Acolytes often wind up stabbing their mentors through the heart, so Baldwin's response to Wright is nothing new. It's how writers and intellectuals grow and separate themselves. (Most of the famous cases are of men; are there well-known cases of women doing so? Memo to self: Research this.) And Baldwin was a difficult guy with difficult relationships. I don't think it's bad to add some sugar to the medicine.
What do you want from your friendships? To be seen and heard and understood, and still loved? Some friendships will survive that test. Others, ones that are more rooted in shared tribal beliefs (to put it in current jargon) won't. You know Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 14? The first part reads:
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say,
"I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day"—
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so.
We have friends who love us for a trick of thought that falls in well with theirs and brought a sense of pleasant ease. But Browning is right, those things can and do change. It's painful, but it's part of the human condition. I hope I don't sound dismissive; when I say it's painful, I mean it's *really* painful. From my own life experience, though, I can tell you that my best friends have come to see that everything is a lot more complicated than we thought it was when we were young and starry-eyed. Those friendships endure.
I hope you keep writing and finding your voice. You may need to experiment with adding or subtracting sugar to find your own authentic speech.
Oh, and visiting friends in the flesh is invaluable. Face to face allows for more melding and communion. It just does.
This is very well-written and thoughtful, Marie. The pain that many of us feel over our alienation from our former tribes is devastating. I feel fortunate, in some ways, that I moved for retirement right before Covid so am not physically close to many of my woke friends. I keep my mouth shut, mostly, on social media. Two years ago, I was giving trainings on "White Fragility"; now I'm just begging for some understanding of nuance. And, not to be creepy, but if you ever want to fly out to the Pacific Northwest, we have a guest room and access to wine!
It is, again, really interesting to know more about the path that has lead you to writing the blog, and your context.
I've been commenting on a number of your posts, and I don't know if it's helpful or adding value, but I hope that it is. It seems like you're engaged with important problems and questions and that your emotional reactions are interesting.
My first thought, reading the essay, is to note again, that the skills and temperament that make for a perceptive writer and critic are not necessarily the same as those that help to find allies and build groups. The former benefits from a willingness to dismiss many of the reasons that people have for doing what they do and justifying the status quo, and the latter benefits from a generosity towards people and recognition of the way in which we are situated in a variety of social structures that we have mixed feelings about.
My second thought is that I think writing about these questions online can be a really good way of thinking through them -- though there are pitfalls.
My own online experience is idiosyncratic. I'm not active on social media, but my online home (emotionally speaking) is commenting on a long-running blog which is notable for having unusually good and productive arguments. I have often had my mind changed and my thinking sharpened by reading other people's arguments, and I know that it's possible to find or build an online community in which people are good readers of each other and are responsive to what other people think and write -- though that seems unusual.
So I hope, as you write this, you also develop a better sense of what you want from your readers (and commenters) and what feels like helpful engagement to you. I think (*knock on wood*) that if you're able to figure out what engagement you want and find benefits in from strangers online that will also make it easier for you to figure out how to engage friends in a way that fits within the existing two-way exchange of the friendship.
Thanks Nick! I definitely read all of your comments and they always get me thinking, which makes quick replies difficult, which is why I don’t get back to you as often as some of the other commenters who I can quickly just agree with!! I definitely appreciate your perspective :D
Coming back to this, because I just read something which feels very relevant to the comments I've been making.
For both this and the previous post I've commented about the ways in which, "deciding what you believe" and "how should I act out those beliefs within my community" are two separate challenges.
For myself, I feel sympathetic to most of what gets lumped under the banner of, "woke" but I don't feel like I have a good sense of how best to act out those beliefs (and wouldn't call myself, "woke" not to distance myself but just because that implies a sense of decisiveness that I don't feel).
The criticisms of, "work" that I feel most sympathetic to are that, as a set of ideas, it doesn't easily translate into action and, arguably, doesn't help people distinguish bad ideas from good -- in terms of leading to long term progress. Matt Yglesias has made this critique, but I also just saw this tweet today: https://twitter.com/ellle_em/status/1424427213403967491
"A big problem that we need to grapple with in social justice spaces is how tumblr taught a huge group of people to appropriate social justice terminology & deploy it in order to destroy things that make them uncomfortable, rather than are actually oppressive . . . "
"The Barnraisers Project coaches and trains white people to organize their friends, neighbors and colleagues for racial equity. We’re nobody’s saviors, but we’re committed to do our part to help build a better, more just world."
I post it here because I hope that, even if you disagree with some of the conclusions that the questions it asks connect to the issues that you've been working on and thinking about.
"I had to laugh at myself a bit here, as I guess my whole deal could be summed up as an US Magazine-style message to white progressives: “Reactionary conservative white people! They’re just like us!” But the more time I spend with white people — across class lines, across political lines, across geographic lines — the more I believe that we all have the same basic driving animus in this moment: we all desperately want to be assured that we’re one of the good ones.
...
