Racism – Susan X Jane

The Buffalo Mass Shooting and the Myth of “Acting Alone”

Racism operates in heads and hearts, but also in the ideas and systems that structure our world.

Sunday Buffalo, New York experienced one of the worst attacks of racist violence in years. In the hours after the shooting all of our channels fill up with the usual scripts and snippets we drag out every time a catastrophe like this unfolds. It is hard to make sense of what can be done when the narrative pulls us first to gun control, then mental illness, neither of which leaves us with any response to racism itself. What should—what can we do?

The Buffalo massacre is not an isolated event, but part of a trend of white extremist violence that has been growing in recent years. It is important to think about the implications of racist violence and what action we need to take to address it. If we exchange cookie-cutter narratives for critical thinking about the complexity of the situation we can work to transform meaninglessness and lack of control into understanding and agency. It can help us find our own sphere of influence to eradicate racism and respond with something other than thoughts and prayers.

https://twitter.com/thrasherxy/status/1525851085461766144?s=20&t=lZ018jB_jyHypP3zVPvijw

The shooter is 18, male, and white. He is alternately described as a boy and a man. The distinction matters. Calling him a boy brings to mind lowered accountability for his actions: think about little scripts like boys will be boys, youthful indiscretion, and childhood innocence. When we call him a boy, these mitigating concepts attach to this terrorist. When someone is called a man, like Mike Brown was when he was killed by former police officer Darren Wilson, the narrative shifts—act like a man, man up, it’s a man’s world. A man acts with power and intention, while a boy can be forgiven for acting out.

The shooter had been referred for a mental health evaluation following a threat of school violence last year. Mental health can be a mitigating factor in legal defenses, but does it actually tell us why this happened? The vast majority of people with mental health issues are not violent. Being racist may be a moral diagnosis, but it is not a mental health diagnosis. Implying racial terror is caused by the mentally ill further stigmatizes those struggling with mental health.

Referencing his mental health also sets us up to think he may have limited culpability. Blaming his disordered thinking suggests this mass killing is an aberration instead of making connections to numerous racially motivated terror attacks—Atlanta spas, Tree of Life, Charlottesville…

What we do know for sure is that he held racist beliefs and actively advocated for violence against black people. Sometimes we think of racists as simply misinformed, or ignorant, as if they would believe something else if only they knew they were wrong. But he chose. His intention was to kill black people. He told anyone that would listen via the power of social media. That is racist, full stop.

The connections we have to others help to feed us, stoke our inclination to act or not, and create —in his case literally—an audience, something that we know mass killers crave. We know he live-streamed the attack—what clique did he find that shared his ideas and was willing to watch a massacre on a gaming platform? Were the people around him calling him on his bullshit or gassing him up with their own racism, normalizing hatred of Black people?

If there were connections in his life that tried to stop this attack, the coming days will fill in the details. When he planned to shoot the school, who was responsible for a follow-up? Was there anyone in his life to slow his radicalization?

Traditional media narratives report on a lone wolf, someone legally not fully responsible, an outsider, or deviant. But the shooter was not alone—he is connected to many people, from family to friends to teachers and trolls. Too often with racism, white people may be uncomfortable confronting peers, friends, and family members, leaving the space for radicalization to go unchecked.

Gun laws are notably one area where institutional intervention—from the government and the private sector—is possible and could make a difference. But they haven’t. Gun-rights lobbyists and the government work hand in hand to thwart the will of the people who overwhelmingly support sensible gun control. More recently, activity to outlaw antiracism in education seeks to undermine educational institutions’ ability to reach or affect an individual like the shooter, and the legal system, we know, is racist (if you don’t, you need some CRT—but you won’t get that in school).

And then there’s the media, including Fox News—the number one most watched cable news network in the country—and the internet, a warren of dark rabbit holes. Created by people with their own biases, media platforms are not neutral purveyors of ideas but megaphones for the misanthropic with algorithms written to accelerate the most incendiary ideas. Social media companies profit from accelerating radicalization—hot takes and extreme content get all the clicks. Companies bet on it.

We are creatures that exist within culture, and the ideologies espoused by those in power give shape and direction to that culture and the individuals, interpersonal relationships, and institutions within it. The United States is guided by white supremacy: this is not hyperbole but history. White Supremacy as an ideology has at its center the control and destruction of black bodies. When the shooter ended the lives of 10 people this Sunday, he was not acting apart from white supremacy but as the living embodiment of it.

White supremacy has always advocated violence both inside and outside the law: slavery, the rise of the Klan, Jim Crow and lynching, State resistance to civil rights activism, and police violence. Since 9/11 the majority of attacks against Americans on U.S. soil have been perpetrated by White Supremacists, including the January 6 Insurrection. They are not lone wolves, but cells in a vast network of attackers, radicalized by right-wing media, and supported—vocally—by some politicians, law enforcement, and others with power.

White Supremacy is the ideology that connects all these attacks—it is the idea that birthed this country, and, if we do not intervene, will be the death of this country. Attacks on voting rights, the erosion of civil liberties to crack down on the Black Live Matter Movement, the militarization of the police, and greenlighting of economic inequality are things that hurt everyone in this country. These are a few of the myriad ways that White Supremacy contributes to a shitty quality of life and dreams deferred in the US.

After the murder of George Floyd, there were many commitments, but comfort and ennui crept into the nation, turning—again—away from supporting and securing Black lives. Like a weed, pulling the occasional leaf won’t alleviate your problem.

Racism is prevalent and growing—it lives in the racist beliefs people hold and trade, and it is proliferating in social networks in the real and digital worlds of family, and friends, and remains codified in our institutions, all guided by the ideologies that shape the culture and the people in it.

We must attack all the places where racism flourishes. Heal and decolonize your mind and body. Talk about what matters: hold the people around you accountable for their behaviors and beliefs vocally and often. Whatever institutions you are a part of—be it company, school, organization, or church—use your power there to actively embed equitable policies and practices, even when there is discomfort or resistance.

While White Supremacy stalks our communities none of us are safe, so we all need to find space to build a better country. If you are a shaper of culture, you have added responsibility—C suite-ers, academics, politicians, and power players, stop slow-walking the change we need. You must battle with the tools you have against the root of White Supremacy. Calling all content creators, teachers, and activists. Tell us the truth, show us the path to liberation and help us dream into reality a better future.

Let let our actions hasten the future our thoughts and prayers cannot.

Is America “Racist”?

The institutions and systems in this country have, since its inception, used a belief that races were different to enable disparate treatment running the gamut from segregation and separation to slavery and death. This is what puts the —ist in racist.

This week Tim Scott set back the fight for racial justice by doubling down on the deniers favorite song—America is not a racist country. Despite the fact that he shared a story about his family experiencing systemic racism two sentences before, he looked straight to camera and declared on behalf of the GOP that the United States in not a racist country.

https://youtu.be/S6W90Z2f2mE

Blink twice if you need help, Tim.

The country woke from its usual slumber of silence around race last summer to admit that given the failures of the justice system, the disparate support structures of the health care system and continued economic inequality we are looking like a pretty racist place, and that was without even adding Trumpism to the mix. We had a moment when many Americans were ready to recognize and reconcile America’s shitty record on race. And then came the racism deniers. Trump and his 78 million supporters fought back hard against those that would identify and address racism. The White House put out communications attacking the schools of thought that spearheaded structures for studying race. The right wing media beats now a daily drum of misinformation and ad hominem attacks on anyone who dares to call out systemic racism, calling them whiners and haters instead of scientists and historians.

