Job one for white progressives: Engage other white folks about racism

A recent study exploring the effect of race-based political messages on white subjects showed that a certain subset of whites, "liberals with higher levels of racial resentment," were particularly responsive to both racially explicit and implicit attacks on government social programs. The story, headlined "Why Some White Liberals Will Probably Vote For Donald Trump," ran on the Huffington Post website earlier this month,

Reporter Arthur Delaney noted that the study's authors, sociologists Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer,
"offered a few theories about why [racially coded] welfare rhetoric would move white liberals more than conservatives. One is simply that conservatives are so familiar with welfare-bashing from Republican officeholders that they can't be swayed any further," he wrote.

"Another is that liberals may be uniquely vulnerable to this rhetoric because they are afraid to talk about racial inequality. Watts and Willer noted that 'strong norms of colorblindness in liberal political culture mean negative outcomes among black Americans as a group are rarely discussed.'"

Clearly, it would be rash to reach any number of conclusions based on a  single academic study, which itself cannot be fairly assessed without knowledge of the kind of details that a news report cannot easily include or evaluate. Still, another statement in the article provides a jumping off point for considering where white progressives should focus their activism. "...strong norms of colorblindness in liberal political culture mean [that] negative outcomes among black Americans as a group are rarely discussed," Delaney wrote, quoting Watts and Willer.

That suggests to me that white folks who consider themselves allies of African Americans have a particular responsibility to engage other whites who may have "higher levels of racial resentment" in discussions of the history, the social and cultural impact, and the continuing significance of 400 years of racism in the United States.

This is necessary for a number of reasons. In 2016, Donald Trump won 46 electoral votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that had twice previously been won by Barack Obama. Trump won those three states by less than 90,000 total votes, giving him 306 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton's 232. There are all sorts of ways to parse that outcome, including the notion that far lower 2016 turnouts of African American voters in Philadelphia, Detroit, Flint and Milwaukee compared to the two previous Obama campaigns may by themselves account for Hillary Clinton's defeat.

But the combination of white Obama voters who defected to Trump, or who voted Green or Libertarian, or who simply sat out the election because their distaste for Clinton obscured their grasp of the damage a Trump victory would, could, and did do, very likely were also enough to swing the three critical states away from Clinton. Looking ahead to the presidential election in 2020, it seems reasonable to conclude that increasing African American turnout and effectively mobilizing estranged white liberals are key to denying Trump a second-term.

In a country that is increasingly polarized and seems almost ungovernable, addressing the general white refusal to understand the full impact of slavery, of the collapse of reconstruction, of Jim Crow, night riders, lynch mobs, mass incarceration, disinvestment and 400 years of economic exploitation is a central task, now and into the future. Whatever one believes to be the most urgent policy questions facing our country, our government and ourselves, it is clear that our collective political dysfunction stands in the way of effective government action on any number of priorities, including climate change, economic inequality, public education, the right to organize, mass incarceration, abortion rights and so much else.

I would argue that racism and white privilege are the very root of that dysfunction. If that is so, and, if for that particularly critical subset of white liberals who can be moved by racist dogwhistles avoiding discussion of race issues is both bad habit and unfortunate priority, than white progressives who are willing to promote discussions of race with other white folks can play a critical role in the effort to restore functionality to our political life.

African Americans cannot play that role with whites. Nor should they. As a practical matter, African Americans already deal with white racism 24/7. They are isolated by it, defined by it, under attack by it, undermined by it and stereotyped by it. Nevertheless, productivity, inspiration and genius are part of the heritage and the contemporary experience of African Americans individually and in community. Eliminating white obstacles to the dissemination of African American social and cultural influence, and the enhanced quality of life that would follow, ought to provide further motivation for white progressives.

We know, or can guess, how much better life could be in the United States if the obstacles to full creative participation in our culture were eliminated for all. Racism alone has probably wasted more work, more talent, more genius than any other single factor. Had we found a way to continue the work of reconstruction after the Civil War, to restore stolen wealth, to create a world characterized by equal justice and equal opportunity, our current political challenges would almost certainly feel far less urgent. That is the world we could come to live in, but getting there may depend very much on the efforts of white progressives to lead in opening the discussion of racism and white supremacy within our own communities.

This will be hard and will take persistence, human kindness, and an unrelenting focus on the world still to win. But we must keep our eyes on that prize.

Borderlands

“I’m sorry, Mommy,” the little dude says, his voice sounding someplace between pathetic pleading and true sorrow.

Just a moment ago, he was neither pleading or sorry. He was strutting in his shades, tank top, tasteful shorts and sandals. Parading back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the Sugar Shack on 26^thStreet. He was holding a waffle cone (sucked and licked dry and empty), arm up high, looking like some tiny 21^stCentury version of the Statue of Liberty, which is nowhere near Chicago, so please forget that I even brought it up.

The Sugar Shack is mobbed on summer nights despite the fact that it has no indoor seating, four small tables and eight chairs on the sidewalk, and uncommonly slow service. An ice cream aficionado at the end of the line might wait a good half hour to place an order and wait most of the rest of the hour to get the sweet treat for which she came. The front décor, menu signs, and miscellaneous designs are repetitive and about pink as they can be. There are two signs, posted on doorways on either side of the order and fulfillment windows that request patrons to respect the neighbors, park legally, hold down the noise level, and clean up their trash. These appeals are signed at the bottom in script. “Sugar Shack,” they say. These are the only places on the building where the business is actually identified by name.