But then, I remember one of the many lessons the cohorts have offered me. Namely, I had this feeling of angst and unsettledness with what I was seeing in the world (in this case, a lot of performative anti-racism by white people but no real organizing). And while not perfect, I had a gift to put out there to folks who might be feeling the same way —I could offer a collective learning space. And so I took the risk and made the invitation, open-heartedly, trying all the while to both communicate who that space might be right for but to lower the barrier to entry. And that’s how I found my people! And then, once that community has coalesced, I try (again, imperfectly but full-heartedly) to lower the shame and judgment people feel in that space (really trying to establish a space that’s not about saying the right thing, not shaming people for missing assignments, etc.).
And I think there IS a lesson there for others: If we’re going to build these muscles together we must first recognize that we’re all simultaneously craving community right now and frequently quite out-of-practice in actually building it in practice. And then, after we’ve done so, we need to take the risk and just offer those invitations. We need to make open-hearted, shame-free offerings to each other… saying out loud “hey, I need ______ kind of space… does anybody else? If so, want to build it together?” And while there’s the risk of rejection in doing so, of course, it’s not as if the track we’re on already isn’t even more isolating than a few non-responsive text threads and unresponded emails."
Ya know... I got the AHP newsletter and started to read it and I was like, oh man I don't think I can take this much wokeness on my first day back from vacation, and stopped reading it... but you convinced me to go back and finish it :)
Garrett seems like a really kind-hearted, well-intentioned guy, and more focused on material benefit and tangible systemic change than most, which is awesome and laudable. Where I struggle with his approach is that it's very tightly tied to the idea that whiteness, and white people as a self-contained community, are the root of most problems. When you have that assumption, you're left segregating yourself by race and coming up with solutions that you can do by yourself that are hyper-fixated on the race of everyone involved, like "send your kids to Black and Brown schools and don't join the PTA." I totally get where he came from to arrive at that solution, but it now seems obvious to me that it's, at best, orthogonal to the direction of real progress. I am SO GLAD he's focused on building a mutually supportive community free from harsh judgement, but wouldn't he want it to welcome non-white members too?
He says "conservatives, they're just like us!" yet he can't imagine that they might be genuine about their moral direction derived from MLK and the Christian faith tradition, or that their concern that CRT is too focused on racially categorizing people might be valid. All in all, like I said, he seems like a good guy, and reading his words, I *LIKE* him, I'd like to be his friend and I don't enjoy disagreeing with him. But I think, like way too many of us, a portion of his brain was eaten by the white supremacy/racism bug, the one that whispers non-stop: "race matters, people of different races are fundamentally and essentially different, all white people need to stick together and treat non-white people as 'not like us,' I must racially categorize every person I meet in order to determine how to treat them." This is what conservatives mean by referring to progressives as "neo-racist." And I'm only calling it out because I thought it myself for so long. I think if he can resolve that cognitive dissonance for himself, he might resolve some of that angst he feels...
Also I fully acknowledge you shared this link knowing I would disagree with much of it!! :) You are right about the parts I liked!
Thanks for the reply! That does clarify your thinking, and ways in which I disagree with you. In brief (because there will be more opportunities in the future).
I think the idea that his efforts are, "orthogonal to the direction of real progress" only makes sense if you believe that it's intrinsically tied to, "the idea that whiteness, and white people as a self-contained community, are the root of most problems. ... hyper-fixated on the race of everyone involved"
I don't agree with that, and I think that his efforts, even if imperfect, are clearly aiming in the right direction.
Our different perspectives probably arise from a different sense of what constitutes the "true Scotsman" of wokeism -- which elements of an amorphous collection of ideas constitute the core, and which are secondary.
That's a difficult disagreement to settle, but I'd highlight two things I see in Garrett's comments.
First, if somebody is working on a local problem that is directly connected to a national political argument they might identify more with the the local effort or the national argument ("what's really important is that I raise money to get the park restored" vs "I really want to prove that problems are better solved by private donation rather than demanding that the government fix it."). Those motivations usually overlap; most people aren't 100% local vs national. But I think Garrett is encouraging people to put more emphasis on the local, and I think that's healthy (there's a similar recommendation at the end of _Why We're Polarized_).
