Anyway: before I delve into the third part of this rambly letter to folk like myself (white progressives), I have to acknowledge that my own civility/tolerance gears are straining. The news about impeachment keeps coming. And now the President has announced--abruptly, apparently without consulting his military experts--that we're withdrawing support from Kurds in northern Syria, leaving them defenseless against Turkish depredations. (I'm no fan of our military interventions in the Middle East, but there are right and wrong ways to withdraw, especially when we've made good-faith promises with some Kurds.)
It's hard for me to see the sense of supporting the President. I'm trying. reading various right-wing sites daily to get their bead on the latest news. Much of the discourse there I find infuriating. I'd love to hear a full-throated defense of Trump's actions in the Ukraine transcript and in subsequent media appearances that doesn't either (1) throw up Biden Biden Biden chaff in the air, (2) retreat to the whataboutism of "well, the Democrats have done worse...", or (3) gesture weakly to the "well, he's just joking/trolling" defense. Really and truly, conservatives: Is it OK for Trump to ask foreign--sometimes hostile--powers for dirt on his main political opponent? Yes or no? I mean, if you're angry that Democrats did it, shouldn't you be angry that Trump is doing it, too? Wouldn't you be screaming if the parties were reversed here? Doesn't it bother you that Trump's whole deal with the Bidens in Ukraine is fueled by conspiracy theories previously debunked by Trump's own advisors?
I could go on. The point: I find it as hard as any progressive nowadays to adopt an attitude of generous curiosity toward Trump's supporters (and, I should add, those who don't approve of Trump but remain silent in the face of these charges).
I agree--I get it, really---that calls for civility in the face of lethal mendacity and disinformation can seem like asking victims to hug those who bully them.
BUT: the same principles that move me to anger when conservatives seem to flout them make me wince when I read things like this. It's a piece by Tim Wise, who is sort of the go-to white explainer or racism and white privilege to other white people. I rely on Wise's writings and arguments quite a bit when I teach or engage in anti-racism conversations with other white folk. He can be excellent about distilling complicated (and hidden, for most white people) histories and realities about race in the US into bite-sized nuggets that speak to white people. He mobilizes what rhetorical power his white straight male identity grants him while also highlighting those privileges as unearned. He has his detractors, including some black and brown writers who criticize him for using oxygen that might otherwise fuel their writing. But all in all I judge him a force for good in the cyberverse.
The piece in question, though, "Not Ready to Make Nice," reads as an anomaly. He starts on sensible enough ground, pointing out that calls for civility tend to aim at the left. We lefties (including people of color, LGBTQ+ folk, undocumented people, etc.) need to "understand" rural Trump voters. "Missing from these calls for civility and compassion," he writes, "are any comparable entreaties for the same from the other side.
No demands that Trump voters seek to understand, or even respect the essential humanity of black people in large cities, asylum seekers fleeing violence, or immigrants from the global south seeking a better life for their children. For these, calls of “send them back” or “build the wall” will suffice, or perhaps endorsements of stop-and-frisk so as to catch the presumably dangerous criminals responsible for what the president calls “American carnage.”
Such one-sided appeals, he continues, "infect 2020 election analysis":
Democratic candidates are expected to pander to small-town whites and sit with them in diners across the fruited plain to mine the depths of their despair. Why? Because these are, or so we are told, the swing voters without whom they cannot cobble together an electoral college victory. Republicans, apparently, need not appeal to the so-called middle, or moderates, or swing voters. They need not find out what black folks are talking about in the barbershop, what Latinx folks discuss at the bodega, or what members of the Unitarian Church are thinking. No, outreach is only for liberals.
Enough of this.
Fair enough. Wise scores a hit, I think, about the unidirectionality of civility nags. Outreach is only for liberals. I've read many a red-leaning piece praising this or that liberal for civility (Ellen DeGeneres being friends with George W. Bush, for instance). I can't remember the last time I read something of, by, and for red-leaning folk on these sites that suggests that they, the red-leaning folk, should try to listen to and understand blue-leaning folk. Writers and commenters on those sites tend to view themselves as an oppressed minority under mortal threat. The suggestion that they "understand" their enemies strikes them like the suggestion that Palestinians in the West Bank "understand" and "sympathize" and "reach out to" the Israeli Defense Force; it's unthinkably offensive because it ignores historical and contextual realities of asymmetrical power. It seems clear to me, though, that these fears aren't grounded in much reality and that the kind of folk rural red-leaning whites tend to fear are also those who stand to suffer most from red-leaning policies.
So yeah, I'm kinda with Tim Wise so far.
And then he goes off the rails.
More tomorrow,
JF
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