That’s Debatable!
Illustration by Ainsley Christofferson
This section solicits responses to the “Question of the Month” proffered by the editors of Candor.
The question for September: “In your evaluation has interracial harmony increased during the span of your life experience?”
You are free to read and respond. Responses are in order of receipt. The most recent are at the top of the chain. Responses received by September 19 may be included in September’s mid-month edition of Candor; those received after September 19 can be included in October’s first-of-the-month edition. Send all responses to: editor@candor.news
Response by Randy Love:
Yes, a thought that needs airing is that prejudice is a necessary part of developing moral human beings, also a necessary part of freedom. Being without the ability to express a belief or prejudice openly is a sign of slavery — maybe too strong a word — but prejudices become dangerous only when they gain the force of government or law behind them. Otherwise, they are just points of view . . . .
Response by Bob Love:
As we have seen recently, Princeton's problem is Sewanee's problem is OUR problem: How to understand racism? As a personal psychological issue or a systemic social issue or both? In that regard, you may find this summary and review of some of the current thinking on "racism" helpful: https://spectator.us/anti-racism-really-means-debate-white-fragility/
In it, I believe, the authors expose the fundamental difference between
dialectical maturity which respects different POVs as essential in the quest for order via conformity to truth and
political pandering which regards different POVs as fatal in the quest for order via submission to power.
For those who have read Wheelis' "How People Change", this is simply the psychological difference between freedom and necessity, where freedom consumes scarce cognitive resources while necessity attempts to conserve them thru "un-use". The irony is that the attempt to conserve them [though sometimes wise] is usually unsuccessful as disputes drag on across lifetimes and generations.
The venturesome could sociologically conclude, roughly guided by Christopher Lasch in his final compilation of essays entitled "The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy", that the contemporary American racism dispute is not about a substantive reality at all but is rather the procedural result of a dialectically immature [i.e., uneducated even slothful] withdrawal by two sides into "simulations of reality" which can never be reconciled. Using this approach, racism is not diagnosed a "disease" at all, but merely another "symptom" of the broader social/class breakdown between rich and poor resulting from what Lasch [in the 1990's] called "liberal capitalism" [which we today would call "crony capitalism"]. Concerning Lasch's final book, one commentator says something I find thought provoking:
Labeling himself a populist (part of a tradition that includes, in Lasch’s opinion, both agrarian radicals [like Andrew Lytle and Wendell Berry ?] and Southern Christian Leadership Conference freedom fighters [like ML King who later in life saw poverty as non-racist ?]), he argues that democracy must rest on individual responsibility [with a good education and the support of local community ?] rather than the veneer of [globalized] misplaced compassion and victimization politics [which are the twin results of] liberal capitalism in both its free-market apotheosis and its welfare-state apparition.
I find both the Wheelis psychological approach and the Lasch sociological approach helpful in their own complementary ways, since we are both individuals and members of society.
You will note that one of the writers of this primary article above is a philosophy professor at Portland State and the other is the founder of New Discourses ... and together they wrote a book on "How to Have Impossible Conversations" ... what a great title !!! Their helpfulness is, perhaps, simply more evidence of our need for an educational vision that brings the student to cultural acceptance [comfort in skin] with dialectical maturity [comfort in mind].
Understanding the complementary roles of culture and cognition in education seems valuable for educators and vital for students in their post-secondary lives [whether at Princeton or Sewanee . . . or in Wichita.
Response by Steve Witherspoon:
For three years, my brother and I attended L’Ouverture Elementary in Wichita, a byproduct of our mother’s desire to promote integration in the schools, and partly because it was one of three elementary schools she taught at as a roving district Art teacher. During the 1970-71 school year, according to the book A History of Wichita Public Schools, 63 white families volunteered to send their children to L’Ouverture, traditionally an all-black school, while, many black students were then bused to predominantly white neighborhood schools. The ratio at L’Ouverture for that year was 72% black students, 28% white.
A few memorable people signed up to teach us, Myrliss Hershey, noted for her aggressive attempts to divide students into groups based on the idea that faster-learning students could help others to achieve shared goals, and other times, students would work individually at self-paced projects. Few issues of racial disparity were evident to me at the time, though one black student called Mrs. Hershey a “white witch,” and that became the impetus of the title of a book Myrliss wrote in 1973. If you take the time to read it, my pseudonym is Stan, and I’m described as shy and reserved; without doubt, though, my eyes and ears were wide open during my instructive years at L’Ouverture.
The following year, my Third Grade teacher, Connie Dietz, who later became a Wichita Public School Board member, and then Career Services Director at Wichita State, sat me down to question why I had gotten into a fight at recess with a black student who was a grade or two older. I’d said something he didn’t like, nothing egregious, but an insult, and I’d felt that I was in the wrong. Mrs. Dietz told me that I should consider the feelings of others before speaking, and that lesson has served me well since. Most students on the playground got along, we were kids, and skin color didn’t mean that much to us, at least from my perspective. Tony was a fast runner, and he and several other students would race each other, shoot hoops, and joke around. Though his skin was darker, the fact that Tony was different than me in some consequential way didn’t enter my mind. I’d like to know what happened with his life: What did he become? Where did he live? But the thing of it is, like with most people you knew in grade school, you didn’t know that much about them, and didn’t see each other outside of the context of the confines of a fenced-in school campus.
