The D-word and America
We’re not having that conversation about race and ethnicity and the myriad dimensions of diversity. That conversation’s having us.
We don’t know yet what surprises Chris Rock has in store for us when he takes the mic to host the 88th Academy Awards tonight. But thanks to one rehearsal publicity image, we may a taste of what’s coming.
One of the publicity shots released last week shows Rock wearing a NASA space suit, presumably a riff on Matt Damon’s role in the Oscar-nominated film “The Martian.”
Let’s imagine what might be coming in the ever-topical Rock’s opening monologue:
He wanders on to the stage of the Dolby Theater in the guise of an astronaut, a stranger in a strange land, a man in an alien place, desperately hoping to find his way back home, back to a land he loves and recognizes. Back to America.
He removes his helmet, looks into the audience and says with exasperation: “Where the @#$% am I? I wanna go home!”
For minority Americans in general, and African Americans in particular, that sense of dislocation from our nation, and the ideals and principles it presumably embodies, is very real. The country we live in right now? This is America, but this is not America.
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Diversity — the D-word — has had one hell of a workout for the last few years, at every level of the public discourse. Like a lot of things, it’s been easier to talk about in the context of what’s next instead of in a context of what’s now. And a lot of people are having a hard time navigating that.
The D-word has been lately attached to a range of relatively genial matters, including hiring practices in business … and the role of diversity in the motion picture industry, the same industry that celebrates itself tonight. The same industry that Chris Rock will briefly but reliably embarrass tonight.
But diversity is at the heart of other deeper, bigger, more gravitational issues of law and law enforcement, politics and government, and the overall advancement of our society. It’s what American society is resisting because it means making changes the country’s not ready for.
And the avatar of that stasis, the walking, talking, spray-tanned symbol of that intolerance is Donald Trump, the billionaire attention addict running for the presidency of the United States and, at this national moment, hands down the most dangerous man in America.
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In the months since he declared his gold-plated, self-funded campaign open for business, Trump has legitimized a rhetorical rage that’s tapped into a simmering racial resentment. With passive-aggressive language, impatience with the social norms of politeness and charity, and a willingness to preside over violence at his own campaign rallies, Trump has almost single-handedly damaged the American brand here and abroad.
Almost single-handedly. It’s not like he hasn’t had a lot of help. David Duke, the avowed white supremacist, former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and oft-failed political candidate, said on Wednesday to his radio audience that “voting against Donald Trump at this point, is, really, treason to your heritage.” Various white supremacist/nationalist organizations have similarly endorsed Trump’s campaign.
That, obviously, is bad enough. What’s worse is the building consensus about Trump’s bid for the White House. All of that comes in the midst of his steady political ascension; his status as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination has been solidified by voters in three straight primary-season contests.
Diversity, as a principle and a national objective, is apparently anathema to all of them.
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In other ways, the D-word has been hard for the nation to get behind, even in some of its more presumably enlightened precincts. Mark Zuckerberg, the master builder of Facebook, loudly voiced displeasure with Facebook employees who repeatedly obliterated the phrase “#BlackLivesMatter” from a wall at Facebook headquarters bearing employees’ sentiments on topical issues.
Zuckerberg waxed passionate in his call for inclusion. “I was already very disappointed by this disrespectful behavior before, but after my communication, I now consider this malicious as well,” he wrote last week in a company communication. “We’ve never had rules around what people can write on our walls — we expect everybody to treat each other with respect. Regardless of the content or location, crossing out something means silencing speech, or that one person’s speech is more important than another’s.”
More problematic for Zuckerberg is his own company’s flat-out sorry record of minority hiring and advancement. Only 2 percent of FB workers are black, 4 percent are Hispanic, and 32 percent are female. That’s pretty much consistent with other tech companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
It’s easy to pay lip full-throated lip service to the idea of diversity. Action, the reality is another matter entirely.
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When Chris Rock goes onstage tonight at the Oscars and does his thing, the movers and shakers of the movie business will grin and bear it, gazing down at their Manolo Blahniks, and shifting uncomfortably in their tuxedos. They’ll put up with what Rock has to say about diversity, and the lack of same in the business they’re in.
They’ll go about their business, applaud in the right places, and head for the countless parties that are a mainstay of the Oscar experience. And for them, talk about diversity will go right back to being what it is, for them and millions of Americans unwilling to commit to what achieving diversity really means. Just talk.
But talking isn’t always conversation. And we as a nation have for years entertained the idea of a “national conversation” about race, inclusion and the D-word. And as the Trump campaign shows, we’ve come to a tipping point about that discussion. We’re not having that conversation about race and ethnicity and the myriad dimensions of diversity. That conversation’s having us.
Diversity today isn’t just a topic in the national conversation; it’s more basic than that. It’s foundational to the national oxygen. But for now, we’ve conceded the terms of engagement for any meaningful dialogue to the Trumps and Dukes and zealots of America. The prospects of having anything as cordial and parliamentary as a “conversation” about the D-word have for now, sadly vanished. Which shouldn’t be a surprise. You can’t really have a conversation if you’re dragged kicking and screaming into doing it in the first place.
