This piece in The Nation is about more than yet another Ivy League alum (Harvard College and Harvard Law School) sitting at the pinnacle of American society prattling on about how very hard he has it. Sadly, there's nothing particularly new about that.
The piece does, however unintended, shine a very bright light on the unavoidable outcome of all-racism-all-the-time thinking that is being administered to the public like arsenic, poisoning the polity slowly but most assuredly over time.
Oh, make no mistake, author Elie Mystal is not fond of white people, that much is certain.
Over the past year, I have, of course, still had to interact with white people on Zoom or watch them on television or worry about whether they would succeed in reelecting a white-supremacist president. But white people aren't in my face all of the time. I can, more or less, only deal with whiteness when I want to.
Yep, he's got some issues with, well, an entire race of people.
I've turned my house into Wakanda: a technically advanced, globally isolated home base from which I can pick and choose when and how often to interact with white people.
Definitely a well-balanced individual.
He gives himself some cover, of course.
To be clear, it's not that most or even many of my interactions with white people are "bad"; it's that I'm able to choose when to expose myself to interactions with potentially bad white people.
Oh, well, "it's not that most or even many of my interactions with white people are 'bad,'" so I guess it's okay.
But, just for kicks, what would this look like were we to swap out races.
To be clear, it's not that most or even many of my interactions with black people are "bad"; it's that I'm able to choose when to expose myself to interactions with potentially bad black people.
That is not something I would be saying in public. Or private. Or really ever have the thought cross my mind but maybe that's because I'm not a racist.
Let's move on to what is really important about this piece beyond one man's corrosive emotional issues.
A weekend trip to CVS showed me that I'm not ready. I'm not ready to go back to accepting that, in a diverse and pluralistic society, some white people are allowed to just impose their implicit biases on the world, and the rest of us have to suck it up.
"Implicit biases."
Keep that in mind.
On Sunday, my wife went to CVS to buy Easter candy. It was exactly the kind of nonessential trip we've been avoiding for the past year, but the weather was nice, and she wanted the walk. She texted me when she was nearly done to pick her up, so she didn't have to carry the heavy bags, and I took the kids with me for a nice little car ride.
Here's his mindset. White people have all these "implicit biases," and he has been avoiding going shopping for a year.
He is primed and ready to be offended, and nothing is going to stop him.
This is a few paragraphs, but you have to take it all in to truly understand what is going on in this country.
I was idling in the parking lot, near the door, when another car pulled up, stopped right in front of the store (blocking traffic behind the car) and rolled down the window. An older white woman shouted towards the door, "Is this where you get the vaccines?" There was only one person standing outside of the CVS, a young Black woman, who looked to me to be no older than 16.
The Black teenager ignored the woman (as I teach my kids to do when strangers are shouting at them), but the white lady insisted: "I said, is this where you get the vaccines?" At this point, the teenager did this elaborate pantomime of looking behind her, a very clear "she must not be talking to me, a person just standing outside and messing with my phone" move.
This, apparently, really pi---- off the white woman who then yelled at the top of her voice: "IS THIS WHERE YOU GET THE VACCINES?" By this point, a small traffic jam had piled up behind her, and the cars started honking. She yelped in disgust—"the service!"—and drove off.
Okay, taking this on face value, a disgruntled individual was behaving in a selfish and entitled manner.
Welcome to the wacky world of humans.
However, this unpleasant but not uncommon encounter in Mystal's mind was his chance.
RACISM!!!
If I had been on my game, if I had remembered my beekeeper suit, I would have rolled down my widow and spoken up on behalf of the teenager...
But I've been living in my white-free castle for a year. My mind and my mouth bottlenecked with thoughts about why this was happening, whether I was "supposed" to speak up, and what my children would think if they saw me getting in a shouting match with an old white lady. By the time I'd figured out what to say and how to say it, the moment had passed.
Saying absolutely nothing over a nothing encounter was the right call, but he views it as a missed opportunity to preen his righteousness in front of his kids.
Did I fail to show solidarity with this young Black stranger? Was I part of the permissive culture that has allowed that white lady to exist? Did I miss a teachable moment that could have showed my children how to stand up to people? It's been a year since somebody else's racism made me feel like I failed.
If you are an emotionally well-adjusted person who has not fully imbibed the poison being peddled by race grifters like Mystal, you're probably asking yourself, how was that racist?
He was ready for you!
A lot of white people have no idea what I'm talking about. I know that because I posted this story on Twitter and the responses from some of the white people were so typical.
That was kind of a red flag, but to Mystal, even more evidence of RACISM!!
Just a bunch of recentering on the experience of the white lady shouting questions. "Why didn't the young woman just answer the lady's question?" was a common refrain. "What's wrong with asking other people for help?"
He then spends paragraphs on how courtesy works, dissecting a stupid meaningless encounter for maximum outrage. Yes, the "old white lady" was not particularly nice.
The horrors!
I suppose if you are a part of the majority culture and aren't regularly confused for an employee, the white lady's question seems innocuous (at least at first, before she starts screaming). Multiple white people brought up the experience of wearing a Hawaiian shirt at Trader Joe's and being mistaken for staff. As if wearing the distinctive outfit of a chain-store employee is the same as "wearing" black skin outside of any old store.
The view these grievance hustlers have of white people's lives has become a source of routine amusement for me, like the "white privilege check lists" that include "feel safe walking the streets."
I swear, they think we all live in Mayberry, exchanging knowing nods with Andy Griffith on our way to Aunt Bee's house for some mayonnaise sandwiches.
If I'm walking around Yankee Stadium in pinstripes and cleats, you can ask me who's on first. Otherwise, look for context clues, like the giant scoreboard with all the information on it, to solve your problems.
Here's my lived experience: I have been mistaken for "the help" numerous times. It's happened in Home Depot, it's happened at a drug store, it's happened at an office supply chain. I've been in a shirt and tie and it's happened.
More than once, I have been mistaken for a gardener WHILE WORKING IN MY OWN YARD.
All of which begs the question, why are people like Mystal so offended to be mistaken for a common person? What is it about the lower classes that they view with such disdain, the people who work with their hands, who work in retail. I've always considered it a complement of sorts. I must look like I know what I'm doing, or my yard looks nice.
These champions of the downtrodden sure don't seem to actually like the downtrodden all that much.
It's exactly the kind of everyday racism that I've been able to avoid for the past year: the crap that white people do without even knowing they're doing it.
Because, they aren't. You are freighting their innocuous and occasionally boorish actions with your own biases, prejudices and hangups.
It's a charge designed to be irrefutable because white people "don't know they're doing it."
In the vast majority of cases, they don't, because they aren't.
Aside from creating completely unnecessary and fabricated "racial incidents," there is a second crime in all this in that it devalues actual racism.
I don't doubt Mystal has been the target of such, but how much validity will I give such an accusation if he cries wolf the other 99 times?
It also makes it impossible for people of different races to form meaningful personal relationships.
You can't get close to someone if you feel like you're constantly walking on eggshells around them lest some innocent comment trigger them or you mistakenly step on a land mine they planted.
If you leave your house believing that you live in a racist country, you are going to see racism in every benign encounter.
No wonder he doesn't want to leave his house.
I despair of going back to a world where the slings and arrows of outrageous white people are part of my day.
As the kids like to say, "imagine thinking this."
By the way, don't dare comment on this piece he wrote in a national magazine if you're the wrong race. I mean, the nerve!
It's not your experiences that are being critiqued.
It's the "implicit biases" as you put it, that you bring to the experiences.
