White people need to understand that racism is real
The one constant and reliable conclusion about people who argue that racism no longer exists is that they are white. And naive of course. It’s a crass statement, to be thrown in with claims such as unions have outlived their usefulness; fascism and Communism are as bad as each other; poverty a result of laziness; and the rest of the reactionary mantra. The lions of the suburbs preaching, as it were; gratingly comfortable and darkly unworldly in their invincible smugness.
The bunch of banality can usually be dismissed, but lately a number of influential and even respected journalists have joined in. Sometimes they couch their arguments with a vague intelligence, often in tabloid hysteria, but the theme is repetitive: Traditional values are under attack, political correctness is oppressing us, free speech is moribund and radicals are violent and unreasonable. We’re all going to hell in a handbasket and the world has to know about it.
Most of the writers are middle-aged, as am I. In my case, not only middle-aged but a white, middle-class man to boot. As such, do I find some of the claims and demands of many young progressives to be shocking? Yes. But does that mean that they are wrong? No. If I can break out of my comfort zone, there’s no excuse for anybody else.
Thing is, aging needn’t be synonymous with conservatism. In fact, the maxim that we become more right wing as we grow older is often the opposite of the case. Life experience, years of parenting, an increasingly safe distance from the daily economic struggle faced by younger people, the sobering reality of mortality, should all lead one to become more empathetic and reasonable.
It should also make us braver and not more fearful, but it’s fear — even hysterical fear — that seems to characterize so many of the comments from this new right collective of journalists and pundits.
Judging from what they say and write, they are threatened and intimidated by the anti-Fascist movement, by Black Lives Matter, by students asking for language to be more inclusive than it used to be. Yet while these may be new movements in their specifics, there is nothing new in a fresh generation wanting a better world. When my uncle went off to Spain as a 16-year-old to fight against Franco, his parents in London were outraged. They later celebrated him as a hero.
Complacency is the last refuge of the privileged. It’s nasty in the bar or the social club but unacceptable in the pages of national newspapers. This increasingly militant wallowing in nostalgia, this reverence for a time that never was, doesn’t expand but simply destroys the debate. Yes, of course such attitudes will attract fans but that says nothing — the politically blind leading the politically deaf.
It’s like the boorish parent bemoaning the music their teenagers listen to and the clothes they wear. You become figures of fun at best but at worst you’re causing harm. After one recent article denying that there was very much racism in Canada, I asked a Black friend about his experience. Had he ever been stopped by the police?
He laughed. That was all. Laughed. It wasn’t a laugh of contempt but of resignation. Of course he had been stopped, several times. Is it really too much to ask those who will never be treated thus to make a small leap of empathy? Isn’t that what real journalists are supposed to do?
In the case of racism for example, it might be one thing to question some of the actions of radical groups in the Black community but quite another to refuse to understand why they were radicalized in the first place. The majority, those who enjoy power, is always frightened by anger but that does not mean that anger is not justified. As for students, socialists, and social justice campaigners, remember that liberation has to breathe. Give it some room, allow for a few rough edges, let go and enjoy the ride.
Terms such as racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia and the rest did not develop from a vacuum and without cause. They are, alas, undeniably real. Getting old is inevitable, being young at heart, mind and soul is a choice. Do not go gently into that dark night of irrelevance.
Michael Coren is a Toronto writer.