Sara Black, with matching skin color, was our principal, and one day in 1973, she gathered students into the hallway to discuss racial harmony, and subsequently offered Three Dog Night’s Black and White on one of those speaker-challenged, school-issue record players. I was much older before I understood at a deeper level what those sessions and that song really meant, but at least she was trying to unite us, and given some of the verbal and physical fights that high school students were engaging in at that time, our students were much more harmonious. In retrospect, she was to be commended for delivering calm within a potentially caustic environment.
The following years led me back to OK Elementary, Hadley Junior High, and North High, where incidents of racial discord increased. Suddenly, skin colors mattered, and I occasionally found myself involved in taunts and threats lobbed at me, and specifically, my skin color. I was stupefied, what happened between the years at L’Ouverture, and the next several?
I can’t say that I have insightful answers to those questions today, but I do know that as an educator for the Wichita Public Schools for nearly 30 years, defining “race relations” is much more complicated. Latin American-heritage students have replaced black students as the leading minority group, and students from seemingly all over the world enter the building at East High every day, where I teach. Are language and cultural differences an issue? Yes. Do students tend to respect those cultural differences? For the most part, they do.
Is the U.S. more of a melting pot, or a salad bowl, I ask my U.S. History students; today, are we truly blended together, united in a singular vision of what is expected of us, or do we remain inseparably linked to our national/ethnic/racial identities? In my class, we learn about the horrific injustices that African-purchased Americans and their descendants suffered, the hatred spewed toward newly-arrived Irish, Chinese, Italians, Poles, Japanese . . . have we fared better over my 50+ years on this earth, in this country, in this city?
Yes, but the vibe I felt in the ‘60s and ‘70s of integration, of MLK’s dream that “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers” is different today. While we are more integrated, more aware of the different shoes that many different people walk in, an imperfect salad remains, with protests, self-segregated communities, and grievance organizations, it is manifest that the melting pot theory suffers from a weak flame. Improving the human condition is a constant worry, and interracial harmony is critical to improve that condition, but it must be an organic movement, not shallow indoctrination. I still believe we’re heading in the right direction, but I was more inspired by the messages delivered in earlier decades. Today, I gain inspiration from the diverse people who share the social efficacy of the Golden Rule, who give of themselves to make the world a better place – that should have nothing to do with skin pigmentation.
Response by Michael Witherspoon:
“Do you remember the “junior research theme,” a capstone project in secondary education two generations ago? (The Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature was rather limiting, wasn’t it.) My enthusiastically-pursued topic was Black Power. Fascinated by all things reformative or disestablishing, Stokely Carmichael, Huey Newton, H. Rap Brown, and Malcolm X helped me understand the Black anger in my generation. I felt it too, in part. Though my high school graduating class of 645 had only one African-American, I gathered into my life during the college years several close friends of color. As a young adult, I played on a city league basketball team on which I was the only white player. Currently, I attend church wherein over half the congregation is darker-skinned than I and numerous mixed-race couples congregate there. All to say, I have not been aloof to race consciousness, have tried to bridge gaps of mutual understanding, and continue to hope for the triumph of “American ethnicity” over identity politics.
“In my lifetime has interracial harmony increased? Yes, if we contrasted the athletic heroes of my grandchildren’s generation with those of my grandfather’s! Yes, definitely, if interracial dating and marriage indicate meaningfully. Yes, if access to the same public accommodations stands for something good. Yes, if the myriad of skin colors we watch on our screens reveals increasing harmony.
“But, what I can’t see clearly is the degree to which race and DNA and gene pool affect culture, creating subcultures with cherished distinctions (think music, language, art, literature, values). I have often repeated the words of a local and notable Black pastor who responded warmly but frankly to the question, Why is Sunday morning so segregated? – “Brother, we just don’t like your music.” We all laughed.
“When we speak of harmony between the races, just what ought that look like? I want it and have wanted it as long as I can remember. But, to what degree does race differentiate culture and culture work against integration?”
The essay below is the September contribution to this section and might serve as a template of sorts for future contributors. You are free to read and respond. Responses received by September 19 may be included in September’s mid-month edition of Candor. Send those to: editor@candor.news
Equality and Diversity? — by Michael Witherspoon
I am wondering who else might be having a measure of mental turbulence from being caught in the tension of a culture that champions diversity yet insists on equality? Who among us understands and appreciates diversity but also allows for inequality? I strain to hear many. Could it be that the concept of equality is often misapplied?
America’s founders, motivated by belief and wisdom, decided to undergird the governance of the republic and its citizens with the notion that all people come into the world with divinely given rights to live and stay alive as long as possible, to freely move about commercially and leisurely, to speak and write what they think, and to work towards their own happiness. Their government would be tasked with protecting those valued rights. Freeing people to live, while minimizing the abuse of freedom — and keeping others from falling too far behind —has been a national unifier, and pacifier, for over 230 years. Studies in world history or current affairs will reveal that Americans enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness at relatively very high levels. I certainly have.
