Progressives need to learn from our mistakes on antiracism. Here's how.

I'm laying out exactly what I have to say to people on the far-left, the far-right, and everyone in-between. And I'm not mincing words. 

(This first episode, I intended to only share with paid subscribers, but I decided to release for everyone. It just had to reach more ears, okay?)

You can expect more new episodes, just for paid members, coming this week. If that's you, get excited. If it's not, there's still time to join. Get in on membership today, so you don't miss future episodes.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome back. I'm your host, Marie Beacham, and
on today's episode, I'll be talking about what progresses could
learn from our mistakes on race and anti racism. This
is my best attempt at a short and sweet episode.
Lots of the other ones I've prepared are on the

(00:21):
lengthier side, but I wanted to give you a whole range,
so I thought this would be a good topic for
me to breeze through and see how you feel about
a shorter episode. The way I see it, there are
three major things, three major overarching umbrella categories, race and

(00:41):
racism and anti racism, and the left and the right
each have their own beliefs about those three things. I
would say that the left and the right and their
extreme forms believe exact opposites about those things. The previous administration,
the left was in power, kind of got our way

(01:01):
on a lot of things, enacted our version of anti racism,
spread our beliefs about race and racism, had a lot
of cultural and social power. Now we're in a different
moment where the right is in power. They're in the
position to enact their version of anti racism and to
spread and implement their beliefs about and racism. So it's

(01:24):
been this ping ponging back and forth thing, and I
would argue, and I do argue, that each side, in
its extremes, has a flawed program. I find myself left
of center, really believing in progressive anti racism, while also
seeing flaws and fallibility over in this neck of the woods.

(01:46):
I've been sounding the alarms ever since I started to
catch wind of all of these areas and ways we
could be wrong about some things. But I think that
now especially, we are primed and in position to learn
from our mistakes. Progressive anti racism had its moment, It
had its heyday. It was being embraced, it was topping

(02:08):
best seller lists, it was adopted unquestioningly in its very
new and novel form at universities, at colleges, at companies everywhere.
But a few years have passed and progressive anti racism
has gone belly up. Progressives have been shaken, and many
of our leaders have been despairing. That's because now there's

(02:31):
no vision for how to move forward. There's just a
hope that whenever we're back in power, we'll get to
do DEI and anti racism all over again, exactly the
same way. What we really need is to learn from
our mistakes. What are those mistakes, Well, I call them
the Big three, the big three claims. The first is

(02:53):
on racism, the claim that racism is absolutely everywhere, The
second is claim that race is absolutely everything, and the
third is that anti racism must be uniformly embraced by everyone.
Those big three beliefs, in their absolute form and their
extreme form, cost progressives credibility and our cultural influence. I'll

(03:19):
unpack each of those in a bit more detail, but
to do so, I actually want to start with explaining
the right, because the right has their own Big three,
and it's the exact opposite of what we see amongst progressives.
On the right. The big three beliefs are that racism
is practically nowhere, that race is practically nothing, and that

(03:42):
anti racism needs to be adopted by exactly no one. Granted,
my big three for both the right and the left,
those are caricatures, those are extremes, but they highlight the
ultimate destination that both sides have been venturing down for
a while. So let's start with these on the right.
On the far right, what do people believe about racism? Well,

(04:06):
there's generally this sense that most people are people of goodwill,
and so because of that, no one's deliberately trying to
discriminate based on skin color anymore. That was true in
the fifties and the sixties, and sure in the seventies,
but it's not true in the twenty first century. As
they see it, We've put so much effort toward anti
racism that those efforts have been successful. Racism is illegal,

(04:30):
discrimination is not in vogue, and prejudice is something that
everyone's trying to deal with. So we could reasonably conclude
that racism is nowhere anymore. What do people on the
far right believe about race? Well, Consequently, because racism is nowhere,
race is pretty much a nothing burger. It doesn't matter,

(04:51):
it's not significant, doesn't affect your social life unless you're
just the one deciding to make a big deal of it.
No one cares about your skin color. No one and
will treat you any differently. It's up to you whether
you want to read into that identity or not. But
if you do that, you're pretty much making something out
of nothing. Race is nothing. Biologically, it's not real, and

(05:15):
so socially it might as well be not real either.
Race hasn't meant anything for a long time, and it
doesn't have to mean anything as long as we can
just move on, move forward, and stop talking about it
so much. Now, what do people on the far right
believe about anti racism. They believe that anti racism efforts

(05:37):
or efforts to oppose prejudice and discrimination need to be
taken up by no one, because again, the issue of
racism is pretty much laid to rest. As they see it,
the real issue is all of this dust we're kicking
up about racism by talking about it so much and
making so many flawed and failing efforts to deal with it,

