Sometimes it’s not systemic racism, just cluelessness
When I was a newcomer just entering the history profession, I got a call from an older historian who asked me to take part in a panel discussion at an upcoming professional conference. ”This is very encouraging and gratifying,” I remember thinking. “I am barely out of graduate school and established historians are already expressing interest in hearing in my ideas!”
Before I could travel far on that train of thought, the caller rerouted it to a different destination. “I’m glad you’re available for this session,” he told me. “We needed to find a woman.”
What could have inspired this man’s frank admission that he wanted me to serve as a tokenized presence on the panel, included only for my conspicuous femaleness? Did his statement arise from a domineering, purposeful intention to assert white male power and privilege? Should I have responded with outrage, refusing to accept such an invitation?
I stuck by my agreement to attend the conference and participate in the panel, but remained bewildered.
And at last, nearly forty years later, I have figured out what this very goofy and very memorable incident taught me:
No human being can escape recurrent flare-ups of the condition that I am now christening as systemic cluelessness. As our experiences, every day remind us, cluelessness is a chronic and universal affliction because it is hard-wired into every moment in which human beings try to decipher, decode, and figure out this impossibly complicated world.
And now for the good news. While repeated bouts of cluelessness produce no immunity, and while there is no research underway for a vaccine, everyone can self-administer a two-step treatment program that provides instant relief:
Step One: Regularly inspect yourself for symptoms. Step Two: When you discover that you are clueless, instantly ask for help in becoming clue-ful.
To reveal the benefits that an honest reckoning with systemic cluelessness offers the nation, we might compare it to the impact of the far more commonly used term, systemic racism. Invoked by people who hope for major change in the assumptions and habits that shape American race relations, this phrase comes with an unfortunate underpinning of fatalism. In other words, if racism has become locked in place in the operating system of the nation, its timeless hold on our souls is almost certain to overwhelm and outlast any individual’s commitment to change.
Here’s why this matters: real racism exists, and there is no justification or reason to deny that. We need to take seriously the obligation that rests on every good citizen to speak out when the premises of white supremacy are presented or disguised as brave exercises of free speech or as simple differ ences of opinion. But blurring the boundaries that distinguish purposeful racism from unintended cluelessness poses a distraction that does not advance the cause of justice.
And now the time has come to reveal the Limerick Hypothesis, which I put forward with a full recognition that a significant sector of Americans today are going to find this hypothesis itself to be clueless.
When people make statements about race that injure others, these statements sometimes arise from a purposeful and intentional effort to do harm. But, sometimes, these statements arise from cluelessness.
Just to be clear, I do not propose that we ban the fatalistic phrase systemic racism. But I do propose that we sometimes replace it, when appropriate, with the hopeful phrase systemic cluelessness.
On university campuses, in the minds of many professors, students, and staff, this proposal stands a good chance of convicting me of harboring a spirit of tolerance, forbearance, and — strangest of all for such a serious topic — humor. My response?
Guilty as charged.