Saying the United States is racist doesn’t mean that this country is full of big meanies or that America is intrinsically bad—that’s a different argument. Too often resistance mistakes feelings for facts—people criticize those critiquing the country by saying they hate America. They claim any desire to identify racism is born of emotion and aims to taint history. In fact the reality is the opposite—the feelings and experiences that we have are a function of the systems of power and privilege that we use to organize our society, not the cause of it.

Race is a social construct that organizes humans into sub-categories according to but not bound by factors like ancestry, heritage, culture, and color. We should note that the lines of race are fuzzy. We are not simple sweet peas where mixing a red and a white give you a pink. The categories of race fall along clear lines—white black asian latinx and indigenous—that fail not infrequently to truly capture the human tapestry of a nation of colonizers and immigrants. The lines themselves are apples and oranges, comparing color, to country of origin, to continent to who was here first. The categories of race adhere much more to the needs of those in power than they do to any natural or biological grouping. Funny, not funny, how that happens.

We used to be more science-y about proving race was a real thing. Scientists in the 19th and 20th century spent oodles of scienc-ing measuring heads and casting questionable and ahistorical aspersions as fact. Science, shaped by scientists who were “people of their time (aka racist), sought out to prove that white people were smarter and more moral than other grouping of people. And prove it they did with junk science like phrenology and demonstrably false theories riddled with bias like the bell curve or broken window policing. These theories supported decades of disparate treatment in education, employment and every other aspect of American life.

At the turn of the century, scientists finished mapping the human genome and proved once and for all there is no gene connected to race. Yeah, race is not a real biological thing. Period, full stop. Tracing mitochondrial DNA shows the all humans share common ancestry—African ancestry for those of you who are unsure about who the original OGs were. Even skin color is created by a set of eight genes that do not break neatly along racial lines. The truth is race is not a biological fact, it is a social construct, made up by humans.

History shows us that race isn’t an ancient concept but is in fact a more modern invention. Sure the human has always been obsessed with the boundaries between tribes, territories and nation states, but race as we currently conceive of it along its white-at-the-top framework was born alongside the United States. Yes, Europeans had all kinds of intergroup hate in the middle ages—they were tough times for Jewish people, or Roma—but the concept of ‘white” didn’t show up in language or thinking until 1400’s just in time to spin a story that Africans are not humans, and therefore ripe for the picking of an exploitable labor force to build the “new world.” Apparently, slaughtering indigenous people and creating the economic engine to catapult American onto the world stage was too much work.

In order to build the United States from a few colonies to the powerhouse it soon became, there was a need for lots and lots of labor that the fledgling country could ill afford to pay competitive wages for. The US trafficked nearly 400,000 humans from Africa, and over the next century, kidnapped, enslaved and trafficked 1.2 million African Americans within our borders for 8 or more generations. These enslaved people built the very foundation of American, creating an economic engine as well as the literal buildings themselves. Enslaved people brought craftsmanship, artistry, cooking and in exchange were tortured, raped, murdered, their children sold off generation after generation all supported by the lie that White people are human and black people are not.

The One drop rule, the 3/5ths clause. Dred Scott, Jim Crow, redlining, the prison industrial complex—for hundreds of years America has created laws, practices and policies to control Black bodies and Black freedom. Even today the plaintive cry to stop killing Black people is met with a no. The institutions and systems in this country have, since its inception, used a belief that races were different to enable disparate treatment running the gamut from segregation and separation to slavery and death. This is what puts the —ist in racist.

The suffix —ist means holding an ideological belief in something, in this case an ideological belief in the social construct of race. So yes, America has taken an ideological position that there are different races and has organized power, practice and policy to that end. That makes America a racist country. Now you can look at the evidence yourself and judge if that is good or bad(spolier alert: not great), but what you cannot argue is that race is not a primary organizing ideological and social structure in this country.

You can’t fix what you can’t recognize. The utter denial of what is historical record, the cynical position declaring there is no racism here without reconciling what we can see with our eyes, what we can know through research and excavation of the historical record, what is evident in the data tracking of our justice, education and financial systems even today: this is what is blocking this country’s ability to evolve. Without acknowledging how power is structured, we run the risk of enshrining for yet another generation harmful—and yes, racist—practices.

Tim Scott got some surprising support from the first Black and Asian Woman to hold the office of Vie President. Vice President Harris likes to remind us that she was that little girl so I gently remind her that that little girl was being victimized by systemic racism right here in America. The impetus for the VP to fight for justice is born from the racism of the US. I hope she remembers that now that she is in an elevated position of power to fight the system that tried to stop that little girl. Tim Scott also seems to hold the power of his family overcoming racism injustice in one hand and the power to deny it on the other. Anyone of either party or any race can deny racism, but those with power have added responsibility to take the side of justice.

It’s time to stop attacking the messengers and open up the letter America has written to itself in the blood of generations of black and brown people. Let’s name it so that we can see it. Let’s look at the truth of our history in all its splendor and shame so that we can reconcile the horrors of our past and present with who we want to be tomorrow.

COVID is the Battle; White Supremacy is the War

Black people make up a mere 14% of the American population but they make up 60% of cases and fatalities under COVID. Heat maps of the virus’s attack clearly outline working-class communities packed with black and brown people who cannot afford the luxury of staying home. Instead, workers on the front lines in health and service industries are pushed by a homicidal federal government to staff the reopening of the economy knowing the cost this will have, knowing that cost will be born by communities that Trump says have nothing to lose, and who, in fact, have everything to lose, balanced precariously at the edge of American safety nets not designed to catch them.

And still that’s not enough.

Black people are 14% of the population but make up 100 percent of the videos I’ve seen of people hunted down by klansmen and their modern boss-hog-hat-wearing descendants, assailants who go uncharged and are ultimately unconvicted, avoiding altogether the prisons where COVID spreads among unadjudicated people awaiting trial, people who are overwhelmingly poor, and, you guessed it, POC. And as soon as one killer walks free there is another and another. Some assailants wear uniforms are are paid by the communities they terrorize. Sometimes they laugh over the still-warm bodies they hunt down; they laugh about killing people they are sworn to protect on video broadcast live and return to work the next day.

And still that’s not enough.

Science says that we are months, perhaps a year or two away from vanquishing this virus. Any story that we can rapidly return to our already bubblicious economy of 2019 is a lie. Already we’re seeing 20% unemployment. The old adage says when White America catches a cold, Black America catches Coronavirus. The economic inequity, set up in antiquity is scheduled to continue, the next tsunami on an already ominous horizon.

Death by health inequities and by cop, and by hunger by the heartbreak of racism: where does the overlap of COVID and death at the hands of white supremacit systems add up to genocide? We are there; we are living in the time of the black death and if I didn’t know we had survived the violence of white supremacy before I might think it impossible to survive this moment.

The counter-narrative to the Black Lives Matter protests said that if only black people would respect the law, the law would respect us. That is a lie that only those willfully ignoring white supremacy can believe. Obeying the law is only mandatory for some Americans. No face of our government is smiling on us. There is no system that reciprocates our compliance. There is no social contract enforcing the empty promise of all of us being created equal.

