Call and Response

I’ve been struggling to write on what’s been happening in our country. I don’t feel like I’m struggling as so many “celebrities” seem to be — there are words for what is happening. I know the words for what is happening.

This is an unending stream of atrocities that all rhyme with “kick them while they’re down.”

This is sweeping and slow-rolling genocide at the hands of a complacent crowd.

This is a petty and baseless continuation of flagrant xenophobia that is touted as moral, and due process.

This is the persecution and death of thousands and thousands black, brown, trans, and other others in a Christian, white nation.

All the while, the demons have the audacity to mutter under their breathe “it’s such a shame you can’t follow the rules.”

A typical white celebrity response to the current situation. Baffled, flabbergasted, gobsmacked, and unsurprisingly void of any call to action.

I have plenty of allegory and moments to describe the vitriolic, wildly flawed, and emotionally detached platitudes I hear from my fellow white Americans. I am struggling to write because I feel like we have become deaf in response to ourselves. In the land of the free, where all voices are “equal” we have shouted ourselves to deafness.

That’s to say, I believe I am heard. I believe that there are those that read what I write, and agree. I don’t feel like there are those who read what I write, and change. I feel stuck between two crude facsimiles of conversation. Either I make a claim and I’m met by the chorus — a resounding “Amen” and nods of sweet affirmation. Or, maybe more unfortunately I am met by stony and stoic discord. A basalt obelisk with no intention of swaying. In both instances, I am left hollow and met at best with echoes.

I’ve heard the kindness from my peers of color — this revolution has multiple lanes. I fight the feeling that I fail because I shrink from the idea of a protest during a pandemic. I fight because I feel like in my best lane, where I feel strongest I am met with hollow echoes.

I can write against echoes. A bit, at least.

I imagine the strategy based on my experience in pedagogy. As a teacher, students came into my classroom with a very diverse set of needs. It was part of my job to quickly evaluate the students to grasp their needs and determine how best to engage them to learn — to change and grow. One of the more powerful tools I picked up for this considered two aspects of any student. Students had some ability, as determined by their genetics, upbringing, success in the previous coursework, etc. and some interest. Student interest was much more volatile because the majority of my students were going through puberty, and had other stressful narratives in their lives that complicated their feelings toward learning, and growth in general. Nonetheless, ability and interest were keen dimensions of any student and created a sort of two-dimensional space where I could more easily assess, categorize, and engage students.

Much like Apple’s earbuds (made for the average ear), the average here is almost entirely unrealistic.

The chart works for any white person who might change, grow, or learn. It’s important to recognize that the middle of the graph is representative of a theoretical ideal. It’s a white person who is neutrally interested and able to learn. In reality, this average does not exist and white people more likely accurately fall into a bimodal distribution in regard to both ability and interest — that’s to say, we’ve polarized ourselves so that we either care very little or a lot, and additionally are either very capable or wildly unwilling to change.

As an example, if I’m thinking about teaching my mother about the applicable philosophy of socialism, I need to recognize that my mother is limited both in her ability to learn about socialism given she was raised during the Red Scare. I also need to consider that my mother isn’t particularly interested in learning about applicable philosophy of socialism because the current system is at best a moral annoyance for her. This puts her in a very rough space for learning because she has low ability and low interest.

Similarly, the bulk of “anti-protestors” we see are in that lower-left quadrant on issues of racism, equality, oppression, police violence, etc. They’ve certainly got no interest in the issues and their ability seems limited because they’ve conflated their moral worth with the idea that “to be good I must be better than someone else.” For anyone in this quadrant on these issues, I don’t have the kindness of a patient teacher anymore. It doesn’t matter if they’re the cops at a protest, or just some stranger tweeting “just follow the rules. #trump2020.” I feel like a failure as a teacher, and truly as an academic that I cannot provide enough logic and empathy to persuade them from their stony perch.

Q3 and Q4 would refer to this as “violent,” “noisy,” or perhaps even just flatly “disrespectful.” It’s none of those things obviously — it’s necessary and human.

To the right of this quadrant I find students with high ability and little interest. The most recognizable example I can draw upon is the increasingly infamous “White Gay Males™”. This is a demographic of cis, white, gay men who grew up rich in opportunity in the bosom of the middle or upper-middle class. They’re predominantly from nuclear families with Christian or Catholic values, and as adults have lives entrenched in a cult of aesthetics and cash. They’re usually Democrats, but they’re the ones least upset to be voting for Biden, because they see the risk to a more genuinely equitable playing field. They’re the first to talk about how “race shouldn’t matter, but preferences are what they are.” Perhaps most upsettingly, these cis, white, gay men are very frequently technically correct on a lot of issues. That insidious adverb emphasizes a greater issue beyond this population — since they generally have a high ability/opportunity/potential, they can facilitate the philosophy behind the current issues and address the small cracks instead of the big picture. They’re the lawyers of this process, and they pontificate on their freedom and opine on their oppression in an attempt to deflect their miserable behavior.

