,
10 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
This “what’s in his heart” stuff is the dumbest thing about how we talk about racism, and perversely centers the conversation around the inner lives of white folks rather than the experiences of the people on the receiving end. What’s in your heart just doesn’t matter that much.
It’s like a polluter protesting that deep down they always cared a lot about nature... great. Maybe so. But who cares? Stop putting shit in the water.
Obviously it matters in a close-up “can I still be personal friends with this individual” sense. But for every broader public purpose we talk about racism, all this excavation of the soul is just noise.
Just as an exercise, consider different frames—different questions we could center with the Northam fracas. The default, itself kind of racist frame takes the interior life of a powerful white guy to be centrally important. What’s the state of his soul? His personal moral arc?
Is it “hateful” to make a joke out of racial degradation and violence, or some more innocent form of indifference to suffering? Has he grown and matured since that time?
These aren’t *irrelevant* questions. Other things equal, we want people to be less awful, especially if they wield power. But there are other good questions that don’t center his interior life.
Like: Is it reasonable to ask a black citizen of Virginia, who doesn’t get to spend long hours plumbing Northam’s soul over tea, to accept a representative now publicly linked to a degrading spectacle?
Or: What conduct should be presumptively, and maybe just automatically, disqualifying for the honor of high office, and what do we let slide pending a psych report? What public message is affirmed by the bright lines we choose?
If staff and legislators are supposed to interact with Northam, what’s the burden of “getting over it” we’re asking them to bear?
Once you allow that the only possible frame isn’t about the white guy’s metaphysical status—is he… A Racist or has he Grown and Matured? —maybe it… just doesn’t matter all that much. Maybe it doesn’t change the answers to other questions of equal or greater importance.
