Thanks.
My (soon to be ex) voted R this time and I got to see some of the election fliers he was getting in the mail and hear some of the podcasts he listens to. (This is why we are breaking up.) And I can tell you, the stuff he was getting fed right into the fears that almost got 45 re-elected. It was real nightmare stuff for sure!
And personally, I think we white progressives pushed away potential allies with some of our language. Shaming people for "white fragility" and "white privilege" may make us feel all woke and righteous, but it doesn't play in Peoria. Moreover, our wonky self-shaming verbiage gave the opposition plenty of rhetorical ammo for their scare tactics. So I suggest a reframe:
(Note: to avoid tone-policing, I'm only talking to my fellow white progressives here. Everyone else, please don't mind me & go on saying things however you want.)
Suppose you thought you grew up in a good family, you all went to church every Sunday, your family ran a grocery or a car repair place or something like that. You always had enough to eat, books in your house, a roof over your head, clothes that fit, etc. , and your family gatherings were lovely. Then one day you find out that your family's business isn't what you thought it was. You wake up one day to the fact your family is part of a crime syndicate, the shop was just a front for money laundering, and you've been duped all your life into taking part in the crimes! How would you feel? Shock, anger, shame, guilt, denial, sadness ... in short, all the stages of grief. That grief is what's often called white fragility. So how do we support each other in grief? Do we shame each other and play woker than thou? Or do we embrace each other (preferably in private) and work thru it together?
This is not to downplay the intense grief that Black and Brown folks are feeling -- of course these should be triaged to the front -- only to say that some of the internal wrecking and splitting and one-upmanship I've seen on the Left makes me say: with comrades like that, who needs Cointepro!
Same with what they call white privilege. It's really just a fancy academic word for baked-in racism. Calling it a privilege to get treated decently in public and not have a cop shoot you at a traffic stop is setting the bar awfully low. This implies that in a just society we should all get shunned and shot. This implies that justice and safety and common decency / dignity is something that we should give up for the cause, rather than something that we should work so that everyone gets to enjoy it! And the administration played right into that narrative, and suggested that a vote for 45 is a vote against a dystopian Marxist nightmare. I know -- I saw the fliers and heard the podcasts that my ex was gorging himself on. Never mind that we're currently living in a dystopian right-wing nightmare!
Again, a disclaimer. I"m not telling Black or Brown folks what to say or how to say it. (Although I don't hear that many BIPOC folks talking in the above terms anyhow, I hear far more often about Dignity and Rights denied.) I’m talking strictly to my fellow white progressives: let's think about the impact that our language has on our kin, as we continue to labor at calling-in our cousins and holding the new administration accountable. We can't let this moment fizzle out. We're not out of the woods yet, and we won't be until EVERYONE is free!
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
