What Does "Victory" Look Like In The Latest American Standoff On Race?
Many people point to the 2008 election of Barack Obama as one of the most progressive moments in our nation's complicated and shameful history on race. Not to trivialize that marquee moment, but I actually found myself more heartened four years later when Obama was decisively re-elected. A biracial President with a center-left policy agenda who took special effort to avoid fomenting racial stratification won a second consecutive majority-vote mandate to lead the country, putting together a coalition of overwhelming support from nonwhites along with healthy plurality percentages of middle-class whites from the suburbs and working-class whites in the Midwest and Northeast. If ever there was a redemption story for a nation with our ugly racial history, this was it. Structural inequalities still existed but it felt like people were generally on the same page and heading in a favorable direction.
Obama's 2012 reelection was only eight years ago, but it feels like generations for as far as the nation has diverged on racial harmony. I predicted less than six months ago that a simmering culture of racial grievance was poised to emerge as our biggest obstacle in the new decade, and it only took until May 2020 for that prediction to be vindicated. The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis was the official flame that lit the fuse of this powder keg, but it's abundantly clear that it was eventually going to happen even if Derek Chauvin and George Floyd's paths had never crossed last month.
The Minneapolis incident was such a flashpoint because it so tellingly reinforced two long-running storylines....that there are a lot of soulless, sociopathic brutes hiding behind law enforcement badges, and that black men are disproportionately on the receiving end of vicious treatment at the hands of those law enforcement brutes. And since the video evidence reinforces the storyline so precisely, the widespread national outrage has included an unusually high level of buy-in from whites, according to polls. And that buy-in from whites has been more durable than I'd predicted, sustaining even after protests turned into riots in major cities across the country. But how sustainable is that white outrage gonna be moving forward?
As a contemporary point of reference, "social distancing" as a response to the spread of COVID-19 was still very popular in early May, but a month later most of the country has moved on, their perspective on the virus that's killed more than 115,000 Americans now predictably resembling the response of indifferent spring breakers on Florida beaches back in March. I suspect public opinion will turn just as quickly on the racial protests, particularly as the memory of George Floyd's death fades and the fault lines of outrage shift to wildly unpopular would-be solutions such as "defunding the police" and slavery reparations. And insofar as mob rule-inspired tactical mistakes and overreach made by Minnesota elected officials are gonna make a conviction of Derek Chauvin that much harder to attain, the moment of unity inspired by Floyd's death seems poised to spiral into a rabbit hole of ugliness that break down along more predictable tribal lines.
Furthermore, the proliferation of phone cameras and body cam technology have been a double-edged sword. They've certainly confirmed black Americans' decadeslong accusations of brutal treatment at the hands of police, but they've also created an expectation that black men dying when in confrontations with the police cannot ever happen without the police having racist or homicidal motives. It's inevitable that more black men will be killed during confrontations with the police, and that they will occur on camera. It happened again this weekend in Atlanta. If victory for this movement is defined by zero black men ever again dying in confrontations with the police, then we are doomed to fail.
And herein lies the hazard of so much of the current generation's civil rights priorities. Would-be victories tend to be either patently unachievable or culturally counterproductive. That hasn't been the case for most of our past civil rights battles. The Civil War led to the emancipation of the slaves. Jackie Robinson led the way to blacks' inclusion in professional sports. The civil rights movement of the 1960s led to equal legal treatment of blacks in jurisdictions that maintained segregation. Barack Obama's election proved that Americans were ready and willing to elect a black man as President. But how do we define victory on the other side of our current racial struggles?
"White privilege" is by definition structural and endemic, meaning it may well be backed up by sociology, but it's an undefeatable enemy in public policy practice. We can always work toward leveling the imbalances in societal outcomes among races, but all that can come from litigating "white privilege" is bitter division. What does victory look like?
We can prioritize electing and reinforcing our surroundings with "people who look like me", the confusing new term celebrated by the woke, but isn't apartheid the inevitable outcome of a society fueled by that level of shameless identitarianism? What does victory look like?
We can continue down the road of canceling from polite society for life anybody who dressed up as Michael Jackson or Tina Turner for Halloween in the 1980s. We can erase from the history books any figure whose track record on racial issues wasn't as progressive as the average women's studies major on Twitter. We can shame those who attempt to integrate into what used to be a proud multiethnic melting pot for their "cultural appropriation". We can send social workers to "shots fired" calls after abolishing the police. We can do all that and more, but does any of it seem likely to inspire a culture of harmonization rather than just exacerbate our divisions? What does victory look like?
