 Welcome and aloha. I'm Mark Schloff, host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. Today we're going across the sea of humanity to discuss the history of race and racism with Peter Hoffenberg. Peter is a history professor at the University of Hawaii. The words race and racism have been used a lot recently. But I ask myself, do we really know what they mean in the historical context? I've asked Peter to share his knowledge of the history of race and racism and lessons from humanity. Welcome, Peter. Thank you very much, aloha. Good to see you again. Yes. Well, I'm a student of history and I'm here to learn. And first, I'd like to focus on two basic concepts to begin our discussion. Please, Professor, define the terms race and racism in historical context. Okay, that should take the next five years. But no, very important. And obviously these days where the words are being thrown around. As most e-terms with different definitions, let me try to give you the consensus which may not make anybody happy, but at least we could set some parameters. Race is generally understood to be what we call a construct. So in other words, there is nothing in nature, biology, the scientific world which one would call race or races. It is a human social and cultural idea that people of a particular race, remember rather arbitrary, share the most fundamental characteristics and we can know an individual by their membership in that group. So you can see that historically race played a similar role to ethnicity, played a similar role to religion. And a book that came out a couple of months ago that's gotten a lot of attention is an argument that race in the United States plays a similar role to caste. And some of your listeners may be familiar with the caste system in India, which also had a construct to it. Racism is the application of that in public and private life. I think probably most of us are most concerned about public life. And recently I think an important contribution has been that racism in public life may or may not be measured by intents, but it can be measured by consequence. So if we see a particular statistic like public health is particularly bad or a worrisome for a particular group even if that were not the intention, right? That is an expression of racism. And I think recently amidst all of the controversies we're actually taking a few steps forward to have a reasonable conversation. I think that's an important point to be made that we're looking at results, not just intent. Okay, so that's very briefly but maybe that can help us with our conversation. Okay, all right. So that's good to think about. I have to try to wrap my mind around those concepts and now that you're talking, you talked about how these things are being currently perceived, but what are the earliest historical references to race and racism? What are their historical examples? There are, but I think the difficulty is, and again, I think your listeners can appreciate this. The word race has been used in memoriam, but the contextual definition, right? What did race mean when it was used has changed over time. And I think that's an important thing, at least my students and I discuss is we're trying to figure out clearly, particularly in the American example. And I'm not picking on the US or saying it's exclusive but probably the one we know best, right? Race has had a particular definition in this country associated with slavery, but that may not be the way that race was used, for example, in a medieval text. So we have to be very careful. You might say almost anywhere that your audience is interested in has been used probably for a long time like class, all right? We tend to use a Marxist definition or 19th century definition, but you could find it earlier. So we try to think historically, like what are the origins and use of a particular definition? So when I talk about this with students and this is open to discussion, I mean, friendly discussion, just as my view, which is just one that, I mean, I share and it's nothing original is that our understanding of race is really a modern one which intersects with the abuse of biology and the abuse of social Darwinism. So when I read race, in the 17th century, I'm not reading the same kind of definition. I'm reading ethnicity, religion. Now, very importantly with your second, there could be racism because in the 17th century, right for the English to describe the Irish as a different race was not a compliment, right? But it's not the biological racism that we have. And obviously that's open to lots of discussion. I think probably the discussion is fueled these days because as we talked about just before we got on, we're trying to get ourselves out of this problem, right? We obviously are living in a very troubled time and by trying to find the origins, maybe we can help get out of that trouble. I'm not sure that's gonna help us. Again, I'd like to see how it's used now and the consequences. Finding out precisely when race was originally used. I'm not sure how much that's going to help us. I mean, it's a valuable intellectual exercise, but I'm just not sure if it's gonna help us escape from our problems or solve them. I shouldn't say escape, I mean, solve the problems. Right, so yes, I want to have a friendly discussion and