Note: I focus on what I'm learning from Black scholars, activists, and academics in this essay; however, I want to note that people of color throughout this country deal with similar--oftentimes worse--situations because of racism. Native, Latinx, Asian, and other minorities also suffer immensely because of the pernicious poison of racism. I am a huge beneficiary of the systemic racism in the United States of America. Some of the privilege I have comes through no fault of my own, of course--I didn't choose to be a white cis-het male born in Utah. I don't have a problem with those aspects of myself; despite what some people might claim about the purposes of race- and gender studies, learning a type of self-loathing because of my privilege isn't the end result of studying these topics. (Besides, I'm a Mormon--a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--so I don't need an academic course to learn how to self-loathe; I already know how, thank you very much.) I recently finished Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Dr. Beverly Tatum and I'm working through Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall--I recommend both of them, by the way--as I, along with the rest of the country, tries to come to grips with the continued protests against police brutality. I've denounced racism before and I do it again: I'm anti-racist and believe that the current system in America needs radical and permanent change. What I've lacked up until now is a stronger understanding of the ways in which racism rots the American experience. What's valuable to recognize, I think, is this simple question: Why does racism keep getting blamed for what's going on? In other words, if Einstein couldn't find a universal theorem to explain physics, what hope have we to figure out a unifying theory of social inequity and problems? Adjacent to that question is another issue, one rooted in the conceit of the "best possible world" and millenarian theology, which I think helps explain the equally puzzling reality that so many people actively shore-up, defend, support, and apologize (in an academic sense) for racism, misogyny, and the patriarchy. What I hope to do here is trace a couple of things that I'm seeing on both of these issues. This post tackles the first one: Why can racism be blamed for so many ills? I find it helpful to follow the Socrates-attributed concept that "the beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms" and define a couple of terms. I found Dr. Tatum's definitions incredibly useful as I started to see the larger, more complex components of racism in our society. First, she uses Ven dem Berghe's explanation about what race is: "a group that is socially defined but on the basis of physical criteria, including skin color and facial features" (96). She goes on to include the definition of ethnic (which is something I've struggled to understand) as a "a socially defined group based on cultural criteria, such as language, customs, and shared history" (96). These two concepts are closely intertwined and can often be self-generating and -reaffirming*. The other definition that Dr. Tatum operates under is a simple, six-word definition of racism that helps demonstrate my thesis: Quoting David Wellman, she says that racism is a "system of advantage based on race" (87). I've been teaching my students that racism is a description of the operations of power--who has it, who controls it, who can face it--within our society, but I like Wellman's more. That simplicity underscores why it's so useful to use when considering the racially-centered problems in our society, and it also shows why it feels like "everything is about race". It's because it kind of is. Before looking at that, though, I feel like there's more to the question of "Why does it have to be about race?" Really, it's the assumptions that are going on beneath the question that deserve some attention. I don't want to craft a strawman to argue with here, so I'm going to recognize that there are many lived experiences that I don't have access to--many of which I don't care to learn about at this point in my life, if I'm being honest--and that not everyone who asks this question is a bad faith actor, antagonistic to the idea, or any other criteria. However, there's a strong likelihood that someone who asks this question out of a sense of genuine confusion and frustration is A) white, B) comparatively socioeconomically secure, and C) misled by what is being asked of society when race is discussed. The reason that this conception is important is because there's a lot that the questioner reveals by even asking the question. It assumes that it isn't already about race, which argues that the speaker hasn't had to be racially aware in any significant or consistent way. Dr. Tatum explains this anecdote that drives the point home: I often begin the classes and workshops [on racial inequality] by asking […]: "What is your class and ethnic background?" White participants […] often pause before responding. On one such occasion a young White woman quickly described herself as middle-class but seemed stumped as to how to describe herself ethnically. Finally, she said, "I'm just normal!" (185) If you're in a system that doesn't provide advantages based upon race, then racism isn't affecting you**. That doesn't make it not real, just less influential. Almost all systems--educational, religious, bureaucratic, justice, consumer, political, medicinal, and more--have been constructed on the premise of white superiority. To focus on just one area, there is an abundance of evidence supporting what many Black people already knew: Black patients are not correctly treated by white doctors. Over 40% of first- and second year medical students have bought into the falsehood that Black people's skin is thicker than a white person's, and that they don't feel as much pain. The students may not harbor animosity towards Black people, but they are still operating within the confines of a racist system. There's still harm; there's still trauma.
