Earlier this year I took a course centered on community outreach — specifically better understanding possible reasons people make the decisions they do (e.g. voting patterns) and how they can be persuaded to do a specific thing in accordance to mentalities governing said decision making. Just to be sure, the course was never structured to provide a level of objectivity oftentimes subjectively demanded by different audiences with agendas incongruent with the case being made.
Attempting to further contextualize such phenomena, the class instructor invited guest lecturers to lead storytelling sessions related to their community centric endeavors. One exercise resonated more than others — a mock negotiation.
One party portrayed a major health system hellbent on acquiring a small community hospital — pitching such advantages as more efficiency and refuge from under performance among others. The other party comprised administrators of said hospital accepting the inevitable merger and demanding better perks than the conglomerate originally offered. The guest lecturer played a mediator role — specifically one as a catalyst — uttering statements to influence our negotiation style. The key here is influence our behavior — not mandate we behave a certain kind of way.
Interpreting the mediator’s guidance as a directive versus a suggestion arose from socialization — a conditioning of our being assigned specific roles with unspoken limitations in ways we navigate power dynamics. We are socialized via multiple media — television programming, Internet search results, selective fixation of religious scriptures, educational curricula, and the undertones of universal marketing and advertising channels, among other streams.
We did not challenge the mock mediator’s suggestions because we did not want to appear uncooperative. If any negotiation’s trope endures, it is we must give up something to get something. Because of this mentality, we subconsciously surrendered our agency within the pretense of the world as it should be (good things happen to good people with good intentions), not as it is (chicanery, sociopathy, and ferocity are rewarded over being a good sport).
Two personal breakthroughs materialized. One, my getting stuck between the ideals of the world as it should be (our lived experiences perfectly reflect “all men are created equal” as the United States Constitution relays) versus the world as it is (white people are artificially cast as the human ideal). The world as it is smothers the world as we have been led to believe it should be — creating strife, dangerous misinformation, health inequities, and a President of the United States void of compassion, intelligence, and decency.
Through the genocide of and massive land grabs from Native people; a culture of European domination and invasion; and stolen labor from enslaved, kidnapped Africans; among other calamitous shenanigans perpetuated by individuals of European descent; white people acquired and sustained control of economic and social capital. Farcical individualism and the incomplete narrative of meritocracy are the most convenient dead horses to beat in explaining away systemic inequities between whites and the othered, manifesting as designed.
The world as it should be, has no health inequities or wage gaps for equal work. The 44th President of the United States is not harangued for wearing a tan suit. Preventable deaths— delivery of healthcare services to African Americans consistently falling short of the quality demanded of whites — caused by subjectively pursuing some medical research over others would not manifest in our healthcare sector. Murderous cops would be fired and held to account in a soul-saving manner. The 45th President of the United States would have a temperament and literacy level beyond that of a recalcitrant toddler. As critical race theory reminds us, white supremacy will not permit such idealistic restructuring of power without overtly naming and actively dismantling it with no caveats.
The second epiphany regards African Americans conditioned to subconsciously surrender our agency every day, all day. My experience has been keeping white people calm is synonymous to working a side hustle without earning any wages. Instead of harnessing my agency via autonomous decision making — taking the elevator full of white people because I can — I frequently surrender it. How? In this example, I tell myself taking the elevator full of white people is not an option (when it clearly is) — artificially limiting my choices to avoid experiencing the indignity of white women clutching their purses upon seeing me or others stiffening their bodies to avoid any accidental touching as if my skin’s hue will mark and poison them.
People as such instantaneously stereotype me as mischievous and dirty, whose sole purpose for being present is to harm, rob, or otherwise lower the class status of the most proximal white folks. In this case, critical race theory posits surrendering my agency rests on upholding white comfort over my right to use an elevator. The former, if violated at just the right time could land me six feet under.
In a more dignified country, I would be able to calmly converse with the purse-clutching woman and please-do-not-touch me enthusiast on the spot, they realize their seething racial contempt non-verbally conveyed, and apologize for sending a message casting or at the very least acknowledge such cues can be implied. Letting go of their white grievance and unfounded assertions of my being a genetically predisposed troublemaker deserving no benefit of the doubt, would be a possibility in the world as it should be.
Yet, this fanciful exchange oftentimes is supplanted by a hostile takeover of my agency by my own hippocampus. The world as it is and has been informs me that seizing the moment to name prejudice and discrimination runs the risk of their overreacting, calling the cops, lying about their safety (comfort) being challenged, and trust being broken (not nicely naming racism). This puts me in a situation where I can be murdered by cops granted state sanctioned power to kill at their discretion (uninformed, biased or otherwise) and limitless benefit of the doubt in ending another’s life. San repercussions, such cops have been shown to only experience inconvenient moments in the media spotlight.
1. D. Gibson, (personal communication, January 2019)
2. DiAngelo, R. (2019). White fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism. London: Allen Lane.
3. Coffee, Starbucks. “Stanley Nelson-Story of Access.” YouTube, YouTube, 29 May 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=o__5xvIE3bU&list=PLk2XBBEnN8pMqtUZiTR0p8ikrrljD4uN-&index=3.
4. Hafner, Josh. “Police Killings of Black Men in the U.S. and What Happened to the Officers.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 30 Mar. 2018, www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/03/29/police-killings-black-men-us-and-what-happened-officers/469467002/.
5. Hayes, Christopher. A Colony in a Nation. W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.
6. Robinson, Jeffery. “The Truth about the Confederacy in the United States (FULL Version).” YouTube, YouTube, 24 Aug. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOPGpE-sXh0&list=PLk2XBBEnN8pMqtUZiTR0p8ikrrljD4uN-&index=2&t=2s.
7. Oluo, I. (2019). SO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT RACE. Place of publication not identified: SEAL.