Secondly, I see a lot overlap between what Garrett is saying and what David French writes here (even though they have different political perspectives), and I'd be curious if it makes sense to you why I would draw that connection: https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/racial-justice-individual-guilt-and
Thanks for the reply. I started thinking as I went to bed last night that my previous reply was a bit too salty and dismissive. I agree that Garrett's efforts at challenging other anti-racists to think local is good. I generally like David French's takes on these topics. The one you linked above fell just short of making a point that I think is desperately needed in these conversations. *Institutions* are responsible for repairing the damage they inflicted in the past. *People* are responsible for repairing the damage they personally inflicted in the past. But individual people are not necessarily responsible for repairing the damage inflicted by people who looked like them in the past, or even the damage inflicted by their ancestors. Instead, I think *all* people are responsible for repairing damage inflicted by others *to the greatest extent they are able to,* not because of ancestral ties but because of a general moral obligation to "spread the wealth" of both money and privilege. So, in practice, this does end up meaning white people have a bigger moral obligation to help communities of color, because those white people on average have more resources to spare! But it's not their *whiteness* per se that's the origin of their obligation, it's the fact that they have resources to spare (which admittedly is often the result of past racism). The important point is not all white people have resources to spare, and its not only white people who have resources to spare. A wealthy POC corporate executive has a moral obligation to support impoverished people in their community no matter those people's race. And I definitely feel we all have a responsibility to support national policy that is more equitable and redistributive in nature. The fixation on whiteness as the primary vehicle of privilege- which, you are right, I am framing as a tenet of wokeness that indeed many people don't share- has been shown to decrease empathy for low-income whites (https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fxge0000605) and can end up disempowering young people of color. I feel it's urgent that we start to each be able to do a personal privilege inventory and dissect the privileges we have (wealth, education, citizenship, occupation, cultural) that may or may not be connected to our race. The "send your kids to a predominantly Black public school" example was even used on the show Black-ish as what white allies should do, where the obviously wealthy and privileged Dre is exempted from such obligations, presumably because the mere presence of Gary's white child will make school administrators work harder for the kids? The causal logic isn't completely there. I agree with what Garrett said, "I'd rather you not send your kid to private schools at all,"-- it's urgent that we all work together, especially those of us with the extra resources available to do it, to make our local schools better for everyone. It's just not acceptable for school boards to "not care" (as Dre assumes) until more white kids go. https://youtu.be/S72o5lhF1Uk?t=98
I worry that if we continue to normalize the assumption that people are personally responsible for rectifying the wrongdoing of their ancestors, we will never heal the divide or achieve anything close to equity, because the past cannot be changed (not to mention you will have people, fairly!, claiming "My ancestors fought for the union and marched with King! My ancestors were oppressed in Russia until 1980!"). It's not your race or ancestry that is the source of your personal moral obligation; it's your available resources.
Thanks again. I have some thoughts but, honestly, you should probably pull some of this into a post eventually, rather than the two of us going back and forth in comments.
Not that I'm trying to talk you out of rambling replies! It's helpful and interesting, and I agree with _much_ of what you say in your last comment.
I would qualify that, however, by noting that when trying to act on this belief -- "*all* people are responsible for repairing damage inflicted by others *to the greatest extent they are able to,* not because of ancestral ties but because of a general moral obligation to "spread the wealth" of both money and privilege."
It's important to have some sense of the history of how the damage happened because, otherwise, it's easy to act in ways that are, as you say, orthogonal to addressing the real issues.
Oh and to be clear, as an American, I am a member of the "institution" of the USA, therefore I have those obligations of repair and restitution. But that's due to my citizenship, not my race.
Marie, you're speaking to me. The whole point is, this process is messy. Because humans and human relationships are messy. But there's no room for a mess in the current woke ideology. An ideology that seems to say, "if you aren't an audience member shouting Amen to the woke ideologues (because white silence is violence, but you better not center yourself by having thoughts or feelings or questions or ideas), you must be quiet and you can never have an authentic relationship with a person of color because you're racist."
I appreciate this story, because I've been through similar situations. But haven't we gone a little off the rails when a white person can't say "I like your shirt" to a Black person without wondering where she is on the spectrum of racism? And then we blame her for feeling stressed about it? And then we scold her for "centering" herself and her feelings in the very environment that has been specifically set up to discuss racism? It takes constant vigilance to fight your thoughts...that doesn't sound like a very life-giving relationship. And if we aren't allowed to expect our relationships with people of other races to be life-giving (because we're requiring them to do emotional labor) then what kind of relationship can white people ever have with people of color?
I'm asking 100% earnestly. And I would love an answer that goes beyond "you haven't done the work" or "you're so entrenched in your biases you can't even see it." I have, and I can. I was 100% on board with this ideology until it began resembling the Christianity I walked away from, in which I am always a hopeless sinner, there is no real path to redemption, and the only hope for me is to be forgiven by someone else.
That story was painful, and yes, relatable. Somewhere in the unraveling it all I realized that the only logical end point of this worldview was complete and total racial segregation (and perhaps mass transfer of wealth between them). Similarly, this WaPo story this morning made me want to scream and cry at the same time: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/07/24/black-women-office-work-home On the one hand, I absolutely do not want these women to feel this level of pain and frustration, and I have no doubt that they've all crossed paths with thoughtless co-workers. On the other hand... there is no amount of awareness of "micro-aggressions" in the world that will prevent them from happening forever, especially so long as we continue to hold dramatically different standards for what qualifies as one depending on who is involved. Even among white people, we are frequently awkward, rude, distant, too friendly, etc to each other. Adding the stress of racial differences can make those interactions exponentially more fraught, if either party lets it. In this instance, the conservatives are on to something simple: just try to treat everyone the same, and everyone as your equal. Don't get caught up in internalizing, dwelling on, then trying to suppress your latent white supremacy. It's as simple as saying: this person is my equal in every way, and really truly believing it. Neither your race, nor your habits, skills, preferences, experiences, or knowledge, none of it makes you a better (or worse) human being that the person you're interacting with. Will some people be frustrated with that sort of treatment? Possibly, but they are the people most likely to be frustrated with most interactions, so unfortunately, the way they feel in the interaction is largely out of your control at that point.
