Beyond the Race Card's Two-Value Logic: Thoughts on Richard Ford's "Race Card at Your Own Peril"

I read Professor Richard Ford's Op-ed piece (Wash. Post, Feb. 16, 2008) with interest, hoping that it'd show greater dynamic ways in which race and racism operate in our lives beyond its usual structural features. In his piece, the structural features have faces – cynical politicians who seek personal advantage through the political process. In some ways, his analysis tracks that of Kenneth O'Neill's Nixon's Piano: Presidents and Racial Politics from Washington to Clinton (1995). As a macro analysis, I agree with his points. Yet, macro and micro levels work together seamlessly, and while it's relatively easy to examine broader, structural features of race and racism, I think that the real action happens at the micro level, the pool on which the scum of ignorance can either float or sink.

In fact, politicians cannot do anything externally or structurally to whip up racist fervor if it does not already exist in our egoistic mental patterns, and hence the real remedy is not just punishing cynical politicians who play the race card, but also demanding that ordinary people, including minorities, take responsibility for their mental patterns, the very source of fear, judging, violence, and ignorance. In their 2005 book entitled The End of Suffering, Russell Targ and J.J. Hurtak argue that suffering originated in Aristotle's two-value logic (or the Law of the Excluded Middle): (1) whites are good; (2) non-whites are not good. This corollary of racism means that politicians have fertile ground on which to work their self-interest. However, it would be all for naught if ordinary people did not view the world through this very simplistic (racist) prism.

For example, on the AALS Minority-section’s List Serv, some concerns have fallen squarely within two-value logic. Some law professors have argued that Senator Obama is either going to champion of the cause of black Americans and minorities in ending racism or going to promote a color-blind agenda that will placate white interests and leave blacks and minorities little better off than they have been under President Bush. He can't do both. Such simplicity promotes a degree of fear that I've witnessed in these exchanges, and as I've noticed, few of us are capable of leaping beyond two-value logic very easily.

By steeping ourselves in either-or logic, politicians can appear to provoke or steer or guide the worst features of so-called human nature to heighten racism and needless separation among us. By rationalizing this either-or logic and its attendant fear, judging, violence, and ignorance, we, most if not all of us, place our considerable mental power at the disposal of politicians who purport to advance our cause, who validate our egoistic mental patterns, and who reinforce that racial politics is the way the world really works. Outside of our fear, we all know better.

By stationing our analysis at the two-value logic level or macro level, we, especially Race Crits or race scholars of traditional sociological analysis, seek out the exogenous or external variables that act as triggers for this either-or logic. Once we've identified these triggers, we focus our considerable intellect on etching the contours of these variables, all in the hope that we'll educate others or neutralize a cynical politician’s ability to stir up the ugly of racism at least in the way she succeeded previously. Unfortunately, what goes missing in their subtle and not-so-subtle analyses is the ways in which ordinary people have been, and are, the timber on which the whipped up racist flames depend.

In practical terms, one cynical politician cannot divide a community, unless ordinary people find so-called external validation for their either-or thinking of the politician’s words. One person can't destroy or unite the world. Cynical politicians or charismatic leaders depend on either our ignorance or hope. In either case, we then serve as the oceanic swell that gives rise to the crest on which these politicians or leaders ride. In short, when we focus our considerable intellect force simply on these triggering human beings (e.g., cynical politicians), especially because we want to avoid needlessly blaming the victim, we too place our mental power in the service of Aristotle's two-value logic (or the Law of the Excluded Middle), and we too operate – even in a sophisticated way – within egoistic mental patterns that contribute to our suffering and the suffering of others.

With self-reflection, we can do better. We must find a way to get beyond two-value logic. For the exclude middle is where greater possibilities exist. For example, Senator Obama can be: (3) black and non-black at the same time. Or he can do: (3) good for the collective community and not good for traditional civil rights politics. By recognizing that the excluded middle offers us greater possibilities, thus getting us beyond the simplicity of either-or logic, we can have different, perhaps more fruitful discussions, in which we implicate minorities and women too.

