“The Pitfalls of (White) Liberal Panic”
“Should we admit, now, that the “postracial” moment was a precursor (rather than a provocation) to a white populism that bizarrely insists on its nonraciality while it projects GIFs, memes, and clumsy puns invoking monkeys, taco bowls, and the Prophet Muhammad? It is stranger still that old terms — racism, misogyny, homophobia, sexism — have flooded the national discourse as if this spectacle, this candidate, this President-elect is the catalyst of a doomsday that has in fact been long present in the seemingly limitless reach of white (male) entitlement to degrade, humiliate, and assert dominion over the field of zero consequences.
The morbid-cynical joyride of (white… multiculturalist?) liberal panic is neither merited nor, for some of us, fathomable. One could learn lessons from the twentysomethings in my classroom — Black, Brown, a few white, working class and lower middle class, queer and trans*, one degree (or less) removed from an incarcerated and/or undocumented loved one — who do not lament a damn thing, and are simmering with urgent questions about the necessity of artful, collective rebellion against an order. They are invigorating a truth that some older, wiser heads have generously shared for years: that to live within an everyday understanding — and embrace — of emergency is to thrust liberal panic to the margins of an indulgence. It is to say, without a hint of “i told you so” smugness or exaggerated rage, that such a political-cultural recalibration to the White Supremacist Normal (however absurd this version may be) is always to be anticipated.”
Related: “Finding Hope in a Loveless Place”
