I wasn’t going to post this because I’m so fed up with the persistence of the narrative that all conservatives are racist that it seems pointless. What had me so frustrated? This article, which a friend I tend to highly respect despite our different political views, posted on Facebook with the admonition “read all the links”. I don’t want to spend too much time going through all the things that article got wrong, but there are a lot. Starting with the image it uses at the top:
The point is to reverse the races and ask: would people have reacted the same way? But here’s the problem, they never questioned that the image they are parodying is itself highly biased. It depicts a very innocent, very young Trayvon Martin (from years before the incident took place) contrasted with a mug shot of George Zimmerman from a prior arrest years before (the charges were dropped). What could be more prejudicial than a photo like this? It defined the narrative of the case, and was a blatant example of the media violating ethics (and possibly the law, Zimmerman has sued NBC Universal) to propagate a very specific narrative of a racist white vigilante gunning down an innocent young black kid for the crime of being black. In order to strengthen this narrative, NBC edited the 911 tape to give the false impression that Zimmerman was obsessed with Martin’s race when, in fact, it was the 911 operator who asked Zimmerman about race. There’s also the strange term “white Hispanic” and phrases like Zimmerman being someone who “considers himself Hispanic” (but isn’t really?).
So part of what bothers me is the vicious and unsubstantiated assumption that if you’re a conservative you’re a racist. (I’ve written about the dangers of conflating politics and race before.) Another thing that bothers me, however, is this simple either/or narrative. The idea that either a person has to celebrate Zimmerman as a hero or denounce him as a vigilante. The reality is that most of the folks I talk to think Zimmerman should have been acquitted because the evidence wasn’t “beyond a reasonable doubt”, but not because he has lily-white hands. That’s why the court finds him “not guilty” and not “innocent”. What happened was a tragedy–and especially for Martin and his family–who in no way deserved what happened to him. I would absolutely put more of the blame on Zimmerman who–from what we know–acted recklessly in defense of his neighborhood. But that doesn’t mean that there was enough evidence for a murder or a manslaughter conviction. It’s not neat and tidy, but this isn’t an episode of Law and Order, either.
Here’s the thing, though. I want to do more than complain about the way liberals–even my friends–are so myopically focused on nurturing their belief in universal conservative racism and try something constructive. So I’d like to point out a couple of stories that–almost without any exception at all–I’ve seen being circulated by my conservative Facebook friends (some of whom are way far off to the right of me).
Marissa Alexander was recently found guilty–despite invoking Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law–for firing warning shots into a wall to prevent her abusive husband for attacking her. In other words, Zimmerman actually did kill someone and he was acquitted. Marissa (who is black, by the way) tried not to take the life of someone who actually was attacking her and she gets 20 years. This is the only case in which I’ve seen liberal friends outraged, and it was only one. All the stories expressing outrage at the verdict that I know of have come from my conservative, gun-rights friends. Theoretically they are all racists and so would not care about Alexander getting 20 years for exercising self-defense, but the reality is that they just don’t seem to care what her race is. They see a woman trying to defend herself and being punished precisely because she didn’t kill her attacker (allowing him to testify) and they say “This is wrong.” There is coverage at MSNBC so the media isn’t totally ignoring it, but I’m not hearing about any protests. Apparently once you involve use of a gun in self-defense liberals lose interest in helping you even if you are black? I don’t know.
Crystal Scott made the headlines at Drudge earlier this morning for another Stand Your Ground shooting, this time in Texas. Scott, who is black, shot and killed Jonathan Ables, who is white, after the two got into a car accident and (according to Scott) Ables approached her car door screaming, shouting, and threatening her. One of my conservative friends posted the article with the simple comment “Good for her”. Now, obviously there needs to be an investigation, but according to the narrative from liberals, white conservatives should all be foaming at the mouth that Scott be thrown behind bars because it’s not possible for them to believe that a black person might have to use self-defense against an aggressive white attacker. And yet, despite that fact, I haven’t seen any of that kind of response at all. (It’s a breaking story so news is harder to find, but here’s an early source.)