Better qualified and smarter people than I have laid out the case--backed by decades of research from sundry areas--for all of the other systems I noted above. (Again, Dr. Tatum's single-volume take helps provide a good groundwork for many of them.) When the forest is racism, you can sometimes mistake the trees as "social justice warriors'" protest du jour. The brutality of police against Black bodies, the disenfranchisement of Black voters, the starvation of Black youths, the hyper-, over-, and premature sexualization of Black girls--all of these things are all tied back to one specific and clear source: Institutional, perpetual, and enforced racism. There's a paradox at play, here: People prefer simple answers over complex ones…or maybe they prefer complex answers when a simple one will suffice. (People are complicated…or maybe we're really simple. I don't know.) The point is, when it comes to complexity versus simplicity, we run into hypocrisy. One stance is that life is so large, complicated, and multifaceted (which it is) that we can't reduce the behaviors of people and institutions into "racist" and "not-racist". Ironically, it is a simple answer to the complexity of the question. Another stance is that racism itself is large, complicated, and multifaceted, infecting and indoctrinating its hate-poison into and throughout the histories, institutions, and programs that people create, causing lasting harm and perpetuating sundry types of violences on to all people of color. Another is that "Blacks are racist, too!", as if that claim (which doesn't work within the context of systemic racial problems, though might fit within the bigotries and prejudices of individual Black people) justifies a failure to engage with and interrogate racism and its many manifestations. Additionally, this point of view is absolutely "thing-adjacent"*** and not the point that needs to be addressed. I wonder if it comes from a suspicion that Occam's Razor isn't sharp enough to apply in most situations--which is not necessarily a bad take. However, the more you learn about how racism intersects with things like gender identity, socioeconomic inequalities, school-to-prison pipeline, and educational opportunities, the more you see that the simplicity of the answer ("because racism") only opens the door to discovering the solution. Kimberlé Crenshaw's efforts in expanding the role of feminism to better incorporate these intersecting difficulties is one of the ways that helps to provide the nuance that's needed to the question of why racism exists--and why that's such a big deal. And maybe that's another component to the question in the first place: Why does it matter so much if [fill in the blank with institution of your choice] is racist? I struggle to take this particular question seriously. I definitely believe that there's a lot of good to be had by having conversations. Debates, Socratic seminars, thoughtful panels--these are all good and healthy things. However, I'm at a loss to understand why certain things are considered fair game. I was under the impression that we had already answered questions like, "Are Black people humans?" and "Do Black people deserve rights?" I've always believed that, when it comes to the concept of Nazism and the foul toxin of fascism, we fought against those ideas. How many times does a bad idea need to be brought up and defeated before people stop zombifying it? How is it that some people think that they can run a Socratic discussion on whether or not another human being counts as human? As the police continues to riot against people protesting their brutality in the name of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter; as the country fails to again confront the bitter roots of racial injustice that are fundamental to its history; as the states fracture over their proper role and their people die in the interim; as corruption at the highest levels of the government go unopposed--if not endorsed and empowered--by political parties; as life-altering decisions about educational needs and public health requirements become infected with politicization; as our world bakes through the hottest year on record; as cabin fever and reckless indifference stokes the flames of the pandemic; as we reel from headline to headline, never being able to grasp what a moment may mean before another one avalanches us; as life continues to be so complicated and difficult, it can be hard to see how so much of these issues are coming out of the same fount. And for someone who is pretty opposed to conspiracy theory thinking, it's tempting to dismiss the idea that we can just blame racism for so many of the problems that we see. I feel that recognizing the problem as racism is too often conflated with solving the problem of racism. It isn't enough to point out that there are Confederate generals whose statues are in front of state capitols. Doing something about that is what's necessary. And though statue-removal is definitely "thing-adjacent", it's a way of working into the deeper, more difficult work of understanding the rotten legacy that racism has left us. It is an example of praxis as an answer to the question. I have a lot more to learn, understand, and believe. I can take certain points as axiomatic, allowing them to be the foundations on which I can build my clearer view of the world--the reality of racism, the personhoods of people of color, the recognition of my privilege. Moving forward from there will be its own challenge--one for another day. --- * As a lifelong Mormon, it makes me wonder if there may be a time when the religious culture of Mormonism becomes so disparate from the way mainstream Christianity operates (as if it isn't already like this) that Mormonism eventually morphs into an ethnicity. I think there are a lot of reasons why it fits Ven