So no we’re not #AloneTogether, unless you’re in your house watching this horrible spectacle of Black death in every corner and wondering which flavor of death your country will serve you. We can’t all #StayHomeStaySafe. We can’t all get some exercise while social distancing. We can’t all expect the law or the leadership to protect us.

How about a new motto, or perhaps we can just repurpose a great American motto for our new time: Live Free or Die. A two-part motto for our tiered and racist society. Let this be the clarion call for 2020, a moment of honesty where the world no longer allows us the comfort of ignorance of who we are, or who we have always been.

Some Americans are free to carry assault rifles while marching on our statehouses. Some Americans are free to sunbathe in the park while flouting recommendations to stem the virus. Some Americans can shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and get away with it.

But not you, Black America. Die but deliver my Instacart first, Die, but do it quickly so my hair doesn’t grow in the meantime. Die but make the hunt thrilling. Die, but make it fun.

Fuck that.

People showed up this week to call for justice and run in memory of Ahmud Abery. Many people recognize, thanks to the efforts of the Black Lives Matter movement, the injustice involved in the justice system, and are ready to step in when we need the community to show up and demand justice. The trickier part is demanding racial justice when doing so requires more skin in the game. As states lift stay at home orders knowing that black and brown communities are being decimated by the disease, will the same Americans who ran for Ahmud demand that black people be protected from calls to return to unsafe workplaces, overwhelmingly staffed by people of color? When the economy pits us against each other will we fight for ways to lift all boats?

Being in this together requires real solidarity. We all must stand up and demand better testing and tracing. We all must support access to vital support services in the communities of color and poverty hit hardest by this disease. You can contribute in big or small ways to the economic support and recovery that will be needed in the weeks, months, and years ahead in communities that will face unemployment at the highest rates. Be where you are, help where you can, don’t stop.

We continue the 400-year-old war. This is the war that we’ve always been in in America, and COVID is the battle, lynching is the battle, economic harvesting is the battle, and still, there are battles yet to come. But we’re fighting back better, we’re masking up and dapping with feet to protect each other. We’re all we got and we refuse to live free or die. We are the truth in #StayTogether. It is the only way we can live.

Victim Blaming: COVID-19 Edition

The Rona is getting real: on Friday the U.S. Surgeon general warned that Black people are “socially predisposed” to catching and dying of the Coronavirus, going on to name preexisting health conditions, whipping out his own inhaler, and finishing up by telling us to stay off drugs and alcohol. TL;Dr–stop getting fat, breathing hard and getting high, Black America, or expect to die. Don’t let the messenger fool you: this is classic Trump racism coming from a Black mouth right into America’s living rooms, conflating complex aspects of systemic racism into bite-size blame of the black community.

When we see large disparities in the outcomes between people of different races for diseases that do not biologically discriminate, we are seeing the shadow of structural and institutional policies practices and procedures pulling the puppet strings of individual behavior. If this virus is to be an apocalypse revealing truth, then one truth is that racism kills black people. Let the virus map out structural inequality:

Exposure

Who gets the Rona? Biologically, the virus does not discriminate, going more places than Kim K nudes and will rock with anyone on any continent. The disease spread first in environments that aided its spread–lots of people in close contact. Cities have been hit the hardest, particularly on the East Coast, as well as Chicago, New Orleans, and Detroit. All of these places have high concentrations of black people living in densely populated areas. Further from work and services, Black people are consigned to using public transit at higher rates, increasing risk on their way to jobs or shopping. These areas have living arrangements shaped by years of systemic racism. From Jim Crow to redlining, to gentrification, and regentrification, and re-regentrification, Black communities have been forcibly corraled by both government and economic policy into densely populated spaces lacking the same access to daily needs, health centers and hospitals as wealthier communities.

While there are plenty of white people in communities affected by the virus, stay-at-home orders have allowed many middle-class and professional people to move their life indoors, empowered in their ability to stop the virus by doing nothing all while ordering delivery of everything from meals to merch. Who is out fulfilling those orders, delivering those packages and dropping off food? Front line workers are working class, working poor and poor people–a disproportionate number of whom are black and brown. Decades of policies around education, job force discrimination and old fashioned bias and interpersonal racism have economically disenfranchised black people, corralling them economically.

It seems almost patriotic–ordering take-out and keeping your local restaurant alive. We certainly need to support local businesses. Where other countries have stepped in to prop up business during national shut-downs, American small biz is left to the hunger games of the SBA relief funds. And it would have been lovely before all this started to have a more equitable economy so the people in your neighborhood didn’t have to choose between risking a quick death by COVID-19 or a slow death from hunger and poverty. In the short run, it would be great if the federal government we pay for would step in to prioritize providing wages and grants to our local peeps instead of paying Boeing to buy back stock. This could support our fav restaurants and their workers. But if we support restaurant and delivery workers to stay home, then you can’t have delivery. Or, we could just make videos about our everyday heroes with slow fades between poignant pictures of smiling UPS drivers and speedy delivery guys. Yeah, that.

Testing and Treatment

While Trump is still downplaying the seriousness of the disease, we knew because Dr. Cardi B told us on March 11 that, and I quote, “this shit is really real.” While there were plenty of memes about the Rona circulating on Black Twitter and social media before most states shut down, Corona tests are more difficult to come by in communities of color. Longstanding inequities in the distribution of health care services and resources have affected health outcomes forever in the Black community, and this age of COVID-19 is no different.

Interestingly, even though the government has been slow to roll out widespread testing in black and brown communities, they have been quick to suggest going to black communities to test experimental drug treatments. A drug that has a high incidence of heart-related side effects is being tested in Detroit. African leaders are reportedly resisting pressure to be guinea pigs for emerging vaccines. Treatment for the virus should be proportionate to the problem, ensuring that the communities of color who are hardest hit get the resources they need stat. The burden of testing should be shared by all communities, spreading the risk of side effects among the groups who stand to benefit.

Preexisting Conditions

Large numbers of people in the black community have underlying health conditions that contribute to bad outcomes for those who contract COVID-19. An uninformed (cough cough Fox cough) news viewer may be left with the familiar stereotype that black people don’t take care of themselves, instead of understanding the complex structural and historic factors that have created such high numbers of poor health conditions. There is a lot of subtle blame in repeating the narrative that obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes are factors without acknowledging that health care disparities, food deserts in urban areas and hereditary factors contribute to these underlying conditions. In addition to environmental and biological factors, studies have shown that being black in America is itself a preexisting condition. The stress of racism is not just psychological, but also physical. Racism is quite literally heartbreaking for Black people. Preexisting conditions matter, but so does putting the prevalence of them in context.

One for the Road

Speaking of dog whistles, the Surgeon general threw a parting shot in asking Black people to refrain from drinking and doing drugs. This is pretty rich since he is well aware that America is currently ravaged by the opioid crisis, largely affecting white people. He also knows that white people use drugs at higher rates than Black people. I didn’t hear him ask white people to lay off the wine and gallon-sized cosmopolitans. In fact, drinking away the pandemic is a laughable trope for the well to do in meme after meme.

The Surgeon Generals comments on race and COVID-19 seemed designed to sound the old racist dog whistles of blame and attack to Donald Trump’s supporters, rather than to help the American public understand the risk faced by Black people. The factors that make Black people “socially predisposed” to COVID-19 can be addressed not pithy by reminders for Pop-pop, but though racial justice. Coronavirus has revealed anew racial health inequities, and we don’t need to return to a normal that perpetuates them.

