Ryan Meehan

Professor Malcolm

HNRSH 290

9/5/20

Quiz #1

The quotes from Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio capture a fight that the modern

Republican party has been having with itself since 2008 at the earliest; does the party need to

concede that race plays a large role in someone’s life outcomes, or does it need to double down

on securing the white majority that makes up the party’s base? Rubio, while definitely not

expressing the same view, comes the closest to the view expressed by Daria Roithmayr regarding

the way that “racial cartels” and positive feedback loops can reinforce the advantages given to

whites and makes it incredibly difficult to move in a fairer direction. Meanwhile, Romney, who

in 2012 was desperately trying to appear more conservative to lock down his hold on the party, is

expressing the classic view that, while racism may exist, hard-working individuals can overcome

it and live the “American Dream”. This view is obviously contrary to the argument made by

Roithmayr, but has come to embody the reaction against her view.

Marco Rubio, while still embodying a conservative optimism about how someone can

succeed in America, is expressing the view that there is an “opportunity gap” that prevents

certain groups from succeeding where others have. Rubio’s work behind the 2013 immigration

reform push is symbolic of this; certain legal barriers have prevented minority groups from

succeeding and removing those barriers will solve the problem. While Roithmayr would

acknowledge the need to eliminate these barriers, she would be more concerned with how the

self-reinforcing tendencies of racial cartels or the like means that just ending the discriminatory
measures won’t solve the problem. She writes that, in order to end the “locking-in” of racial

privilege, “We would have to restructure the way we distribute resources and opportunities,

maybe do away with family inheritance or the way we form our social groups, none of which is

all that likely” (pg. 110).

This is probably the biggest point of divergence between the two. Rubio sees

discrimination as being primarily legal. Jim Crow and racist immigration enforcement regimes

can hold individuals back, but social factors are the responsibility of the individual. Roithmayr,

on the other hand, argues that certain institutions can “lock-in” systemic inequalities between

racial groups. Even though Jim Crow has ended, Roithmayr would say that African-Americans

have not fully recovered from the damage done because institutions continue to keep them as a

group from recovering. Having said all of this, it is still clear that Rubio’s view is closer than

Romney’s view.

Romney, who’s recent appearances in the news were due to his refusal to tow the party

line on impeachment and other key issues, expresses a view here which is actually quite

conventional. Success is entirely a result of hard work and personal morality, rather than

institutional factors. As Romney said in his infamous “47 percent” speech, “I’ll never convince

[Obama voters] they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”1 While Rubio’s

view clearly doesn’t fit totally into the model provided by Roithmayr, Romney’s argument is so

far away from hers that Rubio’s is obviously closer.

In the worldview Romney expresses here, there is no room for anything outside the

individual to affect someone’s outcomes. While religious conservatives will often praise the

traditional Christian family as the key unit of American society and castigate those who fall

1 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/romney-ill-never-convince-obama-voters-to-take-
responsibility-for-their-lives/2012/09/17/0c1f0bcc-0104-11e2-b260-32f4a8db9b7e_blog.html
outside of it, the view being expressed here ultimately sees the individual as being responsible

for their own success and salvation. Even if Conservatives who believe this are willing to

attribute failure to some non-individual factor, culture becomes the next bogeyman that is

responsible for this failure. “Cultures of poverty” became the post-Great Society rallying cry on

the Right as an explanation of the continued existence of poverty, despite the fact that culture

isn’t shaped by individuals in any significant way. As Roithmayr writes, “... the best

explanations assert that culture and structure reflect and reproduce each other in a positive

feedback loop that moves from culture to structure and back again.” (pg. 23)

Ultimately, while Rubio’s view has significant differences between his view and

Roithmayr’s, the view expressed by Romney is nowhere close to hers. Rubio, while ignoring the

possible long-term damage that discrimination can cause, still manages to acknowledge the

forces in modern day America that prevent certian racial groups from doing better. Meanwhile,

Romney in this quote is simply incapable of acknowledging that fact. Just as many

commentators made the mistake following 2008 and 2012 into believing that America was “post-

racial”, Romney promoted a view that saw racist policies as being a relic of the past, not a key

part of American life in the present day. While neither go as far as to express the view that racial

cartels and institutions “lock-in” racial privilege, Rubio is clearly closer to this view.