I don't know the answers. And I'm glad, I appreciate that you say basically the same thing is that you want to talk about it and try to help us get out of our current situation or evolve from it, probably. Now, there is one thing you talked about, perception of race and racism in the United States, but is racism endemic to all human races and cultures? Is it something that we find historically more spread throughout the world? $64,000 question. Let's keep it friendly and uncertain. So I would say racism, if racism is the cultural and intellectual justification for inequality, some type of racism exists. When we teach world history, we notice, for example, most major powers are ethnocentric. So the Soviet empire was Russian. The Chinese are Han, Turkey is Turkic. And even if they may treat other groups differently than they perhaps we treat people of color in the US, they don't treat them equally. So your answer seems to be that no society has ever been equal and no society has ever let everybody participate. Okay, and I think we can probably agree on that. What is the issue in America? Well, we still debate. Is it economic inequality? Is it racial inequality? But I think, again, if you look at the consequences, race and racism seem to be the most common excuse for inequality. So the all societies need that. I mean, one of the reasons the book talked about caste is that caste has been used by elites in India. For example, we've all heard about the untouchables, right? The poorest of the poor, we need to clean the sanitation who will not be touched by anybody else. And the untouchables are not a race, but it is an idea culturally and intellectually that everybody in that group shares the most common characteristic and each of them is inferior to me in another group, a Bengali Brahman. So we may choose race here. Other societies choose other vehicles. There are other societies in which obviously race also plays the role at a place here. I mean, I think Brazil is a good example. Southern Africa and apartheid, those are good examples of race being the crucial determinant and not something else. So in other words, there always is something. Historian is interested in why race, like in the US, for example, they have always been poor people, right? There's always been economic inequality. But much of our public discussion has been racial. It hasn't been economic. Other societies, perhaps economic, where being poor was the equivalent of being an untouchable class, right? The poor are somehow different, right? And if you're a single member of the poor, you're like it, you share most characteristics with everybody else. So if your question is sort of group think and one group is thought of as inferior, it's hard to find a human society without that. I suppose the important question is even if a society has that, what are the venues to overcome that and to participate? So even if a group is held to be somehow inferior, are there opportunities for members of that group and the group itself to join society, to participate, to, I'll use just the social term. I don't mean it in a particular moral way, integrate. Okay, I don't mean it good or bad, but just the opportunity. So if, for example, the Indian government doesn't allow untouchables to vote, well, right? There's not gonna be any kind of political integration. Or if you live in a society where housing is segregated, you can't have that integration. You know, from hearing what you've been saying too, it sounds like racism, the term, has actually been used in a broader context. I mean, beyond the definition of race. And I'm hearing you talk about economics a lot. And I'm wondering, is that the historic basis or reason for the existence of the general term racism? I mean, what does history teach us about the causes of racism? Is it solely economic? Is there a power thing here that I need to understand? Sure, sure. Well, I'm an old man. So let me tell you, there's no simple answer. There's no one. Okay, and I encourage my students not to make a laundry list, and I don't want 100 answers. But I think you've hit upon, at least in the American case, a crucial debate, which is the relationship between racism and slavery. So there's a School of American Historians, keen researchers, very articulate. You say, essentially the economic situation came first as in the need for exploited labor. And then that exploited labor could be justified in racial terms, as if, for example, these people are somehow inferior, right? And that's a very cogent and important argument. And then the other says, well, let's kind of reverse it, that if I'm looking for work or I'm thinking about a group, I'm already thinking they're inferior. I think again, as a scholar, the answer is important for understanding the past, but I would say now in the 21st century, they're all mixed up, right? Attitudes towards race and ethnicity are mixed up with attitudes towards which groups should have a sub-minimum or minimum wage work, right? Which I mean, they're all, they really do tend to be mixed up now. And I think most scholars of economics and society would be wary of taking an exacto knife. The economy is complex enough and ideas are complex enough. It's hard to separate. It really depends upon equality. Do you think people are equal? Or as