Supplemental: Chris Hayes asks a basic question!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24, 2015

In search of the best route to progress:
Chris Hayes asked a very basic question last night.

He spoke with Judith Brown Dianis, a specialist in civil rights law. He asked her an important question—a question about the best way to seek further advances in the area of race.

The question was very basic. Under the circumstances, we also thought it was perhaps a bit revealing and perhaps a tiny bit strange:
HAYES (6/23/15): We think of unity as a good thing and division as a bad thing. But there’s also the fact that part of the job of activists, and part of the job of people who are trying to create social change, is to create friction and—Martin Luther King talked a lot about this.

How do you understand the sort of relative value of those two things? Like, we think of polarization, particularly along racial lines, as a bad thing. But maybe it’s sometimes productive?
On Monday afternoon, South Carolina leaders—black and white, red and blue—stood together in the public square, making a statement about the flying of the Confederate flag. It was one of the most striking examples of unity on a racial issue the country has seen in a very long time.

One night later, Hayes posed his question. We think of unity as a good thing, he said. But is it possible that polarization is more productive?

Everything is possible! That said, this strikes us as a slightly strange time to be asking that question, which is very basic and very important and can’t really be answered.

In our view, the sight of black and white together—and red and blue—is a welcome, encouraging sight. In our view, if we the liberals were slightly more wise, we’d give credit where credit is due and use the occasion as a chance to suggest something else that would be productive.

All in all, our tribe doesn’t work that way. We’re constantly struck by the way our own liberal tribe resists giving credit where credit is due, especially in matters of race. Increasingly, major parts of out tribe only seem happy with a state of wedge-based division.

What’s the best way to move ahead? In our view, it isn’t best to crash about making claims which make little sense—claims which will seem highly implausible to the bulk of the public.

No, Virginia! “The media” really haven’t been trying to “humanize” Dylann Roof. It says something bad about us when we start gulping this ludicrous claim—or when we start making claims like the ones we heard on Reliable Sources.

Brian Stelter spoke with Deray McKesson, a highly visible, plainly decent “social media activist.” In our view, McKesson took an emerging narrative to a puzzling place:
STELTER (6/21/15): Let me put up a tweet on screen that you wrote in the past couple of days. You wrote that “whiteness will work to preserve its innocence at all costs.”

This got me thinking about the issue and I wonder if you say white journalists are protecting a killer in this case.

MCKESSON: You know, it’s just interesting the way that whiteness always humanizes white people, right? So I have seen many pictures at this point of Dylann Roof and really calm spaces [sic].

I have seen pictures of him opening presents around Christmas as a child and humanizing photos of someone who killed people as a terrorist. And I’ve not seen any of those similar pictures of any of the victims.
And that is a humanizing function of whiteness in this America. And that’s what I was referencing in that moment.

STELTER: Your argument is that minorities who are committing violence are not humanized in the same way?

MCKESSON: I’m saying that even the victims, right? So the victims of this crime have not been humanized. We have not heard all of their stories in the same way that we have seen these photos that sort of—that encourage sympathy with the killer.

So I haven't seen any baby pictures or any childhood photos of any victim. And I monitor news outlets. But I just stumbled across these photos of Dylann Roof, just haphazardly, right? They are just present in ways that like humanized him. They encouraged us to believe that, you know, he was a troubled teen as opposed to like a cold-hearted killer who is racist.
Question: How many baby pictures of Dylann Roof have you seen in the past week?

If you go to Google images, you will find many photos of Roof. A few of these photos match the description McKesson gave here.

That said, it seems to us that we have most frequently seen visuals of Roof in his prison suit as he was being lectured by relatives of his victims, and now at the point of his arrest and as he was later being transported. The idea that Roof is being “humanized” in some inappropriate way strikes us as delusional. Meanwhile, the victims have been widely lauded as pillars of the community, which they plainly were.

