This began as a comment to YellowDogBlue, on their diary O.J. And White Racism: we should know better after 30 years. But that diary is almost a day old now, and I have a habit of coming late to these things with my thoughts. So instead, since someone I respect and value is in TimeOut now, and my comment, like that diary, relates to this, I decided to make it a standalone. With link.
Dear YellowDogBlue:
I was in the comments section of the AP O.J. diary when Mo was getting into trouble there. I made one comment in an effort to turn the tide, from anger at Mo to thinking more about why he might not be making blunt statements, but I was too late, and I didn’t have the idea fully formed. And the momentum was too much. My inability to help was frustrating, but that isn’t important. That Mo is on a timeout now IS. He’s too valuable to be lost to us over this.
Thank you for your diary, which said things I couldn’t yet articulate. Words have finally come to me.
In your diary, you quote a Black colleague, Sharon, whose thoughts on OJ’s acquittal were at variance with those of your white co-workers. She explained, as you put it [bold italics mine], that
she was glad to see O.J. acquitted, and I asked her why, and she told me. Sharon was like that. I admired her. Sharon said that white people get away with murder all the time, and if O.J. was white and had a lawyer that good, and a prosecution that bad, he’d be sure to be acquitted, but he might have been convicted anyway, because he was Black and the victim was white.
Your friend Sharon WAS being a friend to you when she respected you enough to say exactly what she thought. She did leave one thing unsaid, though. Implied, but unsaid.
She was absolutely right, white people get away with murder — figuratively but also literally — ALL THE TIME. The part she left unsaid — and considering she was the only Black person in your workplace, I understand why — was that for centuries of our history, most of those whose murders were “gotten away with” were Black, brown, golden or cinnabar.
For centuries, that’s “just the way it was”. Because all of the power in this country was on the side of the murderers, because they were wealthy, and white, and the system had been set up by them, and designed to favor them.
Mo, yesterday, recognized a group rage that had more than one source, but others were not seeing that, and I couldn’t yet articulate it.
Yes, there was rage at the idea that *anyone* could get away with murder. Rage at the police and prosecutors, at the media who turned the horrible deaths of two people into an entertainment circus, and at the way that serious, even deadly issues have been warped into entertainment ever since.
But it was more than that. People were defending that rage as a natural response to OJ “getting away with murder”. But the factor that was never articulated was that this rage was amplified by one salient fact.
OJ was Black. His alleged victims were white.
Of COURSE Mo didn’t feel safe pointing that out here.
Mo was quite possibly hoping that a white community member would do so; this is one of the things allies absolutely have to do. We HAVE to take on the explosive stuff, the stuff that will blow up if a Black person tries it because there’s still too much beneath the surface. Unfortunately I missed the target, only focusing on innocent Black victims of white killers. That just wasn’t enough.
Denial is an emotional defense first and foremost. It runs deep, below the level of conscious thought. Feelings are being defended, and we tend to think that our feelings are what define us. So when you confront someone who is “in denial” at that moment, about their denial, they will respond to you with rage, and even more denial. To them, at that moment, it feels like you are attacking their core identity.
That’s what happened to Mo yesterday. Since we are online, interacting in print, his words didn’t dissipate into the air; they remained. As more people saw them, and challenged him, the rage [and exacerbated denial] built up until things came to a head with his TO.
It is true that he didn’t “spit it out”. Aside from my conjecture that he was looking for a white ally to come alongside, I think he could see a trap being laid for him. Get him to admit what he was thinking so offense could be taken openly, and he could be flagged and expelled from the group, either via timeout or a ban. That has happened to others before him, I’ve seen it.
By the way, when this sort of thing happens to a longstanding community member, it almost never helps. It’s a substitute catharsis — the people targeted here become stand-ins for hated figures such as Trump, or in Mo’s case, OJ — and as such it never fixes anything, but it does drive from our ranks insightful and courageous people. Who ask the difficult questions.
The thing is, and it really IS the thing, there is only one antidote to denial. Humility. The ability to imagine that we, wonderful we, could actually be wrong about something. Maybe even something very fundamental and important. Maybe even something vital. The ability to accept that this could be true of us, just as it seems to be true of many we encounter. That we, too, might have feet of clay and no idea we do.
The sad part is that we behave as though admitting imperfection would kill us. Oh no, so much no, it’s the other way around! The thing that is killing us is our inability to admit our imperfection. Our inability to admit that we, too, are only human, and that we, too, can make mistakes, and terribly, spend our lives in those mistakes, and even more terribly, teach those mistakes to our children and grandchildren, become so invested in those mistakes that we think we need them in order to live. Or to live well.
None of that has to be. It is totally possible to stop investing in false narratives of virtue and just let ourselves be human.
And after all these sad parts, the saddest part of all is that the entire rest of the human race here in our beautiful imperiled nation… is waiting for us to do this. NOT because they want to “get” us. NOT because they want to go all Trump-MAGA on our tails. But because they want the Family Of Humankind to be whole, and safe, and well, and as long as we are holding out like this, that can never happen. They want us to join them and simply COME HOME.
This is one of the most disturbing songs that Joni Mitchell has ever written. The melody, of course, comes from Charles Mingus; but the lyrics are her own.
Listen to the words… I don’t know what she and Mingus talked about when she worked on this piece, but if you want to know what white male privilege will do to our society, listen to the words.
The Wolf That Lives In Lindsey
[C. Mingus, J. Mitchell]
Of the darkness in men’s minds
What can you say
That wasn’t marked by history
Or the TV news today?
He gets away with murder
The blizzards come and go
The stabbing, glaring buckshot
Of the heavy, heavy snow…
It comes and goes
It comes and goes.
His grandpa loved an empire
His sister loved a thief
And Lindsey loved away the darkness
Beyond belief
Girls in chilly blouses
The blizzards come and go
The stabbing, glaring buckshot
Of the heavy, heavy snow…
It comes and goes
It comes and goes.
It comes and goes.
Cops don’t seem to care
For derelicts or ladies of the night
They’re weeds for yanking out of sight
If you’re smart or rich or lucky
Maybe you’ll beat the laws of Man
But the inner laws of spirit
And the outer laws of nature
No man can.
No, no man can.
There lives a wolf in Lindsey
It raids and runs
Through the hills of Hollywood
And the downtown slums
He gets away with murder
Blizzards come and go
The stabbing glaring buckshot
Of the heavy, heavy snow…
It comes and goes
It comes and goes.
If we must hate, let us direct it at deserving targets, at those who wish to do us harm; not at those who challenge us to practice honesty and humility.