recent events

(This is two posts mashed together, one written last fall after I read What Truth Sounds Like, one the week of June 8th, both of them edited this week. In other words, it is long. Sorry about that, but I thought it was better to get it all over with in one post. I think I've already proven that I'm not an expert on racism, so don't expect brilliance. I'm tempted to say don't read this post because honestly, white voices are not what is needed right now. Yet here I am.)

Part One

I just wrote and re-wrote and deleted and re-wrote and edited and deleted three paragraphs on the topic of racism, and I've decided to leave them deleted because nobody needs to hear about another white woman uncovering more layers of recognition of her privilege. But it's a dilemma. Sometimes you need to talk about it.

It's not like I didn't know about my privilege before--I understood the idea of white privilege the first time I heard about it thirty years ago-- but I also still have lots more to learn. And I'm discovering, after some things I posted on Instagram, that if you talk about new layers of things you're learning, the assumption is that you knew nothing before, that the whole world of white privilege was an unknown to you until this moment. I've even had people unfollow me.

Whatever you may have made of the story I told you a couple of years ago, I've been supportive of social justice work since a couple of ferociously progressive teachers in my elementary school taught us what was what back in the 60s. (I was so proud of those young men with their raised fists on the medal podium at the 1968 Olympics.)(I was in second grade.)

I may not have been very brave about bucking the status quo, but I've never wanted people of color to suffer or to have fewer opportunities than I do. But I confess that in the past, I've believed that since I vote pro-social justice, I've done everything I needed to do. Racism had nothing to do with me, I thought, because I am not one of those ignorant, racist people. 

Clearly, that kind of passive anti-racism has not been enough to change the way things are. And that means I've had a steep learning curve about the reality of racism in our country. I keep learning more and more about how insidious racism is, and how it has continued practically unchecked without me realizing that it did.

I didn't know, but at some level I have to be honest and say I didn't want to know. I wanted to be able to keep living my untroubled life, at least untroubled by racism. I wanted to believe that the only people who were still racist in the US were a small number of uneducated yahoos that everybody knew were crazy. I was wrong.

And if we can't keep talking about what we're learning, even long after our original moment(s) of insight, we're doing a disservice to the complexity of dismantling racism in this country. It's not a one-time light bulb moment. If saying that--being honest that I'm learning about racism even as I oppose it-- means I get "canceled" because I'm a racist, what are we even doing here? Are we not allowed to learn? Am I supposed to pretend I have perfect understanding when I don't?

Part Two

Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old who was shot by a white man in 2012 for simply walking through his neighborhood, was the "wake up" moment for me. I have a black nephew. He walks through a white neighborhood every day. But just like I wake up bleary-eyed and foggy-brained every morning, that wake-up moment didn't mean I instantly, totally understood the complexity of systemic racism.

I've been occasionally reading and researching ever since, but a couple of years ago I started getting more serious about it-- honestly, at least partly inspired by Colin Kaepernick. He fascinated me (Dean is a moderately serious 49ers fan) even before he set off a firestorm of white outrage. When he knelt for the national anthem (do you remember that at first, he sat?), I was curious. What was he up to? Why did something so simple, so seemingly innocuous, cause such a bitterly furious response?

At first I just read stuff on the internet. And then Austin Channing Brown's I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness. And then So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo last spring. And What Truth Sounds Like by Michael Eric Dyson last fall. And fiction by many black authors.

That probably sounds like bragging, and I suppose at some level it is, but I'm hardly a saint about this. First of all, the more I read, the more I realize how dumb I am about the experience of people of color in our country, even when I've lived and worked right alongside them. And secondly, I argue with these authors in my head. I don't always agree with them. 

But I've learned far more than I've argued. I've been shocked by some of the experiences I've read about, the statistics I've been ignorant of, the systemic oppression that happens while I've blithely looked away. And saddest of all, I'm embarrassed by the way white liberals have not been helpful at. all. (The Dyson book is especially telling on that subject.) The one thing I know for sure: the way people of color are too often treated in this country is just flat-out wrong. There is no excuse. We have to do better. 

So, not sure where I'm going here. I don't want this to be a fad, something that I get all excited about and then a couple of months from now, I've moved along to something else. For several years now, I've wanted this to be an ongoing part of how I live, and that means reading books by black authors and immigrants and Indians and Hispanics and Muslims and members of the LGBTQ community. 

