When last we left the WAYBAC machine on Friday, we were talking about how five unbroken centuries of physical and psychological segregation leads to whites and blacks far too often mistakenly thinking they're now having deep and meaningful conversations about race, when in reality they're mostly speaking two very different languages. Even when they're regularly using many of the same commonly used Progressive catchwords and phrases. And so today, we again continue trying to break through the proverbial 500 year old witches spell...bit by bit by bit.
In this little trip this time, we're going to venture into why blacks and whites learning to speak the same language is also still not quite enough to right this enormous 500 year old, 350 million passenger, and born defective, ship's course. Because it also turns out, that there also has to be at least a minimal sense of commonality between black and white when it comes to what both groups want ending racism to actually remove from their respective lives, after those five mostly separate centuries. And for the extreme majority of us, that particular rather simple but vastly brain-twisting half of the conversation has never even remotely crossed our minds!
So...here's where that new portion of our frightening and wild and woolly, Indiana Jones-type adventure begins...with a simple-sounding question.
Do you ever just get plain old tired of seeing the seemingly endless negative effects of institutional white supremacy on this society? (Or do you mostly just try to tune it all out as much as you can?)
For example, it's also simply exhausting if you're white, and you're compulsively working, 24/7, to endlessly try and come up with new idiotic excuses (and of course, utterly contradictory and illogical right-wing legislation) to try and make life always more miserable for POC “all the livelong day”. But it also turns out, that it's actually also a deeply tiresome exercise if you're white, to endlessly play a centuries-long game of “follow the (status quo) leader”, and mentally try and pretend not to see something that has been so universally pervasive in our society (particularly our books and media) practically since the Taino people were still thriving in the Caribbean. Yep, in millions of tiny ways, systemic racism is exhausting to all white people too! (Even though, as I said last time, they're systematically conditioned to try not to consciously think about it.) In the age of cellphones and highspeed internet, that unconscious conditioning ain't exactly working as flawlessly as it used to.
The thing is though. Based on the percentages of white Americans that we talked about before, still living in near total segregation from everyone else (Google random listings of the most segregated cities and states for quick evidence.), and also the piles of documented examples of widespread tangible and intangible systemic benefits disproportionately still going to so many whites (most represented by dramatically worsening economic inequality), racism's almost certainly still not going anywhere anytime soon. While conversely, it also goes pretty much without saying, that with the exception of a handful of rather blatant self-hating, pathological opportunists (here's looking at you, Tim Scott and Daniel Cameron...just for starters!), an extreme majority of all POC have been showing emphatically with their votes since 1964 that they are quite simply sick and tired of seeing and living with racism 24/7/365, for what is now well more than five centuries straight!
So that original question is mostly aimed at white people in general. And white people on the Left a bit more specifically. Yes, there are still the regularly occurring, insultingly obtuse, refrains from a limited percentage of moderates on the left, and wide swaths of folks on the right, that supposedly centuries of deeply entrenched institutional racism would somehow magically just simply go away if minorities themselves would just “stop endlessly playing the 'race' card” and talking so much about it all the time. But the essence of my first question is also partly rooted in this. When we're willing to get brutally honest, and scrape away all other aspects of it, from it's very first “legal” inception in the mid-1600s Colonies, American racism was, is and will always be rooted in a fundamental desire to inflict violence on n****rs (without consequence), above all else.* So, therefore even if one is not actively supporting it's continuance (not “intentionally trying to be racist” and/or “wishing it would just magically go away”),if one is not nonetheless actively resisting it, then tacitly one is signaling (whether consciously or not) support for those continued underlying violent effects on POC. Because, no matter how much American society does or doesn't outwardly change, that single, hideous, foundational historically documented truth remains both undeniable and untouchable! Racism is NEVER passive! It is always, always working to inflict harm on POC! That's historically what is was created to do! And THAT is what I'm most trying to put just the tiniest scratch in, just below the surface of that original question.