And finally there’s the another story about black teenage boys that is making the rounds with all my conservative friends. In this case, a little 5-year old girl (who is white) was kidnapped from her grandmother’s front yard. Temar Boggs, a black boy who is 15, said that when he heard the news “We got all of our friends to go look for her. We made our own little search party.” A little while later, he and a friend spotted the little girl in a car that was still in the neighborhood and took off after the car in pursuit. On their bikes. As Boggs tells it: “As soon as the guy noticed we were chasing him, he stopped at the end of the hill and let her out, and she ran to me and said that she needed her mom.” One little girl saved, two black heroes to thank. And you know what? No conservative that I can find is stinting their praise because the heroes of this story are black, teenage boys just two years younger than Trayvon Martin was when he was killed. (NYDailyNews)
I’m not going to pretend that all is right in the world and we have no remaining systemic racial biases or racism to combat. I just think that maybe if more liberals actually knew conservatives–like, had them as real friends–they’d be a little less prone to buy into truly demonic interpretations of them as race-mongering white supremacists. And I know from personal experience that if I didn’t feel like I was being called a race-mongering white supremacist just because I like F. A. Hayek that would make it easier to have real conversations and learn about actual race problems. Because I know they exist and I even know that I’m not an expert in them and have a lot to learn. But I’m not willing to learn from people who are, at best, tragically mistaken about the other half of American society and, at worse, are cynically manipulating race narratives for political gain.
So hey, I thought it would be nice to point out, that here are some stories about violence and race where conservatives–from my own sample, this isn’t a scientific study–are reacting in a way that shows we’ve got some common ground to build on. Maybe more emphasis on that? Less emphasis on the demonization?
Just a thought.
I actually don’t agree with the overly broad use of “right-wing” in the piece; it really should have been written as “radical/extreme right-wing elements in the right-wing media”. I don’t consider folks focused on smaller government, freer markets, and greater personal liberty/responsibility to be part of the furthest right edge that gets airtime during, and is so animated by, these types of events.
I do agree with the thought experiment, though. And it’s splitting the tiniest, most irrelevant of hairs to hang on the supposedly-invented-for-the-Zimmerman-trial term, “white Hispanic”, as some kind of invalidating gotcha. Anytime I’ve seen it brought up it’s belied rudimentary understanding of American race relations. They’re rooted, axiomatically, in black/non-black. The Irish and Italians weren’t considered white. Catholics weren’t considered white. Even northern whites weren’t considered white by pre/post confederate phrenologists-cum-“race” scholars. Add the context that this took place in a former Spanish colony that didn’t join the Union until the mid-19th century, and that there are only five states with a higher concentration of Hispanics, and your counterpoint is further weakened.
I am really, really, REALLY glad to see you write this:
“What happened was a tragedy–and especially for Martin and his family–who in no way deserved what happened to him. I would absolutely put more of the blame on Zimmerman who–from what we know–acted recklessly in defense of his neighborhood. But that doesn’t mean that there was enough evidence for a murder or a manslaughter conviction.”
Every day thousands of (mostly black) people are arrested, tried and convicted for far lesser crimes based on far scanter evidence. This is exactly why the lack of proper investigation, interrogation, forensics, etc., sparked so much outrage. It’s also why so much of the counter-outrage was particularly sad and gross. The vast majority of it had so very little to do with whether or not Zimmerman would ultimately be found guilty. So much of it had, instead, to do with smearing a child and his family or attempting to make coequal reverse-racism/media bias/whatever to an incident that typifies the unquestionably racist outcomes endemic to the American justice system. A child died a death he absolutely did not have to. The state passed on even trying to hold his violent, paranoid, medicated killer accountable. None of these things have anything to do with Al Sharpton or 99% of the attempted rejoinders to the reality of what occurred.
I do think you should walk us through the whole ‘lot’ of inaccuracies that undermine the purpose of the race-reversing thought experiment. I know, for instance, that Zimmerman was listed was only thirty pounds heaver than Martin, at least as listed by police from the night of his interview (no arrest = no intake = no weight taken). Thirty pounds obviously isn’t one hundred pounds, but I think it’s important that you walk us through the entire lot.
