Failing the test
by Tom Sullivan
The changing face of America. Image: National Geographic, October 2013.
The acting president read a statement from a teleprompter on Monday condemning the weekend mass shootings in El Paso, TX and Dayton, OH. Clearly, he was coerced to make it. Clearly, he did not write it:
In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart, and devours the soul.
Donald Trump did not say he personally condemned those sentiments and racist ideology, only that “the nation” should. He blamed the Internet and video games for the body count rather than the racism, bigotry, and white supremacy he cited moments earlier (and that the alleged El Paso shooter cited for his actions). Trump blamed mental illness for the slaughter and would not address the ready availability of weapons in the U.S. and its gun culture. As if to punctuate his own disconnect from victims, Trump managed in the end to misidentify the affected Ohio city as Toledo.
His leadership in crisis was tested. He failed.
Hours later on MSNBC, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor from the Department of African American Studies at Princeton, spoke forcefully of America’s legacy of racism, a racism underlying its whole history. Donald Trump has simply made racism more visible and, by a president’s endorsement, more acceptable for his followers to express openly. Glaude’s powerful statement is worth transcribing in full:
America is not unique in its sins, as a country. We are not unique in our evils. Where we may be singular is our refusal to acknowledge them and the legends and myths we tell about our inherent goodness to hide and cover and conceal so that we can maintain a kind of willful ignorance that protects our innocence.
See, the thing is when the Tea Party was happening people were saying — pundits [were] — “Oh, it’s just about economic populism. It’s not about race.” But people knew … social scientists were already writing that what was driving the Tea Party were anxieties about demographic shifts, that the country was changing, that they were seeing these racially ambiguous babies on Cheerios commercials, that the country wasn’t quite feeling like it was a white nation anymore.
And people were screaming from the top of their lungs, this is not just simple economic populism. This is the ugly underbelly of the country.
See the thing is is this: there are communities that have had to bear the brunt of America confronting — white Americans — confronting the danger of their innocence. And it happens every generation. So somehow, we have to, kind of, “Oh, my God! Is this who we are?” And just again, here is another generation of babies. Think about it, a two year-old had his bones broken by two parents trying to shield him from being killed. A woman who has been married to this man for as long as I’ve been on the planet, almost, lost her husband. For what?!
And so, what we know is that the country’s been playing politics for a long time on this hatred. We know this. So, it’s easy for us to place it all on Donald Trump’s shoulders. It’s easy for us to place Pittsburgh on his shoulders. It’s easy for me to place Charlottesville on his shoulders. It’s easy for us to place El Paso on his shoulders. THIS IS US! And if we’re going to get past this, we can’t blame it on him. He’s a manifestation of the ugliness that’s in us.
I’ve had the privilege of growing up in a tradition that didn’t believe in the myths and legends because we had to bear the brunt of them. Either we’re going to change or we’re going to do this again … and again … and babies are going to have to grow up without mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts, friends, while we’re trying to convince white folk to finally leave behind a history that will maybe, maybe — or embrace a history — that might set them free from being white. Finally!
Incredibly powerful, must-watch moment.
Thank you, @esglaude.pic.twitter.com/rT5CIGJU9O— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 6, 2019
A caller to an NPR show Monday explained the mass shooting phenomenon as an outgrowth of young men from privileged backgrounds expressing anger at a society that no longer accords them the status they believe is theirs by right. The caller paraphrased a familiar quote: “When you’re accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression.”
Americans give regular and proud lip-service to the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. So long as living up to those ideals doesn’t alter the status quo and white people’s place at the apex of the social ladder, we celebrate freedom of speech and religion. But, as it is said, freedom of speech limited to speech that does not offend anyone is meaningless. Easy to claim until that proposition is tested.
Freedom of religion, too. American Christians do not assert the United States is “a Christian country” as a fact of history or population studies so much as a statement of whose faith stands atop the social ladder. The claim is more akin to the high school football boosterism found on bumper stickers: This Is Jesus Country. So long as other “lesser” faiths know their places, proclaiming freedom of religion shows how enlightened we are. Easy to claim, until a Buddhist monk asks to give the opening prayer at the Friday night football game.
Time special issue, Nov. 18, 1993.
And so it is with race. “All men are created equal” might be on all our currency if Americans really believed it. We don’t. We are all for equality in theory so long as it is not equality in fact. White people don’t really believe in “created equal” and spend generations measuring cranium size and other taxonometric characteristics among races to prove to nonwhites inferior. They don’t malign nonwhites as monkeys or liken them to an invasion of disease-bearing vermin.
Now our Americanness is tested. So is our melting-pot myth. Neighbors white Americans once easily tolerated when their numbers were small, their communities out of sight, their languages unheard, and their demands for equal treatment dismissible are no longer satisfied with second-class status — whether they are of a different race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or national origin. Rather than seeing an opportunity to broaden the promises and ideals expressed in America’s founding documents, many white Americans sense their privilege threatened. The changing face of America feels like oppression. Challenged to live up to America’s ideals, some of us are failing the test. A few of us are turning to violence.
Update: Fixed transcription error in last paragraph of Glaude statement.