My husband works in an office space of mostly white men, but his boss is a white woman and the most senior employee other than the boss is a Black woman. I couldn’t’ read the WaPo article (paywall) but based on the title alone, this is happening in his office.
When I say his office, I mean it literally: the office space for his small department. Other departments in the same building and indeed the entire organization are very, very diverse. The leader of the organization is in fact a Black woman, so these standards aren’t being created and enforced by white people.
Every December this woman—who is also single—takes the entire month off (as I said she’s most senior and has lots of vacation time; she’s also capable of retiring at any time she wishes). Nobody has ever even said, hey that’s not fair to the rest of us, never mind denied her that time off. My husband has worked with her for 10 years, and this has always been the case. He’s always been sensitive to the fact that it must be awkward to be one of few women and the only Black woman in their office space. Now, since returning to the office, she barely acknowledges him (or anyone else, for that matter) when he greets her. He's wondering if she's angry at being required to come back to the office. Certainly how friendly or unfriendly she is is her prerogative. But her way of interacting with everyone else certainly isn't conducive to an emotionally healthy workplace environment.
In current wokism, I’m pretty sure I’d be deemed racist for how I described the situation. But isn’t that exactly what intersectionality is? An enumerating of a person’s individual qualities and assigning value to them?
You’re onto something about total segregation being the logical end. Just as Jewish people desired and certainly it could be said deserved, their own protected homeland, and thus established Israel (not arguing against Israel, just reaching for a potentially comparable scenario). But guess what? That already exists for Black Americans. Do you know about Liberia? It’s an African nation that was established by free African Americans. If you’re unfamiliar, I’d highly recommend doing some background research.
"But haven't we gone a little off the rails when a white person can't say 'I like your shirt' to a Black person without wondering where she is on the spectrum of racism?" But it wasn't just any shirt; it was a BLM shirt, so it's possible the guy wearing it could read her voiced approval as pandering. I personally wouldn't have commented on the shirt. But I'm also hugely opposed to "bringing your whole self to work." Bring your work self to work. Do your work, be courteous and friendly, and then go home to be your whole self. If you are in a supervisory position, do your damnedest to treat everyone fairly. In the capitalist reality we occupy, that's the best you can do.
I agree with you. But can anybody tell the new employee not to wear the BLM shirt? If you're openly wearing political slogans, you're practically daring people to comment or not, and judging them on their commentary or lack of it.
For what it's worth, I was until very very recently a total supporter of BLM. I still support the sentiment, I still support the full realization of equality which has not yet been achieved (in some ways, like incarceration, we are far from achieving justice). I just don't support how the organization is going about achieving those aims if, in fact, they're trying to achieve them at all.
"But can anybody tell the new employee not to wear the BLM shirt?" Funny you should ask! I'm married to an employment lawyer. It all depends on which state you live in, and whether you have a policy of allowing employees to wear clothing with political slogans. Whole Foods got into trouble because they fussed about employees wearing BLM masks. The official policy of Whole Foods is that you can't wear “visible slogans, messages, logos or advertising” on your clothes, but they hadn't been good about enforcing it, so people were wearing sports logos and other clothes with "messages". Because of the lax enforcement, the employees wearing BLM stuff claimed discrimination. The judge ruled against them in February, but it will probably be appealed.
Survey your friends. Among them do you find Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, etc.? Trump supporters and haters? If so then it is far less likely that your friends will disown you for heterodox views. And by this I mean that if you are the type of person who collects diverse friends then those friends are in turn much more likely to be tolerant and open minded individuals with their own set of diverse acquaintances.
I would also add this: somebody on Twitter posted that most people throw out ideas not to see those ideas tested and examined but rather for reasons of affirmation and tribalism. Actually critiquing those ideas will result in hurt and shock most of the time. Geeks, of course, often fail to recognize this and consequently step in a lot of land mines.
This is an excellent essay, Marie.
Acolytes often wind up stabbing their mentors through the heart, so Baldwin's response to Wright is nothing new. It's how writers and intellectuals grow and separate themselves. (Most of the famous cases are of men; are there well-known cases of women doing so? Memo to self: Research this.) And Baldwin was a difficult guy with difficult relationships. I don't think it's bad to add some sugar to the medicine.
What do you want from your friendships? To be seen and heard and understood, and still loved? Some friendships will survive that test. Others, ones that are more rooted in shared tribal beliefs (to put it in current jargon) won't. You know Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 14? The first part reads:
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say,
"I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day"—
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so.
