The smugness you don't even know you have

This isn't going to be a scorch-and-burn attack. If I were interested in getting clicks, that's the kind of post I'd write. My son listens to enough of those kinds of things on YouTube--one YouTuber making a living off of attacking another one. Milo Yiannopoulos has become famous and wealthy exploiting this kind of thing. The subject, however, is too important to turn into an opportunity for chest-thumping.

I've been putting off posting this for a long time, because I can't see that anything personally good will come to me from posting it. But if I am really committed to writing about truth as I see it, this is a post I have to publish. 

The rhetoric of those who claim to speak on behalf of racial equality is awful. It's conceited, it's condescending, it's preachy, and it's irritating. It reminds me a lot of the kind of rhetoric I encountered among evangelical Christians when I fell into that group for several years as an old child and young man. It slows racial progress by turning the focus from practical areas of improvement to a cultural war over language.

A recent blog post by a mother who seems like a very good person hits nearly every obnoxious trope of the priesthood of self-appointed curators of correct language on race. From its title, "The Kind of Racism You Don't Even Know You Have," I knew where it was going, and it wasn't going any place good. It used at least four of the rhetorical devices that are the worst, most logically inconsistent, most condescending tropes of the genre.

1. The title. "The kind of racism you don't even know you have." There are a number of problems with this, but some of them will be dealt with later, so I'll just stick to this one: It's in the interests of those who claim to have the truth on racial linguistic propriety to mystify it. If everybody feels uncertain about how to talk about race, then we need a Brahmanic caste to explain it to us. Believe it or not, there are people who make a living out of telling others how to talk about race. Government agencies usually have an EEO office, as do many larger corporations. There is a good deal of investment into keeping on the right side of racial policy, both for genuine, selfless reasons (it's good to treat people decently), and for profit reasons (nobody wants to get sued or boycotted). If it were easy to understand concepts of practical racial discourse, companies and governments might start to wonder if the investment were necessary. Best to keep it spooky: "You might be a racist and not even know it!"

There's a tone here reminiscent of eleven o'clock news "the silent killer" stories. To wit: "In fact, there’s an even more insidious kind of racism than the Neo-Nazism we saw running amuck in Charlottesville. It’s insidious because you don’t even know you’re infected with it; it’s covert, it’s invisible."

The article opens with an insincere feint at sympathy: "Look, I get it. I totally understand your reluctance to discuss racism. I know that even hearing the words racism or worse, racist, feels accusatory – offensive, even." It then ascribes several thoughts to its hypothetical skeptical reader that I do not myself think, even though I am a skeptical reader: thoughts like affirmative action is reverse racism or that because I've never owned a slave I'm not complicit in systemic racism. But these things have nothing to do with my reluctance to talk about racism. My reluctance stems from the fact that we have introduced such a dumb vocabulary to talk about racism, and because the vocabulary is enforced with such blind vigor by those who think they've accomplished something by learning it. 

2. The definition bait-and-switch: I get that there is an academic, pinpointed, specific sociological definition of racism. The article provides a pretty good example of this definition, citing Debby Irving. Racism is "the system that allows the racial group that’s already in power to retain power." That's fine. I have no objection to that as a formal definition. But that's not the definition people are usually expecting when they enter a conversation about racism.

Racism, like many, many concepts, has a formal, term-of-art meaning as well as a regular, everyday meaning. There's nothing wrong with this, and it doesn't mean that people using the everyday meaning are stupid or even wrong to expect that meaning when they hear the word. 

There are a lot of science-minded people who sneer when they hear someone talk about wanting to steer clear of "chemicals" in their daily lives. You'll hear these people say things like, "Oh, yeah, you going to avoid water? Because that's a chemical!" To a chemist, all matter is made of chemicals, because all matter can be reduced to a chemical formula. But that's not what normal folks mean in everyday talk. "I want to avoid chemicals" means something like, "I want to avoid man-made ingredients and substances that might have side effects we don't fully understand yet." That's not a stupid thing to say. That's just how normal folks talk.

When you drop a title like "the kind of racism you don't even know you have," you are playing a click-bait game, because you know many people will read it thinking you mean, "You believe people of a different race are inherently inferior, and you don't even know it!"  This, of course, means you're going to get push-back, but you've got that ace up your sleeve of saying, "But wait! You have to use the correct definition of racism!" 

Yes, there is institutional racism. Yes, the choices that almost all of us make--intentionally and unintentionally--prop up a system that makes life generally easier for white people. So your formal definition stands. But it wasn't that long ago we were a lot more concerned about the man-on-the-street definition. When I was a kid, we were still trying to get everyone to agree that the informal definition of racism--thinking one race is inherently inferior--was a bad thing. That was still an important social war to fight. Not everyone is past that point yet. 

