Walking Out Of The Bubble It’s a jarring experience. You’re sitting close, talking to someone and, in an instant, they seem to recede into the middle distance. Neither of you actually moved. Physically, they’re still right there, as close as they were the moment before. You still hear them talking and you understand the individual words and phrases. Maybe you even agree with what they’re saying at that atomic level, but, somehow, a vast chasm has opened between you.
That’s how I felt several times yesterday while chatting with some of my Liberal and Progressive friends on the subject of the President releasing the vault copy of his birth certificate. We agreed that Donald Trump is a visible-from-orbit asshole. We agreed that “birtherism” is both a manifestation of racism and a tactical effort to other-ize Barack Obama for political reasons. We were all mad at the media for pouring gasoline on that fire of ridiculous stupidity in the service of controversy (read: ad dollars). And then, some of them turned their frustration onto the President himself for “caving in” or “only encouraging them” and, suddenly, a vast chasm opened between us.-snip-
I’m right in the middle of reading Right To Ride by the University of North Carolina’s associate professor of history Blair L. M. Kelley.
It’s a very hard book to read. Hard, not because it’s dense with latinate academyspeak (it isn’t) or because it depends upon the reader to have read 57 other books to put it into proper context (it doesn’t); it’s hard to read because each chapter, each paragraph, each sentence illuminates a very painful aspect of American history and culture.
Right To Ride deserves it’s own post (or six) once I’ve finished reading, and a full review is beyond our scope here. To summarize, though,
it offers a window into the complexities of American race relations by chronicling the decades-long struggle of black Americans to receive equal treatment in the nation’s railroads, streetcars, and other public conveyances. Discrimination and the fights against it took different forms in different parts of the country but there are several common themes:
There is always a set of rules that apply to black passengers that are never applied to white passengers.
Those rules are, themselves, subject to change without notice. If and when black passengers figured out some way to route around the discriminatory rules, the rules simply changed to ensure an unfair outcome.
Professional position, material wealth, social standing are never guarantors of fair treatment. A passenger could have all the money and community respect in the world and the Kafkaesque system of rules would still apply– if they were black. That’s what makes Right To Ride hard to read.
It shines a bright, unblinking light on one of the ugliest aspects of American history by contrasting the experiences of black Americans and white Americans in their efforts to fill that most basic human need of getting from point A to point B. Each story of unequal treatment, bigotry, violence, and cruelty lands like a punch to the gut. I can’t read more than a few pages at a time without becoming simultaneously angry and sad. So I put the book down and go read something else. Because I can. Confronted by the fact that what Prof. Kelley is telling me is but one facet of a divided America that has existed for as long as America itself has existed, I look away. Because I have that luxury. Because I’m white.
Back to
“birtherism”. Look back at the bulleted list above and consider those common themes of discrimination in the context of some people’s questions surrounding Barack Obama’s personal history. Rules applied that would never (and have never been) applied to a white President? Check. Shifting definitions of the rules; of what constitutes acceptable evidence of his legitimacy and acceptability? Check. Questions answered, with answers ignored as the goalposts are moved to still other questions? Check. Public demonstrations that there is no level of achievement– no material, academic, political, or executive success that he could attain, no positive personal or social characteristic he could ever posses– that would ever make the rules of discrimination not apply to him? Check and double-check.
Yeah, that last one. That’s what the whole Birther thing is about, as I see it. It’s the ugliest part of America saying to America’s first black president, “That’s nice. Doesn’t matter. You’re still going to pay the black tax”.
And so he paid it. And he’ll pay it again. Just like every American who has ever been born with black skin pays it and keeps on paying it. To declare that President Obama “caved” or has “only encouraged them” by showing his papers is to deny the common experience he shares with every black American. To remove that from the equation is to retreat into the same privilege via the same luxury that permits me to put Prof. Kelley’s book aside when what it tells me hurts too much.
That’s why I’ve zoomed out into my friends’ middle distance; why there’s suddenly a chasm between myself and them. Because,
from my perspective, to blame Barack Obama for trying to reassure Ugly America’s irrational fears is utterly incomprehensible. Is he supposed to face down 300 years of discrimination all by himself? Do you imagine that any man or woman could? To those of you who are looking at this issue from a purely tactical perspective– about whether or not it was the right thing to do politically– I ask you to please stop. Consider a different perspective. Reflect on the fact there might me more at work, and more at stake, than you might have realized.http://blog.totalcinema.com/2011/04/28/walking-out-of-the-bubble/ 
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