I am having a difficult time avoiding the stark racial polarization that feels as though it is overwhelming the American conversation. There are racial dog whistles everywhere, and every time a group of people declared as a minority make an effort to speak out about their/our treatment in America it is viewed as an attack on whiteness. The answer, often, is framed as ‘get rid of your racial identity’ or ‘appreciate the fact you live here’ when the reality of where we live is made less enjoyable by the insinuation that we ought to shut up and take it. This country is about speaking up. This country was designed under the principles of developing laws and philosophies to help us rise. Perhaps not to help us all rise, but as we all have adopted and adapted to the changing world these principles surely ought to apply to anyone who feels they ought to have their voice heard and their difference recognized. That is, in my opinion, the very purpose and power of free speech. However, when that speech is used to hold a people down or to create lines in the sand then it is not free. It comes at a cost that we are paying right now.
This is not about Fox News. I’ve written at length about the racist ideology that fuels that organization. I continue to believe the network panders to a specific and large fanbase. If you want to know who that demographic is then just watch the commercials. Skip the news itself because the commercials are more informative about who they are speaking to and why and even how. However, they are not alone. The web is flooded with powerfully divisive rhetoric aimed at the weakest among us–those who lack the experience or often the intelligence to decipher what they are being fed. In many ways those who hold the mic, or the pen, or the camera, or the keyboard are treating us much like the dog who doesn’t want to take a pill. They are wrapping it in something we want and feeding it to us anyway.
This works on a number of levels and absolutely terrifies me, because in my lifetime I see us repeating many of the same moments that led towards all of the trouble I’ve read about in the time before. This is the 60’s repeated. As fashion repeats itself so seemingly does racial conflict. The language changes as the cut changes but we are offering nothing new and we are offering no progress. In fact any semblance of progress is greeted with more radical resistance. We get a half-black (we tend to forget about that part don’t we?) President and we get Trumpism as a lasting reminder and example of what happens if we try to have anything ‘they’ don’t want us to have. We get a half-black (again, we don’t often address the other side of that racial equation) Vice President and a woman to boot and we get hoards of white-skinned people storming the capitol looking for (and in some cases finding) blood.
What scares me is that the responses are coming faster. Perhaps the speed of the internet amplifies the speed of human response in a way that should be questioned. Perhaps the speed of media and connection reduces our time to think and leaves only reaction time. What is most awful is that the reactions of the minorities are the ones most criminalized while those who stand as the (shrinking) majority get to claim some moral or ethical or social high ground.
We are not on the brink of a race war. Instead we are in the trenches of a racial cold war and more and more people are awakening to that reality. That, in my opinion is what Woke really means.