Left: “March on Washington” on August 23, 1963 by Unseen Histories
Right: Juneteenth gathering in Atlanta, GA on June 19, 2020
I’m starting to hear more and more people make a peculiar claim.
“If we would just stop talking about race, racism would go away.”
It’s not a new argument, and I hear it from lay people and scholars alike. Even J.D. Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, suggested it recently, and, as someone who appreciated his book and his story, I found myself perplexed by his comments.
“I think the greatest thing in my life is that I married a woman who wasn’t the same skin color as me. And I was able to do that because I grew up in a country that taught us not to think about each other as members of a racial group. We were taught to think about each other as people.”
Vance’s interview was another example of Critical Race Theory being blamed for the destruction of America. But this post isn’t about CRT. Rather, this post is about the perception of comments about CRT. Because I find it hard not to interpret them as disguised attempts to say things like…
- Racism is all in the past. Why do people keep bringing it up instead of letting it go?
- We can never move forward if we keep talking about race and things like slavery.
- People who talk about race or racial injustice are anti-American and teaching hate.
It baffles me because it implies merely bringing up race somehow perpetuates racism.
Do people who claim to be colorblind also claim to be gender-blind, age-blind, etc.? Do people really think our treacherous past can just be forgotten without proper reconciliation? When is that ever an appropriate way to grieve or make amends?
I think expecting people to simply “get over” our racist past is absurd, and I want to offer an illustration as to why I feel that way. This is definitely a very simple metaphor and will take some imagination. It also isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list of injustice, but my hope is to shed light on flaws or risks with proposing we “ignore” race and how that can be perceived.
THE SCHOOL YEAR
Imagine a town is comprised of White, Black, and Brown people. Never mind how the groups got to the town (manifest destiny or the middle passage). And never mind some people were already living in the town prior to the arrival of these new people.
In the center of the town is a school. There are other businesses and institutions, but the school is the most important one. And our story begins in September, at the start of the school year.
Even though kids who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color live in the town, only White children are allowed to attend the school, while all the adults, White and BiPOC, work there. And as you may have guessed, White adults are administrators and faculty while everyone else are the cleaners, cooks, groundskeepers, maintenance workers, landscapers, etc.
But BiPOC workers aren’t actually employees because they don’t get paid. Only the White employees get paid, just like only White children can learn at the school. And Black and Brown children are included in the labor force just like their parents, and they’re not allowed to learn reading, writing, or arithmetic. Their only foreseeable future is to work into adulthood like their parents. Sometimes the workers try to learn by peeking into classroom windows or, if they’re bold enough, by stealing books to try and teach themselves at night.
Speaking of nighttime, White faculty and students all go home to livable conditions every night, but the workers live at the school in very tight quarters. Some live in wooden shacks with dirt floors while others sleep in the rooms where they work, like the kitchen.
And most importantly, the Black and Brown workers are never allowed to leave the school.
Ever.
They’re confined to this life with no legal recourse. Any if they resist in the slightest, or even if they’re caught trying to steal books to learn, they’re beaten, tortured, or even killed.
If any of this sounds dramatic, it’s meant to. It’s utterly shocking, scandalous, and shameful. And now imagine this barbaric and inhumane treating going on day after day for an entire school year. And now consider this is just one school. In one town. In one county. In one state. In a country where almost every state, if not all of them, allowed slavery at some point.
And yes, the analogy is meant to describe slavery, which I’m sure is obvious by now. But hear me out for the rest of the story. Because the point isn’t about slavery. It’s about the timeline.
THE SUMMER
Finally, after eight grueling months, the school year comes to an end. And that means one thing, three whole months of summer with no school!
Things don’t change much for White students and faculty, but, for the first time ever, BiPOC workers are finally able to leave their horrendous conditions! Although, even with a newfound freedom, many aren’t able to capitalize on it without any formal education or vocational skills beyond working at the school. Which means, even without being legally confined to the shacks and kitchens, most find themselves right back there.
Except once they return to work at the school (did they have any other choice?) the school forces them to pay for the land and tools needed for the job (with what money?) rather than providing it like they did before. Some of the workers (ahem, sharecroppers) end up even poorer because of accruing endless debt and rarely, if ever, getting paid.
And if all that weren’t enough, most of the school faculty believe in their superiority so strongly and are outraged that the former slaves are no longer forced to work. So out of anger and hatred, they attack the newly freed workers at random or for trumped-up reasons. Black and Brown people are arrested for things like not having a job only to have their legal rights denied or ignored. Some are even used as medical test dummies.
Tragically, many are murdered, for things like trying to leave town for a better life (so they’re hated but not allowed to leave?). Thousands of people sometimes watch displays of brutality and savagery with dead bodies left behind for everyone to see, even children.
These lynchings are so common that, over the course of the summer, a Black or Brown person is executed every hour of every day in some town somewhere, all while the killers go unpunished. This goes on for three whole months until the next school year rolls around in August.