It’s important because you lead with a critique that Martin’s photo in the visual prompt was taken years before the incident. Except, no, it wasn’t:
“Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump told me in February that the Hollister T-shirt photo of Trayvon was taken in August 2011, when he was 16 years old. That was six months before he turned 17, on Feb. 5, 2012. He was killed three weeks after that.”
http://staugustine.com/opinions/2013-07-06/perspective-5-myths-about-killing-trayvon-martin
This isn’t your point here, but I want to end with the observation that I think a lot of the efforts to get people to shut up about race, to not protest and complain when racist things happen, is coming from both a good place and what is genuine hurt. The hurt is rooted in having genuinely good people told they’re racists. The good seems to be rooted in the fantasy that we’ll heal if everyone peoples defined by their skin color for hundreds of years channel all their experiences through being humans or American. Leaving aside the fact that this strips non-whites of an identity that they may want to occupy, it’s impossible to do this and confront systemic outcomes and *actions* that are actually racist. Or at least I’ve never seen anyone conceive of some way that this to work.
To use what might be a clumsy analogy that’s well outside my area of expertise, would this not be sort of like non-Christian’s telling Christian’s to shut up about religious freedom “because we’re all just people”? Or Evangelicals telling Mormons to shut up about anti-Mormon bigotry because “we’re all just Christians”?
thegalen-
You might have seen that I posted and then deleted a long reply yesterday. Mostly, it was just too long. I’m not going to try to reply to everything you wrote, but here’s what I want to focus on.
I think you’re very mistaken in your assumption that conservatives want people to shut up about race. I know that that’s not what I want. I want to talk about race. What I think conservatives want–and I think they are justified in this regard–is to take the politics out of race.
Right now there is essentially no discussion about race because either you adopt the standard liberal approach or you’re a racist. That’s really the only two options, because even a black American who doesn’t toe that line is going to get called Uncle Tom and vilified as a race-traitor.
Now, you said that you disagreed with the post’s sweeping description of “right-wing”, but you still posted it. I understand that you even went so far as to look for alternative, less-crazy sources, but when you did post it you didn’t include that, or any other disclaimer whatsoever. In this post you seem to be focusing on one specific thought-experiment (changing the races in the photo), but the post you linked to cast a much, much wider net and you said simply “read all the links”.
I’m not trying to argue that you were wrong, but instead trying to illustrate how easy it is to perpetuate the polarized and politicized nature of this discussion even when you don’t intend to. It’s a rut that is easy to fall into.
Just as you seem unwilling to let folks like Al Sharpton speak for all on the left, I think you should be equally willing to consider that a tool like Rush Limbaugh doesn’t speak for everyone on the right. Practically speaking, these are the two most important things we can do:
1. Stop relying on sources that vilify our opposition.
2. Stop referring to elements of the opposition that are nuts.
I understand that Rush Limbaugh is incredibly popular (as are others), but I think you fail to really understand why in this as in many cases. Why did Zimmerman raise $150k in legal fees? It’s not because people thought he was a hero and a good guy. It’s not. It’s because NBC edited the 911 tape to frame him and that–framing someone–pissed people off. Why do conservatives object to so much of the discussion about race? It’s not because we just wish the issue would go away and we could pretend there were no problems in our society. It’s because the current “conversation” is a trap: you either agree with Democratic policies or your a racist. Given that decision, conservatives react in anger.
And let me further add that I’m not engaging in some kind of false equivalence. I’m not saying that poor, victimized conservatives have a coequal claim of discrimination because the race issue is politicized at all You’ve characterized conservatives complaints that way, but that’s another failure of understanding. The simple principle at stake here is this: two wrongs don’t make a right.
No matter how much systematic inequality their exists, framing Zimmerman as a racist to fit the narrative is never justified. Not because Zimmerman is a good guy, but because framing people is wrong. It’s always wrong. You don’t have to pretend that anti-black racism is a non-issue or that white privilege doesn’t exist to believe that.