It's entirely possible I'm missing something here....an aging relic unable to see how the protesters' response to George Floyd's death advances us as a society rather than further rips us apart. We're seeing a dramatic realignment of the political landscape since Trump was elected and it could very well be that what I see as radicalization is actually a healthy absolution on behalf of marginalized groups whose priorities will play out effectively in the public policy arena rather than rip society apart. I'm skeptical though, and a snapshot of the country is forthcoming in less than five months with our next Presidential election, and I have serious doubts whether that aforementioned coalition Obama put together in 2012 can be put together again.
Normally at this point in a Presidential election cycle, I'd be filling this blog up with regular predictions of where I think the race is going. But this year, the uncertainty is such that I've been reluctant to put myself out there. Events are driving that uncertainty, but so is the changing nature of the country, which I've yet to fully get a handle on in regards to its effect on our party coalitions. In the next couple of weeks, I'll make a good-faith effort to predict how I think November will play out in the Presidential as well and Senate and House elections, but honestly, the cultural landscape is so poisonous and the partisan coalitions heading in such depressing directions that I'm having a hard time getting motivated.
I've long maintained that policy priorities of the left and center-left are best attained when a coalition of the downscale drawn from all races and ethnic groups comes together with a common purpose. If Biden wins in November, it's definitely not gonna happen because of a broad, multiracial coalition of the downscale. Trump's successful exploitation of white working-class backlash against a rising culture of racial grievance from the emerging Democratic coalition has turned large swaths of the Midwest that were key components of Obama's 2012 coalition into fever swamps of white resentment. Any number of possible outcomes may emerge from a summer of racial strife, but enlightening unemployed white factory workers from burned-out industrial towns throughout Middle America about the need for them to forfeit all the "privilege" they have is not likely to be among those outcomes. And how credible are the long-standing policy goals of the left if the white working-class isn't part of it as they've been in the past? How can the economic priorities of the downscale be unified if the leading voices of our political landscape are forwarding cultural rhetoric that has people of color and the white working-class convinced they are each other's enemies?
Again, what does "victory" look like? If any of the protesters or their defenders could point to something tangible, I might be less likely to dismiss what the country has seen for the last two weeks as more than simple self-immolation of what was already an increasingly fragile cultural ecosystem. As I said at the dawn of the decade, as the country diversifies at a blistering pace, we can only avoid falling apart if we strive for less racial grievance....not more. What we've seen in the last two weeks is that we're destined for much, much more. Plenty of people seem to think this is a positive development. I'm not among them.
Obama's 2012 reelection was only eight years ago, but it feels like generations for as far as the nation has diverged on racial harmony. I predicted less than six months ago that a simmering culture of racial grievance was poised to emerge as our biggest obstacle in the new decade, and it only took until May 2020 for that prediction to be vindicated. The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis was the official flame that lit the fuse of this powder keg, but it's abundantly clear that it was eventually going to happen even if Derek Chauvin and George Floyd's paths had never crossed last month.
The Minneapolis incident was such a flashpoint because it so tellingly reinforced two long-running storylines....that there are a lot of soulless, sociopathic brutes hiding behind law enforcement badges, and that black men are disproportionately on the receiving end of vicious treatment at the hands of those law enforcement brutes. And since the video evidence reinforces the storyline so precisely, the widespread national outrage has included an unusually high level of buy-in from whites, according to polls. And that buy-in from whites has been more durable than I'd predicted, sustaining even after protests turned into riots in major cities across the country. But how sustainable is that white outrage gonna be moving forward?
As a contemporary point of reference, "social distancing" as a response to the spread of COVID-19 was still very popular in early May, but a month later most of the country has moved on, their perspective on the virus that's killed more than 115,000 Americans now predictably resembling the response of indifferent spring breakers on Florida beaches back in March. I suspect public opinion will turn just as quickly on the racial protests, particularly as the memory of George Floyd's death fades and the fault lines of outrage shift to wildly unpopular would-be solutions such as "defunding the police" and slavery reparations. And insofar as mob rule-inspired tactical mistakes and overreach made by Minnesota elected officials are gonna make a conviction of Derek Chauvin that much harder to attain, the moment of unity inspired by Floyd's death seems poised to spiral into a rabbit hole of ugliness that break down along more predictable tribal lines.
