These days, everyone is an expert on race. Turn on the TV, social media, podcasts, or the radio (lol I know who does that) and there’s a pretty substantial chance someone will be talking about race or racism.
A few really pointed judgments first: Many people talking about the subject do so in a prescriptive, assumed-knowledge sort of way.
Many people talking about race or racism in this way are somewhat unqualified to do so. This because they haven’t really studied or engaged with the topic in any meaningful way (and no, a twitter feed doesn’t count) or because they haven’t experienced it themselves.
Many people talking about race or racism assume that simply because they are talking about it, they exist on the “good” side of the dichotomy. Racist vs. not racist. Woke vs. not woke. Getting it vs. not getting it. Fighting the good fight vs. fighting the errr not-good fight. Being part of the solution vs. being part of the problem.
And now, an observation: many of the people talking about race focus their conversation and their criticisms on an industry or environment different than the one in which they inhabit.
For example, journalists, academics, lawyers, and dare-i-say activists, expound mostly on the racism of industries or environments that they are not a part of: law enforcement or other parts of government, the entertainment industry, or large corporations.
The same goes, perhaps, for sexism. These groups of people reporting or expounding or litigating or activisming tend to focus on industries separate from their own: the entertainment industry; blue-collar jobs, etc. etc.
One could argue this makes good sense — these groups are seeking to hold the government accountable, or hold accountable groups or individuals that have high visibility and high influence.
But, on today, I wonder if that sort of argument doesn’t quite cut it.
Rather, I wonder if the real reason for this externalized focus is that people (myself included!) have a hard time looking at their own shit. And don’t feel like that they should have to in a public setting.
Which, c’mon. Is sort of bullshit. Let’s all say it together: it’s sort of bullsit.
To bring it back down to earth and to the topic at hand — it may be easier for us to focus on industries such as law enforcement when decrying racism because to look at our own industries is harder and uncomfortable.
But why?
Why don’t journalists investigate and write about discuss and challenge the racism in their own industry? Why don’t academics? Lawyers? Activists? (To the extent the word “activism” has any real meaning.) Instead of focusing on, well, every other industry? Instead of focusing on cops?
Well, you might say, if I don’t, whose gonna hold those bad folks accountable?
But — can’t you do both??
Well, you might say, I’m aware of the racism in my industry and it’s really complicated and I’m trying to do better. There are a few bad apples but a lot of us are committed to change. We can’t change overnight. We hire, promote, support based on merit. It is what it is.
But isn’t that what a leader in law enforcement might say? That it’s complicated and they are trying? That there are a few bad apples? That they can’t change overnight? That they respond and act based on who poses a threat? It is what it is?
In that sense aren’t you, actually, incredibly similar to the people you spend a lot of time criticizing and deriding in the name of your own race-righteousness?
Well, you might say, I’m not violent toward black people, I don’t kill them by, for example, placing my foot on their necks. It’s different.
But, c’mon your profession doesn’t involve physical types of encounters so that’s a cop out, pun severely intended. Physical violence would be highly unlikely in a boardroom or lecture hall or office or whatever.
And also, c’mon, violence isn’t only physical and you know that. Especially if you are as smart as you often claim to be.
And wasn’t it Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who said “I ask for no favor for my sex . . . all I ask is that my brethren take their feet of our necks?”
I’m pretty sure Justice Ginsburg hath never had a literal foot on her neck, unless there is some part of her biography I haven’t encountered (I haven’t read her biography, so it’s possible).
But what she was speaking to, through this now incredibly relevant metaphor, is the way certain groups can deliberately and, yes, violently hold other groups back. Even if those means aren’t physical or clearly discerned through the sight or sound, they can still be violent. They can still have a felt impact similar to physical violence.
So you who expounds endlessly on the racism in the criminal justice system while rarely reflecting on that in your own system or industry: are you really that much different?
Could you, perhaps, talk about the ways in which you or those you tacitly support, have had their foot on the necks of people of color within your ranks? What did it look like? What was the point? And then, what have you done acknowledge that? Change that? In other words, what have you done to earn the right to look at another human in another industry and challenge the racism there?
When I was younger, my parents oft used to quote Luke 6:42:
How can you say Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
I don’t really recall the context in which they quoted this to me. Probably chores or something like that.
But really this is all I’m saying here, on today: It’s probably impossible for anyone to make real headway as far as race is concerned, without public conversations about the racism that exists in their own industries, own homes, own neighborhoods, own PTAs, or what have you.
It really can’t be that the answer is to hammer endlessly about others about environments in which you do not exist or have not experienced.
After all, the physical manifestations of violence we see from the police are no different than those that exist in the non-physical realm. One might even argue that they are cruder reflections of what is already occurring. (One, meaning me. Or Medium. Or the me that is actually Medium.)
In other words, perhaps, in all of your endless discussing and unqualified finger-pointing and fake fighting for change, you’re just treading water though not really moving forward. Thrashing about with a speck in your eye, unable to see your destination clearly anyway. Unable to perceive the destination with anything other than your eye anyway. Unable to know that there is a destination anyway.
Of course, you might feel buoyed by the righteousness that comes from haranguing another. But to an outside observer, perhaps one very far away, though you might be treading briskly, it appears nonetheless, that you are, in fact, standing, in the water, completely still.
I’m sure, if given the choice, you’d rather swim.
