"I don't see race": Living in a bubble of whiteness

 I've been thinking about this, from Roger Marshall, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Kansas:

"I don't see race" is a line that has become a punch line, but it occurred to me that for Kansans, it is literally true: They think they don't see race because so often they don't actually see Black people: 13.4 percent of the U.S. population is Black, according to the U.S. Census, but just 6.1 percent of the Kansas population is. In Great Bend, where Marshall lives, the number is less than 2 percent.

I went to a central Kansas high school where (reputedly) one Black person had ever graduated in the entire history, and that was before my era. For many rural or rural-ish Kansans who live outside the cities of Wichita, Topeka and Kansas City, it is pretty easy to go about your life -- work, education, church, everything -- and only occasionally, if ever, encounter a Black person.* That means your primary source of understanding comes from media sources instead of anything remotely resembling real life. 

*There's a related but also separate discussion to be had about the state's Latino population, but Marshall's quote comes in the context of Black Lives Matter.

Which is how you can start a sentence saying that you don't see race and finish it by talking about "the ghetto."

As a political matter, it's pretty easy to vote for somebody like Marshall, then, because -- even though he's going to go and caucus with a party that do esso much, for example, to gut the Voting Rights Act, and which supports a president who is plainly racist -- you don't see the ramifications of that party's acts in your real life. The color line is a theory, and not one that bears much thinking about in one's politics. A lot of us in Kansas "don't see race" because -- all to often -- we don't have to see Black people. I suspect that makes a difference. 

These folks are in a bubble of whiteness, and it's no less pernicious than any other bubble we've talked about in recent years. Maybe even more so: As Nate Silver notes, America's rural areas get 2.5 times the representation in the U.S. Senate than do urban areas. It probably goes without saying that those rural areas are considerably whiter than America as a whole. Some of the folks who live in those areas are surely racist. But a lot of people are probably comfortable with the racially disparate impact of their votes because they think they don't see race -- and in a very real sense, they don't.

Updated with some copyedits.

Bag O' Books: FREDERICK DOUGLASS: PROPHET OF FREEDOM

This has been, for many white Americans, the summer of anti-racism reading. I guess that my dive into David Blight's FREDERICK DOUGLASS: PROPHET OF FREEDOM counts in that category. I can't tell other people how to try and figure out how to do their own thinking about race -- but I don't have much patience for "how to" books like "White Fragility." I'd rather read histories and current books by and about people who have lived the struggle. I've re-read James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time" this summer, as well as Toni Morrison's "Beloved." Next up on my reading list is Isabel Wilkerson's "Caste." In between all of these books, I'm getting in a chapter or two of "Moby Dick" now and again.

Among the lessons to be learned from Blight's book is that discerning the One True Way to battle the evil of racism may not be so easy, or even possible. Douglass evolved over time from a "moral suasionist" form of abolition to a fiery advocate of righteous, cleansing violence. He moved from being a radical outsider to a Republican "party man." He struggled with human foibles. 

The two through-lines in his life, though, are this: He always fought for the advancement of his race. And he often did so by telling his own story -- a biography in which he escaped slavery and rose to become a preeminent orator, writer and (three times!) autobiographer.

The other through line, perhaps, is that the struggle never ends. Douglass started his fight against slavery and ended it an enemy of lynching. Evil never subsides. It just takes on new-- and, sometimes, not-so-new -- forms to be opposed.

Bill Barr, civil liberties, and sedition

 It's interesting that this news:

Attorney General William Barr drew criticism after calling lockdown measures aimed at controlling the spread of COVID-19 the worst infringement on civil liberties other than slavery.

Came down at the same time as this news:

William Barr told prosecutors to explore aggressive charges against people arrested at recent demonstrations across the US, even suggesting bringing a rarely used sedition charge, reserved for those who have plotted a threat that posed imminent danger to government authority, according to multiple reports on Wednesday.

Barr's interest in civil liberties is ... situational, shall we say.

There is no right to commit vandalism of and destruction to government property, of course, but there's a reason sedition charges are rarely used: They've often been used in American history to tamp down legitimate dissent.

This was notoriously the case under President John Adams. Jill Lepore, in her book THESE TRUTHS, wrote about his use of a sedition law to punish political opponents:

Sedition laws were also used abusively around World War I.

Though Wilson and Congress regarded the Sedition Act as crucial in order to stifle the spread of dissent within the country in that time of war, modern legal scholars consider the act as contrary to the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution, namely to the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. One of the most famous prosecutions under the Sedition Act during World War I was that of Eugene V. Debs, a pacifist labor organizer and founder of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) who had run for president in 1900 as a Social Democrat and in 1904, 1908 and 1912 on the Socialist Party of America ticket.

