Metamorphosis of Sisyphus
Institutional responses that can most effectively reduce racial prejudice.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
“And I saw Sisyphus in agonising torment trying to roll a huge stone to the top of a hill”
The following lines were introduced by Homer in his epic “Odyssey” depicting the eternal cyclical punishment of Sisyphus. This myth became associated with moral doctrines which accentuate the critique of the human vices, where Sisyphus mirrored the hideous consequences of the deceit – being portrayed as an anti-hero. However, what if a different perspective is introduced, where Sisyphus is seen as a tragic hero of a story instead?
During the vibrant American modernity, racial inequality is a subject that continuously pulsates in the veins of a polarised society. The concept is stigmatised as a redundant outcome of political correctness. Nonetheless, the annually presented statistics are the antidote to such scepticism. According to the data from the Brookings Institution, in the U.S. Senate and House, “1 in 5 lawmakers in the 116th Congress is a person of color and nearly 8 in 10 are white”. Furthermore, approximately 1 in 1,000 Black American men and boys are killed by the police over the lifetime, compared to 39 per 100,000 for white men and boys. Additionally, 8 in 10 Black American students report experiencing racial discrimination at least once during the college tenure, with 1 in 6 claiming for the apparent regularity of such a process under the gravity of pre-existing disproportionate racial demographic.
These statistics allude to the interconnectivity of the Black racial minority with a tragic hero of Sisyphus. Despite the elusive concept of the American dream solidifying the idea of “equal opportunity” for the masses, it is clear that the racial minority infinitely pushes the stone of white success upon a mountain of prosperity, at the expense of its potential. After reaching the top of the mountain, the racial minority, likewise Sisyphus, is pushed back to enter the renewed vicious cycle of eternal pushing, characterised by the evolution of racial discrimination deeply embedded within a system. Hence, racial stereotypes and prejudices continue to influence decision-making today, resulting in systematic restriction of the rights of African descent citizens, which is encompassed by the evil notion of “institutional racism” or, as the Cambridge Dictionary defines it, “policies, rules, practices, etc. that have become a usual part of the way an organization or society works”.
Therefore, to eradicate institutional racism, the very heart of such a dreadsome concept must be punctured by the needle that will re-sew the rotten doctrines of political, law enforcement, and educational institutions with the threads of greater representation, defunding, and a new dimension of support. However, before presenting and evaluating the possible responses, the evolution of institutional racism should be introduced.
Mountain and Stone
In his book “We Were Eight Years in Power”, journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates asserts that “it was slavery that allowed American democracy to exist in the first place”. The white fraternal society found itself on the top of the socio-economic pyramid, the base of which was constructed on the flagrant notion of the slave trade. Subsequently, the privileged white majority walled up the entrance to the vertex of success because to acknowledge the historical racial discrimination would require to “alter the accepted conception of America as a beacon of freedom”. Thereby, the seed of racial hierarchy germinated from the soil of the slave trade. As defined by professor of Political Science at Tufts University and author Natalie Masuoka in her book “The Politics of Belonging: Race, Public Opinion, and Immigration”, the concept of racial hierarchy epitomises the placement of political power amongst racial groups based on the principle of vertical order. The higher the position in such a structure, the lower the oppression experienced by an individual, usually exerted by the various institutions (e.g. political, law enforcement, educational, etc.). However, unlike other continuous variables along spectrums, such as height and weight, the race of a person is almost unalterable, thus, signifying a predetermined dichotomy within a hierarchy – either high or low. In this vein, the authors Donald Kinder and Lynn M. Sanders, in their book “Divided by Color: Racial Politics and Democratic Ideals”, suggest that the established dogma of white dominance provided an impetus for the further evolution and dissemination of prejudice and discrimination within the societal body in the form of the “new racism”. This metastasised disease encompasses the whites’ perception that discrimination no longer exists and the current lack of success of the Black community reflects the generalised disincentive to work. The concepts of colour-blindness and meritocracy, which echoed the “new racism”, became spread like cancerous cells within a body, forming the tumours in the public institutions. Hence, any initiatives introduced to reduce institutional racism, such as affirmative action, became, according to the author and social justice activist Reni Eddo-Lodge, “frequently singled out as one of the signs of political correctness gone wrong” in an attempt of the white community to maintain their social privilege. The combination of apparent disregard towards the issue and backlash against the demolition of the status quo resulted in the further rooting of institutional racism and an increased weight of the burdening stone put on the shoulders of marginalised Sisyphus, which prevents the tragic hero from reaching the top of the racial hierarchy.
Metamorphosis
When all you have experienced is a privilege, equality might feel like a semblance of oppression. Therefore, to eradicate institutional racism, the blinding prism of indifference must be shattered through the acknowledgement of this essential issue. Seeing race and its implications induced by the institutions is an essential screw igniting the engine of change.
The starting point would be the application of the Critical Race Theory (CRT) as an amplifier of the volume of the voiceless. As argued by the professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California and author Tara J. Yosso in her highly influential article, “CRT is a framework that can be used to theorise, examine and challenge the ways race and racism implicitly and explicitly impact on social structures, practices and discourses”. The framework urges society to interpret the various institutions as inherently racist, in which the concept of the race itself embodies a social construct exploited by the white majority to maintain its political and socio-economic privileges. By bringing racism into the mainstream agenda, emphasising the centrality of the issue based on the experiential knowledge, the institutions will become a subject of an alternation.
