Racism & Forgiveness

I'm a tiny bit torn over these revelations about Paula Deen. On the one hand, I find her to be representative of so much I despise about white Southerners—ignorant, solipsistic, entitled. The fact that she's such a caricature isn't much help in gaining any of my sympathy, either. Then there's that damn other hand.

While maintaining her ignorant, solipsistic entitlement, she also comes across as genuinely remorseful. She doesn't seem quite able to put it all together in any meaningful way, but she certainly appears to want to understand. She wants to be a good person, but she's also an unintentional racist. I don't mean to suggest that racism of any sort is defensible. We're responsible for it whether we've taken sufficient time to reflect on our complicity, on our privilege, on our attitudes or not, but the unintentional part is where so many of us white folks get lost. Even people who are obviously guilty of being as racist as Paula Deen has been somehow manage not to notice. A few racists I come across these days (and they're around) are either quite secretive about their views until they're in all-white company and therefore feel free to let their racist hair down, or they're disturbingly proud of those views and seem to hold them as a sign of conscientious resistance to creeping decadence. But no matter which of those two categories they happen to fall into, they all intend to be racist. They're not even slightly motivated to dress it up as some aw-shucks-it's-how-I-was-raised-I-can't-help-it metaphorical shrug. They genuinely believe it's immoral for races to interact (much less mix), and they believe anyone who isn't white, conservative, and Christian also isn't worthy of the benefits of our—in their view—white, conservative, Christian nation. In other words, if you're not a member of the club then you well and truly do not belong. Any subversion of what they see as their birthright as white, conservative Christians is, in their view, a usurpation of their divinely mandated role in the universe.

All of that said, here's the thing about Paula Deen and her current predicament which has motivated me to write about these things today. I've been in her shoes. I know what it is to grow up clueless in a horrifically racist environment only to come to recognize the abject evil of it later in life. Fun fact: At the end of the street in Pine Bluff, Arkansas where I grew up—just across Olive Street where Hudson Avenue meets it—there was once a family restaurant (yes, I see the irony there) in the vein of Shoney's named Sambo's. When I say "once" I do mean it's no longer there, but it did exist concurrently with yours truly. I ate there as a kid, and I had no clue. It was the late '70s. There were paper place mats that featured renderings of black people (I'm hesitant to associate the term "African-American" with these particularly vile representations) with giant lips, bones through their exaggeratedly wide noses, and dressed in loin cloths. They looked more like apes than like people, by design.

That was the soup I swam in, and it was represented not only as the ways things were but also as how they were meant to be. I accepted it for a time, but although I have managed to come at least a great deal of the way out of that worldview—I still hold that I have blind spots even though, by definition, I cannot be aware of them—I've only managed it in steps. There was no Damascene conversion for me after which the scales fell from my eyes. The revelations were persistent and usually small. They also have been cumulative, to my great fortune. So, if I'm honest and just, I can't refuse Deen my sympathy without refusing it to myself. It's a sad day when we realize how often we have to view such things through our own prisms in order to be able to extend grace to others, but there it is. The truth as it applies to this situation is two-fold: 1) I am repulsed by Paula Deen but feel compelled to extend her grace as well as credit her for at least not wanting to be a racist; and, 2) I feel this way toward Paula Deen because my own history as an ignorant, solipsistic, entitled, and ultimately unintentional racist white Southerner still brings up deep wells of shame in me. Then I remember that I was fortunate enough to be shown the errors of my ways quietly and privately beginning before I even graduated high school. Paula Deen gets to do it loudly and in public after having gained the stature of a celebrity in her field. Any misgivings on my part notwithstanding, that alone is enough to evoke my pity.

So do we forgive Paula Deen? Well, I can't forgive her because I am not the injured party here. I do not hold the power of absolution. In short, it's not my call. I also don't get to make suggestions to African-Americans about whether they should forgive her or me. Most importantly, I don't get to judge African-Americans should they decide against forgiving either of us.

The thing I find most odd about this situation is the cries of outrage coming from white people. (See the YouTube comments under the video I embedded above for examples.) It's not that we're wrong about the outrage. Casual racism of this nature is certainly outrageous. It's that in engaging in these performances we ignore how much we've benefited from the same racism that's motivating us to scream for Paula Deen's blood. By hurling invective at her without restraint, we try to set ourselves apart from her. It's as if we hope to transform ourselves into the Other in order to take up the role of the ones who have suffered the trespass on their human rights and human dignities, but none of us white folks get to do that. It's neither within our capabilities nor within our rights. We do not possess the moral standing to indulge ourselves here. We—each and every one of us—to greater or lesser degree have benefited at the expense of Others as a result of exactly this kind of racism. Deflecting criticism toward Deen does nothing to mitigate our complicity. Screaming to the rafters about the injustice of the racism that Deen represents doesn't remove the slightest mote of privilege under which we have existed in this society for centuries.

Using Paula Deen as our proxy in an attempt to assuage our guilty consciences, whether we realize what we're doing or not, means we have many lessons yet to learn. Paula Deen is a symptom. She's a signpost guiding us white people back to ourselves. We would do well to exhibit a great deal of humility in moments like this one, and remember how we all carry a privilege by virtue of having been born where we were, when we were, and the color we were. We have never earned it, and we do not deserve it. The only way we can possibly move past it toward a more just and equal society is to stop believing we don't have it. A good first step down that path would be to acknowledge that we are all in one way or another like Paula Deen—ignorant, solipsistic, and entitled.

By all means, decry the injustice of racism. By all means, fight against the tide of it. By all means, work to right the wrongs it has done. Just do it humbly. Get down in the muck of it because that high horse we're sitting is all in our heads, and it does nothing but hinder everyone's efforts.