At three-value logic, we can sincerely say that minorities, who have been on the receiving end of some of the worse treatment excepting the genocide of American Indians, can be: victims (although I really reject this concept) and non-victims. As victims, we can say that social institutions, driven by white males’ collective two-value logic, denied minorities and women access to resources that white males took for granted. As non-victims, they too engaged in a different kind of two-value logic: (1) America will always be a white racist nation; (2) America will overcome its white racism if it enacts race-conscious remedies. The upshot: if America rejects race-conscious remedies, blacks can expect to suffer white racism, to face racial discrimination, and to never get a fair break in America. Of course, the tragic problem is that success stories, however few (e.g., Oklahoma's black Wall Street that was later destroyed for cynical racism), belies such explicit or implicit claims.

Yet, on their status as non-victims, I'm introducing the Law of Attraction, which says: "likes unto themselves are drawn." According to Esther Hicks and Jerry Hicks’ The Law of Attractions: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham (2006), this principle would mean that minorities are as responsible for the way in which they view the world and for the experiences they attract to themselves as whites might be. What's particularly important about this principle is that it's part of the excluded middle, and it argues that minorities are co-creators of their own experiences and realities. Professor Leon Litwack's Trouble in Mind (1998), a very important contribute to the analysis of Jim Crow politics, reveals the degree to which black community’s two-value logic was a powerful co-creator of their experiences, and even if blacks later succeeded, they still internalized deep suffering that belies their material success. Just consider Professors Joel Feagin and Melvin Sikes' Living with Racism: The Black-Middle Class Experience (1994).

By getting beyond two-value logic, by exploring the excluded middle, where greater possibilities exist, we can understand different ways of co-creating the world. By interrogating how minorities co-create reality constructs and thus attract good and not-good personal experiences, we can sincerely and honestly examine at least two vital issues: those who ride the crest of the wave; those who generate the oceanic force on which this wave's existence depends.

Harder still is moving from three-value logic, where Senator Obama can engage in racial politics and non-racial politics, to four-value logic, in which he is (4) neither black nor not black. At this level, all things are possible. More important, we can begin to recognize that we are connected to everything and everyone. Leading up to the 2000 census, bi-racial and multi-racial identities argued for four-value logic. Their very existence did violence to official race-based constructs, which were: (1) "I'm white" or (2) "I'm black". I made this argument in The Shifting Race-Consciousness Matrix and the Multiracial Category Movement: A Critical Reply to Professor Hernandez, 20 Boston College Third World Law Journal 231-289 (2000). But officially, we can’t be (3) white and non-white. In this sense, our government has officially embraced two-value logic, not only in racial identities, but also in politics (i.e., Democrats versus Republicans), in foreign policies (e.g., pro-democracy or not pro-democracy), in fighting terrorism (e.g., you’re either with us or against us).

By the time we get to four-value logic, we enter into nonlocal causation (Quantum Physics/culture) and into naked awareness (Buddhism's emptiness). For example, we’ve heard the butterfly protocol: when the butterfly flaps its wings over Tokyo, Paris suffers a storm. Hence, at the nonlocal level, immediate, external events don’t necessarily cause what's happening to us. Rather, according to physicists like Professor Emeritus William Tiller, et al. (Conscious Acts of Creation: The Emergence of the New Physics (2001)) and early thinkers like Prentice Mulford's Thoughts Are Things (2007; originally published in 1889), a group of people in New York City can affect outcomes in California. At the nonlocal causation level, causative forces are unseen, and they still affect people, places, and things. Why? Because at the four-value logic, we are all One; all connected to all.

Furthermore, at this level, then, all thoughts matter, not just white folks, but also minorities and women too. More than theoretical, blacks affect other blacks and minorities by the degree to which they hold a specific set of beliefs or identify with certain egoistic mental patterns. For example, minorities believe or identify with the following thoughts: (a) America's racism is permanent; (b) the criminal justice system is racist; (c) race-conscious remedies can end racism; (d) white, racist cops cause the driving while black phenomenon, etc. None of these beliefs/thoughts is necessarily true. Yet, if we believe that they are true, our personal experiences and sense of social reality confirm that, for example, the criminal justice system is racist. By the by, we got to confront this issue in the case of the Jena Six.