economists would say, does everybody have the same right to fulfill their capabilities? And if the answer is yes, then you don't need racism. If the answer is no, well, we're thinking being and part of it probably is the alienation and guilt, we historically have needed to find a reason, right? Religion is different, so they're inferior and they can be exploited. Ethnicity is different. So I'm really interested in the function of racism. That interests me a lot, is how it works in society and in the economy. And it sounds like the economic reasons for racism were perpetuated for economic reasons. I guess I'm kind of repeating myself, but is that also the source of racial stereotypes? I mean, you hear that certain things have been said about certain races of people and is that the economic cause was to keep people in their place, so to speak? Well, again, I don't know if I could say always the intent, but it has been the result. It has been the legacy and the consequence. So I leave it to other historians who go further back in time. I'm basically a modern historian and most of this is already up and running, right? By the modern world. So I'm wary of giving you an answer which is too simplistic, but I think your description is accurate that regardless of the original relationship, the persistent intent has been to keep certain groups and certainly majority of those groups, right? You can always find an exception. Like what we're talking about a group or to keep that group in a particular socioeconomic space. And I don't think that would shock anybody. And I think if you look at American politics and most politics, that's reality. The debate is what to do about it, right? And who should be blamed? And as a historian, I'm not so interested in playing game. I am interested in what to do about it. So if you look at the statistics and again, let's take, let's not take the US because somebody will know about the US. Oh, let's take France where a disproportionate number of low income workers or unemployed are immigrants, often immigrants from North Africa or the Middle East. Whether or not that's intended, it's reinforcing views towards immigrants, not native born and towards people of color. Many of them are Muslim. So, it's a little bit of chicken and egg. I mean, they live in the ring around Paris, high unemployment. Yes, they are Muslim. Yes, they are of color. But does that mean they're not entitled to all the advantages of the French Republic? And when they don't seem to be taking advantages of the French Republic, then racial attitudes come in to explain why they're not. Okay, so again, I think your viewers can appreciate. It's sort of, it's not dissecting the ninth inning of the game last night, where you can pick which pitches and which throws work. It's seeing them all wrapped around and that's why I think we have one of the reasons we have a problem in this country because it's really not just race. Race has embedded in it ideas about violence, about threat, about what work people should do, about how people treat men and women. I mean, it's all wrapped up in that term and we have to untie it all and figure out how to resolve all of those elements. So, you know, we're talking about economics a lot as perhaps underlying some of this racist behavior. Has that, I mean, historically, has that been the cause of racism? Is that, as you see it? It has been a cause. I don't know if it's the only one, but it's hard if, again, if we open it up a little bit and if we look at economics, just not only as who's doing what and making what amount of money or home or wealth, okay? But the idea of somebody in a different group is taking away my job or my home. We do find that commonly pushing forward explosions of racism and intolerance. They're already based upon racism because you already have a preconception about this group. But if we look at a lot of examples, they're not just about power. If we look at examples in India, if we look at examples in Rwanda, US, South Africa, Britain, there's almost always this sense of being aggrieved and betrayed somebody else is taking my job. That is an economic root of racism when the association is not the individual as an individual, but the individual is a member of a group, right? So you can talk to somebody in Arizona and they very well have a pleasant conversation within a Honduran, but then you start talking about the economy and they very, very well say Hondurans are taking away our jobs, right? I, the Honduran across the street, I don't really mean him, but I mean everybody at the border. And that's racism in action. So has history, I mean, I hear the economy, I hear about the economy being a factor or economics, but you don't hear that talked about. I mean, very much. Has there been historical basis to promote racism? In other words, have people used history to promote racism? Without a doubt, if we expand racism to include, you know, ethnocentric, religious intolerance, let's take the former Yugoslavia where the Croatians and Serbians both went back to the 14th century to excuse what they were doing to each other in the 20th century. Nazi Germany used ideas since the middle ages of Jews. Some of the stereotypes in which people are trafficking about Muslims, Chinese, African-Americans, Jews in the United