I'm not sure exactly what else it means. Montana is more diverse now than it was when we moved here, but there are still only a few people of color where we live. But I can call people out for racist remarks (and I have)(I have to be honest and tell you it rarely works). I can be open to change and encourage others to do the same. And I can acknowledge that I'm still learning, still uncovering layers of ignorance in myself, hidden attitudes I'm ashamed of, and resistance to change in the places I least want it. But it's work that's worth doing, work that has to be done.

understanding conservatives part 2

I know I've already said this about twenty times, but it bears repeating: my point in writing this two-part post isn't to change your mind or convince you that conservatives are Right. I'm just trying to build bridges instead of continuing to more minutely describe how we disagree. And if you needed further proof of how chaotic it is inside my brain, this post will do it. It's all over the place.

OK, so picking up after yesterday's post....

Another thing: conservatives hate it when we exaggerate to make a point. Once you see it, you realize that we do it all the time. The other night while I was watching the Oscars, at least twice someone talked about some unjust situation in the past and then said something to the effect of "and nothing has changed."

Well, yes, actually, it has. We're a long ways from equality in the workplace, but there are women at the highest levels of corporate American. They're there, and they weren't fifty years ago. Slavery has been illegal for 150 years. Jim Crow laws were declared unconstitutional in the 1960s. Yes, there is still insitutional racism, and yes, we still have a long ways to go, and yes, I can recognize latent racism in my own mind. We're not done by any means. But we start getting pushback on these issues when we try to say that they are the "same" as slavery or segregated water fountains.

(and if you wanted to make a case that in some ways racism is worse now--because it's so insidious-- I'm listening. But you've lost Mr. Middle Class American White Guy. And maybe you legit don't care.)

I live in the midwest, and since most questions about race seem to center around urban areas and the South, I'll just throw out there that there are a whole lot of people in middle American who grew up in all white towns, went to all-white schools, and never saw a black person other than on TV until they were adults. So maybe we could cut a little slack for the guy who was at the bottom of the pecking order at his all-white high school and rolls his eyes when we talk about white privilege. What does that even mean if you live in an area where everyone is white?

(you don't have to explain it to me. I get it. I'm just pointing out the flip side.)

I listened to a conversation between a couple of conservatives not long ago and realized something that I've been chewing on ever since. I think most liberals would list social justice as the most important issue facing our country right now (or maybe the environment, but I'm leaving that aside for the moment). We might quibble about which aspect of social justice we should tackle first--fighting discrimination based on gender, orientation, race, identity, or sexual harassment in the workplace or police brutality or or or, but for the most part, liberals are all on board with social justice.

But for most conservatives, social justice is not what they want from government. Outside of the truly awful, it's not that they don't care about social justice. Some of them care very much, especially when it's something that's right in front of them in their own community (witness the conservatives that attend my church).

No, I think that for conservatives (at least the socially aware ones), it's that the laws to protect people's rights are already on the books. What else is government supposed to do? If the laws aren't being enforced, then that's a conversation we can have, these conservatives might say. But what exactly is the role of government in fighting social prejudice? After outlawing discrimination, how can the government change attitudes? It's a question that's worth some thought (and I think there are some good answers).

Which brings up the point that conservatives really resent it when liberals act like they have a corner on morality. Well, I'm a liberal, so I care about these things, which you obviously don't, or else you'd be a liberal, too, our reasoning seems to go. It's worth pointing out that George Wallace, the infamous governor of Alabama whose signature issue was opposing the Civil Rights movement, was a Democrat. The Jim Crow laws were legislated by Democratic legislatures across the South. Lifelong Republicans who are in their 60s and 70s have pretty good grounds to be mystified by this sanctimonious insistence that Democrats are the only ones who care about civil rights.

Which brings me to one final thought, and I'm not sure how to put it into words. But here is a pattern that you see over and over again. Liberals see an issue that they think needs work, but conservatives don't see it as a problem. So Liberals crank up the rhetoric, start the (perceived) exaggerations, talk louder. Conservatives still don't seem to care. So Liberals crank it up again, getting more and more hysterical. By now Conservatives are totally and completely tuned out. (Think back to the women following Jeff Flake into the elevator during the Kavanaugh hearings, then posing for social media with triumphant grins on their faces.)

It's a classic case of doing the same thing that's not working over again, but louder. Somebody said (supposedly Einstein), "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results." Yeah, well, by that definition our entire country is completely insane right now. We just keep having the same arguments.

I think it's possible that the older conservatives I know are more turned off by hysteria than anything else. The ones among them that like to cause trouble will even try to set it off, because they know they can. Say something slightly sexist, or slightly racist, or whatever, and watch the fur fly. It's as predictable as the sun coming up every day.

