A few years ago, I was in graduate school in Columbus, Ohio, working at a small, private, liberal arts institution that had decided to go sick with its staff development budget and hired Tim Wise to speak to all the student staff members. He spoke for about an hour, and discussed race in the United States, and the necessity for affirmative action, race conscious laws, and ways to even the playing field in a system that is inherently biased in favor of the dominant class, A.K.A. white people. I was completely engrossed. I must say, I had been considering, for a time, the notion that maybe we needed to take our foot off the pedal when it came to affirmative action, and that plenty of laws and practices were so slanted in favor of minorities that they actually became something like “reverse racism.” As it turns out, and through a couple of decent stories and turns of phrase, Mr. Wise was able to convince me of the contrary. I walked out of the speech and hopped on Amazon, wanting to purchase his book “White Like Me” to further engage myself in his discussions about race in the United States. As the years passed, and I hopped on to the twit-o-sphere, I saw that Mr. Wise had a twitter account. He was such an engaging speaker, and his books were so encouraging for young white people who wanted to make a change in the United States that I figured the account would be full of commentary about the world at large, and nuggets of wisdom about the institutional racism inherent in our society. I don’t remember first following him, but as I peruse his twitter feed, I realize, he is a colossal asshole. He’s not wrong about much of what he is speaking about, but he chooses the most tone-deaf, holier-than-thou way to convey his message, and it’s completely off-putting. Judging by his interactions with some solidly leftist twitter followers, I’m not the only one who believes this to be true.
One of the first things that drew me in to Mr. Wise and his natural speaking abilities was his storytelling. When he mentioned that Affirmative Action has had a very real, very positive effect on our society, and in ending the biased nature of our institutional racism in the United States, I was skeptical. As I said, I was already leaning toward believing that Affirmative Action had been so effective that it was now having the opposite effect. He spun a long yarn about living in a house with ten other people in New Orleans. Sparing you the gory details, a housemate of his cooked a giant pot of gumbo, and left it for a few days. Gumbo is not an easy stew to make, but it is quite delicious, and extremely aromatic. Mr. Wise discussed the attitudes of everyone in the house as the smell of the pot went from mouth-watering, to inescapable yet still delicious, to finally turned toward spoiled in the heat and humidity of the Gulf Coast, filling the entire house with a putrid, acrid smell. They all were of a similar disposition: I didn’t make it, I’m not cleaning it up. When he said the line, I realized exactly what he meant. Many white people who are otherwise nonracist to anti-racist take the opinion of, “Hey, look. My family never owned slaves, and slavery has been over for almost 150 years. It’s not my fault, I didn’t create the racist tendencies of our country, and it’s not my job to fix it.” Well, the problem is, the longer you leave the stew to putrify on the stove, the more it’s going to stink. We left racism to putrify for so long, affirmative action is only now beginning to right those wrongs. He went on to discuss all the ways in which people of color face institutional biases that white people take for granted, providing support for his point (anything from jail sentences to voter suppression, and everything in between.) Everything he said was treated as an interpretation of the raw data, and conclusions drawn from that. The conclusions were inherently opinion-based, but factually rooted. It was all presented as a call to arms, an encouragement for the white people in the room, enjoying their privilege as the majority race in a system that gives the majority a distinct advantage.
It was this type of no-nonsense assessment, coupled with positive thinking, that I had hoped to find in Mr. Wise’s twitter feed. Instead, I got this:
"If you still think Trayvon Martin was a thug, you are a racist. No more. No less. No exceptions. Absolutely none. Got that?"
Here’s the problem: I don’t think Trayvon Martin is a thug, and I do think George Zimmerman is a murderer. But this language and attitude is so condescending and divisive. What if I did think Trayvon Martin was a thug? Especially if I thought Trayvon Martin was a thug who didn’t deserve to die, who was murdered in a fit of vengeful shame by a pitiful man named George Zimmerman? All of a sudden, I’m a racist? One of the things I’ve come to understand as a person who has studied the way in which people make meaning and learn is that very little is black and white (excuse the contrasting shades in an article about a race writer, it’s a limitation of our phraseology,) and that the vast majority of things are shades of gray. Racism is a dirty, disgusting blight on our country that still has not been expunged. I know that, deep down in my conscience, I am sure I have some nasty inherent prejudices built in from our society at large. Having those ugly, disgusting stereotypes deep down where I’m ashamed of them doesn’t make me a racist. Letting them bubble to the top, whether alone in a giant, wide open field with no one else around, or in a crowded room full of a targeted population would make me a racist.
