Race at the Top

ADVISORY: This is a political post. Knowing that many of those who read my essays aren't of the same political stripe as I, it feels natural to give a warning about what I'm discussing today. Additionally, I'm going to be talking about racism and the way I see it codified within the institutions that many people continue to endorse. 

Water, Water, Everywhere...

The other day, I heard part of a distressing story on NPR. It's lengthy, but I encourage you to listen to the story, particularly the first two minutes or so. The exchange between Nena Eldridge and the reporter, Laura Sullivan, is heartbreaking.

SULLIVAN: "Why do you have all these water bottles?"
ELDRIDGE: "Uh..."

 That response tells you a lot about what's going on in Eldridge's mind, and the tone of her voice manages to imbue the monosyllabic stutter into something that's equal parts embarrassment and shame, with perhaps a slight overtone of frustration. Eldridge is obviously trying to make the best of a bad situation, but as the story points out, she has less than $200 a month on which to live. If you kept listening, you'd get to this part, immediately after she demonstrates how she uses borrowed water from a neighbor down the street in order to flush her "commode" (2:20):

ELDRIDGE: And I'm tired. I'm tired...I don't have nowhere to go and no money to do it so...I get water to keep my house from being stinky. It's bad. But I pray every day, God, make a way, 'cuz I know you don't want me to live like this.

Sullivan continues the report--which is describing the larger problem of misappropriation of funds in the low-income housing market--but I couldn't get past Eldridge's sadness and misery. Injured and unable to work, she was doing the best she could, trying to stay off the streets, but was being crushed beneath the system that was supposed to guarantee her right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As she fights back tears, her emotion lands on the word stinky in a way that you have to hear to understand. She isn't upset that she has less than her neighbors, that she has yet to get the newest smartphone, or distressed that her bucket list of visiting Oktoberfest in Munich has come to pass yet. She isn't afflicted with affluenza, teenage or otherwise. No, she is mourning the fact that her life has been reduced to borrowing water in order to keep her home from smelling.

I recently had some water problems in my house. We turned off the water, used some that we stored, and pretty much lived life normally until we could get it turned back on. I have the municipality charge my credit card every month, hardly sparing a glance at the price of water I'm using--in a desert--to water my lawn and garden, cook, clean, bathe, and drink. If you're anything like me, then you likely don't give a spare thought to water unless it's not working correctly. That is, my daily routine does not include hiking to a neighbor's house so that I can flush the toilet. For Nena Eldridge--and others, too, I imagine--that is reality.

Privilege: Clear as Black and White

Racism is an old story. It's a tired one. It's a perpetual one. It's also something that can be overcome, but only if the institutions that endorse and support it are changed. At this juncture, though, it's pretty clear that as a cis-het white male I'm basically the most privileged human in the history of our species. I--along with millions of others who fall into this "default" category--have a life free of stress, worry, or trial. 

"What about your son, who almost died because of a congenital heart condition?" someone may say with disturbing specificity.

Yes, my son almost died. Twice. He survived because we had insurance, could go to the doctor, could have the birth at a hospital where specialists were trained on what to do, and he survived. He's ten now, and I'm grateful every day for the blessing of having him still in my life. Those days of caring for a heart baby were the hardest, darkest days of my life--the exception to an otherwise trouble-free existence.

"Don't you struggle with depression?"

Yup. Basically every day, in one way or another. Some days are better than others. But there's nothing in my life that isn't bounteously blessed. My job, my family, my resources, my ease-of-access for most anything I desire. I can sit in my private office, look out over my serene neighborhood, watch the arc of a sprinkler over a neighbor's fence, and type about institutionalized racism because of the benefits that the progress of American history has created. 

"So how does this relate to racism?"

There's nothing in the American experience that cannot be traced back to the graves dug in the name of Manifest Destiny. There's nothing in the American experience that is not founded upon the exploited slave-labor of the past. We are who and what we are because of the racism of the past--and present. I mean, who claims the land my adorable white family lives on? It's inescapable that the Native Americans--you know, the Utes (and others) whose tribe gives my state its name--were the first inhabitants of this area. The Mormon settlers took the land, which was "owned" by Mexico, and began to prosper here. How is that not building the country off of racist principles?