(05:59):
Our inti racism efforts that are the real problem. We
just need to stop with all of that mess, stop
striving toward anti racism, and just stick with good shared
moral values about treating people kindly and we'll be good.
Those are the big three ideas on the right. I

(06:21):
say the right the far right. I think there are
a lot of thoughtful people on the right who wouldn't
fall into those caricatures or the most severe version of
those beliefs. But if they had to lean one way
or the other, they would lean in the direction of
saying that racism isn't very prevalent, that race isn't very important,
and that anti racism isn't all that needed now in response,

(06:44):
what is believed on the left? What is the left's
big three? Unlike those on the right who believe that
racism is nowhere, those on the left believe that racism
is everywhere. On the left, you'll hear about implice, prejudice
affecting all of us at the individual level, and systemic
racism affecting all of society. It's taught that no matter

(07:08):
how hard you try to be a good person, even
you can't escape the clutches of racism, you yourself will
promote racism, no matter how hard you try not to.
You are part of the problem because racism is inescapable.
It's poison in the air we breathe. It's a disease
that we're all affected with, even if we're asymptomatic, and

(07:29):
it is pulling the strings in our society. It always
has been, and to believe otherwise is to believe a delusion.
In some strains of the left, it's taught that there
is no such thing as a situation that's free of racism.
There's no possible interaction between two people of different races
that isn't marked by racism. It's a pernicious evil. It's

(07:52):
harbored by those who don't even intend to, and it's
being perpetuated at all times because power is concentrated amongst
white people, and all people of color are fundamentally victims
in a racist, white supremacist society. That's what those on
the left or the far left believe about racism. What

(08:13):
about race? What is the lefts teaching on race? Unlike
those on the right who believe that race is essentially nothing,
those on the left believe that race is essentially everything.
The left is admittedly very identitarian, meaning that our social
identities are demographics. Those matter a lot. They matter personally

(08:36):
in terms of how we can make sense of ourselves
and our place in the world and the scripts that
we're given, and they are also consequential in terms of
the experiences we have, the opportunities we do or don't receive,
the treatment we get. Race unfortunately affects everything because the
previous belief that racism's everywhere. As long as racism is

(08:59):
rampant in our society, and on the left you'll hear
it is, then we need to be paying attention to
race because that necessarily means that race is a determinant
of all sorts of things about your life experience. That's
why you'll also hear that we need to be conscious
of race. We need to pay attention to it because
it is shaping the trajectory of our every day and

(09:21):
our lives, whether we realize it or not, so we
might as well realize it. There's also this view that
not only should we see race because of racism and
as a way of catching discrimination and noticing prejudice, but
we should also see race in the positive sense. We
should see it as a beautiful aspect of your identity,

(09:42):
as a special part of who you are. Race should
be seen and celebrated and salient. It should be top
of mind because it is core. It is key to
who you are as a person. And lastly, what does
the left believe about anti racism? Well, unlike those on
the right who believe that anti racism should be adopted
by absolutely no one, those in the left believe that

(10:05):
anti racism should be uniformly embraced by every Again, that's
an extreme way of putting what's a widespread sentiment on
the far left and in activist circles. If anti racism
is how we deal with the evils of prejudice and discrimination,
then how could we not have everyone adopt this? How

(10:26):
could we not enforce it, share it, teach it, have
people abide by it whether they want to or not.
If we let people opt in or opt out, what
are they opting out of? They'd rather not have anti
racism because they want to be racist. No, we can't
give them that option. Anti racism must be a shared
communal value because it's good and it's true, and it's necessary,

(10:49):
and anyone who thinks otherwise it has to be evil
or stupid. You'll notice how these big three fit together perfectly.
Because it's believed that racism is ever everywhere. That means
that race is everything, and that also means that anti
racism needs to be adopted by everyone. Now I laid

(11:12):
out the views on either side, but to start this episode,
I said that progressives need to learn from our mistakes
on race if we want to make things right. So
what do I mean by them? Do I mean that
the right is right? Do I mean that racism is nowhere?
Race is nothing, and anti racism should be embraced by
No One spoiler alert. No, but I do think that

(11:36):
both the right and the left are getting different things,
very very wrong. I think that political polarization has pushed
us further and further out into extremes. But on this
very gray, nuanced matter, the truth doesn't lie in the extremes.
This framework that I've created of the Big Three helps

(11:58):
us to wrap our mind around exactly what the differences
are on the right and left. The differences first lie
with our beliefs about racism, which then feeds our beliefs
about race, which finally shapes our beliefs about anti racism
and what that should look like. All lay out, really briefly,
what I believe the left must do to learn from