And I understand your anger in saying: “Well, if they really believed anti-black racism was a problem, why didn’t they give $150,000 to the bigger problem?”
You have a legitimate point, but you also need to consider that a lot of policies and programs designed to combat racism are politicized. In short: you need to consider the extent to which your behavior (personally and as a liberal) contributes to isolating conservatives from the race discussion. I’m not putting all the blame on you guys, but I think you have to acknowledge that the left is contributing to (not causing in isolation) the ongoing dysfunction that prevents a serious conversation about race.
The reality is that when black men attack white or Hispanic people in racially motivated crimes and those crimes are covered up, that is a huge problem for conservatives. Not because it proves that things are just as bad for whites (which is totally absurd) but because that method of fighting racism–e.g. of pretending that the depth of the problem for black individuals invalidates the concerns of white individuals to the point where suppressing news stories or outright framing people is accepted–strongly deters conservatives from being willing to participate in any kind of a “dialogue”.
I realize it’s not fair because white privilege is (in a sense, we can talk about that more later) a real thing. White people have more advantages. This is irrefutable. And so saying that we need to avoid offending them if we want their help can seem to be adding insult to injury, and I want to be sensitive to that. I don’t think it’s asking too much to say that white people ought to sacrifice for the sake of racial healing, and in fact I think that is precisely what should be done. But asking for sacrifice is one thing. Expecting anyone to willingly support a movement that is perceived (with some justification) as engaging in retaliation through suppression, intimidation, and lies is neither justified nor realistic.
In any case, I also thought this was interesting:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/07/zimmerman-initiated-a-justice-for-sherman-ware-campaign/
The media has tried to serve up an image of Zimmerman as a racist and wannabe cop who had some sort of close relationship with the police department. Now flashback to 2010, the video posted below shows an incident in which a drunk adolescent son of a Sanford police official attacked a homeless black man named Sherman Ware without provocation.
The media has tried to serve up an image of Zimmerman as a racist and wannabe cop who had some sort of close relationship with the police department. Now flashback to 2010, the video posted below shows an incident in which a drunk adolescent son of a Sanford police official attacked a homeless black man named Sherman Ware without provocation.
“I realize it’s not fair because white privilege is (in a sense, we can talk about that more later) a real thing. White people have more advantages. This is irrefutable. And so saying that we need to avoid offending them if we want their help can seem to be adding insult to injury, and I want to be sensitive to that. I don’t think it’s asking too much to say that white people ought to sacrifice for the sake of racial healing, and in fact I think that is precisely what should be done. But asking for sacrifice is one thing. Expecting anyone to willingly support a movement that is perceived (with some justification) as engaging in retaliation through suppression, intimidation, and lies is neither justified nor realistic.”
A fair minded take.
On the Left, it seems people need to do a better job of addressing *actions* and *outcomes* that are racist against blacks. They need to marginalize people who insist on labeling people as racist where it isn’t relevant in addressing the effects of disparate race-based treatment. In most cases, there’s no point in pondering whether or not individual actors are racist in their heart of hearts. It’s impossible to know. It’s also irrelevant. The reality is blackness, particularly male blackness, is so pathologized in our society that EVERYONE engages in racist behavior against blacks at some point in their life- even blacks: http://slate.me/19zwRD7
(Quick aside: the above is why things like whether or not Zimmerman was once friendly with a black man [other than the one he murdered] don’t really matter. The outcome -an assumption the kid was up to no good, the lack of an investigation, etc.- was flatly racist. Similarly, it doesn’t matter if someone calls Trayvon a thug and then turns around and champions a black woman for utilizing a gun law they happen to favor. Is this person, or by extension the political party they align with, racist when these separate acts are weighed out on the Scales of Racism? I don’t know, but the better questions are: “how could we possibly measure such a thing?” and “who cares?”.)