After delivering an anti-war speech in June 1918 in Canton, Ohio, Debs was arrested, tried and sentenced to 10 years in prison under the Sedition Act. Debs appealed the decision, and the case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where the court ruled Debs had acted with the intention of obstructing the war effort and upheld his conviction. In the decision, Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to the earlier landmark case of Schenck v. United States (1919), when Charles Schenck, also a Socialist, had been found guilty under the Espionage Act after distributing a flyer urging recently drafted men to oppose the U.S. conscription policy.

I don't envy the politicians who have tried -- not always successfully -- to balance the requirements of public health with the obligations of protecting civil liberties. But they have been working (despite criticisms) to protect public health, not to punish their enemies. Sedition laws are generally used to punish acts committed in the name of some sort of wrongthink. To me, at least, that's a more dangerous kind of civil liberties violation. It also happens to be the kind that Attorney General Bill Barr endorses.

Does this count against Donald Trump breaking America's "39-year streak" of new wars?

We refuse to spend enough money to make sure that unemployed people can eat and pay rent, but we can talk about spending tens of billions of dollars to create a fleet of deadly robot submarines. President Trump doesn't get to claim to be the peace president when he's spending so much money trying to make the United States a more lethal nation. We're already pretty lethal!

Anyway, POTUS and his cronies have been speaking lately that he stopped America's 39-year streak of starting new wars. To my way of thinking, this counts against that:

The U.S. military’s Africa Command is pressing for new authorities to carry out armed drone strikes targeting Qaeda-linked Shabab fighters in portions of eastern Kenya, potentially expanding the war zone across the border from their sanctuaries in Somalia, according to four American officials.

The new authorities, which must still be approved by Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and then President Trump, do not necessarily mean the United States will start carrying out drone attacks in Kenya. Nevertheless, they would give Africa Command permission under certain circumstances to expand the counterterrorism drone war into another country.

Arguably, this is an old war expanding to a new arena. If Trump gets to keep his streak-breaking claim, though, it won't be because he's not expanding the United States' wars.

Coronavirus Diary: There's only so many times you can binge-watch "Parks & Recreation"

I am at the stage of pandemic isolation where there isn't much left for me to re-watch on TV that brings comfort -- or, at least, I can't do it without diminishing returns. "Parks & Rec" is great, but you can only go to that well so many times.

I've been allowing myself some socially distanced socialization lately -- mostly, standing out in front of the coffee shop with a small group of men (it's usually all men, most of them a bit older than I am) -- and chatting for a few minutes. Is it distanced enough? I don't know. I'm terrified it's not. But I've also been going stir-crazy in isolation, so I've decided I will allow myself that little bit. If the crowd gets too large, I leave.

I hope I don't regret it.

I hope my family doesn't regret it.

There isn't a lot bringing me joy these days. The other morning, walking my daily two miles in the rain, I felt a sense of well-being I haven't felt in awhile. But it passed. Most days I'm stuck on "dread" and "despair" as my dominant emotions. All I can do is the bit of work that I have, and try not to let my son see what I'm feeling, lest I discourage him. School seems to be going well for the most part. There is that, at least. I wonder if he is learning anything that will help him survive the terrible times I suspect are coming.

A few years back, I read that depressed people are actually ... just more realistic than optimists. I am feeling very realistic lately.

Forgiveness

David Blight, writing about Frederick Douglass meeting his former enslaver: “In much of Christian tradition—in which Douglass had learned to think and write—the forgiver often forgives for his own sake, not to excuse the oppressor.”

I’m not firmly a Christian these days, by but I think about these concepts a lot. I’m not sure why I still aspire to this kind of moral attitude. I certainly cannot expect it of others, least of all somebody as badly wronged as Douglass has been. I barely practice this level of grace myself. And yet I suspect it is what my goal should be. 

Movie Night: THE SECRET GARDEN (1949)

 You can find the synopsis of THE SECRET GARDEN right here.

No movie is the same as the book that inspired it, of course. I like some of what this movie does that's different than the book -- it leans into a haunted house vibe more heavily (it feels a bit like Alfred Hitchcock's REBECCA), which is aided by the appearance of Elsa Manchester (THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN) laughing endlessly just a little too much. But: It makes villains out of characters who were anything but villainous in the book, and it more strongly hints at a love connection between Dickon and Mary. (Given that the actor playing Dickon was nearly 20 when the movie was made, it's good they didn't take it further.)

There is some first-rate child tantruming in this movie. But the real star is, of course, Margaret O'Brien as Mary. She has a charismatic presence, and it's easy to see how she became a (child) star during this era. Overall this movie is a pleasant enough way to spend an afternoon, but it's not essential.

THE SECRET GARDEN is currently streaming at Criterion Channel.