(12:20):
our mistakes. My heart is with people who are progressive
on race, and to that group I have a loving
plea that we would make some things right by modifying
our Big three claims. Rather than just believing that racism
is absolutely everywhere, I think we need to rein in

(12:40):
who and what we deem racist rather than believing that
race is everything. We need to walk back some of
our counterproductive fixation on racial identity, and rather than declaring
that anti racism needs to be embraced by everyone. A
good place to start would be reform, modifying and improving

(13:02):
our program of anti racism, essentially admitting that we don't
have it all figured out and we're not in a
position to implement it uniformly as if we do. I'll
unpack each of those a little bit. This brief conversation
really captures everything that I love about progressive anti racism
and the racial justice movement, and it also makes very

(13:24):
clear where I think we've gone wrong and how we
can take strides to make simple changes that fill out
our beliefs and make them less rigid, less severe, more nuanced,
more practical, more accurate, and precise. In this conversation, both
sides are guilty of speaking in hyperbole. Both sides are

(13:47):
guilty of caricature. Both sides have been moving further and
further to differentiate themselves from the other side. Now we're
at a point where if a conservative person speaks with
concern about racism, they're accused of being too progressive. If
a progressive person says something about racism being a little
less severe than we thought, no, now they're disowned. That's

(14:09):
an act of betrayal. Both sides have been landlocked into
what we've said we believe, and we've been landlocked into
the most extreme black and white version of our sentiment,
and that doesn't help us. So what shift would be
really healthy for progressives to make on each of these
big three claims? Well, if our starting point is the

(14:33):
idea that racism is absolutely everywhere, which I'm not saying
that you, as the listener, believe that or would put
it in those words, what I'm saying is that of
the books from the left on my bookshelves right now,
that's what's being taught, that's what's being assumed. A helpful
pivot would be to reign in who we deem racist

(14:55):
and what we deem racist. Lots of voices on the
left will tell you that every person who is white
is automatically, irredeemably racist. I don't think that's productive. They
will tell you that your implicit prejudices are impossible to overcome,
are ruling your decisions all day long. They will tell

(15:16):
you that you have this disease, this evil that can't
truly be dealt with. But if that's what we believe
to be true about racism, that it's something that everyone
is affected by, and not just affected by, but completely
controlled by, and not just that it controls us, but
that it's completely imperceptible, and not just that, but also

(15:36):
that no matter how hard we try, we can't do
a thing about it. Well, then we have just made
our own grave, and we might as well lie in it.
Those of us who are progressive on issues of race
would do well to see that that logic about racism
can't be argued with. And it also teaches that trying

(15:58):
to deal with racism is a fools errand it's a
lost cause, it's completely hopeless. It leads to a whole
lot of confusion because we end up looking for racism
as if it's equally present in people in places of
goodwill as it is in people in places who are
deliberately discriminating, when in reality, our conscious choices do determine

(16:20):
a lot. We can both believe that unconscious prejudice is
real and also believe that it's not the most real,
most defining aspect of our lives. We can believe that
we are susceptible to racial prejudice or racist socialization without
believing that we have no power over it or that

(16:40):
we can do nothing about it. What I want those
of us who are on the left to come to
see is that it's not just a wash. It's not
that everyone is equally racist in equal measure, not that
racism is so ubiquitous you and I have no hope
of escaping it, or overcoming it, or moving beyond it.
I want us to see racism as something that is

(17:03):
marked by racist categorization of people, racist discrimination of people,
and therefore something that some people really opt into and
some opt out of. I'm essentially asking us to reclaim
the long standing historic understanding of our racism is it
is a choice to see people differently or treat people

(17:23):
differently because of their race. And that's something that you
largely can control, not entirely, not perfectly. There are unconscious elements,
there are passive versions of racism, but those should not
overwhelm the entire discussion. Okay, Now, race, If on the
far left it's believed that race is everything, Race determines

(17:48):
our experience of the world, it determines our self understanding.
It is absolutely pivotal, and therefore we must see it
and pay attention to it. If that's our starting point,
I would like us to walk back some of the
fixation on racial identity. When we pay so much attention
to race, it can have a very counterproductive effect for

(18:08):
people of color, racial minorities, black people. There is a
pile of evidence that paying a lot of attention to
race and believing it's going to shape your experience because
you are on high alert for racism, leads to such
a significant racial burden that even if you don't experience racism,

(18:30):
you still have essentially racial battle fatigue. You still end
up carrying a very heavy load. So when people on
the left are especially telling people of color, you should
really really pay attention to race, you should really be
thinking about that all the time, that works against us.
That's not in our best interest. Now. I love how
on the left there is a positive view of race

(18:53):
and a celebration and embraceive diversity. I think that a
degree of color consciousness is beautiful. It's good. But at
the same time, all of our enthusiasm for race, for
seeing it from racing it, all of our confidence that
paying attention to race will be how we deal with racism.

