Part 1 of Dear White Progressives

(A work in progress)

Dear White Progressives--

With the impeachment craziness, 2020 elections, and massive polarization coalescing into a perfect storm of animus, we're going to be seeing an uptick in three popular sub-genres of online writing. There's the "polarization is bad/let's try to talk civilly to each other"  pieces. There's the "lefty/urban person ventures into Trump territory" pieces (aka "Trump safaris"). And there's the "I'm sick and tired of people telling me I need to be nice and empathetic to Trump supporters" pieces.

These sub-genres form proliferate in symbiotic relationship to each other. Calls for empathy/civility lead to red-state safari essays lead to exasperated rants--which in turn spur appeals for people to taaaaaaalk to each other, and so on.

Not exclusively, but primarily, such writing gets produced by and for white progressives. Like all things white, my writing included, this conversation reeks of a spoiled mix of guilt, good intentions, self-aggrandizement, and privilege. I'm pretty sure there's just no other mode of expression for left-leaning white people.

That sucks, but silence or inaction in the face of systemic injustices isn't a moral alternative right now.  There's a threshold past which "listening respectfully to other voices" becomes "indulging in the privilege of not participating." White progressives don't get to only signal-boost people of color to make arguments for the better world we all strive for. And I'll take spoiled lefty white writing over the truly toxic we're the real oppressed minority narratives from other sectors of whitedom.

The conversation is deeply flawed, in other words, but it's not one I feel I can sidestep. 

That said, within the civility-safari-reaction ecosystem I stake my niche in the "calls for depolarization" zone. For overlapping ethical, theological, and pragmatic reasons, I think it's vital for people to engage where safe and possible across boundaries and chasms of ideology. The liberal democratic system we (ostensibly) seek to realize requires such engagements. And it requires that such engagements unfold on a field of mutual presuppositions about the inherent value and dignity of other people. I can disagree with, fear, rage, or throw up my hands about another person, and I must hold those reactions in tension with awareness of the other as someone capable of suffering, feeling, and thinking as deeply as I do. Losing that common presumption means giving up on liberal democracy in favor of something else. Liberal democracy has tons of problems; I'm not convinced that the "something else" alternative systems on offer can boast better track records. Things can be much worse.

I try to embrace empathy-civility not because I think those values make me holier or better than everyone else. I hold them in part because my faith directs me to humbled empathy (or charitable humility). I recognize, regretfully, that those moments where I lose sight of the humanity of the other--even and especially in moments where I know I'm actually in the right--are moments where I make some of my worst decisions. I err on the side of empathy because I recognize how just plain awful I am at knowing and following the Good and the True. I recognize how easily I fall into patterns of treating people like manure in the name of the Good and True.

I espouse empathy and civility despite the fact that I often can't see people on the other side exercising those values toward others (especially women, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ+ folks, poor people, and a host of others). I don't base the legitimacy of my values on the behavior of my enemies. Trump doesn't get to dictate my moral baseline.

So--I do try when I can to understand "the other side" (recognizing there's not a monolithic "other side," really). As a theatre person, I'm inclined to try on another's worldview, to see how and why they value the things they do at affective and intellectual levels. In my scholarship, I strive to be able to articulate even the views of those opposed to me in such a way that advocates for that view would affirm the accuracy of my summary.

All that said, I get the gripes about civility-empathy pieces.

More tomorrow,

JF