“The Problem We All Live With,” Norman Rockwell, 1963
I cried last Friday, driving home to San Francisco from the South Bay, listening to This American Life’s program called The Problem We All Live With on NPR. I listened again today, walking the dog on a bright sunny Saturday, with the same outcome. The program, narrated by Ira Glass, told the story of a school district near Ferguson, Missouri; you may recognize the town through the death of Michael Brown and the subsequent protests that propelled the #BlackLivesMatter movement onto the national stage. (#BLM began a year earlier with the death of Trayvon Martin, or perhaps more accurately, with the acquittal of George Zimmerman.) (Notice my restraint in the lack of derogatory adjectives introducing Mr. Zimmerman.)
I won’t recount much of the story here; I encourage you to listen online, or if you prefer read the transcript. I recommend this not because I think you need a good cry, but because it offers a compelling perspective – even if just an anecdotal sliver – of the pervasiveness of The Problem referenced in the title. The program briefly reviews the successful but interrupted trajectory of school integration, and the failures of replacement programs (such as No Child Left Behind) in driving towards educational parity between Whites and Blacks. It then spends most of its time telling the story of an “accidental” integration program, and the sometimes extraordinary efforts of adults to dismantle it. It’s this story - and its personal recounting - that is heart-wrenching, stirring in me both guilt and anger. I wanted to heed Ira’s warning not to judge the parents and their comments at the town meeting, but I couldn’t help myself. Keep in mind that this isn’t a story resurrected from 1954, when the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case was settled, nor is it one from two decades later when school busing finally began in earnest. It’s from 2013.
(If you choose not to listen, here’s my takeaway from the parents' comments, recorded at the town meeting. Best benefit-of-the-doubt interpretation? The parents’ comments redefine NIMBY without any sense of shame or responsibility. My less-nuanced take? They’re ignorant bigots. Redundant, I know.)
My mind drifted to a dusty corner, recalling an incident from the early 1970s; a friend was moving into a beautiful pre-war apartment building in East Orange, NJ. The rather mid-scale neighborhood was quiet, the streets tree-lined, the community racially diverse. The landlord made a comment: "Why are you moving in? All the Whites are moving out." If you listen to the program, you’ll hear why this anecdote is relevant.
Was the Ferguson reaction to school integration just an ugly isolated case? Perhaps, but only in its particulars and its carefully crafted reporting and promotion by NPR. Most of the time, such behaviors happen in less-public forums – but the bigotry and its consequences remain. Often, it’s expressed more subtly, more quietly, in veiled words or insensitive actions. It may be latent, subconscious, passive. I’ll guess that some of the parents in the story were simply exhibiting what I’ll call here racism by proxy, unwilling to accept any responsibility for the problem or to participate in a solution. Nevertheless, you don’t have to look hard to find news about public figures, people in elected positions of power, making clearly racist comments. (Yes, I’m aware that the term is thrown around a little too frequently these days, but it applies in the story, perhaps particularly to the woman who called a black mother a racist simply for suggesting that race may have contributed to the backlash. Sounds depressingly familiar.) These are the relative few examples that make the news – because they’re uttered by public figures. Similar – frequently less subtle – comments are easily dug up a hundredfold more easily through the social media presence of private-citizen parrots; in fact, it can be disturbingly difficult to avoid seeing these. I can’t help but point to the effect of trickle-down hate speech that has been one of the hallmarks of US politics for the last 8+ years, elevated anew by Donald Trump.
Racism by proxy is perhaps a slightly different angle on white privilege; you don’t have to be an active participant to allow, perpetuate, even encourage discrimination, and it’s an easy comfort to believe that if we’re not doing bad, then we’re doing good. This racism by proxy, the White privilege illustrated in the broadcast serves to perpetuate Black under-privilege.
Some will call out a “victim mentality.” I know it exists, in many forms. But there is a multi-generational impact from actions and consequences like those in the story, creating real lifelong victims in the Black community. The student who tells her story in the broadcast represents the promise that real progress is possible, and we can see that every day. That doesn’t mean you can point to the well-dressed Black commuter on the train, or the Black mother with her three children in line at Whole Foods, and think that they had every opportunity their White counterparts enjoyed. So next time you’re tempted to post a comment that all lives matter, think twice, and read this cartoon; be part of the solution, not the problem.
Comments?