First, I'm proud to say that my Letter to the Editor of the Brown Alumni Magazine (I'm class of 1993, B.A.) got published in the most recent issue. Here's the link, and the text:
In her letter, "Remarkable Grads," Joan Henry Plumb '51 finds it "very distasteful" that an article in a prior issue mentioned that the presidents of Brown and of the United States are African American (Mail Room, September/October). I completely understand, on the one hand, where she is coming from. Her letter clearly rejects racial bigotry and expresses a desire to live in a country that rejects it as well.
But noting milestones that demonstrate our progress toward achieving that goal—our country's electing its first black president or our alma mater appointing its first black president—is worth doing because it helps encourage more progress. Noticing race is not the same as being racist. I look forward to the day in the future when Brown and the United States have had so many black presidents, and presidents of every color, gender, religious belief, and sexual orientation that it really won't make any sense to mention it.
I'm pretty sure no one reading this diary needed to be convinced of what I said in the LTE, but you guys weren't my target audience. And that's really the key when talking about race: your strategy completely depends on your target audience. The person whose letter I was responding to, as you may have gathered, was upset that Barack Obama and Brown President Ruth Simmons were identified as African American in a previous issue of the magazine. The initial letter writer, who is at least around 80 years of age (she graduated college in 1951) essentially asked: why can’t we stop mentioning race, so that we can get beyond it?
This is a person who, based on what she wrote (you’ll have to take my word for it, as I can't reproduce her full letter here), most likely agrees that discrimination and white supremacy are bad things (there's no evidence to suggest otherwise) and is at least of good faith when it comes to general issues of racial equality in basic terms. My thought was to assume and to acknowledge that she is of good faith, and thus increase the likelihood that she, and any other readers who may have agreed with her position, would be open to hearing what I had to say.
Then, after gaining their ear, I can give them the message I really want to emphasize: “noticing race isn’t the same as being racist.” The initial letter writer's thinking is a common theme unfortunately among many out there, people who, naively, wrongly, but honestly think that not talking about racial inequalities will somehow help do away with them. I suspect most of us on this site see that position as unproductive, to say the least.
There are also, of course, others who take that position insincerely, so that they can shut down people like us who think it is important to educate people about racial inequalities. Obviously, such people are not the target audience for the approach to talking about race I'm advocating here, as they are not interested in hearing what racial progressives and those who want to increase equality and opportunity have to say in the first place.
To return to the letter and its target audience, perhaps I was able to weaken some readers’ attachment to the idea that not talking about race helps reduce racism, so that they can be open to being educated about the realities of how race is lived in America. Additionally, I was able to deliver another message about inclusion in the final sentence that highlights not only race, but gender, religion, and sexual orientation, one that those readers might not have been open to hearing in other contexts.
The kind of strategy I've advocated and employed in this LTE is most effective when your audience includes persuadable, reasonable people. Other times, a more in your face approach that calls people out on their obvious bigotry might well be more appropriate.
On that topic, I'd like to expand the discussion just a bit farther. I know that some of you might well have decided that the initial letter writer's complaint about noticing the race of Presidents Obama and Simmons reflects racism on her part. I've been thinking about this in light of the diaries and comments therein on race I've been reading here in recent months.
I'd like to think that I've built up enough credibility in talking about race on this site over the years to push back, ever so gently, against something that I've seen folks do here. I'm hopeful that you'll hear what I have to say as part of my contribution to a broader discussion about how to achieve the goals we share. Warning: this is a delicate matter.
How to define racism is one of the single most explosive questions we can discuss. I'm going to approach that question from a strategic point of view. My goal is to figure out how best to define that term in discussions where the goal is to convince people who don't already agree with a progressive position to consider changing their mind and seeing things a different way. Such a discussion is, of course, at the heart of what we do in politics: try to convince people to support us. I realize that another part of politics is motivating those who already do support us. Sometimes those two goals can be in conflict with each other. Nevertheless, when political discussions are public ones, some persuadable people are almost always part of the audience, therefore the strategic approach is almost always relevant and worth thinking about.
To go back to my LTE, I could have condemned the initial letter writer as a racist and explored how her viewpoint reflected the desire to shut people up, etc. (you can all fill in the blank about how such a response would go). Such an approach might even be accurate regarding this letter writer, but I don't have evidence of that. Such an approach would definitely feel better, it would be cathartic to say the least. Sometimes catharsis is what is needed. But, the reality is that such a letter would most likely not have been printed, and I'd have not reached the audience I'd set out to reach in the first place.
Again, I'm taking a strategic approach here. What feels cathartic, typically, is not what wins votes and support from the persuadable (I'm not focused here on the already persuaded or the unpersuadable). There are times when one is clearly presented with bigotry and that must be openly confronted. How we define when such a time is at hand is the next question I'll explore.