We have friends who love us for a trick of thought that falls in well with theirs and brought a sense of pleasant ease. But Browning is right, those things can and do change. It's painful, but it's part of the human condition. I hope I don't sound dismissive; when I say it's painful, I mean it's *really* painful. From my own life experience, though, I can tell you that my best friends have come to see that everything is a lot more complicated than we thought it was when we were young and starry-eyed. Those friendships endure.
I hope you keep writing and finding your voice. You may need to experiment with adding or subtracting sugar to find your own authentic speech.
Oh, and visiting friends in the flesh is invaluable. Face to face allows for more melding and communion. It just does.
This is very well-written and thoughtful, Marie. The pain that many of us feel over our alienation from our former tribes is devastating. I feel fortunate, in some ways, that I moved for retirement right before Covid so am not physically close to many of my woke friends. I keep my mouth shut, mostly, on social media. Two years ago, I was giving trainings on "White Fragility"; now I'm just begging for some understanding of nuance. And, not to be creepy, but if you ever want to fly out to the Pacific Northwest, we have a guest room and access to wine!
It is, again, really interesting to know more about the path that has lead you to writing the blog, and your context.
I've been commenting on a number of your posts, and I don't know if it's helpful or adding value, but I hope that it is. It seems like you're engaged with important problems and questions and that your emotional reactions are interesting.
My first thought, reading the essay, is to note again, that the skills and temperament that make for a perceptive writer and critic are not necessarily the same as those that help to find allies and build groups. The former benefits from a willingness to dismiss many of the reasons that people have for doing what they do and justifying the status quo, and the latter benefits from a generosity towards people and recognition of the way in which we are situated in a variety of social structures that we have mixed feelings about.
My second thought is that I think writing about these questions online can be a really good way of thinking through them -- though there are pitfalls.
My own online experience is idiosyncratic. I'm not active on social media, but my online home (emotionally speaking) is commenting on a long-running blog which is notable for having unusually good and productive arguments. I have often had my mind changed and my thinking sharpened by reading other people's arguments, and I know that it's possible to find or build an online community in which people are good readers of each other and are responsive to what other people think and write -- though that seems unusual.
So I hope, as you write this, you also develop a better sense of what you want from your readers (and commenters) and what feels like helpful engagement to you. I think (*knock on wood*) that if you're able to figure out what engagement you want and find benefits in from strangers online that will also make it easier for you to figure out how to engage friends in a way that fits within the existing two-way exchange of the friendship.
Thanks Nick! I definitely read all of your comments and they always get me thinking, which makes quick replies difficult, which is why I don’t get back to you as often as some of the other commenters who I can quickly just agree with!! I definitely appreciate your perspective :D
Coming back to this, because I just read something which feels very relevant to the comments I've been making.
For both this and the previous post I've commented about the ways in which, "deciding what you believe" and "how should I act out those beliefs within my community" are two separate challenges.
For myself, I feel sympathetic to most of what gets lumped under the banner of, "woke" but I don't feel like I have a good sense of how best to act out those beliefs (and wouldn't call myself, "woke" not to distance myself but just because that implies a sense of decisiveness that I don't feel).
The criticisms of, "work" that I feel most sympathetic to are that, as a set of ideas, it doesn't easily translate into action and, arguably, doesn't help people distinguish bad ideas from good -- in terms of leading to long term progress. Matt Yglesias has made this critique, but I also just saw this tweet today: https://twitter.com/ellle_em/status/1424427213403967491
"A big problem that we need to grapple with in social justice spaces is how tumblr taught a huge group of people to appropriate social justice terminology & deploy it in order to destroy things that make them uncomfortable, rather than are actually oppressive . . . "
All of that is to say that I was excited to read this interview with somebody who is trying to community organizing under the idea of building towards racial equality, done right: https://annehelen.substack.com/p/the-antidote-is-always-turning-deeper
"The Barnraisers Project coaches and trains white people to organize their friends, neighbors and colleagues for racial equity. We’re nobody’s saviors, but we’re committed to do our part to help build a better, more just world."
I post it here because I hope that, even if you disagree with some of the conclusions that the questions it asks connect to the issues that you've been working on and thinking about.
"I had to laugh at myself a bit here, as I guess my whole deal could be summed up as an US Magazine-style message to white progressives: “Reactionary conservative white people! They’re just like us!” But the more time I spend with white people — across class lines, across political lines, across geographic lines — the more I believe that we all have the same basic driving animus in this moment: we all desperately want to be assured that we’re one of the good ones.
...
But then, I remember one of the many lessons the cohorts have offered me. Namely, I had this feeling of angst and unsettledness with what I was seeing in the world (in this case, a lot of performative anti-racism by white people but no real organizing). And while not perfect, I had a gift to put out there to folks who might be feeling the same way —I could offer a collective learning space. And so I took the risk and made the invitation, open-heartedly, trying all the while to both communicate who that space might be right for but to lower the barrier to entry. And that’s how I found my people! And then, once that community has coalesced, I try (again, imperfectly but full-heartedly) to lower the shame and judgment people feel in that space (really trying to establish a space that’s not about saying the right thing, not shaming people for missing assignments, etc.).