Black History, Black Present

I am in the New South in a building that was once used as the cotton warehouse for the local plantations. The host tells us that in the 1840s farmers brought cotton here to be sold and shipped. I wonder what the enslaved who farmed the cotton would have thought of this benign title–farmers. I wonder where in this town they were brought to be sold and shipped.

There is healing happening. Young and old people are coming together to face the racism that persists in the schools. They are swapping stories, trying to piece together a picture of the place they live in. Verbal violence and exclusion, rules about which door you could use and texts in the group chat about killing niggers. They struggle with making meaning of the broken things, of the silences and the southern hospitality.

What is this? Are the jagged edges of my world racist? Is my suspicion correct? Is my pain justified?

“Sure we had segregation, but that doesn’t mean it was racism.” That’s a quote.

We are a circle of black folk asking if the violence and oppression we experience is racism in a room where they stored cotton picked by our enslaved ancestors.

That night I see a story on the local news. A white boy uses an iPhone app to make whipping noises at a black classmate. They are not friends.

The year is 2020.

II.

The lesson Black History has to teach an America trembling on the edge of dictatorship is that history is not over. The same white supremacy battled by all the heroes and sheroes of black history still burns hot at the heart of America.

It is both original sin and existential threat.

The last person who toiled in antebellum slavery died in my lifetime. The last person likely to be caught in the school to prison pipeline hasn’t been born yet.

Not past, but a continuous line that leads to me, to you, and to our current state of affairs.

III.

Trump rolls out a line of hats and t-shirts for Black Trump supporters. The word WOKE is stitched in huge black letters across the front of a white hat. The man who rode a wave of racism into office and installed known white supremacists as his close advisors is taking the word used to describe the increased consciousness of racism and the need to fight for black liberation as his slogan to attract black people to support his election.

I used to end my blog posts with stay woke. It was a whisper, a call to action, a reminder to look closely at the levers of power working around you.

He took my words.

IV.

Power never rests. Black history can attest to the kind of work needed to change systemic racism. Pull the chain of Black history and you will find a long line of people who remained unbowed under the behemoth system of racism designed to break them. Those people still live today amongst us. Malcolm’s fire burns in Alicia Garza. Rosa sat, Colin knelt, and the conversation has changed little in the meantime. Those people are us. On the streets of Ferguson and dozens of other cities, hundreds of young people picked up history’s chain to move it forward into political office and sustained action. Pick a day and hit twitter to see still people calling out the Oscars, the Democratic leadership and all the Karens of the world. Resistance takes sustained coordinated effort in the big and small places, hammering at the levers of power. And time. Like, glacial time.

I am in the liberal north, black and free and buying expensive dog food on a Sunday. A large black Ford F450 has parked next to me, the kind of truck that makes me feel like a rabbit seeing a hound. He has backed into this spot and we come face to face as I get in my little truck. I call my mini-SUV Panther because it is black and small and fierce and fast. His window is open and I can hear LL Cool J bumping out of his stereo. I relax a little, I make eye contact and smile, laughing at my own stereotyping of him.

He scowls and winds up his window.

Disengage. Don’t act nervous. Is he getting out? Don’t turn around. He’s behind me. I put my dog food in the back next to my big dog. He is waiting for me. The dog, and the man.

I have to close my door to let him pass. For a moment we stand next to each other.

We appraise each other.

He is wearing a camo Baseball cap and a sweatshirt emblazoned with Trump 2020 The Sequel Make Liberals Cry Again. I am wearing a Malcolm X t-shirt and a Dashiki jacket with a pair of shiny white Adidas. Wrapped in ideology ordered from online t-shirt shops we don’t have to say a word. We exchange a million ideas in a single glare.

Fuck your LL Cool J listening Trump-supporting self.

If I had to guess he probably only thought one word. And it ended with an er.

We go our separate ways; it is dinnertime and we have hungry dogs to feed.

How to Make Not-Racist Fashion (And Why You Should)

The latest trend in fashion seems to be apologizing for your overtly racist design that you just didn’t notice was racist af. Sporting the trend this week is Burberry who sent this hoodie with a noose attached down the runway at London Fashion Week.

Hot on the heels of the Virginia Governer’s moonwalking defense of the blackface pictures in his yearbook, Gucci showcased their blackface sweater just in time to contribute to one of shittiest Black History Months in recent memory. Prada was an early adopter, releasing their blackface space monkey keychain last year. They are also first to move to address the controversy that embroiled them, recently moving to create a diversity council to address internal issues of racism in the brand headed by the always justice minded Ava duVernay. Let’s hope the trend of a turn around catches on too.

What is it with these fashion brands–major design houses that have stood for decades, filtering the zeitgeist of a hundred year through their fabric? Shouldn’t they, the arbiters of the resonant images at any given moment, be most attuned to the long-standing tropes of anti-black racism? Are their claims of ignorance and innocence to be taken at face value? When racism is top of mind, showing up everywhere in news, entertainment and even fashion with active discussions of cultural appropriation, that’s hard to believe. Times are changing and it’s time fashion catches up.

My mother used to say that ignorance of the law is no defense. Perhaps if this was 1619 when humans were trafficked to Jamestown, terrified to discover they were property in this strange land, then we might believe that the ideas and symbols that mark white supremacy had yet to take hold. If it was 1719, before lynching became the terrorist weapon of choice in slavery and then during Jim Crow we could claim that the noose was a tool disconnected from ideas of race, and a sweatshirt had yet to mean anything; Maybe if this was 1819, when the Transatlantic slave trade had been outlawed, with European and American abolitionists pushing back against the continued expansion of colonial powers, and the rise of America’s the minstrel shows still a few years away we could believe they were unfamiliar with the significance of red lips in black skin. But it’s 2019.

It’s 2019, seven years after Trayvon Martin was killed in cold blood by George Zimmerman and a jury of adults blamed a boy in a hoodie instead of a man with a gun. There was lots of public debate about the lowly hoodie as gateway clothing to criminality: Geraldo Rivera said Trayvon Martin’s hoodie was as much responsible for his death as George Zimmerman. one of a hundred talking heads debating whether a hoodie was probable cause for execution in urban areas. Spoiler alert we decided it was. Just two years after Trayvon Martin was killed, 21-year old Ricardo Sans was shot for wearing a hoodie and ‘looking suspicious.” Trayvon Martins hoodie stands as a powerful symbol of the complex and problematic demonization of black people in America. It’s hard to deny the contemporary power of the hoodie or the ubiquity of its representation in relation to race.

Image #: 31361509 A demonstrator throws back a tear gas container after tactical officers worked to break up a group of bystanders on Chambers Road near West Florissant on Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014. (Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/MCT) St. Louis Post-Dispatch/ MCT /LANDOV

It’s six years after the start of the Black Lives Matter movement when black people took to the streets to demand justice and then took to the voting booth, electing hundreds of people of color to local, state and federal office, passing laws to protect the rights of black people and to curtail extrajudicial police killing.

It’s been five years since the fashion world acknowledged the shifting landscape of race. As early as 2014 the conflict over racial violence was showing up on runways. Pieces like this protest sign inspired Chanel bag, or Pyer Moss’s in your face runway show were all over the Spring shows. Other brands incorporated the signs of BLM resistance into their work, inspiring trends, slogans on shirts, and whole collections and emerging fashion movements that appropriate ever-evolving black style.

