July 2021 Blog: “It's Not About Feeling Guilty; It's About Healing Wounds”

As the hysteria over the teaching of systemic racism increases, shrill voices of offended white people flood social media. Few are as infamous as Tucker Carlson, who’s mastered the political manipulation of white rage. And now, I’m falling into the trap of writing about him. Why is this a trap? Because it distracts from focusing on the real victims of racism, particularly the descendents of enslaved people.
 
The centering of the experience of white people has long been used to derail racial justice efforts. As Lawrence Glickman of The Atlantic points out, only two years after ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle condemned reconstruction because white people would lose political power to “a property-less and ignorant class of the population.” As portrayed in the film The Birth of a Nation, after the Civil War many white people believed they were victimized by degenerate Black politicians and sexually-aggressive Black predators who stalked white women. Such pernicious myths led to decades of lynching and anti-black violence. 
 
These myths were alive in the 1960’s when politicians used the hyperbolic fear that advancement for Black Americans meant ruin for white Americans. Glickman wrote that many white people who opposed the Civil Rights Act “embraced a lexicon and posture of victimization that hearkened back to the era of Reconstruction and anticipated the deceiving, self-pitying MAGA discourse that drives reactionary politics in Donald Trump’s America.”  In October 1964, one Saturday Evening Post writer pointed out that white folk “are not against a better life for the Negro, but they are strongly against this being achieved at the cost of white tranquility.” White feelings trumped black rights…again. The powerful journalist team of Evans and Novak declared that white backlash was “a permanent feature of the political scene.”
 
Today, Tucker Carlson relies on this feature to rile resentment and boost ratings, which is why it’s so surprising that back in 2003 he accepted Rev. Al Sharpton’s invitation to join a delegation of civil rights leaders visiting African slave trading sites. On that trip, however, one observation may explain one aspect of white backlash.  While most appeared emotionally shaken, Carlson seemed unmoved.  Rev. Albert Sampson told The Washington Post, “He did not cry. He didn’t give any verbal response. It was a total detachment from the reality of the event.” [How Tucker Carlson became the voice of White grievance, Michael Kranish, July 14, 2021,]
  
Was Carlson unable to process the grief, trauma, and ugliness of racism?  Did he simply retreat to the anger, denial and insults of his current persona? Even Sen. Mitch McConnell, notoriously opposed to the cause of racial justice, was a target for Carlson’s wrath when the Senator expressed empathy towards Black Americans anguished over the death of George Floyd.
 

 

Carlson constantly complains that people are trying to “make me feel guilty.”  When  Rev. Sampson glanced at him during one lecture about European enslavement of Africans, Carlson felt singled out as “the physical embodiment of eons of injustice and oppression.” At that moment, Carlson said that he “longed for the cathartic release that would come from leaping across the table and smashing his [Sampson’s] nose.”  I don’t blame anyone for being upset when learning about racism in our history. Being upset seems appropriate. But White people have to stop reacting with anger and violence to legitimate grievances expressed by Black Americans. 
 
Martin Luther King Jr. explained that racism is like a boil that “must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light…to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.” Lancing a boil isn’t pleasant, but it’s a necessary part of healing. This 400 Years project is not intended simply to “make you feel guilty.” But it will provoke difficult feelings – feelings that must be felt, brought out into the open, processed, and transformed into a commitment to help heal the 400-year-old festering wound of racism.
 
Further Actions:
 
1) Help white people move from guilt and anger and towards constructive action that helps begin the process of healing the wounds of racism.  Self-concerned guilt and destructive anger is not what most Black Americans need right now.  For example, whites can use their privilege and power to support Black-led organizations working to empower Black owned-businesses.  As bell hooks put it, “Privilege is not in and of itself bad; what matters is what we do with privilege. We have to share our resources and take direction about how to use our privilege in ways that empower those who lack it.”
 
2) Speak to your friends skeptical about Critical Race Theory, and point them towards the writings of Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado who simply expose the structural and cultural racism embedded in power structures and law. Or, share with them this simplistic primer from the Kind Academy school (www.kindacademy.org):
Breaking It Down: Critical Race Theory
Critical race theory (CRT) is an academic movement started by legal scholars who seek to critically examine the law as it intersects with issues of race and to challenge mainstream approaches to racial justice. Here are some basic tenets of the theory broken down.
a) Race is a social construct.
b) Racism in the United States is an ordinary experience for most people of color.
c) Legal advances (or setbacks) for people of color tend to serve the interests of dominant white groups.
d) Minorities deal with being stereotyped often.
e) No individual can be identified only in one way. A Black person can also identify as a woman, a lesbian, a feminist, a Christian, and so on.
f) People of color are uniquely qualified to speak on behalf of other members of their group (or groups) regarding the effects of racism.
 
3) When dealing with white backlash “against feeling guilty,” remain respectful. Don’t lower the dialogue to the level’s promoted by Carlson when he called a top military leader a “pig” for saying he wanted to understand the role racism played in the Capitol attack. Instead share with them this article by Michael Kranish (July 14, 2021) on which this blog relied.