Positive Peace

Today, in The Guardian, Paul Lewis and Tom Silverstone reported on an interview they conducted with Donald Trump's campaign chair for Mahoning County, Ohio, a white woman named Kathy Miller, who looks to be in her 60s, and who believes that the responsibility for racism in America lies solely with Barack Obama.  Indeed, before Obama, we simply didn't have racism.  Lewis and Silverstone write: "Miller also dismissed the racial tensions of the 1960s, when she said she graduated from high school. 'Growing up as a kid, there was no racism, believe me. We were just all kids going to school.'  Asked about segregation and the civil rights movement, she replied: 'I never experienced it. I never saw that as anything.'"

It does not appear to strike Miller that as a white woman, she would quite literally never be the subject of anti-Black racism.  She simply (and unabashedly) takes the position that racism exists only to the extent that she as a white woman is aware of it. 

Let's think about that.  Let's oversimplify that to expose its absurdity.  What if Miller had been asked, "Do things exist only if you're aware of them?"  Or how about, "Do things matter in the world only if they are important to you personally?"  Of course not.  Segregation doesn't cease to matter because a white woman named Kathy Miller went to an integrated school.  Yet that's her implication.  "I never saw that as anything"; therefore, it has no relevance to American history.  "I never experienced it"; therefore, I don't have to acknowledge that it happened.

And why is it so important for someone like Miller to declare that racism never existed before Obama?  Why downplay and brazenly attempt to invalidate the facts of history?  Because that's the only way to support the fantasy that we live in a meritocracy.  Because if racism and discrimination did not exist, then we've all had an equal shot, and white people have more often risen to the top because they're just frankly, you know, better - smarter, harder working, more law abiding, more deserving of success.  In Miller's own words, "If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you."

There are lots of points that could be raised just now about the obstacles placed in the paths of Black people in America that aren't placed in the paths of white people.  Since Kathy Miller works in real estate, she should at least know about red lining, restrictive housing covenants, and discriminatory and predatory lending practices.  Instead, she claims that it's because of her work in real estate that she knows there was no racism before Obama took office.  She doesn't explain how, but it doesn't matter how.  Facts are irrelevant; this is about her perception as a white woman.

It would be all too easy to dismiss Miller's racism as something separate from us sensible white people, but stay with me a moment longer while I trace a connection from Miller to myself, to a time when I caught myself saying, "Things have gotten so bad lately!  I don't ever remember it being this bad!"  There's no ill intention in a comment like that, but it's still guilty of all the same things Miller is doing.  Things aren't "bad lately."  Things are being discussed by white people lately.  Things are being covered in the mainstream (white) media lately, because unrepentantly racist people started reacting in big ways the second Obama got elected, and that brought racism to the attention of white people who just started paying attention lately.  That's not at all the same as what I said.  I suggested things were worse now, as though the severity or even the very occurrence of racism and police brutality were contingent upon my personal knowledge of them.  That's not a whole hell of a lot better than what Miller did, and intentions don't excuse me.  Miller did not and does not intend to be racist.  She intends to speak the truth, and she thinks that makes her brave.

As white people, it's easy to think about how far we are from Donald Trump, how low and despicable he is.  White people who consider ourselves individuals of conscience, however, what are we doing in response to police officers shooting down Black people in the streets?  Are we rising up?  Are we demanding change?  Or are we clucking our tongues, wagging our fingers, saying "we'd stand with you, if only."  If only you wouldn't break the windows of police cars.  If only you wouldn't fool with fake guns.  If only you would pull up your pants.  If only you would follow basic instructions.

Recall the opening of Martin Luther King, Jr's "Letter from Birmingham Jail":

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods.'

I would say that we are every bit as much of the problem as Kathy Miller, except that there are more of us than there are of her.  That also means we have more power than she does to pursue that positive peace, but we must use that power, and we must pursue that peace.