It’s been four years since the start of #Oscars so White, a soul-cry calling for more- and more accurate representation of people of color in the entertainment industry. It’s been four years of some of the best movies and TV shows made for and by black people, from Get Out to Moonlight. In the last year alone we’ve been treated to Black Panther and Wrinkle In Time, Blackklansman, Widows and on the small screen Queen Sugar, Atlanta, Blackish, Insecure, Dear White People, The Chi, and a dozen other shows. Black artists filmmakers and writers are reshaping the image of Blackness in a glorious renaissance. There is plenty to inspire designers far removed from the boring tropes of the past four hundred years.

It is a year after the Equal Justice Institute opened The Legacy Museum and the National Memorial to Peace and Justice, commemorating America’s history lynching. There have been no less than 175,000 news articles about lynching in the last year alone, not including articles about three different actual lynchings of black people perpetrated in 2018.

Its been long enough for major brands to get staff, training, and resources to make sure they understand how to navigate the shifting culture their artistry seeks to affect and reflect.

While brands are quick to apologize, and some like Prada are putting resources to moving their understanding forward, brands watch from the sideline don’t have to take these hits. Companies of all sizes and industries need to do their work to find the intersections between their work and an increasingly diverse world. For content creators that means familiarizing yourself and your team with racist tropes. The good news is that this information is not hidden for those that seek it. Cultural critics (like me!) been writing and teaching about racist images for many years. Informing yourself is one part history, one part media literacy and one part acting like a frigging human. If you are ready to go beyond googling “racism”, here are some tips for keeping your fashion house on the right side of racial justice.

Get that it matters. The time has come to stop using racist imagery. It’s not clear from what we know that all of these fashion accidents are truly accidents. The most generous read assumes that people just didn’t know, and frankly, in this day and age that is pretty hard to swallow. For the designers who try to subtly slip less-than-political-correct imagery into their content, a warning: the cost for cheeky racism is steep. After the row over H & M’s King of the jungle shirt, the company stock dropped 62% in one quarter. Boycotts are common and effective in the age of social media, not to mention the canceling power of Black Twitter is best avoided if you want your brand to flourish. If someone on your content team thinks a subtle nod to racist tropes is edgy and will help drive traffic, its time to either drop a dime to management or dump your stock options before the boycotts start.

Know your history. Racist stereotypes develop in cultural context, reflecting the ideas and values of their place and time. Understanding where racist stereotypes come from and how those stereotypes supported the oppression of marginalized people can help you better understand why it’s totally not cool to use imagery like blackface or nooses in your fashion. Stereotypes are not constructed from real common characteristics of a group of people so much as they are made of the mainstream’s beliefs about a group, a collage of assumptions and projections, not facts, that help to support the narrative that those in power want to thrive. Blackface is a set of visual codes–black skin, red lips, wide eyes–and each part of that code was designed to communicate the marginalization and dehumanization of black people.

Understand how stereotypes function. Stereotypes are shorthand codes that communicate not only identity but also ideology. You cannot separate the negative ideology that is the flesh beneath the stereotype’s skin. Stereotypes teach us what people deserve, and racist stereotypes effectively communicate that racial hierarchies reflect natural truths, ensuring their enduring power to define and oppress minorities. The ignorance and animalism encoded in blackface cannot be separated out from those codes. Even if in the course of artistic examination an artist is inclined to use these images to challenge the conventions of the code, the audience is unlikely to be able to receive the code in this new way without being primed or prepared in advance to see something other than what they have always seen. A powerful example of the enduring nature of stereotypes happened with a Swedish artist commissioned to make a provocative piece of art for a show about provocative art created a work he called Ni***r Cake, an interactive blackface cake to draw attention to female genital mutilation in recent African immigrant populations in Sweden. At the reception, the sobering and difficult recasting of blackface was lost on the laughing Cultural minister and guests in the image below that went viral, resulting in widespread criticism of the artist and the firing of the cultural minister. Individual design decisions are not enough to reshape the powerful coded communication of stereotypes.

Hire diverse teams. A lack of diversity in the room can lead to bad decisions, as we have seen over and over again. Each of us has our own filter and our own blind spots. Having a diverse team ensures a wider perspective, allowing your team a broader filter for capturing problematic content. Hiring diverse creative talent is one way to ensure that the right ideas get through and the wrong ones get caught early on. Diverse teams mean more than having an intern pipeline, it means diversity up and down the org chart. Hiring diverse teams at all layers of an organization creates a stronger network of fail-safes, and empowers members of your team to speak up. This is a must–you cannot accurately and authentically represent a population without having that perspective represented in a strong way in your team and throughout your process. And if you don’t want to reflect and connect with racially diverse populations you are shutting out a growing 40% of the American population who identifies as a minority.

Diversity is not inclusion (and you need both). Diversity is the mix in the room and inclusion is getting everybody active in achieving and maintaining a healthy equitable culture. You cannot hire your way to an inclusive organization without providing the training and resources to make sure all of your employees are responsible for maintaining inclusivity. Put plainly–the white people in your company need to be as responsible for creating an inclusive environment as the employees of color. Organizations often hire people of different races thinking their mere presence will change the ideas and thinking of other people in the room, and usually without any extra compensation for the task. This is a set up for people of color brought into culturally ignorant organizations and prevents employees less comfortable with race from growing the skills they will need to stay relevant in an increasingly diverse environment. Instead, organizations need to provide training, coaching, and resources to support teams in doing their part to make sure every member of your organization represents your values around inclusion.

The truth is culture is complex, more so now than at any point in the last 50 years. The stakes are higher for brands who have to work hard to connect in our cluttered media environment, and the costs are steep for companies that refuse to acknowledge consumers’ increasing desire for culturally competent companies. But the days of disregarding people of color, claiming ignorance and laughing at white supremacy’s lame jokes are gone. I hereby declare the moment for mea culpas over. No more oh-so-sorry apologies for overt racism a simple google search could have averted. Fashion brands, do you work to wake up or bear the righteous wrath of the Twitter police and the pain of the boycotts that follow.

2019: Resolve To Stay Awake All Year

I’m a big fan of new beginnings. The more jaded among you may say that January 1 is just another day—random if we were to be honest. The sun and stars don’t recognize the new year. Not even every human culture celebrates the new year on January 1. But right here, we do. We are cyclical creatures: birth, life, death; spring, summer, fall, winter; eggnog, more eggnog, never drink eggnog again. So the new year finds us making promises, buying new gym shoes and tidying up our life for the new year to come. The number one resolution is to become healthier. If you’re like most people, you have indulged a bit in all the culinary joys of the holiday season. Maybe you’re looking more like Santa than a snack. Perhaps you’ve raised too many glasses. So it’s gym time, veggie trays instead of lasagna.

Healthy living is hard to do in a world marked by injustice. Looking back on the biggest challenges of the last year, racism has to be near the top of the list. From the ridiculousness of BBQ Becky and Permit Patty to the sublime white nationalism coming from the White House, America’s struggles with racism were front and center.

