Smoke

Staying up way past when I need to sleep to be less sick in the morning and ready to try to get fit at the gym, I tuned in to a show about Hip Hop Theater. It was very interesting but sort of a mess as a whole, as these things tend to be, because the various parties involved did not have a consistent idea of what the problem was or what the dialogue around the problem should be. Some people were mad at Capitalism, some people were mad at those co-opting hip-hop's inherent political critique and others were mad that white people controlled the means of distribution. Now, the real revolutionary says that those are all the same parcel of The Real Problem but that does not help much with solution or dialogue.

What really hit home, though, is that I would be defensive about the role and blame assigned to white people by the panelists. I am not a programming director for Clear Channel, I think that they do a lot of harm to the world. I am also not a force for gentrification in my "transitional" neighborhood, though I am an interloper. In fact, I am generally sympathetic to the remarks that the panelists were making, if I think about them as intellectual ideas, so why the defensiveness? Part is obviously insecurity and my natural combativeness. Primarily, though, it is easy for me to forget about racial problems as a white person and really easy to not see them as greater than individual-to-individual affairs.

Everytime that I remember this simple truth, I run a thought experiment. Usually it is not deliberately, but I am dumb to the degree that I accidentally rediscover this simple truth about once every two weeks, starting from scratch each time. Slavery was only four generations ago. Jim Crow was one, two or none, depending on how old you are. Apartheid South Africa was almost certainly in your lifetime if you are reading this. That means that stories of being enslaved are just as present in the lives of people today as the stories I hear of family dairy farms, portraits on the stairs and antiques in the house. Memories of Jim Crow, lynchings and state force against demonstrators for an end to segregation are more recent than my grandmother's tales of washing clothes by hand and dusting to get a nickel and a dime for both movies and a candy bar on Saturday afternoon. Just as recent as my dad's stories about tormenting his frat brothers' oppugnants or my uncle getting even with the boy who made fun of his crutches by beating his tormentor with them. While you have been around to watch television, President Reagan vetoed a bill imposing sanctions on South Africa for perpetuating the Apartheid system. That same president pushed to reinstate the tax exempt status of private schools that discriminated based on race.

Our social contract requires a great deal of trust for our society to function effectively. We all sacrifice some liberty, some privilege in order that all may enjoy greater security, happiness and, in the end, freedom. Even if you think that racism is done and gone from our society, white people have been abusing that social contract to the detriment of whatever groups were not considered white up until, at the very least, the late 1980's. It is irresponsible and unduly idealistic to imagine that when it becomes shameful to say that black people are dumber than white people, and the state no longer condones open discrimination, the air is cleared and we all get a fresh start. That trust needs to be earned and the social bonds of our Grand Experiment need to be reforged in a just way if we expect the system to work properly.

Ben Folds Five are singing about a relationship here but the message resonates: "Those who say the past is not dead, well, stop and smell the smoke. You keep saying the past is not dead, well stop and smell the smoke." Even when racial prejudice disappears, the stink will not wash out without deliberate effort.


EDIT: I left out the most important part, the bit tying the beginning to the latter half. In instances like this in which one is listening to someone else share feelings they cannot fully comprehend, it is important to be conscious in listening constructively and openly rather than defensively or in a critiquing manner. Sharing your own view point and justifying defensiveness is rarely productive, particularly initially.