"Accidental Racist" and the Impotence of Good Intentions

I hadn't originally given it a thought for posting here, and I have other posts on many topics in the dry dock here, but TNC's entrance to the discussion on this Brad Paisley-LL Cool J collaboration has provoked me. (Plus I'm tired of only getting around to writing on things long after they're out of the immediate national or social attention. Just this once, I'm jumping in while it's still in the air.)

There's a lot to unpack in this whole situation, and others have gone through the song in ways I'm not willing to do here, so I'll key in on this train of thought: some commenters in his Tuesday post complained that TNC was too harsh on Paisley and LL Cool J, that they were well-intentioned in their efforts to reconcile and have "a conversation", they said. I can understand this defense; I think Paisley and LL thought they were helping.

Fights, Flights, and Subway Trains

I can honestly say that I have never been in a fight in my entire life: sibling fights don't count and scuffling with my stupid cats doesn't count. I mean that I have never waged actual, physical, non-sporting violence against another human being. This isn't a statement of ethics or boasting; it may sound like a punchline, but my upbringing of being a straight-edge, church-going, good grades-making, piano-playing pansy Chinese kid afforded me literally no time to get into trouble, really.

I read devoured Ta-Nehisi Coates's The Beautiful Struggle over our recent long vacation, and in between continuously having my mind blown by the quality of his writing*, I read with interest but otherwise complete detachment about the reality of having to put up your dukes at any given moment.

--

This morning I got on the crowded downtown D train at Columbus Circle as the last to squeeze onto the train-car; magazine in hand, I settled in, standing against the subway door and wedged between the people in front of me and the seats next to me. As the car began to move, the man next to me began muttering, and I soon made out the words, "you punk, you n-word, Chinese something something n-word". I froze. I hadn't touched the guy, spoken to him, nothing. I quickly looked around me and with a combination of uncertainty over looming conflict and the unhappy realization that everyone around me was wearing headphones, probably heard nothing that was said, and were likely unaware of the situation. But maybe he wasn't talking to me? I hadn't turned to him yet.

"I'm talking to you, f****t," He said.

Well, shit. I took a breath and glanced at the man. He was light-skinned but Black, wearing headphones, and making eye contact not with me but somewhere in front of me. I had my wits about me long enough to think, "Turn head, shut mouth, look at magazine," and so I did that, and the guy got off at the next stop.

I told this story to a friend who responded that her policy is generally to ignore all craziness on the public transit unless someone actually touches you; this is actually my personal policy, too (and it should be yours, should you ever come visit our fair City). But the guy was less than arms-length away, and we were trapped next to each other between doors and seats and people on a moving car. I still remember my train of thought, that I realized there was a non-zero chance something would happen, and yet somehow I directed myself to standby mode; this was fight-or-flight in real-time application. And incredibly, despite my utter inexperience and likely impotence I steeled myself for an altercation and maybe would have even engaged him were I actually the type to throw down at groggy-o'clock. I can laugh about it twelve-plus hours later, because it's not who I am; all the boastful ubermachismo rap on my iPod would have done me no good. The "heat of the moment" renders unstable the best-laid of mental self-assurances; I was shaken but reminded that I was human.

Also, that guy was probably nuts.

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(*Seriously, this is the most amazing, gorgeously written book I have ever encountered. So much so that I actually stopped reading a third of the way through, grabbed a pen, and then started over so I could underline the parts that made my head explode. This is something I have never in my life done or felt compelled to do on my own. So I say again, read this book).

Waxing philosophical about wonder

I'm taking a few minutes to return from this unplanned extended hiatus to recommend strongly this piece in the Times by Ta-Nehisi Coates on the subject of school and the manner in which students are made to process their subjects. I cannot find strong enough language to express how much I enjoy and appreciate Ta-Nehisi's writing, and this guest spot continues his excellent writing on the topic of child-rearing, race, and education. And while he steers the direction of the article on towards matters of race (as is his charge over at The Atlantic), there is truth overflowing from his thoughts on the purpose (versus the execution) of education. This part made me want to stand and cheer:

I can tell you everything that was wrong with my education — how cold pedagogy reduced the poetry of Macbeth to a wan hunt for hamartia*, how the beautiful French language broke under rote vocabulary. But more than that, I can tell you what happens when education is decoupled from curiosity, and becomes little more than an insurance policy.

"An insurance policy". As he goes on he explains how this rote education is can serve ultimately as a safety net or protection for poorer and/or urban children if they indeed make it through to that very-important high school diploma; and while he allows that it is something worth celebrating given the higher rates of success for those who attain their diploma, he reminds that another goal of education is to instill in the students with an ability and drive to learn more. While it's great to equip students, especially those like himself when he was in school, it would be even better if they exited with a productive curiosity to accompany that diploma.

This piece resonated deeply with me since my upbringing strongly stressed the importance of "education" or rather an incomplete appreciation of it. My "education" was my ticket to university, and my performance at education would pave my way to further education and opportunities (Ivy League, of course), where I could continue to learn and magically emerge a successful member of society. And my "education" did just that for me (well, minus the Ivies)- it was a "smart" insurance policy through which I collected a good "education". But lost somewhere in the midst of all of this was the development of curiosity, a drive to delve into the subjects at hand (and tangential- I spent most of college tossing aside non-engineering classes with disdain as if they were holding me back from a goal of ... doing something with engineering... that hadn't materialized in the first place). Somehow, I managed to travel through secondary "education" and nearly all of my "higher education" before my sense of wonder was kindled - and by this point it was too late to spend all of my idyllic college years on exploration. All's not lost, of course. But it's a deficit of time and opportunity to discover more of the world and myself that I really regret: one that I have been spending a lot of my time lately trying to make up for.



*[From Dictionary.com: hamartia — n, literature: the flaw in character which leads to the downfall of the protagonist in a tragedy. Would've been an incredible word to have known back then for paper-writing uses.]