The daily drip of terrible stories felt overwhelming and unstoppable. ‘Stay woke’ isn’t just a catch phrase, it is a real challenge to remain conscious under such an onslaught of daily micro and macro inequities. It is easier to limit our focus to ourselves, to stop paying attention to the ongoing injustice around us and retreat into a narrower consciousness. It is not hard to turn your self-care routine into a self-segregating wall, tuning out too long to stay awake, settling back into the comfortable routine of focusing on getting the bag, treating yo’ self, and ignoring the dumpster fire that rages across cable news every day. This not-normal world is becoming the new normal. We’re settling in to watch our country burn like it’s a Netflix special—put on your comfy pants and pass the popcorn.

Just like too much eggnog, tuning out of the resistance will leave you foggy and full of shit. Turns out, lactose and systemic inequality are not natural or healthy for humans to consume. So a new year is just what we need to clear out the fog and recommit ourselves to creating a better America. Just two years ago at this time, we were measuring our heads for pussy hats and painting signs for the Women’s march. We’ve come a long way since then with active and difficult conversations about racism and transphobia both in the women’s march and our country, and we still have so very long to go. Time to fire up the knitting needles and stab them into the white supremacist patriarchy. Like your health goals for 2019, it’s good to start with truth beyond the myths of conventional wisdom and a few tips to get you started.

Myth #1 Racism has always been around and will always exist

False. Racism is a man-made social construct, and as such can be dismantled by humans. Race as we know it—black, white, Asian, latino—is a modern construction. In fact, the printing press, fireworks, and Christmas are all older than racism. We didn’t always have race; it is not inevitable that racism continues forever. We can dismantle the system of racism in America.

Myth #2 Racism is the fault of bad racist people

False. Racism is a system that is used to structure power dynamics and is maintained in our culture by laws, rules, cultural norms, and interpersonal dynamics. Each of us in America lives in this system. There are many behaviors of well-intentioned people that perpetuate this system. We all have the responsibility for working to change rules norms and practices that confer power in ways that are unjust: we can educate ourselves, vote, speak out, listen, support, lead, confront, and collaborate with others to change the social structures that perpetuate racism.

Myth #3 Racism is perpetuated by old people; when they die so will racism

False: People of all ages can and are racist. This picture alone from Charlottesville reminds us of that. Proud boys, white nationalist groups, white terrorists all count young people among their members. Racism is not generational. The heated battles over race take place on many campuses across America; racially motivated violence plagues schools across the country; white nationalist organizations continue targeting youth for recruitment. Racism is not going to die out unless we kill it.

Myth #4 Racism is a problem for people of color

False. Racism in America negatively affects all Americans. People of color are the primary victims of racism in America, and white people are systemically advantaged. But the impact of racism extends to all the people who live within its system. Unfair systems of advantage keep our nation divided, hurt people in marginalized groups, and prevent all people from experiencing the benefits of a unified population. We cannot know what we could have become if we chose the best leaders, and rewarded the brightest minds, not just the whitest minds. With massive challenges ahead like climate change, we will need to be a country united to battle challenges, striving to make America the country it said it wanted to be.

Like dieting, there is not a shortcut to ending racism. Even if we all decided today that we would like to end racism, the laws, policies, norms, and practices all need to change. That takes effort. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try—we can see from the daily news headlines that we have to try or surely the new normal will become future terror. We need to build a system that is fair and equal, one where each person is truly free to pursue the life they choose. Ending racism is a life-long pursuit, and like any healthy lifestyle change, it can have long-lasting positive effects on us and on those we love.

So let’s pledge to work with dismantle racism right where we live. You don’t have to be a professional organizer to take on the job of tackling racism. You don’t need superhero skills to make a difference. Whatever your skill level you can take regular action where you are with what you have. Let’s start slow:

Research—ideas about race are shifting as our knowledge about history, culture, and science expand. Pick a book, article or even a video to help you learn more about what race really is and how it operates in the US. Educating yourself is a good action to start with, especially if you haven’t learned about race in a while. Got a great read? Share it along with this article or in the comments.

Do your own personal survey—how inclusive is your world? Studies show the majority of Americans spend time with people of their same racial group. Be aware this week of the kinds of people that you surround yourself with: who is in your home? your town? your workplace? Examine the vertical relationships you have—who are your peers, and who are people with less and more power than you? Journal out your own environmental scan and look for places where you can grow.

Set your intentions—It’s not enough to dislike racism. We have to be clear with ourselves about what it means to be anti-racist. Do we want to just send hopes and prayers, or do we want to take an active role this year to address the issues of race in our own community? The new year is a good time to affirm our commitment to justice. If you’ve been unplugged, tune in. If you were drifting into the new normal, wake up? Add antiracism to your list of 2019 resolutions.

Experts say the average New Years resolution lasts until about January 17, but not us baby. I’ll be here with ideas and inspiration to keep you working to build a more inclusive world all year long, so be sure to follow me here and across my social at #inclusive2019. I hope you will keep thinking, learning and acting to end racism in your own life, so we can meet here same time next year to usher in 2020 with clear vision and loving communities. Stay woke.

Why Blackface is Wrong (Annual Installment)

your intentions do not change the meaning of culturally established stereotypes; you alone don’t get to decide to wash history clean and declare post-racial victory. When you put on the costume found in the toolbox of white supremacy, you do the work it takes to keep the narratives of antiblackness alive.

It’s almost Halloween and that means it’s blackface season–that special time of year when white celebrities declare their love for black people by dressing as their favorite racist stereotype. This year Megyn Kelly declared it open blackface season in a segment on her show that laments when she was a child–probably back when America was great again the first time–blackface costumes were okay. And besides, what’s the harm?

By afternoon, Kelly had issued an apology citing a difficult political history to blackface that she must have momentarily forgotten in her dream dress as her favorite Supreme. Blackface season closed. But with a week left to Halloween and so many dope black people to stereotype, it will be hard for the masses of asses to resist the siren song of sweet, sweet blackface. Twitter, and thankfully Padma, are here to remind the Megyn Kellys of the world that blackface is deeply offensive and finds its roots in America’s dark early days.

In Kelly’s not-so-surprise apology, she says that we need to be more sensitive these days and that the wounds around blackface were “too deep”. Her apology positions blackface as offensive to individuals because of past representations during minstrelsy. She’s basically saying too soon for Jim Crow jokes with the snowflakes. Blackface is deeply offensive–it always hurt my soul to show students the hurtful and racist origins of blackface–but feelings aren’t the only important reason to refuse to black it up for Halloween.

Blackface is skin blackening, and it is also a host of small symbolic elements that combined make up the projection of blackness through the white gaze. Physical features like darkened skin, engorged or red lips, “nappy” hair, big white eyes, hypersexualized bodies, and big hands and feet. Blackface also includes character traits like lazy, stupid, horny, animalistic, and backward, as well as status markers like class, education (always lack thereof) or citizenship. Blackface characters are poor or pretending to be wealthy, criminal or threatening, here to steal your chickens, your girl, or your country. Even today’s celebrity-wanna-look-alike blackface costumes often emphasize the stereotypical aspect of black stars.

In short, blackface isn’t a black person, it is a stereotype of blackness, a symbolic construction, a representation of blackness weaponized by white supremacy and used to perpetuate antiblackness in political, economic and social spheres. These negative portrayals of black people constructed out of white supremacist talking points are rhetorical weapons used to teach audiences what black people are like and what they deserve. The ubiquity of blackface-based portrayals reinforces the normalcy of antiblackness and anti-black policy. The purpose of blackface is to stoke support for the oppression of blacks.