So...again...do you ever simply get tired of seeing and hearing, day after day after day, what racism in America has once again mercilessly and inhumanely done to another subset of innocent Americans, for seemingly no apparent rational reason whatsoever, other than the color of their skin? But more important than that at this stage, do you ever allow yourself to question just the tiniest bit, what seeing and hearing such an endless and monumental stream of violence, for five centuries straight, is doing to the folks inflicting (and silently allowing) all those centuries of violence? For example, does it make you regularly not want to turn on the news? Does it make you not want to interact with people “like that” (in families and neighborhoods)? Or maybe, it just results in a disproportionate desire to escape and simply have “fun”? So as not to have to think too much about how overwhelmingly out of control, supporting racist violence has led fascist-level corruption and violence to grow in almost all aspects of this society? Or maybe there's an increasing fear of what all this seemingly never-ending racial turmoil is going to leave one's children and grandchildren to have to deal with? Or is it possibly some tiny, unspeakable sense that this has been tacitly allowed to go on for so long now that it simply can't be undone at all now? And as a result, maybe we're simply on a downward trajectory to self-annihilation as a species?
It's actually a tiny, but very, very radical question (Though in reality, by now it should be far from it!). So I'll clarify. I very intentionally did not ask if you ever think about what all this means to all of us as Americans, Democrats or even human beings. I very specifically asked if you ever think about what all this racialized turmoil does or doesn't mean for white people alone. Now, why would I make such a seemingly “odd” distinction? Why would I be explicitly asking white people what 5 centuries of racism against POC does or doesn't mean exclusively to white people alone? At best, is sounds a bit counterintuitive. When clearly one of the primary goals of progressivism for the last 60-oddyears has been to remove racism from the lives of POC. In fact, to many, it probably sounds almost sacrilegious and self-serving. Or is it???!!! What could one possibly hope to gain by looking at it all from such a seemingly odd, if not contradictory, angle?
Unfortunately (for the impatient among us) the answer to that question is itself another question. Who actually gains what, from nonstop racial violence being removed from the lives of POC? Is it possible that white Americans too (despite the segregation and economic inequality that I mentioned at the beginning) also stand to possibly gain something from an end to systematic violence in the lives of nonwhite people? And what's more, would that potentially be a small and seemingly intangible thing? Or is also possible that ending racism has the possibility of significant direct and tangible (though mostly unexplored to this point) benefits to great numbers of white people too?
Therefore, my overall contention here is, we will probably not get significant enough by-in from those still tens of millions of whites (very much including on the Left) still living comfortably in racial segregation and enjoying the fruits of economic inequality, if we don't begin to analyze what allowing racial violence to continue is costing them specifically. Along with how ending it will potentially benefit them specifically too. But unlike Heather McGhee in her book “The Sum Of Us” (that so many are currently enamored with), I'm not talking about in terms of dollars and cents. But rather the tens of millions of tiny, bludgeoningly endless negative things that make white people feel perpetually tired and worn out from being endlessly surrounded by racism too. And endlessly inundated and surrounded by the residual effects of it all too. Even if they are seemingly predominantly happening to POC. And thus the hidden point lying just below the surface of that original question! What makes you feel tired about racism going on all day every day, even if you are white? And would thus improve the overall quality of your life if removed from the lives of POC? For example, the potential end to endless exhausting stories of out of control and militaristic police. Or, compulsively stockpiling bigots ever-worsening the overwhelming danger of guns to everyone. Or, turning on the TV or internet and perpetually seeing nonstop imagery of downright soul-numbing idiocy, seemingly mostly driven by bigotry. Or more and more, the fear of that original thirst for random and mindless violence toward POC spreading more and more uncontrollably into the lives of greater and greater numbers of white people too. The example of mass shootings comes immediately to mind. Or by far, my personal biggest example. Increasing amounts of basic and life saving social services being removed from the lives of tens of millions of deserving white people. In the name of supposedly harming “undeserving” POC.
What poisonous byproducts of all these centuries of ever-worsening racialized violence need to be excised from BOTH black and white society? Because it turns out that, lo and behold, to a very great degree, we've been deceiving ourselves for the last 150-odd years (and the last 60 especially). And at best our reasoning has been incomplete about wanting to somehow supposedly surgically remove racism from the lives of POC, while leaving white society mostly untouched. Because it turns out that unless we have an accompanying list of significant enough reasons for wanting racism also removed from the lives of tens of millions of white people too...it's probably “legitimately” not ever going to happen! And all the multi-racial coalitions in the world are generally going to simply keep repeating an endless cycle of having words and actions that don't generally match, as far as POC are concerned.
So...what are you truly sick and tired of about racism? And again, not just for the sake of POC. But for the sake of lots and lots and lots of white people too???
* Validated last night by President Biden referring to white supremacy unequivocally as terrorism.