From the strategic approach, I suggest that racial progressives would do well to define racism--the kind of racism we respond to with blunt, open condemnation both because it is strategically necessary and morally righteous to do so--as follows.
Racism (in terms of belief, not action) includes any of the following (this is purely my definition):
1) The expression of a belief that the members of one racial/ethnic group are, by definition, inferior in some way or different in some other kind of way (more violent, etc.) due to their membership in that group. In other words, stereotyping.
2) Hatred or ill-feeling toward the members of another racial/ethnic group as a whole.
3) Belief that members of your own racial/ethnic group are inherently superior, etc.
Also, there are a whole range of racist actions one can take, ranging from discrimination to violence, when one acts on any of these beliefs.
Now, having offered that definition, there are plenty of things people say that, while wrong, racially insensitive, simply clueless, etc., we are better off, strategically speaking, as not defining as racism. I argue that there are two reasons for this:
1) It is a mistake, strategically speaking, to define as racism such other kinds of statements and ideas, even the kind of palm-smacking-to-forehead clueless things Gene Marks breathlessly offered in his Forbes column titled "If I Were a Poor Black Kid," [hint: the author wasn't] which were rightly derided in a number of Dkos diaries and across the blogosphere yesterday.
I read Marks' article and I'm absolutely not here to defend his suggestions for what black kids should do. He's clueless, and says a whole bunch of ridiculous stuff. But he doesn't express hatred or prejudice directly. Marks says his own kids aren't smarter than inner city black kids. He also acknowledged how hard it is for inner-city black kids to succeed, even though he clearly didn't get how hard it is. Maybe he's an optimist and thought optimism might help some people. Who knows?
Ultimately, he needs more educating about the realities of inner-city life, but he does honestly seem to want to help. This is a guy who seems reachable. Now, I could be wrong about that, no question. But the thing is, if I give him the benefit of the doubt and engage him in a respectful way, and he turns out to be a bigoted jerk, I can always then unleash my righteous indignation. But if I assume just from reading the piece that he is bigoted, and respond in kind, then I've lost the opportunity to see if he is reachable. Giving him the initial benefit of the doubt, while frustrating perhaps, is the strategic thing to do. And that's the point. When we talk publicly about race in a political arena, we aren't doing it to feel better (that's what we do when we talk with friends), we're doing it to win support from those who aren't yet our friends. That means thinking strategically.
In addition to whether Marks, or any author, is really a racist even if they say things that are ridiculous and even things that, if adopted/enacted, set back the cause of equality, engaging with him gives racial progressives the opportunity--say, via the comments section of his post--to reach and to educate his audience, other people who are perhaps ignorant (i.e., do not possess the relevant information) but who do want to reduce inequality. This concept applies beyond the comments section of a given article as well obviously.
2) Defining the clueless, insensitive stuff as racism reduces the power of the word when we use it to describe open bigotry or hatred. That's really important. Hatred often leads to violence. Prejudice and stereotyping almost always lead to active discrimination. We need to be able to call those things what they are, and call the clueless, insensitive stuff something else. There is a difference not merely of degree, but one of kind here. Defining all of it as racism impairs our ability to emphasize that difference.
Whether the clueless, insensitive statements actually reflect racism simply depends on how we define the term. We have to focus on: a) how best to defeat structural racism, b) to fight those who express hatred or bigotry, c) to educate the clueless, and d) to sensitize the insensitive. But achieving each of those goals requires a different approach and a different definition.
To begin to wrap this up, let me add that I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I know what racism "is" and others of you don't. I don't subscribe to the idea that only black people can talk about racism, although I must also say that very, very, very few people on dkos have stated such an idea--even though they've been accused of stating it on this site. That "debate" is largely a result of people talking past each other.
I do believe that, with empathy and education, we can speak about situations we have not personally experienced. If that were not the case, the only legitimate form of expression would be autobiography. I also believe that one should engage with what a person says, not react to who he/she is. People can't engage in a meaningful dialogue about who they are, they can only be put on the defensive and made to feel less than. Such an approach is not strategic, and will not win support for our cause(s).
So, I'm not going to tell you what you should think racism is. But I can tell you what I think is the most strategic way to talk about racism to middle of the road white people whom you are trying to convince to support progressive ideas/causes/politicians. I've got a lot of experience doing that and have given it a lot of thought. Doing that can be downright painful, as one has to think of a strategic way to say something one might rather say, shall we say, unstrategically. Nevertheless, doing that is one crucial part of how you get people in office who support your vision. It's not the only part of course.
In my own life I've steadily moved left (starting out as a fairly typical, center-right-ish suburban white kid before my education and, later, my teaching exposed me to books and people that broadened my perspectives), so I have some idea of what kinds of presentations of race and racism turned me off and which forced me to challenge some of my own deeply held ideas--something I'm still doing and hope to always do.
Well, in the spirit of talking about how to talk about race at Dailykos (now that's meta), I hope you found my thoughts here worthwhile. Let's hear yours.