Early minstrel shows traveled the country reinforcing the idea that blacks were wild and terrible. Black characters were stupid and brutish, criminal and childlike. These depictions encouraged audiences to support the system of slavery. In the time before movies and TV, minstrel shows were the most popular form of entertainment in America. Anyone with a penny to pay to see the show would know that enslaving those animal-like black people was what any good, Christian would do to protect our budding country.

Blackface imagery during Jim Crow encouraged white audiences to see blacks as the enemy, ape-y tricksters that had to be kept in line. White audiences would see blackface all around them, from their darkie toothpaste to their little Sambo children’s books to early movies depicting barely-human blackface characters. These characters were whistling at white women, stealing from the white man, and making America not-so-great. In a world of racist representations like this, lynching seems like a natural and logical response to protect whiteness.

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A hundred years on from Birth of a Nation and negative stereotypes of black people have barely changed. Despite the New Black Renaissance flooding our timelines and televisions with Black magic, negative stereotyping of black people remains remarkably consistent: the Jezebel, the brute, the uppity negro, the magical negro. Still today negative stereotypes of black people support dominant cultural narratives around what black people deserve. And still today those stereotypes are cited as fact by racists: the alphabet soup of white women calling 911 on black people, Colin Kaepernick haters, the thin blue-liners.

With very little substantive and reflective dialogue between black and white people, media portrayals of black people serve to teach white audiences who black people are and what they deserve. White audiences too often see new versions of the same of old step and fetchit stereotypes with no black people to provide a real-world counter-narrative. A white person’s blackface costume may be the closest some people get to talking to a black person all year and the story that blackface costume will tell is a lie.

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C’mon, killjoy, Megan asks, what if you just looooove Diana Ross?! If you didn’t know blackface was racist then I’m going to guess you don’t love black people as much as you claim you do. Drunk white people dressed in Afro wigs are generally not talking about the recent spike in black women earning Ph.D.’s or the rise in black homeownership. Besides, your intentions do not change the meaning of culturally established stereotypes; you alone don’t get to decide to wash history clean and declare post-racial victory. When you put on the costume found in the toolbox of white supremacy, you are doing the work it takes to keep the narratives of antiblackness alive.

Blackface was born in the stories told by white people to other white people to make sense out of the barbaric economic system they relied on. Like Hitler’s depiction of Jewish people and Trump’s depiction of Mexican people, Blackface’s stereotypical (mis)characterization is used to justify and encourage the violent and oppressive treatment of black people. Blackface is problematic because is it a cultural tool that encourages people to ACT: vote to support slavery, fight for the south, enforce Jim Crow, lynch, fight desegregation, vote against civil rights, hate Obama, support stop and frisk, support police brutality, gerrymander, call 911, regentrify, disregard BLM. There are real consequences from the continued use of blackface representations.

So yes, its too soon for Jim Crow jokes, and no you can’t wear blackface now or ever. Ever. There is too much at stake for us to have to have the blackface argument anymore. We can’t afford you ghouls out here this year trying to scare up votes based on fear. We won’t tolerate your costumeized cultural assassinations. We see under your mask. And hood.

Privilege: Kavanaugh’s Cloak of Invisibility

America is gripped this week by the Supreme Court hearing for Brett Kavanaugh, a salacious episode of reality TV involving sex, power, and privilege. Tomorrow, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford will testify that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party when the pair were in high school in 1982. Even as more accusers come forward–~~two~~ ~~three~~ five as of this writing–tomorrow’s testimony is set up to be a battle of the he-said-she-said–but there is a third element to this story we can’t ignore: the power of privilege.

Watch any crime show and you will see the weight we put on the world of the perpetrator to mold their criminal ways. Shoot up a school? Let’s see what video games you played. Black criminal? a product of the streets. It’s not unusual–and in fact is too often standard to replace evidence with character and culture when adjudicating criminals. That is until it comes to those prep school boys and their boys-will-be-boys antics. The prep school of Kavanaugh’s narrative is a virginal version of academic heaven; surely no harm can happen there? The violence of power and control that is shaped by a competitive environment where privilege protects bad behavior could not possibly have any bearing on a man 30 years after, right?

The world of frat boys gone bad is a familiar trope in American culture. Movies like Skull and Bones, Animal House, and Private School (released in 1983 during Kavanaugh’s school days) and TV shows feature a world where ~~boyish behavior~~ crimes are common but consequences and parents are absent. Hidden behind the Ivies, violence becomes tradition and assault becomes kidding around. This rapey frat boy thing is not mere fiction: a long litany of actual news events feature young men who used their power and privilege to get out of the consequences of sexual assault, their lives deemed more important to not disrupt than that of victims, forever disrupted by a justice system that refuses to let their wounds heal. We are surrounded with a long tradition of tales that stage whisper to us that sexual assault is a normal, if not a traditional part of private school that frat boys believe are part of their rites of passage into toxic masculinity–also know as the old boy’s network.

Neither the overreliance on environmental factors–like the Marilyn Manson theory of school shooters–nor the erasure of anything from the past as some would like to see in Kavanaugh’s hearing provides for the complex factors that make any person who they are. When we examine someone’s integrity, the past is a part of who they are. When we are validating accusations, circumstances matter. Brett Kavanaugh’s environment in addition to Ford’s testimony should factor into verifying–or denying–her claim. We should hear from others who were there and who say they are familiar with the incident. Hmm, we need some way to gather all this information. Wish we had an FBI–oh we do! A full investigation will make sure that all voices are heard and we have a tapestry of voices, not just two.

One trait of this trope that you may notice is that this is a long list of white men. While the GOP is bending over backward to avoid investigating old accusations about Kavanaugh, Bill Cosby is sentenced to 3-10 years in prison and is labeled a sexual predator. As powerful as Bill Cosby once was, it was not impossible for the court and the court of public opinion to see past years of Cosby’s family-friendly work and find him guilty: he was after all a black man, and America has a long legal tradition of finding black men guilty of being sexual predators. Cosby lacked a prep school to blame his behavior on. Black fame without white privilege gave his accusers a chance to be heard, and, after enormous effort, justice will finally be done as Cosby enters jail.

There is no such legal legacy when it comes to white men. Too often white men win in the court of public opinion long before they are held to legal account. Before a word of testimony regarding the Kavanaugh’s situation is heard under oath Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is promising to “get through this.” Kavanaugh’s accusers are denied an FBI investigation that would examine evidence related to their claims. The best they can hope for is that the man that perpetrated their alleged assaults doesn’t also decide their healthcare rights. The cloak of whiteness protects the old boy’s network from scrutiny; crime is redefined as horseplay, jokes, hazing. It’s easy to bend the rules in favor of the old boys’ network because the old boys are by and large the ones who get to make and interpret the laws.

Neither the age of the allegations nor Cosby’s massive fame and fortune stopped the accusations from negatively affecting his life–as justice would require. To be clear, this is not a defense of Cosby. He is now a convicted sex offender, while Kavanaugh will not have any judgment rendered regarding the allegations themselves. Instead, this is a chance to point out the often invisible way that privilege works to advantage those in power. Even as Cosby was being labeled a sexual predator for drugging women and sexually assaulting them, Trump told the media that Ramirez’s accusations of Brett Kavanaugh’s sexual assault are not to be believed because she was inebriated. The difference between the narratives surrounding one case and another highlights the privilege protecting wealthy white men accused of sexual assault that prevents them from the scrutiny–and just process–of a trial.