They willingly wield the same blade as those who oppressed them. Because they can. White Gay Males™ actively abuse their intersectionality in favor of systemic oppression. For students in this quadrant, I am willing to fight to try to sway them. For adults — like the White Gay Males™ — I have no more time to spend investing in their self-interest and aggrandizement. They want to be “normal”, and I don’t.

History tells me that they lose either way.

Directly north of these students, I see those with high interest and high ability in the upper-right quadrant. In a classroom analogy, these students are slightly less worrisome than the previous category. I see myself a lot here, because there’s such a passionate desire to change and grow, and foreseeably a large potential for change, but with that comes a certain sense of delusion. That simply by pushing themselves forward, they will drag the average with them.

For these students, and myself I wonder — what is the best set of resources to give self-motivated learners for these issues? I’m ingratiated by leaders in my own circles that spur these resources in abundance, and I am still left wondering how to engage students that do take themselves beyond the current conversation.

That’s the teacher struggle. Right now the class is at “protests as a form of peaceful revolution.” In perhaps one of the whitest of ways, I want to engage brick walls in deep philosophical discussions about their humanity and their childhood. I make it about me by wondering “why the other side can’t seem to see the blatant double-speak and fallacy in their thinking?”

It’s a part of my privilege speaking to want and feel owed an arena that fits my strengths.

Students so far into the upper-right quadrant are well-intended, but a little useless and poetically hopeless in these moments. For myself, I am trying and floundering. For other “white idealists” like me, I can at best provide solace and a slight goad toward actionable goals.

And finally there is the final quadrant. There are those who are low in ability and high in interest. Students in this quadrant are the “underdogs”; they’re endearing and very human. They know their own faults and work despite them. In the context of a classroom, these are the best students. I love my very high achievers, and I really I cherish all of my students. But the eager students that also have so much room to grow feel additionally rewarding. I believe it’s because their epiphany is resplendent. They carry such vehement interest in bettering themselves, that the joy of change rolls off them and onto me.

In the context of the current state, these are the white people striving for ally-ship in the active arena. They’re cognizant of the necessary roles they can play, and actively pursue filling those roles. For them, it’s about leveraging their privilege against the police state, and amplifying Black voices in a country that spends a lot of time and money attempting to silence them. When they falter, they recognize the mistake quietly and internally, and persist without shame or guilt.

Shame and guilt specifically are enemies of this process, since both are largely narcissistic in the face of others’ suffering.

There’s no room for an “it takes all kinds” approach to bigotry. Bigots and apologists are ACTIVELY in the way.

Toward the success of this revolution, we need to begin transitioning more people into Q2. For me (and others in Q1), I hope it is happening that I recognize my opportunity and strengths have ceilings here, and that my growth is perhaps best pursued through facilitating and amplifying Black voices and PoC needs. I am trying to shed my feelings of shame, guilt, powerlessness, and hopelessness in favor of pursuing this goal without further regard. I give myself limited space to consider those in Q3 and Q4 as to how they might transition into Q2.

These are people who expel their own children for expressing their homosexuality. They can’t even look past their sense of “morality” for their own children.

These are people who casually toss aside the suffering of others because considering others’ pain would be an ugly inconvenience for them.

For myself, right now I can’t engage them. I won’t question their transition into a more engaged quadrant if it occurs, but in my mind they’re dead weight. They’re the tumor that needs excising. In my classroom, I held a rule where if you weren’t feeling able to learn, you could put your head down. I explained it as “you’re in control of your learning. The moment you attempt to control someone else’s ability to learn is when I’ll take issue.”

So that’s where I’m at. Have your beliefs, fine. If you don’t care about Black lives right now, know it and put your head down.

If you can’t value the lives on one side of this war as even basically human, then disappear until it’s over.

You’re in the way, even if you don’t mean to be. This isn’t some ploy to inconvenience you, or a conspiracy for Black people to take over the country. If you can’t care, then go away until the fight is over.

Friends and peers of mine back in Chicago’s Boystown Neighborhood actively pursuing this cause. I’m proud to see them fight, especially in a neighborhood now bloated with a lot of bigots and apologists.

If you can care, look around. Grow from the others who can and do care.

• Consider your resources, consider (or reconsider) your needs. Part of the work is going to be literally redistributing wealth and resources, even as the government opposes it. Support each other and listen to each other’s needs.
• Amplify Black voices, and continue to overwrite the biased narratives from white and government-pushed media sources.
• Protect Black bodies and leverage your privilege against police brutality at protests.
• Celebrate art and joy from communities of color, and ingratiate yourself to the human heart in them.
• Talk about whiteness with your white peers. Find those in quadrants I and help them transition into Q2. Impolitely inform narcissists in Q3 and Q4 that they can fuck all the way off.

This is a human fight. For humans.