Over at The Upshot this morning, Sendhil Mullainathan wrote a very soothing article on a very difficult topic, The Measuring Sticks of Racial Bias. The basic idea is one that readers around here should be well aware of: the racism that we need to worry about is not the overt racism of Cliven Bundy. It is the subconscious racism like what Jesse Jackson spoke about, “There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved…” It’s our gut reactions — far less conscious than even what Jackson is referring to — that maintain our inequality and our racial segregation.

I think that Mullainathan is too gentle in his conclusion, but he is exactly right:

Over the past many years, I’ve been obsessed with my own racist baggage. Even among the stuff that I’m aware of — like the Jackson quote above — I feel largely helpless. It does get better over time, but that’s just the stuff that I’ve noticed. I often think that I’m sitting on an infinite pile of racism. In his article, Mullainathan lists a number of different studies that have demonstrated subconscious racism. I’d like to believe that I’d do better, but I cannot say that I would.

The best know study was done by Mullainathan himself: resumes were sent out for job openings with randomized black (eg, Jamal) and white (eg, Brandon) names. Identical resumes with white names got interviews 50% more than those with black names. But the most disturbing study was this one:

You would think that doctors would be systematic about this kind of thing — almost like a computer: you enter the state of the patient and the treatment is spit back out. And I suspect that this is to a large extent true. This racial bias just shows how deep our racist tendencies lay and how powerfully they affect us.

At the same time, dealing with overt racism is difficult. On the one hand, it is repellent. I always wonder what is going on inside of people who are willing to say publicly, “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the negro” — and say that blacks sit around waiting for their welfare checks and how much better off they were as slaves. One thing is for certain: they aren’t losing any sleep about their subconscious racist tendencies. So I think these people should be lambasted because we don’t want to live in a society in which such vile thoughts are acceptable.

Just the same, outrage about such horrible behavior is usually a bad thing. There is a certain triumphalism as though the fact that we don’t have wisdom to impart “about the negro” means that our less public racism isn’t a problem. Or, as I hear from conservatives, that it doesn’t even exist. And the problem isn’t just in the realm of racism. Remember when everyone got upset at Todd Akin for claiming the female body had ways to “shut that whole thing down” in cases of rape? But does that make Rand Paul — who believes in exactly the same policies — acceptable, just because he isn’t as stupid as Akin?

I will continue writing about the vile and stupid things people say — just as I write about movies and music and puppets. But the real thinking — the real work — about racism needs to be done on the inside. The fault, dear readers, is not in their words, but in ourselves.

There are big happenings in California. The state has started issuing driver’s licenses to undocumented residents. It is creating quite a stir. But this makes no sense to me. You see, I thought that California had been doing that for decades. I was kind of right. When I left California for Oregon back in 1990, the state did indeed issue driver’s licenses without people showing proof of citizenship. But that all ended in 1993 when I was involved in solving huge systems of differential equations. It never occurred to me that the state would stop doing this. But like most people, I tend to mistake my liberal home in the Bay Area for the not-so liberal state of California. This is, after all, the state that in 2008 simultaneously voted in Obama as president and voted to deny same sex couples the right to marry.

Michael Hiltzik did us the favor of running down the history that I missed, California’s Huge Blow Against Stupidity About Immigrant Driver’s Licenses. This was during the early 1990s when Californians had a collective freak out about unauthorized residents in the state. Let’s be clear: it was flat out racism. Just as Reagan’s “welfare queen” was clearly a black woman, California’s “illegals” were Mexicans. And this issue was aggressively demagogued by one of the worst people in the world, Pete Wilson.

This all led to Proposition 187 in 1994 — a ballot initiative that deprived non-citizens from things like healthcare and education. It was a vile law and it won the state by almost 18 percentage points. And typically, the only place the bill failed was in the Bay Area (along with Yolo County, which is almost in the Bay Area). The law was found unconstitutional, but the fight against the evil brown people continued.

The “no driver’s licenses for illegals” law stayed in effect under Wilson. After Gray Davis became governor, he reversed the law in 2003 (in a cynical and unsuccessful ploy to appeal to the Latino community). But after Arnold Schwarzenegger got in the governor’s mansion, he reversed that (in a cynical and successful ploy to appeal to the white community). So for a little more than a decade, non-citizens have not been able to get driver’s licenses. So it is good that yet again we are allowing driver’s licenses regardless of legal residency status.

