capitalize “Black” when referring to race while continuing to use “white” in lowercase. AP explained that Black people possess “strong historical and cultural commonalities,” while White people generally do not share the same history and culture. AP also expressed concern that capitalizing White could inadvertently legitimize white-supremacist beliefs. I find that reasoning difficult to reconcile with the principle of racial equality. If Black and White describe racial identities, why should one receive a typographical distinction denied to the other? Black Americans have shared elements of history, but they are hardly culturally uniform. A Black American whose ancestors endured American slavery, a Nigerian immigrant, a Jamaican, and a Somali immigrant can have dramatically different histories, religions, languages, traditions, and values. Yet, those differences do not prevent the AP from recognizing Black as a collective identity. White Americans are similarly diverse. Their ancestors may have been English, Irish, Italian, German, Polish, Scandinavian, Greek, or countless other nationalities. Their histories and traditions differ as well. If internal diversity does not invalidate Black as an identity, it is difficult to understand why internal diversity should invalidate White. Note: The National Association of Black Journalists itself recommended consistency, supporting the capitalization of "White" as well as "Black". This may appear to be a trivial argument over a capital letter, but I don’t think it is. Language teaches us how to categorize one another. When a supposedly neutral style convention treats two racial identities differently, it introduces an unnecessary distinction into everyday communication.

If we truly believe that no race is inherently superior or inferior to another, our language should reflect that equality. Capitalize Black and White or don’t capitalize black and white. Either convention is defensible. What is difficult to defend is granting one racial identity a distinction while deliberately withholding the same distinction from another. Perhaps that illustrates the larger point of this essay. We spend an extraordinary amount of time categorizing people according to race when the differences that most profoundly shape human lives are often cultural rather than racial.

What I Saw in Masonry

I was reminded of this recently while attending a Masonic family gathering in Richmond, Virginia. The gathering was overwhelmingly White. Yet what impressed me about the atmosphere had nothing inherently to do with Whiteness. I saw families, successful people giving back to their communities, friendship, brotherhood, charity, and people who had spent decades building productive lives. Freemasonry does not teach that those qualities belong to White men. Quite the opposite. A man of good character may seek admission regardless of his race. My own lodge has a Black member who stands upon the same level as every other Brother. The question I asked was, what produced the atmosphere I experienced? My answer is Choice.

People had voluntarily entered an institution that expected something of them. Masonry teaches responsibility, charity, self-improvement, brotherhood and service. It doesn’t make every Mason successful or virtuous. Men remain imperfect. But institutions reinforce values, and values influence behavior. That distinction is important because racial statistics can easily tempt us into confusing race with culture. When a racial group experiences disproportionately high rates of violence, poverty, family instability, educational failure or dependency, we should be able to discuss those facts honestly. But skin color itself explains very little. Within every racial category are radically different families, neighborhoods, churches, and communities that produce radically different outcomes. If dysfunctional behavior is cultural rather than racial, we should expect people of the same race living according to different cultural expectations to experience different outcomes. We should likewise expect people of different races who share strong norms concerning work, education, family, and responsibility to experience more similar outcomes. That is exactly why race cannot be destiny.

Choices Compound

None of this means everybody begins life at the same starting line. Some people inherit money. Others inherit debt. Some inherit stable families, excellent schools and useful connections. Others inherit broken homes, dangerous neighborhoods and very little opportunity. While circumstances matter, they are not opposites of agency. A wealthy person can inherit enough money to postpone the consequences of terrible decisions. But persistent overspending, addiction, irresponsibility, and destructive behavior can eventually consume enormous wealth. Likewise, a person beginning with very little can repeatedly make decisions that improve his position: learn a trade, get an education, work consistently, save something from each paycheck, avoid addiction and crime, choose friends carefully, build a stable family and accept responsibility when something goes wrong. None of those things guarantees success. Life contains tragedy, illness, discrimination, economic downturns and simple bad luck; however, choices alter probabilities, and over decades, probabilities compound. Good choices compound. Bad choices compound. Wealth can postpone the consequences of bad choices, just as poverty can postpone the rewards of good ones, but neither permanently abolishes cause and effect.