I read a blogger a couple of months ago make an offhand, positive comment about styrofoam cups in a completely unrelated context, and I thought to myself, oh, boy, here we go. And sure enough, the comments started. Don't you care about the environment? Don't you care about what you're doing to the ozone layer? I'm surprised at you! I thought you knew better than this! 

I personally do my best to avoid styrofoam, but that's not the point. The point is that I could see that blogger getting angry and resentful at the sanctimonious comments, comments about a situation that really they knew nothing about. (Maybe styrofoam cups are the one anti-environmental thing she allows herself. Remember my face-wipes?) But they felt they had the god-given right to pass judgment.

And speaking of things that are as predictable as the sunrise, this got way too long again. I can't really think of any big overarching conclusions to draw. Maybe this: avoid hysteria. If you think the world should be different, be the change you want to see. Don't shout, scream, bludgeon, judge, preach. It just makes the walls between us that much stronger.

And speaking of moralizing. I'm getting off my soapbox now. I can't imagine that I will be able to think of anything else to say in time for tomorrow so have a great weekend.

understanding conservatives part 1

 If you didn't grow up in a conservative Christian home, you probably don't think about hell very often. But I was raised on that stuff, and being afraid of hellfire and eternal damnation was a big, scary thing for me when I was still an Evangelical.

When I was in my twenties, as I became more and more angry about the un-Christian ways I saw Christians acting, I reached a point where I was so done with conservative Christians that I had the shocking (to me) realization that if those were the people that were going to heaven, I would rather go to hell. I'd rather risk eternal damnation than hang out in heaven with those smug, sanctimonious "saints."

I don't believe in hell anymore-- not because I'm sure it's not there but because the idea of heaven and hell has become irrelevant to me. But I still think about that moment, the moment when I realized that I was so disgusted by conservative Christianity that I was willing to risk eternal damnation to get away from it.

Fast forward to the 2016 election. As I watched the unabashed glee of the Trump base after the election, it suddenly occurred to me that they had hit the inverse of that moment: the moment where they were so disgusted by liberals and holier-than-thou progressive moralizing that they'd rather risk being governed by a known philanderer with zero experience than vote for a liberal Democrat.

(I should insert here that this is all entirely anecdotal, just based on my observations watching the people around me. I have no hard data to back this up. Just so you know.)

The working class conservatives were overjoyed with the feeling of having won a long-shot, wing-and-a-prayer last-minute victory over the Democrats who had completely lost touch with them (see below for more about that). The more well-to-do traditional Republicans, I think, weren't so much voting for President Trump as they were voting against Hillary Clinton, and through her, voting against whatever they perceived to be the liberal/progressive/Democratic agenda.

So my mini-quest to understand the other side became a quest to figure out how we as liberals/progressives managed to so thoroughly enrage the other side. How did we lose them so completely? How did we manage to alienate conservatives so thoroughly that they were willing to believe anything someone said to them as long as it involved trashing the Democrats?

You'll note that I'm assuming that you, gentle reader, are a liberal/progressive. That's because I'm pretty sure I lost all of my conservative readers-- or at least, all the ones I know about-- when I wrote the post about why I am pro-choice. (And I guess if I didn't lose them then, I've lost them now.)

There's a lot of directions that we could go here--for example, in a country that cherishes freedom of the press as much as we all do, how in the world do we hold the media accountable for the ways they have further polarized us to increase their own bottom line? and how in the world did Donald Trump manage to convince working class voters that he was one of them?

But that would be, once again, trying to figure out why they (the press, working class voters, Republicans) are Wrong. Lord knows we've all spent plenty of time doing that. What I'm trying to do here is figure out what we (progressives/liberals) have screwed up. How did we lose them so badly?

So here are some ideas.


For one thing, working class voters resent being lumped together with the poor. When I finally got this, I was embarrassed to death that I'd been doing this for years. When liberals look at each other, mystified as to why working class voters hate them, we think, But we're in favor of food stamps! We want to increase access to medicaid! And we're completely missing that working class voters do not consider themselves to be poor. To them, poor people are people who can't hold a job-- drunks, drug addicts, deadbeats. Those people might need handouts, but working class voters don't want them. They want steady jobs with decent pay and good benefits.