And I think there IS a lesson there for others: If we’re going to build these muscles together we must first recognize that we’re all simultaneously craving community right now and frequently quite out-of-practice in actually building it in practice. And then, after we’ve done so, we need to take the risk and just offer those invitations. We need to make open-hearted, shame-free offerings to each other… saying out loud “hey, I need ______ kind of space… does anybody else? If so, want to build it together?” And while there’s the risk of rejection in doing so, of course, it’s not as if the track we’re on already isn’t even more isolating than a few non-responsive text threads and unresponded emails."
Ya know... I got the AHP newsletter and started to read it and I was like, oh man I don't think I can take this much wokeness on my first day back from vacation, and stopped reading it... but you convinced me to go back and finish it :)
Garrett seems like a really kind-hearted, well-intentioned guy, and more focused on material benefit and tangible systemic change than most, which is awesome and laudable. Where I struggle with his approach is that it's very tightly tied to the idea that whiteness, and white people as a self-contained community, are the root of most problems. When you have that assumption, you're left segregating yourself by race and coming up with solutions that you can do by yourself that are hyper-fixated on the race of everyone involved, like "send your kids to Black and Brown schools and don't join the PTA." I totally get where he came from to arrive at that solution, but it now seems obvious to me that it's, at best, orthogonal to the direction of real progress. I am SO GLAD he's focused on building a mutually supportive community free from harsh judgement, but wouldn't he want it to welcome non-white members too?
He says "conservatives, they're just like us!" yet he can't imagine that they might be genuine about their moral direction derived from MLK and the Christian faith tradition, or that their concern that CRT is too focused on racially categorizing people might be valid. All in all, like I said, he seems like a good guy, and reading his words, I *LIKE* him, I'd like to be his friend and I don't enjoy disagreeing with him. But I think, like way too many of us, a portion of his brain was eaten by the white supremacy/racism bug, the one that whispers non-stop: "race matters, people of different races are fundamentally and essentially different, all white people need to stick together and treat non-white people as 'not like us,' I must racially categorize every person I meet in order to determine how to treat them." This is what conservatives mean by referring to progressives as "neo-racist." And I'm only calling it out because I thought it myself for so long. I think if he can resolve that cognitive dissonance for himself, he might resolve some of that angst he feels...
Also I fully acknowledge you shared this link knowing I would disagree with much of it!! :) You are right about the parts I liked!
Thanks for the reply! That does clarify your thinking, and ways in which I disagree with you. In brief (because there will be more opportunities in the future).
I think the idea that his efforts are, "orthogonal to the direction of real progress" only makes sense if you believe that it's intrinsically tied to, "the idea that whiteness, and white people as a self-contained community, are the root of most problems. ... hyper-fixated on the race of everyone involved"
I don't agree with that, and I think that his efforts, even if imperfect, are clearly aiming in the right direction.
Our different perspectives probably arise from a different sense of what constitutes the "true Scotsman" of wokeism -- which elements of an amorphous collection of ideas constitute the core, and which are secondary.
That's a difficult disagreement to settle, but I'd highlight two things I see in Garrett's comments.
First, if somebody is working on a local problem that is directly connected to a national political argument they might identify more with the the local effort or the national argument ("what's really important is that I raise money to get the park restored" vs "I really want to prove that problems are better solved by private donation rather than demanding that the government fix it."). Those motivations usually overlap; most people aren't 100% local vs national. But I think Garrett is encouraging people to put more emphasis on the local, and I think that's healthy (there's a similar recommendation at the end of _Why We're Polarized_).