People have their reasons for being against providing these licenses. And the law addresses these reasons. But the truth is that not providing licenses to undocumented residents is really just about getting “those people.” A lot of people are upset about this development. But why? It isn’t that undocumented residents won’t drive without a license. This new law is a practical measure that makes us all safer and save us money. But I suspect that it is much like the death penalty, which is also hugely popular in the “liberal” state of California. It doesn’t matter that the death penalty doesn’t work as a deterrent. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t make us safer. It doesn’t matter that it costs a lot more than the alternative. Practical concerns never matter when people are being ruled by fear and hate.

Thankfully, California has taken a step forward in terms of practical policy over the politics of division. We will see how long it lasts.

The usually great Matt Yglesias engaged in a bit of false equivalence earlier this week, The Problem With Now More Than Ever Politics. That doesn’t mean that he’s completely wrong, but it’s still a bit annoying. He noted that in response to stagnating working class wages, the two parties have new policy ideas. And those policy ideas are — Surprise! — exactly what they’ve always been. The Republicans want to decrease regulation and “reform” the tax code. The Democrats want to invest in infrastructure and education. There are a few problems here. One is that although that is pretty much the only thing that the Republicans want to do, the Democrats actually believe in a whole lot more. But let’s leave that aside for now and look at these programs.

The basic idea behind the Republican policies is that it will help the economy grow. That’s debatable. But what if it did cause the economy to grow? As Yglesias pointed out, the economy has grown over the last several decades. And all that growth has gone to the rich. There is no reason to think that even more growth would be better shared. In fact, if the Republicans have their way, it will not be shared. Their ideas about reducing regulations go right along with their ideas for tort “reform” — the idea is to let the rich do whatever they want and then when they harm working people to disallow any kind of just judicial settlement. So the Republican plan has nothing to do with improving the lot of the working class. It is disingenuous to suggest that it does.

The idea behind the Democratic policies is the long refuted idea that economic inequality is all about education and “opportunity.” But at least it is a good faith effort to respond to the problem at hand. Well, maybe “good faith” is a going too far. The reason that politicians push the whole “education is the source of inequality” canard is because it doesn’t threaten the power elite. Nonetheless, spending on education and infrastructure will make a positive impact on income inequality. But Yglesias is right: it isn’t the best route.

Yglesias’ main point is the one he’s been making for years: if you want to get the poor out of poverty, give them money. It’s such an obvious insight that it seems silly when stated so bluntly. He provided a graph of poverty rates in most of the advanced economies and it shows that poverty without government interference is roughly the same level across the board. But post-tax-and-transfer poverty in Sweden is less than a third what it is in the US, even though pre-tax-and-transfer poverty is actually slightly higher in Sweden.

But which party is it that wants to cut food stamps and other kind of aid to the poor? Which party is it that wants to make sure that even the poorest people pay some federal income tax so they have skin in the game? Which party is it that has slashed taxes on the rich and still thinks they are taxed too high? Oh, that’s right: the Republican Party! They are also against raising the minimum wage and in many cases in favor of eliminating it altogether. The Democratic Party is broadly in favor of raising the minimum wage. If Washington were controlled by the Democrats, the minimum wage would be raised. Since the Republicans control Congress, we know that the minimum wage will not be increased.

Yglesias noted that there are ideas that are “out of the box” — although the ideas listed in the original article are mostly pathetic. The good ideas for reducing income inequality are almost exclusively liberal ideas. How about a financial transaction tax? How about a guaranteed minimum income? How about a higher inflation target? But all these ideas are anathema to the Republican Party because they don’t fit into the only two categories of acceptable policy: lower taxes on the rich and fewer regulations that affect the rich.

The mainstream Democrats may only offer weak tea for addressing our most important economic problems, but Republicans only offer poison: policies that will make the problem worse. Matt Yglesias knows this. But he’s trying to maintain a certain amount of centrist credibility. But history will scoff at the centrists who tried to find balance in modern American economic policy.