Which leads to a corollary: Conservatives don't consider poor people to be minor saints. I didn't catch this attitude in myself until I'd been working at the food bank for awhile. If you talk about poor people in hushed, reverent tones, or in the same voice that you use to talk about sick children or abandoned puppies, you might be guilty of this, too. Poverty is an enormously complex issue that I'm not going to tackle in a blog post, but I can guarantee you that this attitude is not helpful. Or at least, not if you're a volunteer at a food bank.

as always, this is getting too long. The other half is mostly written, so I'll probably post it tomorrow. I can't believe I'm posting this, because I am so far from being an expert on this that it's like the proverbial chalk from cheese. And the more I write, the more I realize how presumptuous it is of me to post this as if I know what I'm talking about. My only comfort is that not many people read here, and also, if you're a conservative and you're reading this and I've gotten anything wrong, I'm counting on you to let me know.

to be continued.

In which I do not act like the heroine in a Newbery award book

There are a lot of things I want to say right now, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to say them. So instead I'm posting this story, which has been sitting in my drafts folder for months--according to the last edit date, the last time I worked on it was in February. I have no idea how it will sound to you.

When I was in junior high (forty+ years ago, in the mid-70s), we lived in a rural area in East Texas a half-hour drive from my school. The school I attended was about one-third black kids, two-thirds white kids. (That is purely a guess, I don't really know the exact numbers.)

We moved to East Texas from Dallas the year I started junior high, so I was the new girl. Lydia, the black girl who sat behind me in English, was just about the only kid in the school who was friendly to me for the first couple of months. Junior high sucks.

I was grateful to her and friendly in return, but neither of us made any effort to be friends outside of class. Generally speaking, the white kids were friends with the white kids, and the black kids were friends with the black kids.

There is no way I can pretend that there was no prejudice at that school, or in our part of East Texas. There were occasionally black cheerleaders, and there were a bunch of black athletes, but for the most part, the popular crowd (which I was not a member of) was all white, and the black kids kept to themselves. Or, to phrase it a different way, although it wasn’t conscious on my part, we didn't allow them to be part of us. The school had been desegregated, but it was still segregated.

In the summer, we had a few weeks of summer band practice every weekday morning. There was a black family with a band kid my age that lived near us in our rural area, and my mom decided we should arrange a carpool with them so she wouldn't have to drive me back and forth all the time.

I have a memory-- which is vague on details but strong in general sensation-- of listening to my mom arrange this with the other mom. My memory is that I knew it wasn’t going to work, and the black mom knew it wasn't going to work, but my mom forged ahead. Even forty+ years later, I can’t decide if I think she was brave for bucking the way things were, or oblivious to the difficult situation she was creating.

The first day I was supposed to ride with them, my mom was off doing something else so I was home alone. (I am ashamed to admit this. It's making me feel flushed and hot to even type it out.) I was at the back of the house, and I "might have" heard a horn honk outside, but I pretended I didn't. I didn't even go to the window and check. After a few minutes, they left -- I guess. Since I didn't look, I'm not sure what they did. I know they didn't honk twice. When my mom got home, I told her they never showed up. We didn't try it again.

Yeah.

I was 13-ish, not an age when anyone is at their best. I suppose I could argue that it isn't a 13-year-old's responsibility to change the world. But this is obviously, clearly bad behavior.

I didn't really think it out and I certainly didn’t think to myself "I am not riding to school with a black family"-- it wasn't nearly that conscious. It was just a gut reaction born partly of a thirteen-year-old's entitled anger at her mom (all the other kids’ moms drove them back and forth) and partly a deep knowledge: This is not done. This is not how we do things at this school.

If I were a braver person, I would have tried it, and maybe I would have forged a bond with that family, and maybe it would have made a tiny difference in a world of prejudice. But I’m not a brave person, and I didn't. I don’t say that as an excuse, I’m just stating the bald truth: I was not a brave child, and I didn't.

It is occurring to me only now (and maybe that is the most shameful part of the whole thing) that maybe I hurt the other girl's feelings. I've always assumed that she felt the same way I did, but maybe she had hoped that we would be friends. I don't know.

Am I culpable for going along with the informal segregation in our school? Yes, I most certainly am. Was I acting on some deep-seated personal prejudice? well, I must have been. Theoretically, in my head, I didn't have any problem being friends with black kids, but I also didn't have enough personal strength to buck the system. I just knew it wasn't done, and I wasn't enough of a maverick to push against the way things were. I wish I had been.

I have no moral to this story. I'm just thinking about it as I read Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson's memoir, which is terrific-- equal parts love letter to and indictment of the South.