2020 – THE YEAR OF CONFRONTING REALITY; THE YEAR THAT OFFERS THE POTENTIAL AND THE DEMAND FOR SIGNIFICANT CHANGE
I’ve just finished reading the book, How to be an Anti-Racist, by Ibram X. Kendi, and watching the movie, 13th.
In a way, it’s hard to imagine an encounter with a book and a film opening my mind in as significant and challenging a way to my views on racism, having lived this subject and thought about it and labored in it for close to 50 years. But these two interactions have had that effect.
For me, it has taken off the table any notion that a “color blind” or “race neutral” approach to confronting the racial divide that exists in this country will be adequate to the challenge.
The only thing that will make a difference, and this will be very hard, is changes in policy which can happen through the exercise of power—political power, corporate power, grassroots power.
This is not really a new discovery. It was only the civil rights laws and the voting rights laws of the 1960s that made a difference, and even that has been only a partial difference and one subject to erosion.
Racial bias is deep and enduring. It will not go away.
Eyes have been opened as never before to the deep inequities that exist racially. COVID-19 and the racial protests surrounding George Floyd’s death are doing that. We are witnessing a rallying of Whites together with Blacks in protesting inequities in policing and criminal conduct that I believe can, if sustained, result in substantive policy change.
The biggest challenge lies in changing the distribution of income and wealth. This affects the poor, particularly Black, but people of every race and color.
The gulf in income and wealth between the top 20% and 1% and the bottom 50% (pick the percentages as you wish) is growing larger, not smaller. COVID-19 and its economic consequences will make this gap grow larger, not smaller. The new administration, which I trust will be led by Joe Biden, is going to have to take decisive steps in income distribution and inheritance policy. As Kendi summarizes: “Individual behaviors can shape the success of individuals. But policies determine the success of groups. And it is racist power that creates the policies that cause racial inequities.”
I drew many points from this book and film which opened my mind and some that challenged me. In particular:
- Reassessing my commitment to and call for the integration of Whites and Blacks. I have sometimes lamented how Blacks separate themselves to be on their own. I now see this evinces a certain disrespect and lack of appreciation for the natural desire of Blacks to share their culture and friendships with one another. No one would criticize Whites for getting together as a group, drinking beers after a golf game, at a bar. To be clear, my motivation for desiring the coming together of Blacks and Whites in sustained relationships is based on my own experience on the best way for White people to come to appreciate the individuality of individuals who happen to be Black. “Individuality,” including all their personal qualities. I still hold to this view—strongly. But I have to acknowledge a watch-out in this and it contains an element of racism.
At Yale, as I saw Black students sitting together in dining rooms, I did not see “these spaces,” as Kendi describes them, as ones of simple and understandable.cultural solidarity. “Integrationists think about them as a movement away from White people,” Kendi writes.
- The film, 13th, presents this remarkable analogy. A monopoly game that has gone on for almost 500 years. Blacks were allowed to be at the table for the first 400 years, even as slaves. But everything they made in the game was not theirs. It was turned over to their competitor, White people. Then, during the last years of the game, running up to today, they were allowed to keep something, but less than the White people and too often, when they were successful, they were attacked, as Blacks were in the Tulsa riots in the early part of the 20th century.
Now comes the clincher. Blacks are asked to play Monopoly today. They’re told they are starting out with the same stakes as the White people. They’re “free” now, so there is no reason they shouldn’t be able to compete equally. But no account is taken that their White competitors have, over the course of time, accumulated lots of houses and hotels; they’ve been able to take possession of the key properties like Boardwalk and Park Place. Some equal opportunity!
While I think it may be changing at this moment—I hope so—there has been a huge cleavage in opinion between Whites and Blacks in the belief that the country has made the changes needed to give Blacks equal rights with Whites. For example, in a survey of nearly 8,000 police officers in 2017, nearly all (92%) of White officers agreed with the post-racial idea that “our country has made the changes needed to give Blacks equal rights with Whites.” Only 6% of White officers agreed with the idea that “our country needs to continue making changes to give Blacks equal rights with Whites” compared to 69% of Black officers.
- I’ve become even more aware of the burden Black people are asked to play. You’re expected to exhibit “good Black behavior” in order to make White people “less racist.” In other words, Blacks feel they have to prove something, not just about themselves but about their race.
At the same time, they carry the burden for exhibiting to their Black friends that they have not left their Black heritage and Black culture behind.
As I reflect—how often have I looked at an outstanding Black man or woman, and I’ve known so many, and think of them as a model of their race? Yes, I’ve done that.
How often, on the other hand, do I look at a White person whom I value and think of them as an outstanding representative of the White race? Never.
So, a racist lens does affect my view, even at this ripe age of 81.
Kendi concludes with some very important points that I had not thought about in the way he presents them.
“Moral and educational suasion breeds the assumption that racism minds must be changed before racist policy, ignoring history that says otherwise. Look at the soaring White support for desegregated schools and neighborhoods decades after the policies changed in the 1950s and 1960s. Look at the soaring White support for interracial marriage decades after the policy changed in 1967.”
“To fight for mental and moral changes after policy is changed means fighting alongside growing benefits and the dissipation of fears, making it possible for anti-racist power to succeed. To fight for mental and moral change as a prerequisite for policy changes to fight against growing fears and apathy makes it almost impossible for anti-racist power to succeed.”
“Changing minds is not a movement. Critiquing racism is not activism. Changing minds is not activism. An activist produces power and policy change, not mental change.”
I join this line of reasoning only to a point. I believe it is important to simultaneously work to change minds even as we change policies.
When it comes to diversity and inclusion, this is what has always led me to start with the mandate, “Make diversity happen now, in your own circle of influence.” For it is as it happens that people experience the benefits of diversity they also come to see the rumored dangers that they might have suspected are fables.
Kendi is no Pollyanna optimist. Nor am I. He says, and I agree, before we can treat racism, we must “believe in the possibility that we can strive to be anti-racist from this day forward. Racist power is not godly. Racist policies are not indestructible. Racial inequities are not inevitable.”
He makes the point that “race and racism are power constructs of the modern world. For roughly 200,000 years, before race and racism were constructed in the 15th century, humans saw color but had not grouped the colors into continental races, did not commonly attack negative and positive characteristics to those colors and rank the races to justify racial inequity, to reinforce racist power and policy.”
He is right, certainly as he talks about institutional slavery and racism. But there is no mistaking the tendency of the human race, over time and to this current day, to separate ourselves from “others,” defined by race, yes, but defined in other terms—religious beliefs, ethnicity and other differentiators. In the end, our task is to view every person as an individual, appreciate them for their differences, see the world as best we can through their eyes, recognize that our DNA structures are 99.9% the same and, if we hold to a religious belief, as I do, that we are all children of God.
I close by recommending you consider reading Kendi's book or watching the documentary "13".