The little dude is still wailing. He has also bruised a knee or two and it’s possible that pain has contributed to his anguish. Mom is not having any of it. “I told you to stop your running around,” she says, picking up the fallen but clearly undamaged cone with which he had been lighting his way, and tossing it. He moans. It is one more small trauma the little dude must process on his way to becoming a bigger dude.

A guy holding two small ice cream cones and accompanied by a child who no doubt will end up eating one of them, makes his way back to a minivan, where a woman stands with another child. “Looks good,” I say to him, or to the kid, or to the ether, as he walks by, and the guy smiles, making the barest minimum of eye contact.

A few minutes later, I’m at the pick-up window having assumed that a long enough portion of life has passed by to justify the expectation that my strawberry shake is ready. I’m wrong, of course and I can hear the voice of my irritatingly clever youngest son say, “Assumptions make an ass of you and me, Dad.”

But I’m standing there when minivan guy come back and edges up next to me. “I bet there’s a hundred dollars in that book bag,” he says.

I take a moment to process that statement. Is he talking to me, I wonder. What’d he say, I think. I look at him. He’s smiling, but it’s not the kind of smile that lights anything up. “No, I doubt it,” I respond. “There’s nothing in it, but stuff I’ve written. I think it’s worth way more than a hundred bucks, but I’ve never run into anybody else who thinks so.”

“Just joking,” he says.

“Ah. You got to give an old guy a little bit of extra time to get the joke. I’m not as quick on the uptake as I once was.”

He looks confused, but he keeps smiling that smile that doesn’t light up his eyes or anything else. Then he turns and walks away.

Shortly after, I get my milkshake. It feels like a reward. The chunks of strawberry in the shake clog my straw and slow down my rate of consumption. That’s a good thing.

I take a seat at a curbside table. The people in line seem content to wait and ready to chat with both friends and strangers. A woman carrying a cardboard tote with four sundaes of varying description balanced precariously walks back to a car parked right next to my table. She passes the good stuff inside to three passengers, all women, who are clearly thrilled to welcome her back. She walks around to the driver’s door and hops in. Someone passes her sundae back and they sit there, eating and talking.

A minute passes and here comes the guy with the fake smile. He makes eye contact with me and looks away. He has either never seen me before, a case of mistaken identity, maybe, or he simply sees no reason for further interaction. Whatever use value I once had, it’s gone.

He walks up to the driver and says something I can’t hear, but he points at the minivan and then points further down the street. The woman in the car is clearly reluctant to respond to him, but he keeps smiling and explaining and she shrugs and nods. The passenger in the back seat slides over and he gets in. They drive off, four women and a guy I’ve already decided is a psychopath. He probably does need the help, I’m guessing. Maybe a gallon of gas?

At any rate, the driver appears to have concluded that she can do whatever favor he’s asking for and that she and her friends are taking no real risk. But I can’t help thinking that the dude will keep playing people until playing them stops getting results. What happens after that is anybody’s guess.

I finish my strawberry shake and, satisfied, move on.

Neverending Story

You know the story,

the one that ends with the hero

face down in the mud.

Or, maybe, the story that ends

at the by-no-means guaranteed discovery

of the protagonist dead on the bed,

her eyes shut tight against

light and dark,

out of range of the magic that forever

lurks and lingers in the rare and intangible air.

They are, I tell you,

the self-same story but for the details,

which I do not mean to demean.

After all, if the stories are the same

wherever they end,

and at all of their ends,

then the details

—the way the life came

and the way the life went—

twisting and turning,

falling down and getting up,

are all that really matters.

And,

we so stipulate,

the details, the twisting and the turning,

the magic before

and the magic that lingers,

the falling up and the getting down,

are the major symptoms,

the proof we can infer,

of the grinding wheel,

the great grinding wheel,

the irresistible force

constantly confronting

the human (objects) on their way,

and always in the way

of the grinding, travelling wheel

that somehow contrives

to always be rolling down

our very path, our whatever path,

to wherever we meant to be,

to where we would be,

in whole or in part,

but for the wheel that rolls

always against us,

always failing to know

that we are exactly there

where we are.

All of which means

that at the very least,

it makes no sense to blame the wheel

that has no ethics, no passion, no fun and no life.

Entirely unlike our uncelebrated selves,

with our vast potential

for ethics and passion and fun

and life before death.

So tell the stories, all,

of Jack, say, and Jill

and the great fun they had

on the twisting way uphill,

and the tumble down,

and the get back up to go back up,

where there remained more fun to be had,

or still a world to spy from the top,

until one broke a body part

or broke the spirit that gets back up 

and left the other to solo the rest of the way.

All we know is that they set out one day,

one ordinary, even familiar, day,

to work at their endless tote

and on the way they ran afoul

of warlords, maybe, or amphibians

—the rare bloodthirsty kind—

or calendars stuffed full of deadlines.

They labored, dripped sweat, danced and dodged

and laughed aloud and fled in terror.

It wasn’t much,

but it was life

and it would do.

Sometimes they shared their load

and sometimes traded it for a different load,

or passed it on and sat to rest.

One day very like the day before

and the day to come.

It isn’t much,

but it is life

and it will do.