Today lets dive into one of the toughest questions of our religious, cultural, and political lives. While we write and print millions of words about race in America, why is it still so hard to have a truly respectful, decent, and humble dialogue about perhaps the most complicated and contentious issue in American life? Its a huge topic, but lets start with what I believe is a true principle of human nature, a maxim called Miless law: Where you stand depends on where you sit.
While originating as an explanation for behavior of people in bureaucracies, Miless law has a much broader application. It speaks to the overwhelming influence of our own social, religious, and cultural experience over our viewpoint. Our different political cultures not only live different lives, they speak different languages. They apply different definitions to the same words and phrasesand those definitions are not self-evident.
Take systemic racism, for example. I daresay that only a vanishingly small number of Americans know that this is a term with an academic meaning thats not entirely obvious from the words themselves. Heres one definitionstructural or systemic racism is:
A system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with whiteness and disadvantages associated with color to endure and adapt over time. Structural racism is not something that a few people or institutions choose to practice. Instead it has been a feature of the social, economic and political systems in which we all exist.
Yet millions of Americans read the accusation that America is beset with systemic racism and hear a simpler and more direct meaning of the termyoure saying our systems (and by implication the people in them) are racist. But thats completely contrary to their experience. They think, How can it be that the system is racist when I just left a corporate diversity training seminar, I work at an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, my sons college professors are constantly telling him to check his privilege, and no one I know is a bigot? It seems to me that the most powerful actors in the system are saying the same thingsdont be racist.
Then, when you go online or turn on the television, youre hardly persuaded to change your mind. If youre conservative, chances are your social media feed is full of images of rioting and looting. There are viral videos (including one the president retweeted Saturday) that declare George Floyd was not a good person and the fact that he has been held up as a martyr sickens me. There is the constant repetition of statistics about black-on-black crime, and posts and pieces arguing that police racism and brutality are overblown are shared across the length and breadth of social media.
Even a well-meaning person subject to this barrage of messaging is then apt to look at clear racist injusticeslike the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, where the killer allegedly used a racial slur after he fired the fatal shotand say, Sure, there are racists still in this world, but theyre not part of any system I know. Moreover, compounding the problem, those voices who are most loudly condemning American racism are also the voices he or she trusts the least on other issuessuch as abortion, religious liberty, economics, or health care. Something in the conservative mind and heart rebels, I cant join with them, can I?
We each like to think were not unduly influenced by our immediate environment and culture. Thats a phenomenon that affects other people, we believe. Im the kind of person who has carefully considered both sides and has arrived at my positions through the force of reason and logic. Sure, Ive got biases, but that only matters at the edges. The core of my beliefs are rooted in reason, conviction, and faith.
Maybe that describes you, but I now realize it didnt describe me. I freely confess that to some extent where I stood on American racial issues was dictated by where I sat my entire life. I always deplored racismthose values were instilled in me from birthbut I was also someone who recoiled at words like systemic racism. I looked at the strides wed made since slavery and Jim Crow and said, Look how far weve come. I was less apt to say, and look how much farther we have to go.
Then, where I sit changed, dramatically. I just didnt know it at the time. I went from being the father of two white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed kids to the father of three kidsone of them a beautiful little girl from Ethiopia. When Naomi arrived, our experiences changed. Strange incidents started to happen.
There was the white woman who demanded that Naomithe only black girl in our neighborhood poolpoint out her parents, in spite of the fact that she was clearly wearing the colored bracelet showing she was permitted to swim.
There was the time a police officer approached her at a department store and questioned her about who she was with and what she was shopping for. That never happened to my oldest daughter.
There was the classmate who told Naomi that she couldnt come to our house for a play date because, My dad says its dangerous to go black peoples neighborhoods.
I could go on, andsuresome of the incidents could have a benign explanation, but as they multiplied, and it was clear that Naomis experience was clearly different from her siblings, it became increasingly implausible that all the explanations were benign.
Then the Trump campaign happened, the alt-right rallied to his banner, and our lives truly changed. In October 2016, I wrote a piece describing what happened. It began like this:
I distinctly remember the first time I saw a picture of my then-seven-year-old daughters face in a gas chamber. It was the evening of September 17, 2015. I had just posted a short item to the Corner calling out notorious Trump ally Ann Coulter for aping the white-nationalist language and rhetoric of the so-called alt-right. Within minutes, the tweets came flooding in. My youngest daughter is African American, adopted from Ethiopia, and in alt-right circles thats an unforgivable sin. Its called race-cucking or raising the enemy.
I saw images of my daughters face in gas chambers, with a smiling Trump in a Nazi uniform preparing to press a button and kill her. I saw her face photo-shopped into images of slaves. She was called a niglet and a dindu. The alt-right unleashed on my wife, Nancy, claiming that she had slept with black men while I was deployed to Iraq, and that I loved to watch while she had sex with black bucks. People sent her pornographic images of black men having sex with white women, with someone photoshopped to look like me, watching.
The attacks got worse and some became overtly threatening, including posting image after image of dead and dying African-Americans in the comments section of my wifes blog. Suddenly, my understanding that weve come so far in American race relations was replaced by the shocking, personal realization that weve got so far to go.
