You’ve heard me say many times that America’s Thing With Race is complex. Not just a tad confusing, but full on complicated. A lot of that is because we have never been able to talk to each other. And a lot of that is because of the false narrative that each of us grew up with about how America has always been led to greatness by great White men. Sure, women, indigenous people and Black and Brown people get mentioned. But just not as often, not in the same category of greatness, and not with the same reverence.
America’s most popular icon is arguably the cowboy. Taciturn. Able to take care of himself with his fist or his guns. Able to endure hardship and loneliness. Square-jawed. Hard worker. White. But in actuality, 25% of cowboys were Black. You wouldn’t know that from our narrative. My own aunt once berated me for making that claim with a haughty, “There was no such thing as a Black (American icon) cowboy. Everybody knows that.” Cowboying was a profession where ranch hands actually were judged on their skill and ability and work ethic. Maybe not in town, but on the range, Black cowhands were treated equally. In free Florida and enslaved on cattle plantations, Black cowboys ruled the roost.
Courtesy of Florida Memory, State Library & Archives of Florida
When I was in school, I learned about Eli Whitney. He gained prominence and somehow earned a place in our history books for finding a lot of uses for peanuts. I guess that’s pretty wonderful, but it pales besides being a cowboy. Nobody ever wanted to grow up and become a peanut guy.
Because of our false or incomplete narrative, there are so many important conversations that Americans can’t have. America’s seminal event was the Civil War. The war where Americans went to battle to kill fellow Americans over race. We can’t even have an honest conversation about our seminal event because the majority of Americans were taught that the Civil War was about states’ rights.
It wasn’t.
We can’t really have an honest conversation about slavery, because so many Americans were taught and believe that slavery wasn’t that bad. That slaves loved their masters and their masters loved their slaves like family.
Yeah…no.
Most Americans have heard the term, “Sold down the river”, and understand it means “To be betrayed.” But few Americans understand that to be “sold down the river” is a short expression that quickly references the extreme brutality of the American sin we don’t really talk about.
Slavery was brutal. But the further south slaves got the more brutal enslavement became. The work was harder and more dangerous. Harvesting sugar cane in Texas, for instance, was a death sentence.
The heat and the humidity was more brutal. The slave management customs were more brutal. The overseers, and the slave owners were more brutal. But worst of all was the knowledge that to be “sold down the river” meant being ripped from your family, ripped from your children, and a zero chance of seeing them or hearing about them ever again. The deep south followed the more brutal British model of enslavement while the middle and northern states were modeled after the somewhat less brutal French model.
We can’t really talk about uniquely American programs like unemployment insurance, or Social Security, or the G.I. bill, or federal home loans and insurance and whether they do or do not constitute American Socialism”… one of our country’s bogeyman. We can’t talk about those programs because they didn’t even apply to all Americans. By custom or by practice or by law, few Black Americans were eligible for any of those programs.
Enter The Civil Conversations Project and three people who simply thought, “Let’s have honest and civil conversations about America’s Thing With Race.” Let’s not even call it “racism”, because the mere word triggers so many people.
A few days ago The Civil Conversations Project held our first ever webinar. We sent out electronic flyers three times. Flyers promoting civil and honest conversations about America’s Thing With Race. We highlighted the Civil Conversations Project philosophy of meeting people where they are. We don’t use triggering words or concepts like, “White Privilege.” Just honest conversation. What could go wrong? Plenty.
We had something like 60 people enroll for the webinar. It seemed like a positive reception, and it was. But here’s what could go wrong. We also had people livid that we were not going to cram concepts like “White privilege” down White people’s throats. And I’m pretty sure it was far left White people themselves that were angry.
From the far right side of the fence we got mail from people who were angry that we dared to talk about race at all. Long ago, famed and highly awarded actor Morgan Freeman got his 15 minutes of fame when he claimed that the way to end racism was to simply stop talking about it. Then magic happens and voila’…gone! We heard that quoted from people who were angry…angry because we were going to (and did) talk about America’s Thing With Race.
In 2009 Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, in deciding a racial discrimination lawsuit bought by Black firefighters against the city of New Haven in Ricci v. DeStefano said, “The way to end discrimination is to not discriminate.” Then he went ahead and allowed the city of New Haven to discriminate against the city’s Black firefighters so that the city’s White firefighters would not feel discriminated against. I guess that not talking about it works the same way as Robert’s “…not discriminate” works. Magic happens! The 405 year-old American solution.
I bring all this up because a couple of weeks ago I posted a piece with the title, “America Has A Racist President.” A few months ago, I heard about one of our readers who looks at the title of our posts and tries to determine how unpleasant the writing might be. If he surmises it’s going to be a rough read, he doesn’t read it. He’s interested enough in America’s Thing With Race to subscribe and to occasionally to read about race in America. But only up to a point.