The point is, racism is as clear as black and white, and it's alarming to see how many ripple effects that causes.

The American Experience

I cannot speak about being Black in America. I can hardly handle being White and Mormon in America. But I do know that example after example crops up of "White privilege", the fact that certain behaviors that can be condemned or condoned based upon the color of the person. This privilege allows me to rest assured in certain assumptions, to believe certain fundamentals, to act in certain ways. I don't stress out when a cop pulls me over--well, I do, but I don't worry about losing my life.* If a White man directly challenges the federal government by seizing a wildlife sanctuary, he is acquitted. If a Black man walks on a college campus with a glue gun, the campus is closed down. 

Look, there's obviously something wrong with the way race is perceived in America. And it isn't going away any time soon. If anything, it's likely to get worse as racial tensions--high during the tenure of a Black president--escalate beneath the more vocal contingent of white supremacists growing beneath the 45th president. I mean, white supremacists are getting serious airtime and conversations about "hearing their side of things"? Free speech means that the government can't shut down ideas, not that our culture has to listen to the soul-rotting poison of racial supremacy. Having different ideas about policy, behavior, and taste is fine; engaging with an argument whose default position is "One part of the human race is inferior to the other based upon their skin color" doesn't strike me as necessary. 

The frustrating thing about institutionalized racism is that it generates self-fulfilling prophecies. For example, if a Pepe-lover argues, "Blacks are poor because they don't work hard or have enough intelligence to succeed," they can point to statistics like this that show that the largest demographic (aside from children) who live in poverty are Blacks. Racism, from that perspective, is verified.

But the more likely reason that over 4.6 million Blacks live in poverty is that the system--built off of slavery, then Jim Crow--was never designed to allow them in. Yes, more Blacks are poor than Whites. And it's true that they're poor because they're Black. But it's the man-made institutions that profit off Black misery that perpetuates it, not something "inherent in their race". 

Getting Historical

Would you ever say to a survivor of the Holocaust, "Jews are better off because of what Hitler did"? Would you look into the eyes of a Paiute and say, "Native Americans are better off because of Manifest Destiny, the Trail of Tears, reservations, and assimilation programs"? 

If you answered No to either of those questions, then you probably should answer No to this one, too: Would you claim that African-Americans are better off because of slavery? 

Yet that last one is a sentiment that I've heard or seen multiple times. That slavery was a blessing for the Black race. That life here in America is so good (true) it undoes the tragedy of slavery (false). 

For proof of that concept, I've heard people point to Africa (usually as a country, because of course) and say, "Look at how corrupt and crazy it is there! No one is immigrating to Africa. They're coming here instead."

I don't dispute that, but I think there's a false reading here. African history is replete with its own problems and triumphs, but it's clear that European involvement permanently altered whatever trajectory Africa had before the West showed up. There are manifold examples of horrendous experiences of African nations being exploited by (usually the British) and then abandoned. If your country is wrecked, rebuilt in a new way, and sabotaged by invaders, do you think that your country will ever be the same? Maybe Africa (taken as a whole) struggles with human rights violations, violence, war, and genocide less because they're "less civilized" but because they're still responding to abuses that happened to them a long time ago.

I once asked a Native American I knew if it's been long enough since Columbus that the pain of European conquest had faded. She thought for a brief moment and said, "No, not really."

The End

It should come as no surprise, if you've read this far, that I'm against racism in all its forms. I feel that any policy or legislation that targets minorities is fundamentally unjust, unethical, and morally bankrupt. I recognize my own complacency and complicit benefits from the system and still call for its removal. Life is not a race to the top, nor is it about one race on top. It's a journey we take together and we ought never to forget that.

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* You can find videos of police shooting Black men at routine traffic stops. You can find stories of Black boys gunned down for playing with toys. You can see weapons used to shoot unarmed Black teens put up for sale on the internet. This isn't a red herring about the "real problem" of black-on-black crime, by the way, it's the reality that millions of Americans live with every day.