The Atlantic has posted a link-farm of their best articles on race and policing.
I think, partly, it’s a subtle, “uh huh we were there long before you were…” reminder that they have been around for a while and Frederick Douglass wrote articles for The Atlantic. [atl] Take that, web kids!
That’s one way to think about it. Another is that “god damn, this is an old problem!” and yet another is, “I guess 170 years is not very long time in which to get Americans to admit they’ve made a mistake.”
“No republic is safe that tolerates a privileged class, or denies to any of its citizens equal rights and equal means to maintain them.”
It’s been an ongoing issue all of my life; I remember the student protests at Columbia when I was 6, and the big marches in Washington, DC, and New York when I was a teenager. Eventually, the Vietnam War was stopped – not out of political courage, but out of expedience – but the US political establishment has managed to learn nothing from that, except to hide it better. Well, that’s depressing. But so is it depressing to realize that Frederick Douglass was there, and lived through it, and saw the US refuse to learn. That must have been torment on so many levels, for him, perceptive as he was. It’s a miracle that he didn’t simply wave his hands and sputter incoherent rage, like Lewis Black does in his stage routine. I am reminded that there are philosophers of ethics who claim that we are able to perform some kind of moral calculus, also involving the waving of hands, and I wonder what Frederick Douglass would say about that; the calculations are not that obvious or rational after all.
Here’s a link to all the links: The Atlantic
One thing they did, that I really appreciate: they broke the articles up into themes, and then present the historical writings, followed by current analysis. So you have Ibram Kendi following Stokely Carmichael. It’s a gold mine.
The quote from Frederick Douglass’ article made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. What, didn’t anyone listen to Mr Douglass’ obvious truths? What the fuck kind of jackass takes a look at Frederick Douglass and feels in any way superior to him because of his appearance. Holy fucking shit some people are so dumb they ought to never be allowed any political power at all.
See, that’s what gets me: this stuff is easy. You see your mistake and say “whoah. I screwed up. Do I need to do anything to make this better?” And then, and only then can you think about moving on. What you don’t do is double down again and again until you have this really truly great big problem that you cannot possibly kill your way out of. You either try to make it right, or you hunker down and pray the reckoning lands on the next generation.
“””See, that’s what gets me: this stuff is easy. You see your mistake and say “whoah. I screwed up. Do I need to do anything to make this better?” And then, and only then can you think about moving on. “””
Nope, still just words. Nice words but essentially useless. The follow-through is a lot more difficult, especially if you’re trying to apologise for something huge and systemic that part of you – “you” being a big country filled with various-minded people – may not feel sorry for at all. So even for the part of you that feels differently and would like to do better business as usual can seem very attractive. As you said, we’ll just hide it better. People, especially people on the comfortable end of a power gradient, move on quickly and may not take the time to arrive at the appropriate “then”. In short, actual apologies are hard and that’s one reason why there are so few proper ones.
Sadly, it seems that it is the people least qualified to wield political power that obtain it the most often. My group leader once said in a conversation about childhood fantasies (namely the common childhood wish to become president): “By the time you have acquired enough wisdom to be president, you have also acquired enough wisdom to realize you do not want the job.”
I imagine similar statements can be made about most political offices. Given that, you then realize that that most of the people in office never acquired enough wisdom to qualify for that office. There will of course be some small subset that acquired the wisdom, didn’t want the job but went for the job anyways out of some sense of civic duty. But they are probably uncommon.
It seems to me that American culture teaches that admitting mistakes and apologizing makes you appear weak and that it’s better to earn respect through power and fear. It’s the way the U.S. practices politics and it has been since long before the current administration.
MR@OP: “What the fuck kind of jackass takes a look at Frederick Douglass and feels in any way superior to him because of his appearance. Holy fucking shit some people are so dumb they ought to never be allowed any political power at all.”
A neighbor of mine was clearly a bigot. He wasn’t dumb. He knew intellectually that black people were the same as white. He had participated in studies that had concluded that blacks and white were nearly identical in IQ, reasoning ability, moral purpose and self control. He would talk up colleagues and compliment black and brown people he knew. He worked with , and for a time for, a black man. He car pooled with friends of several races.
But then his daughter came home with a black man she was dating. And he threw a shit fit. Intellectually he understood and accepted various races. Emotionally he didn’t.
On race many people, of all colors, are of two minds. Intellectually we are accepting and even handed. Emotionally … not so much.
Like the Christian philosopher who intellectually understood the need to control his lust even as he was very fondly attached to his desires. So we get: ‘God grant me chastity … but not yet.’
Another expressed it as: ‘Those things I should not that I do; Those things that I should that I do not’. He knows what he should and shouldn’t do but has issues translating that into action.
Clearly people are not of one mind. We are broken and just loosely fit back together.