(19:14):
I want to thwart that just a little bit by
reminding you that race itself was invented for purposes of racism.
Race was created. We all know this. We all know
it's not biological. We all know it's just a social invention.
We all know the categories of black and white were
made up so that some people could enslave other people

(19:35):
and to humanize them along the way. If we know
that that is the origin of race, and that the
categories themselves serve to justify differentiating people and discriminating, then
isn't it very possible that holding tightly to those categories
that were created for oppression might not be the best
way to deal with oppression. It's possible that dealing with

(19:59):
racism means dealing with race if we want to get
at the root of racism. The root of racism is
believing that race is important, it's defining, it's a distinguishing feature,
and it makes us very different. Racism then takes that
one step further and says it makes some better and
some worse. But maybe the way to go upstream and
fully deal with racism is to deal with race a

(20:20):
little bit, to not embrace it and pay attention to it,
and say that we should see other people differently because
of it, and be race conscious till the cows come home.
Maybe we need to examine race itself, deconstruct race itself,
undermine our belief in race itself. Yes, in the biological sense,
everyone knows to do that. Everyone knows race is biologically fake,

(20:43):
it's not real. But we should also consider what that
could mean in the social sense. Maybe not now because
race still affects so much of life experience, but hopefully
in the future, hopefully the near future. And finally, anti
racist on the left, if the starting belief about anti

(21:04):
racism is that it needs to be embraced by everyone,
how could we shade that in with some nuance, Well,
I think we would do well to begin readily changing
our program of anti racism. Our program of anti racism
is often guilty of some circular reasoning. Many prominent voices
in the left talk about anti racism, and they define

(21:25):
racism very rigidly, and then they define anti racism very rigidly,
and they define a racist person as anyone who doesn't
agree with them on racism and anti racism. They'll talk
about unconscious bias, they'll talk about systemic racism, they'll talk
about stereotyping, they'll talk about microaggressions, they'll talk about a
million and two issues, and then they'll say you are

(21:46):
anti racist if you agree on every last one with
what I've just explained, and you are racist if you
disagree and you have internalized racism, or if you're a
person of color, then your self hating, or if you're
a white person, you're a white supremacist. And it's this
fully circular, padded argument of head's eye win tails, you lose,
and that circularity has led to our own demise. We

(22:11):
need some give in our understanding of anti racism. We
need some flexibility. We need to be open to learning
new information and being willing to change. Anti racism by
its nature needs to have some opt in opt out ability,
because we need to start by not seeing it as
objectively good and true, but as something that is fluid,

(22:31):
something that's largely speculation, largely moral. It's an ideology, it's
not a fact. Hopefully, we take a lot of facts
and use those to inform our ideology, but when it
comes to what we believe about paying attention to race
more or paying attention to race less, or interpreting microaggressions

(22:52):
as if they're racism, or interpreting microaggressions by assuming the best,
or there's a whole range of things I could list out.
We want to take the facts and build an ideology,
but at the end of the day, it is inherently ideological,
which means it's something that people are going to see differently,
and that's not necessarily a problem. That might even be

(23:13):
a strength. Dare I say it is a strength on
the left. We've lost out on what could be a
lot of helpful discourse, a lot of back and forth,
a lot of improving our own program, because when we
receive criticism, we dismiss that person, We shun them and
shame them as a heretic, and we send them on

(23:34):
their way. I'm not saying that's everyone, and I bet
money that that's probably not the people who are listening
to this podcast. So this is not a call out
by any means. But in this critical time where the
future it is, it remains to be seen. We don't
know what's going to happen in the coming years. I
think we won't regret getting our grasp of race and

(23:57):
racism and anti racism in tip top shape. And if
we are put in the position once again to have
a lot of political and social and cultural influence that
will get it right that time, a little bit more
right than we did the first time around. That's my hope,
at least, truth be told. I had not a single
note for this episode, so I was hoping it would

(24:18):
be much more brief. But I have impressed myself with
my own jeeper jabbering abilities. I'm sure you'll give me
grace in how I chose my words, and I hope
that I could put in simple and clear terms a
picture of what we're seeing on the left and the right,
and that I could make a case for a different way,

(24:40):
a better way than all the ways that have been
done before. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you
for listening. Until next time,