Secondly, I see a lot overlap between what Garrett is saying and what David French writes here (even though they have different political perspectives), and I'd be curious if it makes sense to you why I would draw that connection: https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/racial-justice-individual-guilt-and
Thanks for the reply. I started thinking as I went to bed last night that my previous reply was a bit too salty and dismissive. I agree that Garrett's efforts at challenging other anti-racists to think local is good. I generally like David French's takes on these topics. The one you linked above fell just short of making a point that I think is desperately needed in these conversations. *Institutions* are responsible for repairing the damage they inflicted in the past. *People* are responsible for repairing the damage they personally inflicted in the past. But individual people are not necessarily responsible for repairing the damage inflicted by people who looked like them in the past, or even the damage inflicted by their ancestors. Instead, I think *all* people are responsible for repairing damage inflicted by others *to the greatest extent they are able to,* not because of ancestral ties but because of a general moral obligation to "spread the wealth" of both money and privilege. So, in practice, this does end up meaning white people have a bigger moral obligation to help communities of color, because those white people on average have more resources to spare! But it's not their *whiteness* per se that's the origin of their obligation, it's the fact that they have resources to spare (which admittedly is often the result of past racism). The important point is not all white people have resources to spare, and its not only white people who have resources to spare. A wealthy POC corporate executive has a moral obligation to support impoverished people in their community no matter those people's race. And I definitely feel we all have a responsibility to support national policy that is more equitable and redistributive in nature. The fixation on whiteness as the primary vehicle of privilege- which, you are right, I am framing as a tenet of wokeness that indeed many people don't share- has been shown to decrease empathy for low-income whites (https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fxge0000605) and can end up disempowering young people of color. I feel it's urgent that we start to each be able to do a personal privilege inventory and dissect the privileges we have (wealth, education, citizenship, occupation, cultural) that may or may not be connected to our race. The "send your kids to a predominantly Black public school" example was even used on the show Black-ish as what white allies should do, where the obviously wealthy and privileged Dre is exempted from such obligations, presumably because the mere presence of Gary's white child will make school administrators work harder for the kids? The causal logic isn't completely there. I agree with what Garrett said, "I'd rather you not send your kid to private schools at all,"-- it's urgent that we all work together, especially those of us with the extra resources available to do it, to make our local schools better for everyone. It's just not acceptable for school boards to "not care" (as Dre assumes) until more white kids go. https://youtu.be/S72o5lhF1Uk?t=98
I worry that if we continue to normalize the assumption that people are personally responsible for rectifying the wrongdoing of their ancestors, we will never heal the divide or achieve anything close to equity, because the past cannot be changed (not to mention you will have people, fairly!, claiming "My ancestors fought for the union and marched with King! My ancestors were oppressed in Russia until 1980!"). It's not your race or ancestry that is the source of your personal moral obligation; it's your available resources.
This piece by Steve QJ was great: https://medium.com/illumination-curated/the-racism-arms-race-c9e43b5e7aad
This got a bit rambly and probably salty again, sorry! I really appreciate the exchanges!
Thanks again. I have some thoughts but, honestly, you should probably pull some of this into a post eventually, rather than the two of us going back and forth in comments.
Not that I'm trying to talk you out of rambling replies! It's helpful and interesting, and I agree with _much_ of what you say in your last comment.
I would qualify that, however, by noting that when trying to act on this belief -- "*all* people are responsible for repairing damage inflicted by others *to the greatest extent they are able to,* not because of ancestral ties but because of a general moral obligation to "spread the wealth" of both money and privilege."
It's important to have some sense of the history of how the damage happened because, otherwise, it's easy to act in ways that are, as you say, orthogonal to addressing the real issues.
Oh and to be clear, as an American, I am a member of the "institution" of the USA, therefore I have those obligations of repair and restitution. But that's due to my citizenship, not my race.
The formatting of substack comments makes it slightly difficult to separate the quotes from my text. In case it's helpful for anyone....
The paragraph starting with, "a big problem" is quoting a tweet.
The paragraph starting with, "The Barnraiser Project" quotes the description of the organization.
Everything starting with, "I had to laugh " to the end of the comment is a quote from the linked interview.
Marie, you're speaking to me. The whole point is, this process is messy. Because humans and human relationships are messy. But there's no room for a mess in the current woke ideology. An ideology that seems to say, "if you aren't an audience member shouting Amen to the woke ideologues (because white silence is violence, but you better not center yourself by having thoughts or feelings or questions or ideas), you must be quiet and you can never have an authentic relationship with a person of color because you're racist."
For example, I just read this article which was linked in an Instagram account I follow: https://depinomelissa.medium.com/in-our-white-feelings-on-the-path-to-antiracism-5987e70a4dfb
And then I wrote this response, and deleted it:
I appreciate this story, because I've been through similar situations. But haven't we gone a little off the rails when a white person can't say "I like your shirt" to a Black person without wondering where she is on the spectrum of racism? And then we blame her for feeling stressed about it? And then we scold her for "centering" herself and her feelings in the very environment that has been specifically set up to discuss racism? It takes constant vigilance to fight your thoughts...that doesn't sound like a very life-giving relationship. And if we aren't allowed to expect our relationships with people of other races to be life-giving (because we're requiring them to do emotional labor) then what kind of relationship can white people ever have with people of color?
I'm asking 100% earnestly. And I would love an answer that goes beyond "you haven't done the work" or "you're so entrenched in your biases you can't even see it." I have, and I can. I was 100% on board with this ideology until it began resembling the Christianity I walked away from, in which I am always a hopeless sinner, there is no real path to redemption, and the only hope for me is to be forgiven by someone else.