The Bread Problem

That brings us to government. Imagine a hungry man. Giving him bread tonight may be exactly what morality demands. Charity and personal responsibility are not enemies. Sometimes people genuinely need help, and a civilized society should not be indifferent to suffering, but suppose tomorrow I provide his bread again, and again the following day. Eventually something can change in the relationship. The recipient may discover, “If you give me more bread, I will support you.” The politician may discover, “If I give him more bread, he will support me.” Neither statement requires a conspiracy. Each person is responding to incentives. Eventually, the institution designed to relieve dependency can come to have an interest in maintaining the relationship between provider and recipient. That is fundamentally different from saying we should abandon people who need help.

The better question is: Does our assistance ultimately restore the person’s ability to provide for himself? Government programs sometimes approach this very differently. Means-tested programs provide assistance because someone’s income falls below a specified level. Earn slightly too much and assistance may decline or disappear. Poorly designed programs can therefore create benefit cliffs in which improving one’s economic circumstances carries an immediate financial penalty.

Contrast that with the idea of giving a child an investment account at birth. Instead of waiting until someone becomes poor and then responding to poverty, the philosophy is to give the individual an asset that can grow throughout childhood. One model primarily responds to need. The other attempts to build ownership before the need develops. There is room for both approaches. But they teach subtly different lessons about the relationship between the individual and government.

Who Should Pay the Toll?

Virginia’s Elizabeth River tunnel toll relief provides another useful example. The Commonwealth has used general-fund taxpayer money to provide substantial toll assistance to qualifying lower-income residents around Portsmouth and Norfolk. One can sympathize with someone struggling to afford a toll while still asking a legitimate question: Why should taxpayers in Southwest Virginia subsidize the daily transportation expenses of residents in Portsmouth? The tunnels serve a regional transportation need. If regional residents believe tolls are excessively burdensome, perhaps the region should decide whether to subsidize them through local or regional taxes. There is also an important distinction between constructing public infrastructure and paying an individual’s cost to use a particular route. Untolled alternatives exist. They may be less convenient. But convenience and necessity are not identical. The deeper issue is not whether poor people deserve compassion. The question is what government should do about the consequences of individual circumstances and choices—and who should pay for it.

Charity Without Surrendering Agency

Masonry offers interesting lessons here because charity is central to the fraternity. The lesson isn’t, “I succeeded; therefore anyone who hasn’t succeeded deserves his condition.” That would be both arrogant and false.

The lesson is closer to this: Help the man who has fallen, but do not teach him that he is incapable of standing. Someone else may genuinely have contributed to his predicament. Society may have treated him unfairly. His parents may have failed him. His employer may have wronged him. Discrimination may have limited his opportunities. Acknowledging causation is not the same as surrendering responsibility.

There is tremendous power in saying:

Someone else may have helped put me here, but I will not give that person the power to determine where I go from here.

The moment a person accepts responsibility for whatever portion of the next step remains within his control, something important returns: agency, and with agency comes self-reliance, self-respect, accomplishment, and eventually the ability to help somebody else.

Culture Is What We Teach

This brings me back to where I began. The important distinction is not between White culture and Black culture. It is between cultures that strengthen human agency and cultures that weaken it. A healthy culture teaches that work has dignity, education matters, families matter, promises matter, self-control matters, crime has consequences, achievement should be respected, neighbors deserve our assistance, and capable adults should ultimately strive to provide for themselves and their families. An unhealthy culture can teach precisely the opposite lessons. Neither culture belongs genetically to a particular race. They are learned, reinforced, and can change. That is why culture matters so profoundly. Culture establishes expectations; expectations influence choices; choices produce consequences; and consequences compound across a lifetime—and eventually across generations. Circumstances determine much about where we begin. They should never be ignored, but neither should we pretend that circumstances determine where we must finish.

Race does not determine character or destiny. Culture matters because culture shapes expectations and choices. Choices have consequences, and those consequences compound over a lifetime. Culture determines character and destiny.

Perhaps the most compassionate culture is therefore neither one that abandons the struggling person nor one that promises to carry him forever. It is the culture that offers him a hand, helps him regain his footing, and then reminds him that he is capable of walking.