Are we liberals just talking to ourselves, or are we trying to talk to the public? In the end, it’s hard to get the bulk of voters to believe claims which are plainly absurd.

When liberals start making implausible claims, liberals can drive the public away. That said, this was the answer Dianis gave to Hayes:
DIANIS (continuing directly from Hayes, above): That’s right. Division is often important because that’s where you get the breakthrough. Because at some point we have to take a stand and we have to say, “Are you with us? Are you on freedom’s side or are you against freedom?”

And it’s when we start to change hearts and minds around these issues of race is where we start to get the unity. But we have to underscore the division first in order for people to come along and say, “You know what, I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history. I want to be an inclusive America.”

Everyone deserves the right to breathe in America and so I think that we’re going—that’s the retrenchment part and that’s why I was saying we’re going to have retrenchment before we see some unity.
“We have to underscore the division first?”

Really? Why not underscore the points on which the vast bulk of decent people agree, then try to proceed from there? More and more, it seems to us that we the liberals simply don’t want to go there.

Concerning the victims’ families: As he continued to speak with McKesson, Stelter said that he had been hearing many references to “terrorist” and “terror” in the discussion of Roof and his crime. He wondered if McKesson might perhaps be expecting the worst from the press and overlooking his own influence on the discussion.

Good grief! McKesson, who is decent and sincere, said this:
MCKESSON: You know, the thing about the language of “terrorist” is that some places have like hidden it in the text, right, as opposed to putting it front and center. So what we saw the other day was that every newspaper has these sensationalized messages about forgiveness and none about the terror of the victim, or the terror of the killer. And that's what we are talking about.

So it’s one thing to hide “terrorist” in the 15th paragraph. It’s another thing to put it front and center on major newspapers. That’s not what we have seen.
With no examples being given, it’s hard to assess these complaints. That said:

“Every newspaper has these sensationalized messages about forgiveness?” We have one word for you:

Wow!

Those “sensationalized messages about forgiveness” originated with the victim statements made by relatives of the people who were murdered! As with Roxane Gay’s column in the New York Times, our activists don’t necessarily seem to like the relatives of Roof’s victims.

That strikes us as a very familiar but very bad old choice.

25 comments:

  1. The best blogger on the planet.

    "If you go to Google images, you will find many photos of Roof. A few of these photos match the description McKesson gave here."

    Glad to see Bob has discovered Google. Guess he wanted to divert you from their use in the manner described by McKesson:

    http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/charleston-church-shooting/relatives-charleston-church-shooter-dylann-roof-describe-quiet-sweet-kid-n379071

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. How dare you show evidence of the media humanizing Roof.

      Bob not only said he was a lost soul, he said suggestions that the media had in any way humanized Roof were "clownishly fraudulent."

      You troll.

      Delete
    2. How do you generalize one link to "the media"?

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  2. It's understood by anyone alive for over 13 years and sane that productivity toward solving a contentious problem begins with friction and from there moves into attempts at understanding the other side, finding common ground, and negotiating a solution. There are reasons one might choose to wallow in the friction stage and resist moving on, involving personality issues and gratification derived through feeling victimized or insisting others are, and none have anything to do with arriving at solutions.

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    Replies
    1. When necessary, stories must be invented and R-bombs launched, to deal with anyone tempted to move into a more productive mode.

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    2. And vice versa.

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  3. "And I come to say that America too is going to hell if she doesn't use her wealth!" --- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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  4. Hayes posed a question. Questions can have different answers. They can be discussed and debated. Surely Bob from Harvard knows this.

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  5. "Hayes posed his question. We think of unity as a good thing, he said. But is it possible that polarization is more productive?"

    Did you notice Bob Somerby slipped in a word that wasn't really in Hayes's question?

    To use the bloggers own words: The addition was very basic. Under the circumstances, we also thought it was perhaps a bit revealing and perhaps a tiny bit strange.