Furthermore, the proliferation of phone cameras and body cam technology have been a double-edged sword. They've certainly confirmed black Americans' decadeslong accusations of brutal treatment at the hands of police, but they've also created an expectation that black men dying when in confrontations with the police cannot ever happen without the police having racist or homicidal motives. It's inevitable that more black men will be killed during confrontations with the police, and that they will occur on camera. It happened again this weekend in Atlanta. If victory for this movement is defined by zero black men ever again dying in confrontations with the police, then we are doomed to fail.
And herein lies the hazard of so much of the current generation's civil rights priorities. Would-be victories tend to be either patently unachievable or culturally counterproductive. That hasn't been the case for most of our past civil rights battles. The Civil War led to the emancipation of the slaves. Jackie Robinson led the way to blacks' inclusion in professional sports. The civil rights movement of the 1960s led to equal legal treatment of blacks in jurisdictions that maintained segregation. Barack Obama's election proved that Americans were ready and willing to elect a black man as President. But how do we define victory on the other side of our current racial struggles?
"White privilege" is by definition structural and endemic, meaning it may well be backed up by sociology, but it's an undefeatable enemy in public policy practice. We can always work toward leveling the imbalances in societal outcomes among races, but all that can come from litigating "white privilege" is bitter division. What does victory look like?
We can prioritize electing and reinforcing our surroundings with "people who look like me", the confusing new term celebrated by the woke, but isn't apartheid the inevitable outcome of a society fueled by that level of shameless identitarianism? What does victory look like?
We can continue down the road of canceling from polite society for life anybody who dressed up as Michael Jackson or Tina Turner for Halloween in the 1980s. We can erase from the history books any figure whose track record on racial issues wasn't as progressive as the average women's studies major on Twitter. We can shame those who attempt to integrate into what used to be a proud multiethnic melting pot for their "cultural appropriation". We can send social workers to "shots fired" calls after abolishing the police. We can do all that and more, but does any of it seem likely to inspire a culture of harmonization rather than just exacerbate our divisions? What does victory look like?
It's entirely possible I'm missing something here....an aging relic unable to see how the protesters' response to George Floyd's death advances us as a society rather than further rips us apart. We're seeing a dramatic realignment of the political landscape since Trump was elected and it could very well be that what I see as radicalization is actually a healthy absolution on behalf of marginalized groups whose priorities will play out effectively in the public policy arena rather than rip society apart. I'm skeptical though, and a snapshot of the country is forthcoming in less than five months with our next Presidential election, and I have serious doubts whether that aforementioned coalition Obama put together in 2012 can be put together again.
Normally at this point in a Presidential election cycle, I'd be filling this blog up with regular predictions of where I think the race is going. But this year, the uncertainty is such that I've been reluctant to put myself out there. Events are driving that uncertainty, but so is the changing nature of the country, which I've yet to fully get a handle on in regards to its effect on our party coalitions. In the next couple of weeks, I'll make a good-faith effort to predict how I think November will play out in the Presidential as well and Senate and House elections, but honestly, the cultural landscape is so poisonous and the partisan coalitions heading in such depressing directions that I'm having a hard time getting motivated.
I've long maintained that policy priorities of the left and center-left are best attained when a coalition of the downscale drawn from all races and ethnic groups comes together with a common purpose. If Biden wins in November, it's definitely not gonna happen because of a broad, multiracial coalition of the downscale. Trump's successful exploitation of white working-class backlash against a rising culture of racial grievance from the emerging Democratic coalition has turned large swaths of the Midwest that were key components of Obama's 2012 coalition into fever swamps of white resentment. Any number of possible outcomes may emerge from a summer of racial strife, but enlightening unemployed white factory workers from burned-out industrial towns throughout Middle America about the need for them to forfeit all the "privilege" they have is not likely to be among those outcomes. And how credible are the long-standing policy goals of the left if the white working-class isn't part of it as they've been in the past? How can the economic priorities of the downscale be unified if the leading voices of our political landscape are forwarding cultural rhetoric that has people of color and the white working-class convinced they are each other's enemies?
Again, what does "victory" look like? If any of the protesters or their defenders could point to something tangible, I might be less likely to dismiss what the country has seen for the last two weeks as more than simple self-immolation of what was already an increasingly fragile cultural ecosystem. As I said at the dawn of the decade, as the country diversifies at a blistering pace, we can only avoid falling apart if we strive for less racial grievance....not more. What we've seen in the last two weeks is that we're destined for much, much more. Plenty of people seem to think this is a positive development. I'm not among them.
posted by Mark at 7:33 PM
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