In the context of Ford’s Op-ed piece, and the limits of two-value logic, voters don’t have to succumb to simplistic, racial tropes. Accordingly, if cynical politicians come to town and if voters show up to listen, then they don’t have to provide them the oceanic forces so that politicians can ride the crest of racism to public office. Voters can decide to punish politicians either by not showing at the polls, by voting against them, or by publicly denouncing this either-or approach of old-style politics. That is, they can prevent cynical politicians from using them. Once so used, voters become little more than objects within a fear-based collective who can be moved puppet-like by deterministic forces. Hence, Hispanic voters in the coming Arizona and California national election, and eventually in Texas’ primary, can reject politicians who engage in the old-style politics of divide and conquer so that later, as president, he or she can offer olive branches and political spoils to show that he or she is sincere about healing the ugly, unfortunate rift between blacks, Hispanics, and whites. Basically, we must expose cynical politicians who simply seek to manipulate us for their own ends. However, we can only so do if we move beyond two-value logic and view our world and possibilities from a broader perspective.

From this broader perspective, we can ask: isn't it entirely possible that the rest of the world, which is terribly sick of President Bush's militaristic, corporate-oriented foreign policies, is psychically and emotionally supporting Senator Obama's run for the presidency? From a nonlocal causation or naked awareness, wouldn't they as well as national voters be equally responsible for his ongoing momentum? Don't we all consciously or otherwise see in Senator Obama’s campaign a rejection of the two-value logic of old-style, divisive politics? Aren't we – and the world – now ready for three- and four-value logic, especially because we see the real limits of imperial presidents, military juntas, and totalitarian governments? I believe that four-value logic (or nonlocal causation or naked awareness) holds the greatest hope for our self-awareness that we, especially the United States, do affect the rest of the world, that we’re connected to all others, and that as Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now (1999) might argue, we can ultimately liberate ourselves from suffering, of which racism is just a temporary, historical feature.

Although Professor Ford’s Op-ed piece hovered at the macro level, focusing on deterministic triggers who, this time, were cynical politicians, I enjoyed the read, agreeing with most of his observations. His piece is deeply whetted to two-value logic. What’s missing is the micro level. At this level, we’d expose the degree to which minorities and others are the energy behind all of their best moments and worst, racist experiences. These experiences flow from two-value logic, and if we are to get beyond this source of our psychological, existential, and emotional suffering, we must interrogate the ways in which we rely on egoistic mental patterns like racial identities to engage in self-destructive judgments, violent thoughts, scarcity-based policies, and old-style politics of divide and conquer. Yet, to do so, we must fundamentally alter the way we think, act, believe, feel, and talk. At the very least, we must embrace four-value logic of nonlocal causation or naked awareness. With nonlocal causation, we’d appreciate that we’re not only the sum of our collective choices but also connected – mind, body, and soul – to every living thing on the planet. We harvest today the history of our aggregating choices. Hence, what we permit to happen to one of us today has happened, and may happen, to us again unless we alter our core beliefs.

Fortunately, by altering our core beliefs and by adopting nonlocal causation or naked awareness, we can strengthen and broaden antisubordination or empowerment principles. Within legal academe, Critical Race Theory (CRT) comes to mind. We can strengthen CRT by understanding that past, present, and future are linked. In this way, Race Crits can more persuasively argue that social conditions and present effects of past discrimination are still powerful explanatory forces in extant racism and racial discrimination. We can broaden CRT by tying these present effects to present core beliefs, egoistic mental patterns, and human agency, for thoughts are real, affecting everyone and everything around us. We can also broaden CRT by acknowledging that all humans are powerful reality co-creators, and as such we can attract good and non-good experiences. In this way, Race Crits cannot simply point to white structural oppression for what plagues minorities and women, and then argue that race-conscious remedies will eradicate racist ills, while they leave the two-value logic at the heart of the suffering of minorities and women untouched. To truly empower others, Race Crits themselves must psychologically and existentially embrace three- and four-value logic too.

Once these views are woven into our cultural fabric, our educational curricula, and our scholarly musing about social issues, we can gradually move beyond two-value logic to four-value logic, thus rejecting old-style politics and connecting to all human beings whether here or elsewhere. Perhaps we stand ready for this new world. After Senator Clinton and former President Clinton engaged in race-baiting politics, they lost broader support. With a far broader campaign based on the nonlocal logic of all for all, Senator Obama enjoys greater momentum. In this coming new world, we’ll refuse to send people to Washington or to gubernatorial offices who view us as billiard balls for their well-chalked cue sticks.

We’re not objects. We’re powerful reality co-creators who must reject views that Asians, blacks, Hispanics, whites, and other human beings have distinct, existential interests. We don’t.