Tribalism Will Never Solve Racism

Like most white people (I assume) I struggle to find any words at all to talk about racism. I have gotten myself in trouble plenty by being just plain foolish. I even quoted a song lyric once that had the n-word, and did so in front of a black person. Yes, I have been that dumb before, and fortunately for me, I escaped that situation with all my limbs in tact.

The lesson I’ve learned: the best thing for me to do is to shut up and listen.

Yet that will only ever take a person so far. At some point, you have to say… something. People are hurting every day because of injustice that destroys communities, and so being silent isn’t actually the answer either. Perhaps I could be better in that regard.

When it comes to listening, and only speaking up when absolutely necessary—and from a place of truth—I realize that it is usually much more complicated than that.

People used to ask me for my opinion all the time. I seemed to have developed a reputation for being fairly objective, and on most matters, I can speak my truth in a way that offends few people. However, if anyone thinks I have never been afflicted with foot-in-mouth disease, let it be known that this is not the case!

On the other hand, though, character assassination is alive and well. There is a hidden premise behind everything nowadays. If you say something wrong—even slightly—then you are put into a box, from which you may never escape. I have felt this way many times.

It’s hard being the one that’s willing to listen to literally anyone. From a very early age, I was the kid that asked an obnoxious number of questions. I would keep asking them until the person got tired of me. At my current job, I learned as much in the first six months as those that have been around for years. I know because all my co-workers told me so.

That was because I wanted to know everything. I don’t ever want to be the guy asking the questions, but rather the one answering them. So I ask, and ask, and ask some more.

For the last few years, this is basically all I’ve done. I’ve made statements here and there, and my missteps have become few and far between. If you are really listening, therefore, you realize how difficult it is to take a position on very complicated subjects.

As Mary Shelley puts it, in a quote I use often, “I am not a person of strong opinions because I feel the counterarguments too strongly.” This is the best description of my approach to tough issues.

And racism is no different.

On this topic specifically, you could say I had two “aha!” moments.

The first was regarding “white privilege.” This is from one of the chapters of my moronic former life, when I truly felt like it must not exist at all. I later realized that my reason for defending this position had more to do with other points I didn’t want to concede, and some of those points I still think are valid.

I was discussing public housing with a friend, and I thought we were making headway, when suddenly he said, “You are only saying this because you are white. You need to check your privilege.”

It was very odd, because the conversation was effectively over after that. We could no longer discuss the policy of public housing at all, unless I agreed with the other position. This was probably when I realized that wokism can and has been used, not as a tool for enlightening others—or “witnessing,” to use the lingo of Christian conservatives—but rather as a weapon. This was, and still is, one of the main points the right has correctly been making for a while.

Clubbing people with thought policing and semantics is not an effective strategy for outreach. I see the same thing inside the Liberty movement, too, so I can’t even say the left has a monopoly on this. When it comes to racism, though, my white liberal friends are never shy about letting people know when they wish for them to stop speaking.

Another example happened a little over a year ago, after sharing an article on Facebook about how—when you set politics aside—America is actually pretty “nice.” It argued that, if you actually travel the country, you find that most people are good to each other more often than not.

Immediately after posting this, one of my white liberal friends (whom I love and would take a bullet for) said, “yes, if you’re a white male.”

I was pretty stunned. That’s because I shared this article for a reason.

Over the course of the previous week, I had participated in three separate conversations with co-workers that all said the same thing, unsolicited. I wasn’t even asking the questions this time, but this was how they felt.

All of them, if it wasn’t clear, were people of color.

One in particular said (to paraphrase): “I’ve been doing this job over twenty years, and I’ve been all over this country. And I gotta say, most people just wanna do the right thing. You gotta turn off the news, because it’s not like it seems if you only watch the news.”

I shared the article because I actually listened to my friends and co-workers. Despite this, one of my white liberal friends gave a hot take that negated the perspective I thought I had come to share with those I had listened to. It was a moment in which I knew that this was not simply foot-in-mouth disease. This time, I had a point.

It was not the first time my optimism had been challenged on the grounds of social justice, but I realized that I was not crazy for continuing to believe that most people are decent, and care about the same things we all care about.

My other “aha!” moment, though, was regarding the Christian conservative community’s response to the caravans coming up through Mexico. At the time, the country could not have been more polarized on an issue. I wrote an article detailing my dismay at seeing so many of the churches' purported followers clinging to such a inhumane position.

One side believed that there was a genuine humanitarian disaster that resulted in people having to flee oppressive regimes and seek asylum in that shining beacon on a hill. The other side, however, gobbled up conspiracy theories that the caravan was being funded, and that the president better not let them in or so help us all.

Again, it was a family member’s Facebook thread that showed me the error. She has children with an immigrant that happens to be undocumented, and had some unsurprising things to say about the president’s rhetoric and policy prescriptions for this issue. The ensuing conversation went predictably off the rails.

This type of unpleasant and toxic conversation was happening everywhere, but what shocked me was the rather callous and dismissive attitude towards those seeking refuge here, expressed by another family member’s co-worker on that same thread.

Over the following months, I really tried to listen to the reasons given by my conservative friends, and all they gave me in return was talk of law and order, and how we are a nation of laws. All I heard was the other-izing of people, using the emotionless image of handcuffs and jail bars.