The American resolve to protect and grant me freedom warms the heart. If I should be quite ill or harmed, an ambulance will stop traffic, speed towards my care, and take me to a center laden with machinery and its expert users. As an exercise of personal liberty, I have owned or signed leases on 28 separate residences since entering adulthood, have had more job changes than some would think wise, and I can tweet or publish for broad consumption nearly whatever I might want to say to those who might “follow.” If I am feeling closed in, cars and planes transport me to other states, regions, and continents in a matter of hours. If I am bored, I am continually offered new things to read, watch, and listen to through increasingly sophisticated productions and technologies.
Whether one’s struggle to get to America involved leaving others behind, stormy seas, immigration authorities, the sheer financial cost, or the horrors of a slave ship, the journey could be difficult. But for most Americans, organizing a litany of freedom’s blessings would not be a difficult exercise. And our governments – federal, state, and local --now are and have always been under enormous pressure to do a better job of ensuring “our rights.” Regions and races, laborers and lovers, want to enjoy the same levels of protection. Understood! Government at-your-service is how “of the people, by the people, and for the people” plays out.
Yes, of course, times and episodes of unequal protection are not difficult to find. Why do some get a knee on the neck and not others? is a fair question – with disturbing answers. Bias and prejudice and neglect and ignorance can be found at times in all of us. Equal justice under the law, absolutely, would depend on one judge having the only standard and applying it without prejudice every time. (We‘re not going to have that here, unless our machines take us over.)
To my point: equality is especially meaningful when applied to human rights. (The quest for equal rights finds the nation currently and painfully seeking greater police consistency.) But, diversity is especially meaningful when applied to human outcomes.
Diversity bids us to appreciate the grand human differentiation by personality type, learning style, vocational aptitude, emotional make-up, cognitive ability, genotype/DNA, and so on. Genetically and neurologically, we are finding out how different and uniquely individual we are, different in so many ways beyond anguishing over race or gender, skin tone or sexual orientation. Each of us is a unique combination of strengths and weaknesses, some a function of DNA, some a function of nurture and environment. Who would be so unwise to announce limits to the understanding we will have of ourselves by further exploring and pinpointing our genetic codes?
Those who emphasize our diversity as a function of DNA will have increasing data to analyze, but diversity is also due to the wisdom of those who raised us in childhood (some parents resemble helicopters; some can scarcely be found by a team of sleuths), by the excellence of our school teachers, our extra-curricular experiences, coaches, and mentors, our social groups, and by the myriad of different cultural exposures. The data that promotes nurture as a crucial determinant is also impressive. But when the concept of equality is too tightly applied to human outcomes, to the working out and life application of our freedoms, equality loses its strength as a unifier – and pacifier. No two lives turn out the same.
When 330 million people seek to eat two or three times per day (oftentimes, the fruit of a sufficiently-paying job) and to have a safe bed in which to sleep after an evening of leisure, we can never expect that all will eat the same meal, have the same paying job with the same level of employee satisfaction, walk the same safe streets, or enjoy the same leisure activities. Everyone does not hit a baseball the same distance nor solve the same level of mathematical problems. We are all subject to disease and we are all educable, but equally? That level of equality is unrealistic, unfundable, and unenforceable. Even when we want the same things, some of us are more able to assemble the good life than others of us. Life is competitive. Making it non-competitive would be the grand devaluing of individual liberty. But, happy people can be found in vastly different circumstances.
I wince a little when I hear the well-intentioned and good-hearted declare that “we are all the same,” inferring that if we’re not enjoying the same life circumstances, bias or prejudice is the obstacle. My schooling revealed to me early that all do not have the same capabilities. I have recalled many times the 7th grade aptitude test in which I learned that I was a “failure” at spatial reasoning and mechanical ability (the cause for my life-long awe of those who tear apart and reassemble things). A friend, Scott, built machines from scratch for a local aircraft company, machines that even his boss didn’t understand – though Scott never graduated from high school. He and I were quite different.
Isn’t it more beneficial for us to know our uniqueness more than our sameness? To the degree to which we can help every person understand themselves – their mental acuities, their emotional strengths and weaknesses, their tendencies of personality, their vocational interests and aptitudes — schooling will be money, even big money, well spent. Testing and measurements will only increase in sophistication and accuracy as the culture advances, making us better prepared to live with less frustration, to live more happily and prosperously. Discrimination is “seeing the difference between things,” says Webster. I’d like to help change its connotation, to change it into a positive, a means to know one’s self as unique and peculiarly capable.
Problems without solutions aren’t really problems. It’s not a problem that we’re all so different. The ideal of e pluribus unum still has meaning as we focus science and education on our unequal and diverse potentialities, then build up those individual strengths – and inspire our government to protect everyone’s life and liberty equally. The outcomes will not be the same, but happiness is a highly personal and unique commodity.