Our fears allow frail “deplorables” to control conversations about race and oppression

After reading Stacey Patton’s WaPo piece “Sorry, ‘deplorables’: Being called racist doesn’t mean you’re being oppressed,” I finally had to step outside of my usual Facebook commentary (as I had shut down my political blog, Pam’s House Blend, in 2013) to say something in longer form. Patton:

"Many of the beliefs of Trump’s supporters — from the rabid racists to the unconsciously biased — are deplorable, and they don’t see how he is exploiting frustrated, disenfranchised and poor whites looking for someone to blame for their economic condition. He has successfully exploited their resentments, as if he’s going to give them jobs. But Trump has taken advantage of poor white people his entire professional life. He made his money off bankruptcies, stiffing vendors and contractors who could not pay the workers who built his hotels and casinos. He fleeced Atlantic City and left the people of all racial backgrounds there even poorer. Trump has nothing to sell but racial fear and blame.

None of that exonerates Clinton from some very public acts of racism herself — she did, after all, once refer to black children as “super-predators,” and she endorsed the atrocious crime and welfare bills her husband signed into law in the 1990s. But she does deserve credit here for standing up to Trump.

It is never inappropriate to call out racism. We don’t do it enough in this country. It is especially important for white people to call it out, to bear witness to it, to identify it among and within themselves — and to do something about it. Stop playing the victim, and talk honestly about how to keep this country off the verge of a racial nervous breakdown."

This election cycle has become more and more deranged, derailed by voices normalizing hate speech, white supremacy, and denying that white privilege exists. Those speaking out, emboldened by Trump, feel under siege when they are as a result, called racists. As if the label is worse than the bile coming out of their mouths.

It’s hard to witness the scab being torn off, the boil lanced. It is not oppression to call out bigotry in very personal specific terms — “you are a racist” versus “what you said is racist.” At least David Duke owns what he believes. But you don’t have to be him to hold views that reflect racial animus or support for a system that oppresses minorities (or even a majority, as women outnumber men in the U.S.). It is about who holds power.

It means being held socially accountable for what you say, and what you do. If you mean what you say, then you embody what those words mean. You can say whatever filth you want in private, in public most people will never say the same racist, sexist and homophobic things. If you have to modify your public vocabulary because you are concerned with being called a bigot or racist, perhaps you should think about why those phrases exist, why they are harmful to public discourse, and reflect poorly upon you as a person.

The deplorables don’t have a filter or decency censor. Trump has made it A-OK to hurl those types of words out and then cry foul as if society should find it acceptable. Even worse, you have deplorables egged-on to be violent by Trump — and they are dumb enough, mad enough about their situation, and disrepectful of the mere differences between us to hit, kick, cold-clock, beat-down in groups, people who have done nothing to them. In some cases merely speaking out in opposition is enough to get assaulted.

Deplorables only care that they can exercise their feelings about what they see as ills in society on whatever person they resent is in front of them. THEY HAVE NO IMPULSE CONTROL. Same as their Cheeto Master, who gleefully enjoys it, denies white supremacists and supremacy exists, and accepts money from them. Well, the basket of deplorables includes anyone who defends this behavior, whether it be physical violence or commenting in threads that have little debate and only personal insults.

Witness Facebook. I see so many people in my feed talking about blocking and unfriending family members, friends, and obviously acquaintences they care little about, because there is no rational debate or discussion going on about the difficult truths this election has exposed. What is exposed are raw nerves, defensiveness, lack of any discipline to engage rather than insult perfect strangers…and willingness to cut ties with people rather than see if we can meet in the middle.

There is precious little middle anymore when you have a presidential race that does nothing to educate how to discuss all the “isms” that divide us. A media that has done little journalism until Trump started barring news organizations and it woke up that he was serious about restrictions on the First Amendment and admired the way Putin dealt with them.

Seriously, how can one man, albeit a powerful, wealthy one, with no class, no tact, and lies with such ease (even with ample evidence on tape, and in court documents that he is done so), pull the wool over the eyes of so many? Because that rage and resentment was always there, simmering, then boiling in a pressure cooker of divided politics and intransigence we’ve seen on the Hill, and Trump ripped the lid off and it’s exploded in our faces.

We have learned just how much of our society is a facade, that dismantling bigotry by legal means is not the same as society accepting the reality that we are all equal. When one group has gamed the system (white privilege) and created a system of oppression that has been handed down and affirmed. It’s no wonder the fragility emerges when it is pointed out. That’s not oppression. None of the groups Trump demonizes is in control or has the power to change the system, to stop institutionalized bigotry in law enforcement, housing discrimination, etc. White society at the top promotes divide and conquer strategy with white people at the lower and middle rungs of the economic latter to maintain their supremacy over all of us.

And here we are, Trump stoking deplorables to act out on their fears and biases rather than admit, discuss, and find common ground. How many of these deplorables have friends — not acquaintences, not co-workers — people in their lives they can learn from and understand what it is like to live in this system and navigate it each day?

Sadly, you can be close to, related to, or married to/living with someone who you have learned is a deplorable and you are seeing it naked and raw for the first time in this election cycle. What does that feel like, being unable to have a rational conversation about a difficult topic with someone you thought you knew?

It truly hurts to see so much of this. When I had PHB up, we had so many useful discussions about race on the blog. People opened up about their own racist upbringing, views and fears they still held…but they knew my blog was a safe space where no question was stupid, we were there to learn. Pam’s House Blend and its community ethos seem like a relic.

It also meant calling out not only racists, but minorities for being defensive and shutting down conversation. Some were simply weary of catering to white fragility. For instance, I still felt it was important to help lead non-minorities into positive, yet difficult subjects that would expose, but not condemn instances of white privilege. The only thing that should be condemned is once you are well aware of it, that you CHOOSE to do nothing about it when you see and hear it in your life. To challenge the deplorables in safe space, not with invectives or personal attacks, but compassion for the larger topic — discomfort with a changing society’s demographics. Since change will occur with or without the consent of deplorables, we have no choice but to engage, empathize and learn.

But violence, verbal attacks, and shunning are negative manifestations of a public ignorant of any reasonable way to engage. Do these deplorables want to be part of the solution or continue to be part of the problem? Do the rest of us think blocking/shunning does anything to help? At this point it seems we don’t have the tools in the toolbox to address this rationally anymore. They’ve been tossed out by angry, fearful people who have no sense of decency or humanity. I cannot begin to figure this one out.