Over the years I’ve received numerous request or comments imploring me to write about success stories, or something good, something happy, something that doesn’t actually describe the state of America’s Thing With Race.
But here’s the thing. I get almost no direct feedback on my writing. I will occasionally get rumors or innuendos or second or third hand intel. But mostly I have to kind of guess how things land. That story about America’s racist president had far fewer views than we normally receive. So my CCP partner, Mara, and I guessed it was the title and a feeling of, “(Groan)…Ach! I just cannot not read one more negative thing about race.”
Once past the title, in the meat of my story about America’s racist president there was really nothing troubling or offensive. But that title… Oy! When I assigned that title it didn’t occur to me that it might give people a jolt. Trump is a racist, and I thought that pretty much everybody knew that. Everybody might not dislike it, but they know it. It was the first thing out of his mouth when he came gliding down his escalator in 2015 and announced his run for the presidency. To paraphrase him, “Hi. I’m Donald Trump and I’m a racist who hates Mexicans.” It’s not a secret. Trump doesn’t want it to be a secret. He wants people to get on board.
Trump is intent on firing Lisa Cook, the ground-breaking first Black female to ever serve on the Federal Reserve Board. Today he’s trying to oust Gregory Washington, George Mason University’s first Black president. And in addition to the ouster, Trump is even demanding a public apology from Doctor Washington for pursuing DEI at the school. Getting a Black scholar fired isn’t enough for Trump. It needs to come with a dose of national humiliation.
A couple days ago Trump referred to the kids of Washington DC as “Hard core criminals." He didn’t specify what color the kids are that are hard-core criminals. But like the minority/majority cities that Trump chose to sue for so-called “voting irregularities” after the election he lost, and like the minority/majority cities he has selected to send in the troops, Washington DC, known as “Chocolate City” because of its demographics of 43% Black and 39% White, is one of those minority/majority cities. So we know what color the kids are that Trump was referring to as burgeoning “hard-core criminals” that need to be taken off the street now, just as we knew what color the citizens of his “Shit hole countries” were.
Americans know that America has a racist president. Just don’t say it out loud. And that right there is the problem. It’s just really difficult to fix something that we can’t talk about.
But if you want to help fix America’s most intractable problem, we need to talk about the problem. We need to understand America’s actual narrative, not the false narrative that we promote. And then we need to move into action. We… as in you. And here is where I could use your help. As I have said, I get very little feedback. I don’t know how what we write and what we do, lands. I would like to hear from you. I would like to know what works and what does not work. I want to hear what you can tolerate and what you can’t. What motivates you and what turns you off. I’m not here to get a pat on the back. I’m here to roll the ball a little faster than it’s been rolled over the last four hundred and five years. So help me out.
In her book, Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People about Race, author Reni Eddo-Lodge explains her frustration with the fragility of White people and trying to move the needle on racial justice. “I’m no longer engaging with White people on the topic of race. Not all White people. Just the vast majority who refuse to accept the existence of structural racism and its symptoms. I can no longer engage with the gulf of an emotional disconnect that White people display when a person of colour articulates their experience. You see their eyes shut down and harden. It’s like treacle is poured into their ear canals. It’s like they can no longer hear us.”
“This emotional disconnect is the conclusion of living a life oblivious to the fact that their skin colour is the norm and all others deviate from it. At best, White people have been taught not to mention that people of colour are ‘different’ in case it offends us. They truly believe that the experience of their life as a result of their skin colour can and should be universal. I just can’t engage with the bewilderment and the defensiveness as they try to grapple with the fact that not everyone experiences the world in the way they do. They’ve never had to think about what it means in power terms, to be White, so any time they’re vaguely reminded of this fact, they interpret it as an affront. They’re itching to talk over you but not really listen, because they need to let you know that you’ve got it wrong.”
I am not on the same page as Eddo-Lodge. But…she ain’t wrong. For a few brief moments after George Floyd (remember him?) was murdered, White people got engaged. But they wanted to be out front. White people, suddenly awakened, wanted to explain to America and to the world what was wrong with racism…wanted to tell the world how to fix it. Black Americans pushed back. Mostly what was heard from Black Americans was, “We don’t need you out front and we don’t want you out front. We really just need you to sit back, sit down, and listen. To us. Do your homework. Be our ally, we don’t need your leadership.”
Several years ago, a reader and supporter commented to me that sometimes my frustration bleeds through into my writing. Guilty! She found that so bothersome that she canceled her subscription. Problem solved. We don’t need you to cancel your subscription. We need you to join the conversation.
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/5420907-trump-policies-damage-children/
https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/09/01/432225353/the-black-cowboys-of-florida