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  6. We have divisions within ourselves we fail to address. We can't unite our tribal divisions until we unite our internal ones.

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  7. We need to talk about Dylann. There is an odd failure on the part of the lefty media to acknowledge and report that he was motivated by the lies of the media lynch mob during the Trayvon Martin incident.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, the media behaved horribly in the Trayvon Martin matter, but that in no way excuses or justifies mass murder, so I'm not sure what end a public discussion of the killer's grievances would serve. Sick twisted people do sick twisted things.

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    2. There is a failure at the Howler to acknowledge many commenters here during and after the Trayvon Martin killing wrote things remarkably similar to the so called Roof manifesto.

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  8. We’re constantly struck by the way our own liberal tribe resists giving credit where credit is due, especially in matters of race. Increasingly, major parts of out tribe only seem happy with a state of wedge-based division.

    This is because the Dems have little positive to offer. They pretty much enacted most of their programs during the Johnson era. Their health care is kind of a mess. Various benefits are now quite generous, if not un-affordable (speaking as one whose self and spouse Social Security benefits alone make us considerably richer than the average family.)

    So, they run -- and win elections -- on the idea that conservatives are the devil. If they drop that argument, there's not much reason left to vote for them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Everything you assert is false (and has nothing to do with Somerby's post). Troll.

      Delete
    2. I hate to tell you this because it may hurt your feelings, but conservatives crucified Jesus.

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    3. D in C - doesn't your tribe to the nth degree constantly pound it out that 'liberals' are the devil?

      Delete
    4. AC/MA -- actually less than you might think. Yes, there's some mockery and criticism of individual liberals, but there's a lot more criticism of liberal policies. And, much of the individual criticism is about acts or statements made within their governmental function.

      Delete
    5. @AC/MA,

      Liberals are the masters at pounding it out. HRC's umpteenth announcement for POTUS speech was the stuff liberal wet dreams are made of.

      Delete
    6. I can't agree with either D in C or cicero - cicero is a perfect example - every single word out of his pen is an attack on obama, clinton, or some other dem - liberals are 100% wrong, and rarely is anything he says substantive. Never have I seen him say anything that explains how his tribe would make anything better or not make anything worse.The fact is that noone captures 100% of the truth, each side talks past each other. I perceive that the right's focus is not on substance, it's almost all cant and propaganda. Unortunately, it to some extent, that's what yu get all to often on the left, with a lot of shallowness also. Wisdom , like gold, is a hard to find commodity

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  9. It's not Roxane Gay's place to forgive Dylann Roof, any more than it is my place, so her column was kind of beside the point. It is the loved ones of the victims who are in the position to forgive, or not forgive the killer.

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  10. 'Those “sensationalized messages about forgiveness” originated with the victim statements made by relatives of the people who were murdered! As with Roxane Gay’s column in the New York Times, our activists don’t necessarily seem to like the relatives of Roof’s victims.'

    I believe this is particularly true of those among "our" activists who also happen to be white. Expressing rage, especially vengeful rage, with impunity is part of white privilege, especially white male privilege.

    African-Americans, outside of a few riotous situations that slip out of control, are generally more cautious when it comes to expressing rage than Whites. I have no doubt that the families of the victims of the Charleston massacres are at least as outraged as any white person. However, they have learned to use forgiveness as a spiritual practice to stop this rage from exploding out of control. The congregants of Emanuel AME Church belong to a long tradition of resistance that once included violent resistance to slavery. But they have learned, over more than a hundred years, that creative nonviolent resistance works better. Given this accumulated cultural wisdom, the forgiveness that the families of Dylann Roof's victims have offered to makes perfect sense. They didn't do it for Roof's own soul, which may be a lost cause. They did it for the good of their own souls, and to keep themselves sane, calm, and disciplined in the face of radical evil. These committed activists are not interested in scoring cheap points. They are interested in winning the whole cultural war. They are interested in defeating white supremacy, once and for all.

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