Woke and Conservative

 Being Woke and Conservative

How can people be “woke” and conservative?  They do it by treating racism as a personal, psychological problem rather than as a social issue. They think that the first order of business is to overcome the racism in their hearts, and this belief conveniently absolves them from a need to do anything that will really make life better for black people.

We can see this attitude in a recent article called “As A POC, I Thought I Couldn’t Possibly Be Racist (And I Was Wrong)” . Its author says,

It’s about completely upending and rewriting everything you thought you knew about how the world works — and it is terrifying. It is scary and makes you question if you ever deserved anything you worked so hard to earn. It feels as if it’s a personal attack because haven’t you also experienced prejudice — and if you’re a non-Black person of color — racism?

It’s paralyzing because you realize you are complicit.

Later, the author adds,

As a non-Black person of color, it also means examining both how we are and have been complicit in perpetuating anti-Blackness — and how anti-Blackness ultimately harms us and as Scot Nagawa wrote, is the fulcrum of white supremacy. It means dismantling a lot of cultural trauma of how we, too, are both oppressed and oppressor — as colonized and colonizer.

It looks like changing the people you follow on social media, changing the kinds of narratives and stories you read or watch, changing the artists and music you consume. It looks like quashing that very human response of discomfort and dis-ease. It looks like listening and not rushing to erase the myriad experiences of Black people — who are not a monolith.

Personal Growth Rather than Political Action

What is described here is a process of personal growth. There is nothing here about doing anything that would actually reduce the gap in wealth and well-being between black people and white people in our country. There is nothing here about providing adequate health care to black people. There is nothing about registering black people to vote. There is nothing about making sure that people who work in occupations dominated by black women are paid adequately. The reader is not even exhorted to protest against the murder of black people by the police!

What is described here is profoundly conservative because it does not demand that we confront the injustices of our society. Instead, it demands only that we purge our hearts of “anti-blackness.” It treats the fight against racism as a process of self-improvement rather than a process of social and political change that requires confrontation and conflict.

Black People See the Irony

Many black people are aware of the irony in this approach. An article entitled “When Black People are in Pain, White People Just Join Book Clubs” says,

… when things get real — really murderous, really tragic, really violent or aggressive — my white, liberal, educated friends already know what to do. What they do is read. And talk about their reading. What they do is listen. And talk about how they listened.

… white people tend to take a slow route to meaningful activism, locked in familiar patterns, seemingly uninterested in really advancing progress. Theirs is still a world of signs and signaling, where actions like joining book clubs — often based in some “meaningfully curated” readings [like] “White Fragility,” “How to Be an Anti-Racist,” “Between the World and Me,” maybe even “All About Love” — take precedence.

 

But those actions are fraught: Book clubs, for instance, are comfortable gatherings of friends who are unlikely to nudge one another to the places of discomfort that these books, at their best, demand. Who wants to damage a relationship over something as abstract and removed as racism? Learning about new perspectives and the ideas underlying them is great; wanting to discuss them among friends in safe spaces is understandable. But outside the window are people marching to the beat of a different drum.

Let’s Get to Work!

We have real problems of racial inequity in our society, and solving them should not have to wait until I and other people who are not black have purified our hearts or finished deepening our understanding. With all our inherited imperfections, we have to get to work on those problems right now. The solutions to many of them are political. They demand action and confrontation.

What can be done to get the police to stop shooting black people? What can be done to reduce the wealth and income gaps between black and white people? The answers don’t depend on the purity of my heart or the depth of my understanding. They depend on political action.

Focusing on personal growth rather than political action is easy. It is comfortable. It does not demand that we annoy our neighbors or upset our relatives, but it is ultimately a dead end. It does not solve the problems of our society or make it a more just and equitable place.

Let’s get to work!