In typical form I realized a few minutes before the end of a meeting that I had to get to Baker to usher for the Coates lecture. I got my Very Official Badge and posted up at the front of the student section on the floor. Honestly, it was mostly surreal at that moment to be on the basketball court. People slowly started filing in. There were a few groups of people that came in as soon as the doors opened. They claimed seats, staked out spots for their less-dedicated and/or buisier friends. As more people came in I kind of realized that our student section was split into thirds. The first third: “I know who Coates is, I’m so glad he’s at Davidson, I’m ready to hear him preach, let’s go.” The second third: “I read his book in a class and also some of my friends are talking about this Coates guy and like, probably it will be interesting and I’m interested in hearing what he has to say.” The final third: “Everyone’s going to this thing, I should also go.” As I stood around awkwardly realizing that my job was pretty useless except for nagging people to squish together and stop leaving open seats, I realized just how huge this lecture was going to be. People were showing up in droves, flocking to the “adult” seating and anticipation was building.
If you’d like to know about what Coates said– read his book or the Davidsonian article. I’m more interested in depicting the responses of the crowd.
I was sitting in the second row, so I couldn’t see the reactions of those behind me, but I certainly heard the claps that started intermittantly from behind me. I, and the others sitting in the front, had heard much of what Coates had said, but it was kind of validating to hear someone speak so candidly, easily, and confidently about truths that sometimes seem so very tenuous at a PWI like Davidson. I’m assuming there were some people in the crowd to whom Coates’ message was new. I heard people talking about it later saying they’d never thought about it like that, or that it was racist of Coates to say he didn’t have a lot of faith in White people. So, you know, reactions ran the gamut.
Obviously I’m so white I’m pretty much translucent, so the big parts that stood out to me were his comments about white people, white America, white supremacy etc. Every time he said supremacy, which was more often than zero, but not a crazy huge amount I felt a little discomfort. I pictured what most white people tend to picture– scenes from movies like American History X or Django Unchained. I don’t have a shaved head, I don’t follow crazy anarchist sites that spew hateful vitriol… so how do I fit into the supremacy picture? Coates continued discussing the inscription of criminality onto black bodies and I realized how different the connotations of white supremacy are for me and for him. Take the literal definition of “supremacy,” which is” the state or condition of being superior to all others in authority, power, or status (taken from Google) and it makes more sense how I fit into the U.S.’s supremicist society: no matter what I do I will always get to fall back on that image of me as “better than” becuase of my skin color.
“But by bringing up race, you’re just perpetuating racism,” someone told me a few days later when we were catching up about the lecture and some of the Q&As and talkbacks. At the time I stumbled over words because I’m still not sure how to really bridge the gap in how salient race still is, still has to be for some…. and how little it can mean, how easy it can be to think that all is equal and okay, for others. Coates said in his lecture that we don’t say “let that be in the past” when we talk about George Washington, the pilgrims (happy Thanksgiving…), or even Dr. King (although, we should note that white America tends to quote his most color-blind line and love on his qualities that adhere to the notion of respectability politics so easily… we tend to forget that the key players in that Civil Rights Movement were strategically chosen to be as controversy-free as possible). Anyway.
We don’t say to forget about those things, or leave them in the past, because it is so easy for “mainstream” America to hold those as a part of our past and to track (and celebrate) their importance, significance, influence on us today. But bring race even into those historical conversations and it’s suddenly too PC, too liberal bullshitty, too this too that and the conversation stops. If we have trouble bringing race into the most violently racist time in our nation’s history is it any wonder that we can’t talk about the (very obvious) ways it has helped shape what modern and future America looks like?
“Heritage matters,” Coates repeated over and over again. The significance of that statement is easy to miss for white Americans. So freaking easy. But it is so simple and in its simplicity so important. Race mattered when we built this nation from scratch. Race has mattered in so many pivotal moments and decisions. Race has been taken for granted and manipulated and worked out of (holla to my Irish homies) and determined by paper (holla at the one drop rule). Race has been one of the biggest threads tying us now to where we came from. And that’s ok. Becuase that’s not going to change. What can change is us actually acknowledging that some affirmative action isn’t going to suddenly upend centuries of violent, non-violent, de jure, de facto racial subjugation. What can change is a willingness to sit in discomfort for a few seconds one day, a few minutes the next day, a few hours the next day, etc. To sit in the discomfort of realizing that YOU personally have a role in racialized society we have even if YOU are not A Racist… becuase I don’t think you are. To sit in that discomfort and then realize that you don’t have to put anti-racist work at the top of your daily to-do list, but that if it’s not on your list at all, then the least you can do (and I would argue need to do) is get out of the way of racial social justice (no this doesn’t mean letting liberal America run rampant– please complicate your image of cival engagement and then return to my overly-simplified metaphor). Becuase if you don’t get out of the way, then you are a barrier. And if you don’t get out of the way, you can’t say “I don’t care about race” becuase there is something keeping you in the way and that something is racialized (whether it’s fear of discussing race, fear of losing relative power, fear of the “other,” or a whole host of other possibilities). If you don’t get out of the way, you become a part of white supremicist America. And that’s fine I guess, but cop to it (not on Yik Yak) so a new road around you, over you, under you can be built. And if you think these things are not mutually exclusive, e-mail me @ madriscoll because (and real people can really attest to this) I want to talk about it. I’m not 100% right, I don’t think you’re 100% wrong and it is in conversation and discourse that change is made.
To the people reading this who didn’t need that spiel: stay strong; stay woke.
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