Look carefully not at the sordid details themselves, but the falling action, where boys lives are deemed relics of a past to be forgotten, where their behavior becomes an inconsequential drop in an ocean of what-boys-do. Not only are these acts normalized by their sheer frequency, but they are excused with weak slaps, or condoned, simply a nod to tradition that remains unquestioned and un-consequenced. We can and must do better.

America is designed to be a nation of laws, not (white) men. What’s good for the comedian is good for the supreme court judge who will make decisions that will affect women for years to come. Let Cosby’s conviction be tomorrow’s lesson: ignore the privileges that come with power. Believe the women.

BlacKkKlansman: White Mask, Black Skin

How is it you don’t feel like you have any skin in the game? The question, asked by undercover police officer Ron Stallworth to his Jewish counterpart Flip Zimmerman as they prepare to infiltrate the KKK, rests at the center of Spike Lee’s masterful film BlacKkKlansman, released Friday on the 1 year anniversary of the Nazi rally and subsequent riots in Charlottesville. The film explores the true story of a black police officer leading an investigation into terrorist activity at the local Ku Klux Klan chapter in Colorado Springs.

Here is a black man who is pretending to be a white man. Here is a Jewish man, who only sees himself as a white man, pretending to be the black man who is pretending to be a white man. Here are a group of white men pretending to be brave and powerful when they are cowards too stupid and blinded by their own beliefs to get it right. Here is a room full of activists who refuse to pretend to be anything but black and proud. All this is set in a country built on racism pretending to be a multicultural pluralistic democracy. The brilliant interplay of masks and layers in the film reminds us of the complex dance between who we are and how we are seen by others in our racialized society. Master the dance, and you can navigate our treacherous landscape, but make a misstep and the consequences can be lethal.

Set in the 70s the film’s commentary on racism is uncomplicated by social media or tech tracking tools and hackers. Free from technology that so often frames our current debates about race, the essential arguments for and against racial justice stand out plainly against the backdrop of the plot. There is no quick escape for racists trolling in the real world. There is no surveillance tape or citizen video. Instead, there is slow action as the cops build a case against the klan.

Lee gives us long scenes with big blocks of dialogue—a speech from Kwame Ture (the Black Panther formerly known as Stokley Carmichael), a speech by David Duke and long sequences that bring us into the reasoning of various characters. Most powerfully is the recounting of the lynching of Jesse Washington by Harry Belafonte to a rapt black student union. We hear people in their own words, a broad range of points of view, complex, messy, sometimes conflicting ideas in the same mind. There is time here to reflect, to listen to the thought process behind the sound bites of ideology.

Ron and his gang must think carefully about what white supremacists want, what they fear, what they talk about when no one is listening, in order to make the klan think they are one of them, and we get to listen in on the wire. Even as we hear various points of view the film itself leaves no room for false equivalencies or the bias of both sides having “good people.” The film makes clear to us that racism is untenable both personally and politically.

This is also the second movie this summer along with Boots Riley’s brilliant Sorry To Bother You that hosts “the white voice” as an important device advancing the plot–Sorry’s voice is fantastical while Blackk’s white voice is more functional–the character’s own daily code-switching. Ron Stallworth, played by the gorgeously talented John David Washington, pulls off his brazen plan using a voice described in Boots Riley‘s film Sorry To Bother You as the white voice.

To be black in America requires you to familiarize yourself with white people who make up the vast majority of this country–about 70% currently. Often positions of consequence–teacher, police officer, banker, politician–are more likely to be occupied by a white person. In order to navigate the world, replete with racists among the population, black people are often hyper-aware of the ways that white culture moves, thinks, and feels; as for any prey, understanding your predator is the key to survival. In Sorry to Bother You the white voice is the key to the Lakeith Stanfield’s character Cassius Green rising through the ranks to telemarketing superstardom. Being able to speak the King’s English opens doors for Ron Stallworth in BlacKkKlansman, but it is his intimate knowledge of how to speak to the soul of the Klan members that gains him access to David Duke.

Both films share the understanding that voice is not just diction but culture, beliefs, and values. Both Stallworth and Green leverage this ideological disguise to move in white cultures with such success, invisible to White people as they reflect back to whites their own cultural image. Here is where diversity behind the camera is so important: unpacking the concept of the white voice and the power it has beyond words is something that can be done best when fueled with the lived experience of a creator that has navigated this voice his whole life. This is a delicate and complex cultural process unfolding often outside the view of mainstream white America. To have this dance dragged out into the light to show the benefits and consequences of strategically navigating whiteness as a black man in this country is a gift to our dialogue about race and an opportunity for moviegoers to understand a way of being that is rarely

A view of whiteness through the eyes of black artists and authors is too often excluded from our media, but integral to understanding the many ways of thinking and seeing race in America. The conversation about race in America often centers around othering people of color. In both films, the exploration of the white voice and the power it wields is an exploration of whiteness itself. In Blackklansman we have an opportunity to explore the ideology of white supremacy while listening and watching through a black lens.

Most explorations of whiteness come from white directors writers and producers. Their lived experiences, implicit biases and beliefs infuse their work, often with a sympathetic eye. Well known movies about the klan range from the fawning–Birth of a Nation to the cautionary tale–American History X, framing the klan as heroes, antiheroes, or at worst misled youth and exaggerated nazis. From behind the camera, Spike Lee refuses to give the klan credit for being clever monsters or pure-blooded gentry. In Lee’s film, The klansmen are farcical. They are equal parts keystone cops, 4chan losers, and townies. While watching the movie in a theater of mixed moviegoers, a single white woman guffawed at the klan’s clunky shenanigans, but her laugh echoed in the silence of the theater. The shit is not funny. The film disses klansmen but is sure to remind us the mess these fools create has material consequences like the threats hovering over the black activist throughout the film.

We know how the story ends: Ron Stallworth, after all, lived to tell the tale and the Klan lost no one but their own members in the incident detailed in the movie. There is no such neat and tidy ending for our own time though, as Lee reminds us in a powerful coda. David Duke survived too, and now claims a friend in the President of the United States. Conversations throughout the movie that highlight different points of view on race are completely familiar, ripped from your social media feed and stuffed into the mouths of the characters. The pending Unite the Right rally coming up in DC Sunday is set to repeat the public display of vitriol from Charlottesville just a year after Heather Heyer was killed by a white nationalist terrorist. Police are still shooting people in the back. We are haunted years after Stallworth’s success by manifestations of racism that too many thought was long gone.

No nation can be great when part of the population is bent on genocide of the rest. The violence of oppression has a wide-ranging impact that touches every life in this country, whether people acknowledge it or not. BlacKkKlansman reminds us there is no simple mathematic formula delineating who is harmed by racism. Stallworth’s partner Zimmerman, played by Adam driver tells him it is his [Zimmerman’s] business why he doesn’t’ think he has skin in the game and Stallworth reminds him, “No, it’s our business.” Whatever complex factors affect your own experience of race, this is your fight to win or your loss to bear. There is no being colorblind to the dynamics of oppression. We all have skin in this game.