Make 'em see?

The Ravens on Sunday

This week's authors are much more ambitious than the others we've read so far.

Lisa Delpit wrote a compelling piece that might convince well-intentioned, progressive white educators who aren't particularly woke to break some of their paradigms and strive for a pedagogy that might actually begin to undo some of the most deeply ingrained structural racism that runs through our public institutions. Youth in Action works to empower youth who are already profoundly affected on a daily basis by social inequalities. And even Johnson - though he did go farther than the other authors in pushing for those who have been silent to find reasons to engage in dialogue - was still writing for an audience of folks who are already pretty bought into the idea that inequalities exist and are bad.

This week, though, we got into the problem of how to talk about these topics with people who really don't want to. "Whites claim they do not discriminate because they do not think in racial terms," write Armstrong and Wildman in Deconstructing Privilege (p 63). When talking with somebody who touts the All Lives Matter slogan, writes Kevin Roose (quoting GeekAesthete), it should be emphasized that really Black Lives Matter means, "Black lives matter, too." This is brand new territory. No more are we talking about activating the energies of well-intentioned, liberal, progressive folks who might otherwise stand on the side; now we are talking about actively trying to change the minds of those most disinterested in change. This is a major shift. "Color insight," argue Armstrong and Wildman, "admits that most of us do see race and underlines the need to understand what that racial awareness might mean" (p 67).

If that's the case - if the first step is admitting that we do see race - then I would argue we need to have more things pushing themselves right in front of our faces to force us to acknowledge that we do see race. This weekend, after the leader of the free world suggested NFL owners should fire players protesting racial injustices during the playing of the National Anthem (you can read a well-argued explanation of the symbolism of taking a knee out of respect and protest), we witnessed the most widespread social justice protest in a professional sporting community ever. Trump continues to insist that his argument is not about race at all.

70 percent of the NFL is African American. I'm sure there are people who will say they never noticed that, since they don't see race. I'm also sure that if this sort of activism continues, the number of people who will be able to continue to say with a straight face that they don't see race will dwindle. Only a few mean girls and boys will remain.