To them, it most certainly is not “other-izing” at all. To them, it is simply morally right to take a stand on the breaking of laws. They trust that, if we have laws at all, they must exist for a reason. Yet they fail to reconcile this with their anti-establishment, small government sentiments.

The woman in question was, I should point out, a Christian. She is a great woman to be around, and I have little else bad to say about her. But on this point, I could not have been more shocked. She was determined to see all undocumented entrants into our country as criminals, regardless of whether they were seeking asylum.

I realized that this viewpoint was not an isolated one. I have many conservative friends that see things this way.

So on to the hard part.

Am I the sort of person to sift through the social conditioning of my conservative friends to find some deep-seeded, latent xenophobia, so that I might say, “That explains it.” Perhaps it is true, and if it is, it probably won’t simply manifest on this particular issue.

But if I squinted my eyes and scrutinized a person's every word in this manner, I could quite easily conclude that literally everyone must be racist, or racist-adjacent. Our actual positions, however non-sensical and irrational they may seem, always have a reason. It takes a certain mindset to go looking for malice in people's hearts based solely on your personal interpretations of their words.

On the other hand, though, it also takes a certain mindset to remove sinister motives as a possibility. One person may have a certain innocent rationale for wanting tighter border security, while another has motives that really are awful. One would never know which one is true, though, without having a more generous attitude towards the discussion.

Liberals call each other out all the time, which goes to show how easy a person’s words can be used against them. But is this a matter of sematics, or is there really some darker motivation in play?

There is one way that I reconcile this: The Charity Principle.

The Charity Principle was introduced to me this year in The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe (a book everyone should read, by the way!), and it is changing how I talk to all of my friends.

It suggests that the best way to approach a position or argument is to start by assuming the most charitable interpretation of that position first, then moving on to progressively more challenging ones. In this way, you never misinterpret someone or assume their motives.

If a person says, “Gun free zones are less safe,” don’t respond with, “So you want more kids to get shot?” This assumes that the person you are speaking with actually wants kids to get killed. Unless you are speaking to a psychopath, it’s safe to say this is probably not true. Yet this is the way so many people deal with disagreement.

So when I talk to my conservative friends, I don’t assume they hold these positions because they are racist. If they are, I will find out. If they aren’t, I will find out why they hold these positions, and maybe even persuade them to consider alternative points of view.

Creating a pathway to citizenship seems like a great idea, if done right, but it’s wrong to assume people are racist if they challenge it. You will never know what the roadblocks are to such sensible policies unless you are willing to listen to the other side.

Those are two very small examples that have jumped out to me, and they suggest that today’s tribes could learn something from each other. The right could be more sensitive to issues of racial justice, but the left could also be a lot less sensitive as well.

I truly believe most people want to do the right thing. Most people abhor racism, and yet hate groups are on the rise. I see one side blaming our now-former president for this, even though hate groups have been on the rise since the 90’s. I see the other side pretend like it’s not happening at all.

Nowadays, hate groups have ridden the wave of anti-PC backlash, and it’s worked out very well for them. But it never had to be like that. Many of the newest recruits to these organizations could have been prevented with just a little kindness, thoughtfulness, and patience.

People really are hurting, and that includes young white men. Trump pretty much proved that, and it shouldn’t be debatable anymore. We should never again feel it is acceptable to alienate and shame an entire group of people, and not think of the blowback.

We now have copious amounts of data regarding hate groups, and cults in general. As a horror movie buff, I can tell you that political horror and movies about cults are among the most popular horror movies being made today, and there’s a reason for it.

On some level, there is a generation of anxious and angry young people that are itching to radicalize on both sides. I would say to anyone reading this that is pursuing extremist ideologies on the left or the right to strongly consider widening your circle of friends. I would encourage everyone to have as many hard conversations as they feel they can stomach, and do so with compassion and understanding.

If you assume the position that the person you are talking to is a better person than you might suppose, then that person might surprise you.

I like to think that I have actually had an impact on some people. Like I said, some have continued to ask me for my insight into this or that current event, and I like to think that it’s because I treat them with respect, no matter how much we disagree. On the topic of racism, I'm about as ignorant as most white people. At least, that's the attitude that I have chosen to adopt on the issue. I am always forcing myself to do more listening than talking, and it's easier said than done.

Tribalists on both sides will likely feel misrepresented by this post, but that just proves my point. If you are the sort of person that is not given to scapegoating others, or repeating the only perspective you’ve allowed yourself to hear, or accepting the opinion of others simply because they are on your team without challenging them even a little, then you will likely realize that most people are not that terrible.

I care about racial justice, but I also recognize that the way we have chosen to have this conversation as a nation is as painful as it is predictable. It is a vicious cycle of name-calling, self-rightousness, heartlessness, and blind rage. Anger makes a person more susceptible to misinformation, and this feedback loop is what makes Twitter and Facebook uniquely toxic.

Realize that this post is less about the actual topic of racial injustice, and more about the manner in which we’ve chosen to discuss the issue. There are plenty of real solutions to racial injustice, and I would join anyone in having that conversation, right or left.

But if my unwillingness to pick a side bothers people, I’m less inclined to feel bad about it these days. I would rather take no position, than participate in ruining someone’s life and be wrong about it. Everyone deserves a fair trial, no matter how much you dislike them. I will continue to make it a priority to listen, and I think everyone should do the same.