At the beginning of this month, I attended a screening and discussion of the film Selma held at a local Baptist church and co-sponsored by my home parish. The film had many moments that gave me pause, but what stuck with me most came from the discussion afterwards.
I have lived in this same town for most of my life, but most of the other participants had been living here for several decades longer, and could remember when the town had a well-deserved reputation for racism. One person recounted a story of a black plumber he’d hired who was afraid to go to the local hardware store to pick up the parts he needed to complete a job. Another reported that there had been a cross burning in front of a black family’s home as recently as 1990.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called Chicago the most segregated city in America, and my home town is part of that sprawling metropolis. It wasn’t really surprising to hear that the town had a racist past, but the stories made it all seem that much more real.
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| An example of the pictures shared on his official campaign website. |
But his presence is hard to ignore. This despicable man lives a proverbial stone’s throw away from me, and he has enough local support to get on the ballot.1 Clearly, this area’s racist past is not entirely behind it. Although it has ceased to exercise meaningful political influence, explicit racism is not dead.
This sort of unambiguous evil ought to meet sharp opposition… but neo-Nazis and other advocates of white supremacy seem to thrive on attention regardless of whether it’s positive or negative, and that alone makes me hesitate to give it to them.
Arthur Jones has no chance of winning even if the Democratic primary2 goes to the far-left challenger over the pro-life incumbent, and the Republican Party apparently plans to make their rejection of Jones’ candidacy absolutely clear by pouring resources into a write-in candidate.
Nazi is a cultural shorthand for absolute evil, something that must be resisted at every turn. But as long as this sort of overt racism is a marginal force in politics and culture, I don’t think it’s necessary for me to spend any more energy to oppose them than I have in writing this blog post, unless Jones plans a rally to turn the district into the next Charlottesville (at which point I would feel obliged to join in the counter-protests) or his supporters start threatening minorities (which is more of a matter for law enforcement anyway).
This style of overt racism may have been a significant problem more recently than I thought, and it may persist as a marginal force well into the future, but in America today, Nazis are not the face of racism. Racism today is not the same as when Dr. King fought it. The problem is not explicit discrimination or overt racism, but subtler, systemic forms of racism—laws and institutions and biases that victimize minorities, often without directly or intentionally targeting them. And so although Nazis are almost literally begging for attention today, I don’t think the form of racism they represent is what I ought to spend my own time and energy trying to understand and fight against.
The subtler forms of racism are more worthy of attention, but they are also much harder for me to identify with certainty. Subtle racism, as suggested by the adjective, is not begging to be noticed. I wouldn't know where to begin looking for it in my city government, which unanimously enacted a Welcoming City3 ordinance last spring. If only in that way, my community seems to have come a long way in the last few decades. But if nothing else, the Selma viewing and subsequent discussion showed me that racism is always just a little bit closer than I want to believe it is. The major change in the apparent culture of my hometown doesn't actually mean that it's free from the subtler forms of racism, nor does my capacity to notice and reject obvious forms of racism mean that I can pretend to be "woke." At this point in my life, I'm not prepared to recognize and combat systemic racism; the best I can do is listen to others as they communicate their own perspectives and experiences (as Erin Conway did in her previous blog post).
It's largely pointless to seek out confrontations with attention-seeking racists like Arthur Jones or Richard Spencer, and I have only the faintest idea where to begin in understanding and combating the subtler forms of racism that continue to have deleterious effects on minorities. In short, contemporary race issues leave me feeling frustrated, confused, and powerless-- but maybe that's the right place to start.
1 Undoubtedly some people who sign his petitions just think that the incumbent should get a challenger and don’t ask questions or research his positions beforehand (how often does one actually think to ask someone gathering signatures to run for office, “Are you a Nazi?”), but the 91 people who gave him write-in votes in the 2016 general election must be aware of and probably agree with his despicable views.↩
2 I was already planning to take a Democratic ballot primarily for the sake of this race. For more than a year now, the Democratic Party has been in crisis as to whether it will give pro-life Democrats a place at the table, or whether the party is willing to further alienate pro-life voters at a time when the Republican Party looks less appealing than ever. It’s almost as if both sides of the aisle are conspiring to create an opening for a moderate 3rd party.
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3 Cable news would call it a sanctuary city law, but its advocates insisted on the term "welcoming city," since "sanctuary" carried negative connotations in their minds.
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