All this was happening as I had already grown alarmed at the sheer vehemence of conservative defensiveness on matters of race. Before the backlash I received for opposing Trump, the piece that generated the most personal anger from conservatives was a 2012 essay in Commentary called Conservatives and the Trayvon Martin Case where I critiqued the conservative medias seeming rooting interest in George Zimmermans innocence, and I critiqued George Zimmermans decision to arm himself and pursue a teen whose only crime was walking to his fathers girlfriends house after dark. I did not judge Zimmerman guilty, but I did signal that conservatives should not reflexively defend the police:
[C]onservatives should not be inclined to trust without question the actions of local law enforcement. There is no evidence that a single national conservative commentator knew the first thing about the competence or character of the individuals who made the initial decision not to charge Zimmerman. They dont know whether those local officials are wise, foolish, or free from racist taint. But they do know, or should know, that public officials (even public-safety officers) make mistakes even when they have the best of intentions, and they should also understand the need not only for constitutional constraints on police actions but also for public accountability.
This is when I began to learn about conservative political correctness. If politically correct progressives are often guilty of over-racializing American public discourse, and they are, politically correct conservatives commit the opposite sinand they filter out or angrily reject all the information that contradicts their thesis.
For example, if youre a conservative, youre likely quite aware that the Obama Department of Justice decisively debunked the hands-up, dont-shoot narrative of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. Youre less likely to remember that there was a second Ferguson report, one that found Fergusons police department was focused on raising revenue more than increasing public safety, and it used its poor, disproportionately black citizens as virtual ATMs, raising money through traffic stops, citations, and even arrest warrants. It painted a shocking picture of abuse of power.
If youre a conservative, you may well be aware of the research cataloged by Heather Mac Donald rebutting claims of systemic racial bias in fatal police shootings. You may be less aware of the recent New York Times report indicating that African Americans make up 19 percent of the population of Minneapolis, 9 percent of the police force and an incredible 58 percent of subjects of police use of force.
But again, I hear the objection in my head, the sentiment of good friends and thoughtful peopleIf racism is this bad, and if the experiences of black Americans are this negative, why dont I ever see it?
Lets perform a thought experiment (I did this on our Dispatch Live event this week, so I apologize to readers whove already heard it.) Lets optimistically imagine that only one out of 10 white Americans is actually racist. Lets also recognize thatespecially in educated quarters of white Americaracism is condemned and stigmatized. If this is the reality, when will you ever hear racist sentiments in your daily life? The vast majority of people you encounter arent racist, and the minority who are will remain silent lest they lose social standing.
But imagine youre African American. That means 10 percent of the white people you encounter are going to hate you or think less of you because of the color of your skin. You dont know in advance who they are or how theyll react to you, but theyll be present enough to be at best a persistent source of pain and at worst a source of actual danger. So you know youll be pulled over more, and in some of those encounters the officer will be strangely hostile. The store clerk sometimes follows you when you shop. A demeaning comment will taint an otherwise-benign conversation. Your white friends described in the paragraph above may never see these things, but its an inescapable part of the fabric of your life.
This is how we live in a world where a white person can say of racism, Where is it? and a black person can say, How can you not see?
So now I sit in a different place. But where do I stand? I believe the following things to be true:
Slavery was legal and defended morally and (ultimately) militarily from 1619 to 1865.
After slavery, racial discrimination was lawful and defended morally (and often violently) from 1865 to 1964.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not end illegal discrimination or racism, it mainly gave black Americans the legal tools to fight back against legal injustices.
It is unreasonable to believe that social structures and cultural attitudes that were constructed over a period of 345 years will disappear in 56.
Moreover, the consequences of 345 years of legal and cultural discrimination, are going to be dire, deep-seated, complex, and extraordinarily difficult to comprehensively ameliorate.
Its hard even to begin to describe all the ramifications of 345 years of legalized oppression and 56 years of contentious change, but we can say two things at onceyes, we have made great strides (and we should acknowledge that fact and remember the men and women who made it possible), but the central and salient consideration of American racial politics shouldnt center around pride in how far weve come, but in humble realization of how much farther we have to go.
Moreover, taking the next steps down that road will have to mean shedding our partisan baggage. It means acknowledging and understanding that the person who is wrong on abortion and health care may be right about police brutality. It means being less outraged at a knee on football turf than at a knee on a mans neck. And it means declaring that even though we may not agree on everything about race and American life, we can agree on some things, and we can unite where we agree.
For example, heres a thoughtyou dont have to be a critical race theorist, agree with arguments about implicit bias, or buy into the radical social platform of Black Lives Matter to reach consensus on some changes that can make a difference. Ill call this tweet, from my progressive friend at Vox, Jane Coaston, the Coaston plan, and I endorse each prong:
A journey of a thousand miles continues step-by-step, and you dont have to agree on the entire travel plan to put the next foot forward.
Oh, and as we do it, be better than me. Remember, I had to change where I sat before I could change where I stood. If you first change where you stand, then the next generation will sit in a very different and better place.
One last thing ...
Weve seen too many images of violence from this weeks protests. Weve seen police violence. Weve seen riots. We havent seen enough moments like the short clip below. It comes from one of my favorite cities (Memphis), its my favorite hymn, and it touched my soul:
Photograph by Brent Stirton/Getty Images.
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American Racism: We've Got So Very Far to Go - The Dispatch