That story was painful, and yes, relatable. Somewhere in the unraveling it all I realized that the only logical end point of this worldview was complete and total racial segregation (and perhaps mass transfer of wealth between them). Similarly, this WaPo story this morning made me want to scream and cry at the same time: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/07/24/black-women-office-work-home On the one hand, I absolutely do not want these women to feel this level of pain and frustration, and I have no doubt that they've all crossed paths with thoughtless co-workers. On the other hand... there is no amount of awareness of "micro-aggressions" in the world that will prevent them from happening forever, especially so long as we continue to hold dramatically different standards for what qualifies as one depending on who is involved. Even among white people, we are frequently awkward, rude, distant, too friendly, etc to each other. Adding the stress of racial differences can make those interactions exponentially more fraught, if either party lets it. In this instance, the conservatives are on to something simple: just try to treat everyone the same, and everyone as your equal. Don't get caught up in internalizing, dwelling on, then trying to suppress your latent white supremacy. It's as simple as saying: this person is my equal in every way, and really truly believing it. Neither your race, nor your habits, skills, preferences, experiences, or knowledge, none of it makes you a better (or worse) human being that the person you're interacting with. Will some people be frustrated with that sort of treatment? Possibly, but they are the people most likely to be frustrated with most interactions, so unfortunately, the way they feel in the interaction is largely out of your control at that point.
I'd re-post your comment :)
My husband works in an office space of mostly white men, but his boss is a white woman and the most senior employee other than the boss is a Black woman. I couldn’t’ read the WaPo article (paywall) but based on the title alone, this is happening in his office.
When I say his office, I mean it literally: the office space for his small department. Other departments in the same building and indeed the entire organization are very, very diverse. The leader of the organization is in fact a Black woman, so these standards aren’t being created and enforced by white people.
Every December this woman—who is also single—takes the entire month off (as I said she’s most senior and has lots of vacation time; she’s also capable of retiring at any time she wishes). Nobody has ever even said, hey that’s not fair to the rest of us, never mind denied her that time off. My husband has worked with her for 10 years, and this has always been the case. He’s always been sensitive to the fact that it must be awkward to be one of few women and the only Black woman in their office space. Now, since returning to the office, she barely acknowledges him (or anyone else, for that matter) when he greets her. He's wondering if she's angry at being required to come back to the office. Certainly how friendly or unfriendly she is is her prerogative. But her way of interacting with everyone else certainly isn't conducive to an emotionally healthy workplace environment.
In current wokism, I’m pretty sure I’d be deemed racist for how I described the situation. But isn’t that exactly what intersectionality is? An enumerating of a person’s individual qualities and assigning value to them?
You’re onto something about total segregation being the logical end. Just as Jewish people desired and certainly it could be said deserved, their own protected homeland, and thus established Israel (not arguing against Israel, just reaching for a potentially comparable scenario). But guess what? That already exists for Black Americans. Do you know about Liberia? It’s an African nation that was established by free African Americans. If you’re unfamiliar, I’d highly recommend doing some background research.
"But haven't we gone a little off the rails when a white person can't say 'I like your shirt' to a Black person without wondering where she is on the spectrum of racism?" But it wasn't just any shirt; it was a BLM shirt, so it's possible the guy wearing it could read her voiced approval as pandering. I personally wouldn't have commented on the shirt. But I'm also hugely opposed to "bringing your whole self to work." Bring your work self to work. Do your work, be courteous and friendly, and then go home to be your whole self. If you are in a supervisory position, do your damnedest to treat everyone fairly. In the capitalist reality we occupy, that's the best you can do.
I agree with you. But can anybody tell the new employee not to wear the BLM shirt? If you're openly wearing political slogans, you're practically daring people to comment or not, and judging them on their commentary or lack of it.
For what it's worth, I was until very very recently a total supporter of BLM. I still support the sentiment, I still support the full realization of equality which has not yet been achieved (in some ways, like incarceration, we are far from achieving justice). I just don't support how the organization is going about achieving those aims if, in fact, they're trying to achieve them at all.
"But can anybody tell the new employee not to wear the BLM shirt?" Funny you should ask! I'm married to an employment lawyer. It all depends on which state you live in, and whether you have a policy of allowing employees to wear clothing with political slogans. Whole Foods got into trouble because they fussed about employees wearing BLM masks. The official policy of Whole Foods is that you can't wear “visible slogans, messages, logos or advertising” on your clothes, but they hadn't been good about enforcing it, so people were wearing sports logos and other clothes with "messages". Because of the lax enforcement, the employees wearing BLM stuff claimed discrimination. The judge ruled against them in February, but it will probably be appealed.
Fascinating! Thanks for sharing
Very thoughtful piece! I like your stuff because you seem (you are?) more interested in getting it “right” right then in “winning” the argument.
My free advice is something I told my wife, a member of the clergy: don’t be afraid to pitch inside.
Survey your friends. Among them do you find Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, etc.? Trump supporters and haters? If so then it is far less likely that your friends will disown you for heterodox views. And by this I mean that if you are the type of person who collects diverse friends then those friends are in turn much more likely to be tolerant and open minded individuals with their own set of diverse acquaintances.
I would also add this: somebody on Twitter posted that most people throw out ideas not to see those ideas tested and examined but rather for reasons of affirmation and tribalism. Actually critiquing those ideas will result in hurt and shock most of the time. Geeks, of course, often fail to recognize this and consequently step in a lot of land mines.