AUGUST
The school clearly symbolized slavery before, and that obviously didn’t return. But like I said earlier, the point of the story isn’t slavery, it’s the timeline. So allow for some creative thinking.
Just imagine one whole year has passed. 365 consecutive days of forced labor, unlivable conditions, degradation, poverty, persecution, imprisonment, violence, fear, murder…
And just like during the summer, things are technically “different” and BiPOC are legally allowed to do more things, but very few have the resources, education, or opportunities to take advantage of these new “civil rights.”
Over the next month, new legal battles emerge, often over drugs. Never mind drug usage is comparable among racial groups. And never mind “school administrators” are aware drugs are being smuggled into communities. Even knowing both of those things, the authorities impose prison sentences 100x harsher for people who consume their drugs the wrong way (does that mean some drugs are more fashionable?).
Distrust with law enforcement grows among Black and Brown communities (maybe because of the previous 365 days?) as arrests disproportionately continue. Families are devastated. And even if those incarcerated get released from prison and they can afford their probationary fees, their conviction records are likely to prevent them from ever attaining adequate jobs or housing.
But despite it all, in the final days of August, lo and behold a Black man is elected to be the leader. And not just to be the leader of a school where just a few months prior he would have been forced to work, no he is elected to be the leader of all the schools.
After 389 days of oppression, trauma, and violence, might “change” finally be possible?
NOT EVEN TWO WHOLE WEEKS
In this story, leaders are only elected to terms lasting half of a week, though this man was special and was elected for a whole week. While some saw his election as a sign of hope and optimism, there were many who refused to accept not just his leadership ability but his actual citizenship and where he was born. They called him a monkey and a terrorist.
As I said, he was elected for one whole week, but he only earned 52% of the votes in those two elections. Which means 48% of voters didn’t choose him. Yet many are adamant his elections are “proof” the previous 400 days have all but been forgotten (how many who say that didn’t vote for him?). His election means racism is “water under the bridge.” Some even go so far to say racism has been reversed and BiPOC are now in control!
But before his single week is over, an all-important law offering legal voting protection is overturned, a law that was passed only one month prior. And the days following his departure are filled with familiar rage and rhetoric eerily similar to the prior school year and summer that people were still trying to forget.
The flames of division are fanned as riots and violence reemerged (had it ever left?).
WHICH BRINGS US TO…
And so here we are. Based on the timeline we should be in mid-September but clearly I’m referring to current day so what’s the point? Why this analogy? As I said, this is a very simple example, and it leaves out so much.
But imagine this very same story in all its detail but every single day represents an entire year.
The school year lasted 8 months. Slavery was legal for 246 years (1619-1865).
The summer lasted 3 months. Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement lasted 100 years (1865-1965), and there was an estimated lynching every week.
August represents the 43 years between 1965 and 2008, stained by the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, culminating with Obama’s election.
And the final week-and-half represents the Obama and Trump presidencies from 2008 to 2020.
So for people claiming racism is over I want to ask, when did it end? How does Obama’s election somehow erase everything that has happened? Do people claiming we should “move on” truly understand the duration, intensity, and recentness of these atrocities?
And this doesn’t even begin to address lasting impacts over generations when it comes to wealth, the belief in people “deserving their station in life” based on their “bootstrap” efforts, legislation like the G.I. Bill and redlining, Asian-Americans being confined to internment camps during WWII (and receiving reparations for it!), or land stolen from Indigenous Americans.
And it also conceals the fact that racism is rampant still today. Just weeks ago residents in Acworth, GA, found flyers in their mailboxes stating: We want this neighborhood just for white people. Out Hispanics; Out Blacks; Out Asians.
But we’re past such racist bigotry? We’re post-racial in 2021? Those events are outliers?
We seem so afraid to merely admit our history, much less to make amends and reconcile it. Instead, we want to breeze right past admittance and reconciliation by focusing on acceptance.
I question if people realize it was the presence of racism that created race, not the other way around. Pretending race doesn’t exist or claiming that it shouldn’t play a role in society doesn’t somehow make the injustices vanish, it simply conceals them. As Ibram X. Kendi puts it, “terminating racial categories is potentially the last, not the first, step in the antiracist struggle.”
History has shown us we often find ourselves prisoners of the moment, limiting our ability to see the errors of our ways often for decades. We thought “separate but equal” was appropriate, until it wasn’t. We thought redlining was fair, until it wasn’t. We thought everyone’s right to vote was to be protected, until it wasn’t.
So how is it some are so confident that it’s not possible for us to implement racist policies today?
Simply thinking critically about race doesn’t automatically equate to people perpetuating hate and division, nor does it mean we are to judge people solely based on race, as some claim.
Maybe this metaphor won’t even make sense. But I hope it will.
It’s what comes to my mind when I hear these things.
What do you think?