On the right, people need to marginalize extremely powerful reverse-racist hustlers like Limbaugh (Sharpton and Jackson combined are like 1/20th as influential as him or Drudge). They also need to look honestly at who it is they surround themselves with for political ends (see: Paul, Rand). And they need to make space for an hones examination of their rhetoric. Every Republican primary candidate in contention from last year’s election (including the eventual nominee) made a joke about (or claimed outright!) that our President is really a secret African. Stop and think about that for second- it’s insane.
god, can i not edit comments on here?
Nope, not that I know of. I can edit them (even yours) so if you’d like to send me new text I’ll edit on your behalf, but I don’t think there’s anyway I can let you edit them.
I’ll look into it though.
No was just curious. I always catch a typo or two…
I think that would be a tremendous step forward. Far and away the biggest concern I have when it comes to how racism is treated on the left is that it is generally used as a political weapon. The accusation of racism is virtually always a character-attack. This helps perpetuate a cycle of dysfunction (the right helps as well) that exacerbates racial problems.
I agree with you in principle, but I think you’re aiming at the wrong targets. I don’t believe that big name talking heads are as influential as you think they are. Yes: they have huge audiences, but does that actually reflect their influence? Or just their ability to reflect popular views? I suspect, after listening to how carefully Rush Limbaugh in particular tiptoes around any possible controversy among his listening base, that it is much more the latter.
What’s really needed here, more than anything else, is to get sane people from the right and left talking about racism in ways that are serious and open-ended.
And, on that point, I want to press a little bit on this racist-outcomes vs. racist-motivations emphasis that you’re suggesting. I think it’s a move in the right direction, but also that it’s actually quite a big leap for a variety of reasons.
One of the biggest is that an emphasis on racial disparity can mask underlying problems and engender needless animosity. Consider the problem of black crime. African Americans are incarcerated at rates that are dramatically higher than whites (or any other minority). This is a racist outcome, but how much of it is caused by racism (e.g. by discrimination)? Well, we know that some definitely is, because studies (cited in the Slate article you linked) show that, all else being equal, a black defendant is more likely to be found guilty and given a higher sentence than a white defendant.
But it’s also true that African Americans commit crimes at a much higher rate than whites, and so–to the extent that the higher incarceration rate reflects a higher crime rate–it would be a bad idea to focus on the incarceration rate as being racist. Why? Because part of the problem is discrimination in the court system, but part of the problem is also crime in black communities.
I think it’s also important to address directly the sense that racist attitudes from white people (and even black people) are not based on intrinsically discriminatory thought processes. Here’s what I mean: back at the height of intellectually-respectable racism (19th century) there was an idea that “race” was a valid scientific category, and that blacks were inherently inferior. In other words, race caused bad outcomes.
Today no one really believes that race is actually a valid biological category and so no one believes in racism in that sense of the word. I don’t think people believe that being black causes higher crime, for example. Instead, in the 21st century, most racist attitudes are rooted in a notion of correlation. It’s trivial to observe that fatherless children have higher crime rates, that fatherlessness is higher in black communities, and that therefore being black is going to be statistically correlated with higher crime rates. But none of that is racist in the old-school sense of the word, because the root causal link here (no fathers -> more crime) is held to be universal and race blind. In other words, it’s incidental that crime is higher in black communities.
What this view recognizes is that fundamentally people are the same, and that the only real consequence of race is to create self-perpetuated lines of division. So a 19th century racist would have refused to be near black people because he thought they were inferior. A 21st century racist might be uncomfortable near black people because she knows that–all else being equal–the probability of them committing a crime is higher.
That’s a really dangerous thing for me to say, but I think it needs to be said so that it can be addressed. Just because there’s a valid statistical rationale for the disparate threat assessment based on race doesn’t justify the response. I suspect, although I’ve yet to run the numbers, that in any given encounter the actual difference in risk is insignificant. Let me put it this way: if I tell you that standing next to a Mormon makes you three times as likely to be attacked by a shark, would it justify treating all the Mormons you meet with fear and apprehension? No, it wouldn’t.