Racism requires action. Prejudices don’t. The large majority of Americans do not know who Trayvon Martin is, and a large portion of Americans who support the legalization of marijuana, or at least the decriminalization of use/possession of small amounts of it still see the cell phone picture of him smoking marijuana, and see deep down in their conscience a scary black teen doing something illegal, and think “thug.” That’s wrong, and it’s what proves Mr. Wise’s point from several years ago in Columbus. But what if you think all of that, and you still mourn his loss? Is that really racist? If you acknowledge your own prejudices and fight them? If you hold two conflicting or incongruent thoughts in your head at the same time, isn’t that a sign that you have an advanced mentality, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once posited? Divisive language and name-calling are not helpful when attempting to have honest discussion about our own innate tendencies toward prejudices against African-Americans.
In his engrossing tome: “White Like Me,” Mr. Wise discusses the problem with white people leading the charge against institutional racism, and fighting for true equality for all. He tells a story about how, when sitting on a panel, debriefing and unpacking some event they had held that was designed to expose a race-based injustice, a woman of color asked how they expected to be taken seriously by those they were trying to help if everyone on the panel, and everyone in the demonstration or activity (I forget what it was, exactly) was a white person? She effectively de-legitimized their activity because they hadn’t involved members of the targeted community. Mr. Wise had no answer for this woman, and realized that, by taking up the torch and being the standard bearer, he was perpetuating his own white privilege by speaking for the targeted group for whom he was supposed to be advocating. He realized that white people should not be holding positions of power in anti-racist organizations; it becomes another avenue for the subjugation of people of color, as though “they” can’t even lead an activist organization or event designed to assist and support people of color.
On his twitter feed, in response to the recent National Security Agency leaks by Edward Snowden, Mr. Wise opined about the racial divide in outrage about the United States government spying on its own citizens:
"notice white folks: NO people of color shocked by Snowden's revelations. None. POC assume this shit. #whiteprivilege lets u ignore till now"
Again, Mr. Wise deals in absolutes here. He makes a bold claim that, of the millions of Americans who identify as a person of color, absolutely none of them are shocked by the revelation of government spying. It’s not just a turn of phrase, either. He reiterates, “None.” Your buddy from work, who is Asian? He knew it. The latina woman in line behind you at the DMV? No shock whatsoever. But, what’s more disconcerting, especially in the face of his embarrassment (he described his lack of an answer for the woman at the debrief panel/press conference in his book as embarrassment) previously, is that he decides it is appropriate, as a white male, to speak for people of color. Some of the first few twitter responses ask Mr. Wise to recognize his own #WhitePrivilege in speaking for all people of color. This is a mirror of his previous interaction, recounted from “White Like Me.” Instead of recognizing and rephrasing, Mr. Wise doubles down:
"but ask them if they were shocked by Snowden's revelations. ASK THEM! They weren't. My point"
When challenged by a twitter user who identifies herself as an activist specializing in neoliberalism, gender, and sexuality, at first, Mr. Wise jabs her by saying “whoever you are,” as a deflection, presumably to compare twitter followers and fame. He then claims that she doesn’t like him personally. It seems strange that, as the discussion devolves further, it’s clear that she is trying to have a twitter discussion about his assumptions, which she, as a woman of color, automatically refutes, especially in the face of his polarizing claim. He then tries to make the claim that he wasn’t speaking for people of color, while in the same tweet, asking the woman to prove him wrong. He later tries to make some sweeping points about white privilege, which are mostly correct about how white people perceive the world. Perhaps many people of color were able to assume that the government was spying on them, not to be trusted, and more dangerous in our move toward an authoritarian police state, something that our white privilege left us blind to.
This gets at the heart of all that is frustrating with Tim Wise. His go home is that white people are shocked that their own government would treat them this way. People of color are not shocked. When presented with his own white privilege for speaking for people of color, he curled up into a ball and defended himself instead of clarifying his point. His beliefs aren’t wrong, and he’s an extremely intelligent guy, but he’s not catching a whole lot of flies with honey. He certainly has a right to be angry about the permeating stench of racism in our society, institutional and individual. Speaking down to others, especially people who aren’t just white people who do a little to stop racism and institutional racism, but rather people of color who are actually in the targeted class for whom he claims to advocate is really divisive and alienating. The fact that so many responded to him, and his reaction was to take the Keith Olbermann “I’m more famous than you”/”You just don’t like me” approach is disheartening. When I saw him speak in Ohio, Tim was a confident, engaging, and inclusive speaker with a great storytelling mechanism that employed humor with his inspiring message of encouragement to end racism that helped me to realize my own inherent prejudices and racist tendencies. When I read his twitter feed, it comes off as a self-involved, humorless prick who is far more interested in proving himself correct than engaging in actual discussion about race in the United States, especially when his message seems to be “You are wrong, I am right, and if you don’t agree with me, that makes you a racist.” Tim Wise has a lot of great things to say, and deserves an awful lot of our attention. But the feeling that he is smarter, more evolved, and right when everyone who disagrees with all or part of his opinion makes him the twitter race police, insular and petty, and it makes it hard to hear his boulders of wisdom when they are packaged in condescension and mean spirited, polarizing, “with-me-or-against-me” claims.
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