dem Berghe's definition. For example, if you don't know what a Mormon means by FHE, Mutual, or food storage, then it shows that you're outside of the cultural taxonomy Mormonism uses. (Or, to push it further, if you aren't aware of the way my use of the word Mormon affects members of the Church, there's another example of lexicographically generated cultural differences.) There's a lot to process here, more than a footnote allows, so I'ma put a pin in this and see if we ever return to the thought. ** Writ large, the American system is most definitely racist, so there's technically no escaping its pernicious influence. However, there are other systems that abound, and sometimes, within the contexts of those smaller systems, racism doesn't have as strong a hold. Family dynamics, for example, may not see many directly racist effects (assuming, of course, that there isn't a problem within a mixed-race relationship) within the interpersonal experiences. *** I happened upon the thinking of Jane Coaston via a Twitter thread--which I can't find right now--that helped to draw focus on why it feels like there are a million fires to put out and more keep springing up. She talks about "the thing" and being "thing-adjacent". The example she brought up is the face mask hullabaloo. The "thing-adjacent" is that masks are an infringement of rights (in a way that pants aren't, I guess?) and so on and so forth; "the thing" is the absolute, unequivocal failure on the part of the United States to get a handle on the pandemic. If the "thing" (pandemic response) had been taken care of, the "thing-adjacent" (mask wearing) wouldn't need to be focused on. Because we tend to focus on "thing-adjacent" controversies, we leave the underlying "thing" uncontested or unchallenged. I'm not a fan of the terminology, if I'm being honest, but it's an effective way of conceptualizing the issue. When mid-March arrived and, with breathtaking rapidity, schools went from business-as-usual to crisis schooling, I held back on any opinions about the next school year. I didn't entertain questions about what it would look like, nor postulate how bad the pandemic might become, thereby necessitating some large-scale changes in how I visualize my teaching. I did this for two reasons: 1) I was busy trying to figure out what the best way was for educating my students remotely, and 2) Conceiving of changes implied that my worst suspicions and expectations would be confirmed; namely that statewide responses to the unprecedented (except it wasn't, but who reads history?) event would be so poor as to make opening schools untenable.
The end of the school year was difficult for a lot of reasons. (I detail a couple of them in this other post.) Once the grief process had worked its way through and summer arrived fully, it was easy to fall into my normal summer experience. I tend to be pretty introverted and hermetic, so the pandemic didn't put a lot of strain on my expectations. There were some, of course: I like to take my sons on a special summer experience once per season--a museum, a game store, whatever--but I couldn't do that this year. I also go on a writing retreat with my writing group, which also didn't happen. The Utah Shakespeare Festival had to cancel its season (and I wouldn't have gone anyway), which still hurts my heart. (It will be the first time since 2006 that I haven't gone to Cedar City for my biannual pilgrimage.) As summer waxed, so, too, did Utah's COVID-19 cases. The governor shut schools and churches and sports and a bunch of other things early on in the crisis, but failed to maintain any sort of discipline on the closures. Cases increased and restrictions eased--an inverse of what ought to have happened. Only on 9 July--a full four months after the pandemic began--did Governor Herbert announce that schools would be required to have everyone present masked, a no-brainer of a decision that still required a huge amount of effort to attain. The governor failed to make the mandate a statewide requirement, however, wagging his finger and telling Utahns that they had better start being more responsible or else! (For context: Since the beginning of July, Utah has seen its three highest days of COVID transmission, with our current peak being 9 July 2020 with 866 cases…coincidentally, that's the day where the school mask-mandate came into play.) The national discourse about the wearing of masks--the idea that the government can't tell us what to wear (even though you definitely have to wear clothing when you go outside or else you'll be jailed is, without a doubt, the government telling us what to wear) somehow becoming a rallying cry for armchair Constitutionalists and conspiracy-prone "thinkers"--has made it abundantly clear to me that my worst suspicions and expectations for the federal response to the pandemic were far too generous. And that's saying something. I'm not a fan of conservative politics in general--the thing that they're most often trying to conserve is racism and exploitation under the guise of governmental non-intervention, regardless of what their roots may have been--and I'm highly critical of the man in the Oval Office, so it's not really surprising that my biases meant I didn't have a lot of faith in the government's ability to handle the coronavirus. I admit that I was expecting it to get bad. What I didn't expect was that people would continue to see President Trump as a savior of democracy and a competent president. I assumed that the botched job would serve as a physical, visceral, personal reminder of his failings and would push his pertinence and rhetoric out of our collective minds. But, no. Currently, the United States is home to Florida, one of the largest epicenters in the world of COVID-19. Over 137,000 Americans who were alive to celebrate the advent of 2020 have gone