First of all: if you’re in Kansas the shark attack threat is non-existent. In other words: we need to guard against irrationally applying a fear of risk in contexts where it has no place. Secondly: the chance of a shark attack is 1 in 11.5 million (says Google) and that probably in a lifetime or some long period of time, so the chance of a shark attack at any given moment (in a short period of time) is probably much less than that. And doubling it would be still too small to be significant.
So you’d have to weigh the benefits of extra vigilance when you’re around Mormons (which is basically nil) vs. the the cost (which is making all innocent Mormons feel like they are viewed with suspicion all the time). I think this is important because it doesn’t try to just condemn people for their ability to see that Mormons are related to shark attacks (trying to condemn people for accepting true facts is a bad idea) and also because it acknowledges that anti-Mormon bias is a consequence of the general human inability to handle risk-assessment in a rational way and not any particular specifically anti-Mormon animus.
This is important because it defuses the moral stakes a little bit: people who are a little afraid of Mormons are no longer being compared to 19th century bigots who murdered innocent Mormon kids and are instead being told “What you’re doing is hurtful and irrational, but it’s not intrinsically evil.” Meanwhile, Mormons are being told “They don’t hate you because you’re Mormon. They fear you because of an irrational exaggeration of a statistical correlation. It’s not personal.”
Now, I realize that I’m coming from a particular background and maybe I just totally don’t understand things, so I’m open to critique / other views. I’d love to hear them. But to my mind, re-framing the issue in terms of irrational exaggeration of a threat seems like a better way to view racially disparate outcomes. It removes the villains from the equation and it’s more accurate.
What do you think about this as a model? Not for everything all the time, of course, but for starting to make forward progress towards more reconciliation and understanding?
Also, what do you think about this perspective: http://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/profiles-in-outrage/Content?oid=1920343
Notably:
To reiterate: I don’t actually accept that risk assessment validates profiling, but I do think it needs to be addresed as a valid concern rather than condemned in a way that renders it equivalent to 19th century racism.
“This is important because it defuses the moral stakes a little bit: people who are a little afraid of Mormons are no longer being compared to 19th century bigots who murdered innocent Mormon kids and are instead being told “What you’re doing is hurtful and irrational, but it’s not intrinsically evil.” Meanwhile, Mormons are being told “They don’t hate you because you’re Mormon. They fear you because of an irrational exaggeration of a statistical correlation. It’s not personal.”
I like this approach a lot. I think this is instructive in fleshing out the degree to which the fear is irrational: “Yes, from 1976 to 2005, 94 percent of black victims were killed by black offenders, but that racial exclusivity was also true for white victims of violent crime—86 percent were killed by white offenders. Indeed, for the large majority of crimes, you’ll find that victims and offenders share a racial identity, or have some prior relationship to each other.”
http://thebea.st/1aG7tvT
I would quibble with this, though:
“But it’s also true that African Americans commit crimes at a much higher rate than whites, and so–to the extent that the higher incarceration rate reflects a higher crime rate–it would be a bad idea to focus on the incarceration rate as being racist. Why? Because part of the problem is discrimination in the court system, but part of the problem is also crime in black communities.”
Crime follows poverty, and there’s a disproportionate number of blacks concentrated in communities suffering from poverty’s agglomerative community-destroying effects. There is no unique problem facing poor black communities that is truly separate and apart from those problems facing poor white communities in, say, West Virginia, Kentucky or Tennessee. There are different flavors of drug trafficking and abuse (e.g. crack vs. meth), but the resultant crimes are generally the same irrespective of demographics: property crimes, robberies, murders etc.
Well for one, that’s not a direct quote, but I’m pretty sure JJ Sr. lives in a predominately black neighborhood in Chicago. Since most crime is intraracial his nervousness might make perfect sense. The inraracial disparity between black and white murder (8%) doesn’t really make sense to use as justification for profiling. Or rather, it does but only if you’re falling for base rate fallacy compounded by selection bias in enforcement (e.g. investigation, arrest, conviction) which probably speaks to a large part of that 8% difference.