States have been around for 150 years. So in the sense of reusing old ideas, but also using a historical instance, a Yugoslavia is a really good example of where both sides appealed to certain battles that were centuries old, right? And that's a grievance, that's using history. Use, you know, walking around with a Confederate battle flag is abusing history, right? That's using history. So I think that if you expand history out a little bit to say using the past, and I don't mean that in a snarky way, it just mean not scientifically thinking about what happened, but your sense of what happened, or your memories used all the time, yeah. Even in a strange way in the United States where opposition to expanding African-Americans political and economic rights is often phrased in, well, look, we fought the civil war, 700,000 people died. Wasn't that enough, right? And that's, you hear that argument, McConnell gave that argument in the bowels of the Senate, and you hear it rather commonly, even among seemingly politically balanced people, and that's using history, right? Saying, well, you know, we've done enough, we did it. We did it back then. Now we don't need to do it now. So the past is always used, always quite often abused, but it's one of the interesting things about modern life where we're not sure what we should appeal to or authority greater than ourselves, and so the past is there to be ransacked or authority. Let me ask you then, taking the same train of thought in a way, but is there something that we can learn from history? Can history teach us something about defeating racism? Is there some historical evidence that we can take a look at and say this had a reaction that defeated racism? I'm pausing because the defeats of racism in the modern world have always been temporary. There is no example of enduring complete defeat of racism, but having said that, right, progress is important. And I think in the American case, quite clearly, when reconstruction was supported by the federal government, when Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt integrated the military, when the Voting Rights Act was promulgated and enforced. So I think there again, if we go back to where we started, because I know we're near the end for today, we go back to where we started. I think I just personally and as an educator, I'm less worried about changing people's hearts and minds. I want to change the outcomes of public policy. So we have to say voting rights is something critical for the American public interest. You may not like African-Americans, right? That is your private thought, but you have an obligation. And two examples, because I know you like British history and spiritual, two examples of people a Churchill would agree with. Queen Elizabeth, who said, just go to church on Sunday, I will not look into your heart and soul, but you need to practice the Church of England. And Macaulay, a great reformer who Churchill wrote about a lot in Churchill's history of English-speaking people, Macaulay was a virulent antisemite. I mean, he hated Jews, but he gave the single most important speech for what back then was called Jewish naturalization, which was giving Jews the vote. And I think as a society, you've got to come to that point where, all right, you are entitled to your own thoughts, you are. You're not entitled for those thoughts to deny other people their rights. You're entitled to those thoughts, but they have to mix with the public interest. And so I know we're out of time, so I'm really interested in the application of racism, the consequences, and people owning up to having less of a religious view of the world, good and bad, and more of an economic and scientific view which allow people their rights, even if you don't like them. So that's what society is about, is getting along with people you don't like. It's easy to get along with people you like, that's easy. And so I hear you saying social structure is important and getting, regardless of what you think, but if we can set up a social structure that treats everyone equally, that's important. Now, in one minute. We'll solve everything. Do you see any historical trends one way or the other? Or how do we? Right now, unfortunately, I see the historical trends going in the wrong direction right now, across, actually pretty much across the world. So again, not to just pick on the US. I see much less tolerance, whereas you could argue that governments could promote tolerance. I see more and more governments actually exploiting intolerance, places like Hungary and India, India and Brazil. I don't think that trajectory is very hopeful right now. I'm not thoroughly depressed. Jay is thoroughly depressed, our good friend. He's depressed every week. I'm not thoroughly depressed, but I am worried. I'm worried. And all it really would take is reviewing, at least as a start, just reviewing existing laws and regulations and removing those which have a racist consequence. Well, Professor Hoffenberg, I appreciate your time and this discussion and getting our thoughts going and trying to see, I don't know if a consensus can be reached at all, but I think we do go up and down in society at times. But I appreciate your time today. Of course, always. I was going to chat with you. All right, Aloha, take care.