to their graves like beds, killed because of the disease or complications exacerbated by it. That number surpasses how many American soldiers died in World War I by a clear margin…and it took 18 months of being involved in that war to get to our final death numbers. In the case of COVID, we're not even a half-year in. And, while we're still far away from the 1918 numbers (about 675,000 Americans died from that pandemic, more than both World Wars combined, and in the same ballpark as number of dead from the Civil War), we aren't out of danger. At all. I was curious how well we're doing now compared to 1918, which saw its first case on 4 October 1918 and then, by April 1919, had sufficiently contained the virus. Those six months saw about 9% of its population (10,268 people) come down with the influenza. The death count? A reported 576 people. As of right now, not even six months into this debacle, Utah is sitting at 28,855 cases and 212 deaths. Since history harmonizes, it's not surprising to learn that our current case number is about 9% of our 2020 population. That we have less than half as many deaths is a credit to the advances in medical technology and health care, which has absolutely blunted the lethal edge of coronavirus. However, medical experts warn that there is a pending crisis of hospital beds and ICUs that will allow that relatively low death number to remain relatively low. "It feels like we're headed for disaster." And it is in that context that I think about the pending school year. It cannot happen. I fully recognize the manifold problems, nuances, and complications that are tied up with the opening of schools in a month*. I am not insensitive to this at all. I don't know of a teacher who doesn't recognize the dilemma that's involved. Parents need the schools open so that they can return to work; students and teachers put back into the boxes we vacated in March will become vectors of the disease. It's what will happen, given what we know about transmission, infection, and difficulty with COVID-19. Parents demanding that schools open up in five weeks are demanding that teachers and students die for them. It's that simple. The danger to parents, students, teachers, and staff is higher and worse than it was in March. I'm positively baffled by the double standard here. The state of Utah has shown itself incapable of flattening the curve (see again the case counts). Our worst days of this virus are most likely ahead of us. And while there are some measures that can make schools safer, there isn't a way to make them safe. There's a narrative out there that only old people or those with underlying conditions need be worried about the coronavirus, and it's one that people want to believe so much that they are willing to risk lives for it. There are disturbing potential connections to COVID-19 and Kawasaki-like symptoms**. We have no idea what kind of long-term effects COVID-19 can have on a body--young or old--a few months down the line, to say nothing about a year or two or five from now. Deliberately putting people into harm's way in order to serve the economy is ghoulishly revolting. Alternatives do exist, of course. The most obvious one is to lockdown the state, reassess what we mean by "essential workers", and then pay everyone else to stay home. And I mean that: Pay everyone to stay home. Put a hold on all debt payments--not deferring to a few months down the line, I mean a complete stop--and guarantee a universal basic income that allows for food and necessities to be purchased. If people don't have to work, they won't have to insist their kids go to school. However you parse it, though, sending kids off to school "in the fall" is like encouraging them to play with their toys in the street: It's only a matter of time until a preventable tragedy strikes. --- * That's one of the ways in which the danger is being downplayed: We keep saying "in the fall". "Schools should open in the fall." In Utah, that's never been when we go back to school. For us, the school year begins on 18 August--that's five weeks from when I'm writing this. That is still summertime. The sun doesn't go to bed until 10:00 in August; the mercury consistently plays in the high 90s. "Fall" conjures images of autumnal leaves and crisp mornings, a distinctive change in temperature and frost on the lawns. But that isn't what we're actually talking about. When people say schools need to open up "in the fall", they actually mean, "middle of next month". ** This particular article is indicative of the willingness to perpetuate the narrative about who's vulnerable to this disease. If you notice the second bullet point of the summation at the top, it says, "New study pointed out a third of these pediatric patients were obese or had other medical woes". That means that two-thirds did not. The vast majority of those kids were not in a high-risk category! Not only that, but with heart-, lung-, kidney-, diabetes-, age, or obesity problems all being linked to higher mortality rate for COVID-19, essentially half of America is at risk in some form or another. And when you think about the potential transmission factors, almost everyone--or someone they love--is at higher risk. Pointing out that a third of these kids had additional problems tricks readers into finding a way to not be worried about what's going on. Here's a hypothetical: Say that all 330,000,000 Americans get coronavirus and only 1% of them die. When we read "1%", we're inclined to think that isn't so bad. But 1% of 330 million is 3.3 million dead. That's more than all of our wars that we've ever been in combined, plus the 1918 pandemic. Check out this video if you're interested in seeing how our brain tricks us into thinking that this situation isn't as bad as it really is. |
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