In any event, is racism of this sort something you can actually "have"? It's something you can be a part of, but do you "have" it? No, you can only "have" the layman's form of racism. 

3.  Just plain using words wrong. The article calls out whites who complain about "playing the race card," but only focuses on one meaning of this term, and not the more common one. The article acts like it means using racial status to get advantages, like those offered by Affirmative Action. But the more usual meaning is "using racial status to get out of trouble," like when a black person who has really done something wrong tries to suggest he or she is being targeted because of racism. The article claims that playing the race card "is not a thing," but that's referring to the first, less common meaning. To prove that the second meaning really exists, you'd only need one example of it actually happening. 

O.J. Simpson. 

It's a thing. It may not be the most common thing, but it's a thing.

Wanting to brush it aside, like saying "there is not reverse racism although black people can be prejudiced against white people" but then not really wanting to talk much about how what black prejudice means to racial theory as a whole. White people who have faced considerable amount of prejudice, like Mrs. Heretic, who worked in Baltimore City Schools for over five years, might be willing to accept that they faced "prejudice" rather than "reverse racism," but that doesn't make the experience any more pleasant. Whether it was overt, like notes from students that said, "I hate white people," or hidden, like being shunned and passed over by black principals in ways that were hard to prove but felt real, it happened and it was wrong. Are we really telling her that because it wasn't systemic racism, we don't need to talk about it? That's what it feels like.

I agree that white people often use examples of black people playing the race card--along with examples of black prejudice (or black-on-black crime, etc.) to distract and derail a conversation from the very real effects of racism. But that doesn't mean those things don't belong in the conversation at all.

4. Got a problem with white privilege? You must not understand it!  I can't count the number of articles I've read that are written "for your white friends who still don't understand white privilege." This article does the same thing: "The next concept, white privilege, may be one of the hardest for my fellow white people to understand, but stick with me..." This is nails-on-a-chalkboard kind of condescension. I got this from evangelicals all the time: "You think evolution makes sense? You just need to read this creation scientist..." This would be ignoring the fact that I had already mentioned the same creation scientist twice in the same conversation and that I'd already offered a critique of that person's points. I can understand something you hold dear and still disagree with you.

At its heart, I don't object to the notion that white privilege is a thing, because it clearly is. Whiteness is one of those things that tends to have a beneficial influence on one's chances for material success. But there is a racial essentialism summoned by "The Racism You Don't Even Know You Have," which often wants to act as though whiteness is the only determining factor. This article itself cites in a positive way another, much better article, "Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person," which is an article that acknowledges that race is just one of many things people are born with that effect their chances in life. Others are: citizenship, class, sexual orientation, sex, ability, and gender identity. I'd add "skill of parents at parenting" to that list as maybe the most important. "Explaining White Privilege..." doesn't try to claim that whiteness will always trump all the other disadvantages one might have. It's possible to be born rich and black and have it better than someone born white and poor. It's just a statistics thing, which means we're dealing with averages. On average, whiteness helps. On average, the system hurts people of color. Other things being equal, whiteness yields better results. But that's not essentialism. It's not saying race is the only issue. 

Ta-Nehisi Coates is America's best writer on race because he doesn't let America forget how important race is on that list. We should not lose that focus. It is. Institutional racism is much more pernicious, much deeper, lasted with legal sanction until much more recently, and has directed the landscape of the present much more than most white people are willing to accept. However, even he can sometimes make too much of race as the only issue worth considering. In his article on Donald Trump as the first president who was elected specifically because of his whiteness, he cited some voting statistics. (I believe his statistics match those here.) Coates points out that Trump won with every white group, debunking the notion that his was a "middle class victory," but Trump won non-college whites by 37% and whites with a college degree by only 3%, a fact Coates passes by without comment. Surely that means that there are other factors that have a profound impact besides just whiteness. 

Along with explanations of how racism can to be in a thing in America that focus exclusively on use of race, I think there are other, useful ideas to consider. A neo-Marxist might make the point that those in power--largely white males--are happy to use racism as a tool to keep their power, but might also, under certain circumstances, abandon racism as a principle in order to keep power. The white slaveholding caste didn't race bait because it really believed black people were the inferior children of Ham, in other words; they invented the notion that black people were the inferior children of Ham because it was a useful way to keep power. Coates has sometimes objected to policies that attempt to deal with racism by sweeping them up into broader policies aimed at poverty in general, but someone who sees racism as one tool of in the tool chest of power--even if it's the tool power uses the most--might be more willing to compromise.

Where does whiteness fit in the complicated web of factors, unmerited, that contribute to one's fate? It's an interesting, complicated question. It's also one I can't see obsessing over if what you really care about is FIXING racism, not elaborating upon it to death. The obsession with proper terminology as a sine qua non to being accepted into the fellowship of those committed to a better world seem like something you do when you're trying to avoid the hard work of actually fixing the mess.  