In this case, the modern-day annihilation of the racist symbols, such as the destruction of the statues and renaming of the edifices, accompanied by monetary and admission support of the descendants of the enslaved people, represent an attempt of the white community to reconcile with the wrongdoings of the past, simultaneously, neglecting the injustices of the modernity. Therefore, the essential element for the eradication of institutional racism is the reconstruction of the damaged system – the evulsion of envenomed roots, rather than the clipping of rotten buds. More specifically, the U.S. institutional responses must be implemented within political, law enforcement, and educational spheres.
Firstly, the political institution should be reformed, with the emphasis on augmented racial representation. Particularly, the analogue of the NFL’s Rooney Rule in the form of the candidate quota can be introduced within political departments. As discussed by the author Cynthia DuBois in her research paper, “the Rooney Rule requires NFL teams to interview at least one minority candidate for any head coaching vacancy”. DuBois further finds that a minority candidate is “19.6 to 21.3 per cent more likely to fill an NFL head coaching vacancy in the post-Rooney era than the pre-Rooney era”. Hence, through the implementation of the “soft” affirmative action, which would require parties to consider at least one minority candidate for the specific position, the initial process of the greater representation will be initialised. Subsequently, this will produce a public relations effect, in which the analogue of the Rooney’s Rule would imply social pressure on the existing political edifice, in turn, affecting the creation of the Ministry of Equality which would oversee the execution of the new policy. Ultimately, through the further rounds of the candidate quota, the long-term effect of greater minority representation will be enacted, thus, producing a shift from the current underrepresentation, reflected in the statistics mentioned in the introduction, to a new favourable status quo.
Secondly, the law enforcement institution should be restructured. This can be done through the process known as the “defunding of the police”. As mentioned earlier, a disproportionate number of Black persons are dying at the hands of police, either directly caused by the exaggeration of authority or by institutional factors. As argued by Taleed El-Sabawi and Jennifer J. Carroll in their co-written paper, “Public outcry against racial inequities has increased as the authority of police departments has expanded… to respond to calls regarding behavioral health issues and houselessness.” Thereby, the claim to defund the police “raises questions about how budget cuts should affect the types of services provided by police departments and what new and improved responses may look like”. In this case, the Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets (CAHOOTS), implemented in Eugene may serve as a role model. The 2020 White Bird Clinic report proclaims that CAHOOTS service in Eugene, Oregon, allows “health professionals respond to mental health calls instead of police”, thus accumulating in the savings of “$8.5 million in public safety spending annually”. Therefore, the restructuring of the full powers exercised by the police and the empowerment of other social services will stabilise the weights of equality and equity by improving the efficiency of help provision. Additionally, such a structural response produces the reallocation of funds sufficient enough to be integrated into the other spheres needed for institutional racism eradication.
Lastly, one of such spheres that can experience increased monetary support is education. The funds freed up through restructuring of the law enforcement institute may be utilised for the strategic augmentation in both the number of the educational edifices and the quality of the education in the marginalised areas of the cities, mainly inhabited by the racial minority groups. Based on the general research on 1,500 regions across 78 countries, the authors Anna Valero & John Van Reenen concluded that “10 per cent increase in a region's number of universities per capita is associated with 0.4 per cent higher future GDP per capita in that region”. This model can be applied within particular areas of the cities, not only boosting the overall economic performance of the city but also improving the access to education within marginalised areas, previously categorised by the educational inequality. This can produce the spill-over effects, such as the better quality of education due to the economic and technical advancements of certain areas, higher career prospects, and avoidance of the white cultural conditioning in the privileged educational environments.
Furthermore, the feminist scholar Peggy McIntosh, in her infamous essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”, argues that “my schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture”. Thereby, within both the newly built and existing educational edifices, the training in awareness of racism, alongside cultural diversity should be introduced. However, such actions must be implemented through innovative systems that would teach rather than inform the students. In this case, the students from various entho-racial heritages should be encouraged to share the stories of their family lives intertwined with specific information about the indigenous cultures and traditions. Hence, according to American Psychological Association (APA), through such a process, the “contact hypothesis” will produce a long-term effect of promoting tolerance and acceptance, under the common goal of building a cosmopolitan world. Essentially, the white-dominated society of America needs a modern version of an “evil demon” of Descartes alternating the misleading dogmas of racism through the collective action of building demand for the redefinition of what it is to be racist, hence, becoming more respectful to the cultures different from the defined “typicality”.
Aftertime
Ultimately, racism prevails in the U.S. since the birth of the nation, developing its condemning curse on the marginalised Sisyphus. However, as argued in this essay, the effects of increased political representation, alongside the improvement of the educational system based on the resources received from law enforcement defunding, may serve the long-term purpose of eradicating institutional racism. Consequently, the U.S. can produce an earthquake of real modernisation, covering the rest of the world in the tsunami of veritable racial equality.
If personal and communal peculiarities that draw a portrait of the desirable citizen will be repainted on the canvas of racial neutrality, Sisyphus will be able to reach and overstep the unattainable peak, thus, concluding his metamorphosis.
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