The Blindness of the White Eye.
A few Years ago, while still in dark days of W's reign, I had an opportunity to attend a get together of a group of Young Democrats at Tavern in Atlanta. It was an informal gathering of about 10 twenty somethings. At one point a woman began to describe attending a local forum on the question of why Young African American men didn't vote. It was pretty revealing.
She had found the whole experience upsetting and was venting freely. As she put it, instead of hearing a reason for the lack of turn out among young black male voters, all she heard was a lot conspiracy theories about how whites were plotting against blacks. She went on for quite a bit and was obviously both offended and angry.
After she complained for the upteenth time that she had gone to the forum to learn the reason that young black men didn't vote, I had to break in.
I told her I thought she had been given the reason even if she didn't recognize it. That stopped her dead in her tracks and she gave me a baffled look. I then pointed out that, after all, it wasn't as though there had never been any white conspiracies against black folks, starting with slavery going forward through segregation, systemic disenfranchisement and such horrors as the Tuskeegee syphilis experiment. Given all that, it hardly seemed remarkable to me that young African American men might be suspicious of the entire political system and consider voting a waste of time. In fact, what is remarkable is that African Americans as a whole hadn't given up on politics long ago.
She appeared stunned by my statement and didn't say another word about it.
I don't tell this story to ridicule her. Obviously, she didn't harbor any extreme racist views and no doubt took a generally liberal if not progressive position in her politics. I tell it because I think illustrates the fundamental difficulty in having a reasoned, productive discussion about racism in the US. The fact is that white identified folks and African Americans don't inhabit the same reality.
For this young woman and apparently for the other white identified folks in the group, the suggestion that "white people" might conspire against African Americans was self evidently irrational CT. They held this view despite the fact that US history abounds with examples of such conspiracies. Not that they were unaware of this history but they seemed unable to grasp the logical conclusions it implies.
In contrast, for most African Americans, this historical reality is central to their perspective. They understand that racism and white supremacy weren't the products of spontaneous generation. Rather, they were consciously constructed, maintained and exploited for specific political and economic ends. The explicit purpose of this process being to elevate and empower those classed as white while degrading and oppressing those classed as non-white. This development was possible only with the support, both active and passive, of the great majority of those classed as white.
This is a horrific but indisputable fact of US history. Its consequences have largely defined our politics and social life since the inception of the republic. Yet every attempt to incorporate an appreciation of this fact seems to spawn a reaction of denial even, as the above example indicates, in supposedly politically enlightened "reality based" circles.
Nowhere is this dramatic disconnect in perception and experience more apparent than in the current flap over the role of white racism in the opposition to President Obama.
It is glaringly on display in the argument that the charge of racism is so potent, so inflammatory that it ought not be raised except in the most overt and extreme cases. This amounts to arguing that the teabaggers and others of their ilk, overwhelmingly comprised by folks identified and identifying as white, must always be given the benefit of a doubt, unless and until their behavior becomes so blatant and egregiously racist as to make this impossible.
The material facts of our history indicate an entirely opposite conclusion. White racism and white supremacy have been so intrinsic to the political development of the US that a realistic view would tag the above argument as an exercise in willful credulity.
This isn't to say that this argument can't be made on the basis of political expedience. No one will deny that directly confronting white racism is a polarizing issue par excellence. However, that is not the form the argument usually takes.
More often it is portrayed as the default position of "reasonable" people. In the context of our national experience, there is nothing "reasonable" about it. It is only within the charmed circle of "whiteness", insulated from the worst consequences of our shared history, that this assertion could gain wide spread credence. It amounts to arguing that whatever is compatible with the self regard and comfort of those classed as white is the epitome of reason. It follows that any view challenging this and related assumptions is unreasonable and irrational.
It shouldn't be necessary to point out that this effectively defines the perspective of African Americans, informed as it is by the historic experience of white racism and white supremacy, as irrational and unreasonable. A more acerbic view would be that the lunatics are running the asylum. Whatever the rationale employed, it's clear that the desire to avoid confronting the white racist undercurrent fueling RW hysteria places concern for the sensitivities and interests of those who identify as white above all other interests or considerations. There's a word for that.
In the present moment progressives are faced with a stark challenge. We can either have the courage to live up to our self definition as a reality based community and challenge the racism that has bedeviled US history, or we can capitulate to a false perspective that ignores the unpleasant realities of our history and politics, disarming ourselves and empowering the worst elements of our national life.