The smugness in not just this article, but nearly every article from a writer frustrated with the intransigence of people like me to accept their terminology, is palpable. If we feel any sense of indignation while reading their rhetoric, that's not a sign that the writers are being superior know-it-alls, it's a sign that they're right, and I'm upset with how on-the-nose their keen insight is: "What is your knee-jerk reaction to being called out for “racism?” In actuality, insults only hurt deep down if they’re true." This reminds me of some Christians I knew who sometimes acted obnoxious about their faith, then blamed the reaction they got on the world's rejection of Christian truth. Sometimes, the reaction you get tells you more than you might want to admit. Not always--certainly, the mob can be wrong. But you can't automatically overlook the reactions you get without giving some consideration to whether the reactions are understandable.

I'm not hurt but this kind of talk, I'm annoyed. One group has stolen the megaphone and is shouting down anyone else who cares about racial equality. It's like the Protestants are in power, and they're insisting that us Catholics aren't even Christian enough to work with to feed the poor...
 
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I'm going to end the list there, although I originally had a few more in mind. The point is, this is all very familiar to me. I have been in churches where to be a Christian was really nothing more than knowing how to use a few select Christian cliches in the correct context. I have been in churches that argued endlessly over pre, mid-, and post-tribulation schemes, and used varying answers to these abstruse questions as reasons to be or not be in fellowship with others. That's what this feels like. 

The writer of this article concludes by talking about how unpopular her views are, how often those who express them are attacked for them. I have not found this to be the case. Generally, I've found that if you want to avoid being called racist, the things she said are the things you have to say. This is the orthodoxy you have to stick to. I'm afraid to post this response. Mrs. Heretic is always warning me not to write about race. Some of my friends think that honest discourse about race is impossible in our culture and a waste of time to try. That's kind of how I know I ought to post this.

The writer seems very certain that those who object to what she writes are acting out because they don't want to talk about race. I think that the very tone of this kind of insistence on orthodoxy is what hinders racial discourse, not unwillingness to engage in what's hard. I think the very false mystification, the insistence that only the gurus of racial thought, those who have been handed the sacred fire of the correct words with the correct definitions, is what prevents more people from being involved.

If you haven't seen this episode of "Lady Dynamite," watch it. "If you're white, keep it light."

I have avoided naming the writer of this article here. That would have made this into an attack. I don't want to call out the writer, with whom I am probably a natural ally. I want to call out the rhetoric. The writer felt her article was "reaching across the aisle," because of its awkward attempts to sympathize by putting the wrong words in the mouths of her would-be interlocutors. Rather, I think this is the kind of talk that has widened the gap.

The writer points out how polarizing race rhetoric and hate speech have become more prevalent since Trump took office. That's true, but the writer seems to want to only point the blame in one direction. In her mind, we went backwards not because some people felt so frustrated trying to meet the moving goal posts of what we were all supposed to think and say about race that they gave up trying, but because racism was pushing back against change to the system meant to protect power. That's certainly part of it, but I don't think liberals--and on race, I am one--should let ourselves off the hook for our own sins being part of it. I think we're partly to blame for the thing we hate.

I haven't believed in evangelical Christianity for over 20 years, but I'm always fascinated by how often sociological truths from church play out away from that environment. It's possible to be a Christian without really understanding much Christian doctrine at all, just by trying to love as Jesus did. You'd never guess that from the way some churches spend nearly all their time going over doctrine, though.

Similarly, I think the current liberal racial discourse is too focused on saying the right things, even though it's possible to have it all wrong and still do the right things. You can be a kindly old person who never got the memo about "white privilege" and "whitesplaining" who just knows that she wants to help, so she fosters black kids from poor communities and does a really good job of it. If a certain brand of liberal heard her insisting her kids try to overcome systemic racism and assume personal responsibility for their actions, the mom, unhip to the right terminology, might be accused of being racially insensitive. In fact, she's just a good mom.

I wish we were as obsessed with right action as we are with right speech. I wish that, rather than testing each other for the shibboleth of using the right definition of "racism," we tested to see what work we are doing to practically solve systemic racism. I know that old line about "as a man thinketh, so is he," but if I had a dime for every time that was used as a reason for a church to spend all its time studying the Bible and no time doing anything, I'd be as rich as Joel Osteen.

I'm done with my critique, and now that I'm done, I have no wish to keep fighting with people who do talk like the writer of this article. This critique of mine shouldn't be a reason to divide natural allies further. I hope it's nothing more than a call for liberals to self-examine how we talk. I feel that moderate conservatives and moderate liberals together form a true political majority in this country, and we've been kept apart from each other because we've been taught to make more of little things than we ought.