Privileged bubbles and trying to pop them

Recent events in the news:

A Black man jogging through a White neighborhood in Georgia was murdered in a modern day lynching; this happened months ago and the killers would have gotten off scot-free, with help from local authorities, if not for a video being made public.

A Black woman EMT in Louisville was shot and killed in her own home by police officers executing a no-knock warrant at the wrong address.

A White woman called the police and threatened the life of a Black man by falsely claiming that he was threatening her after he asked her to obey the rules and leash her dog in Central Park.

A police officer in Minneapolis murdered a Black man by kneeling on his neck for nine minutes while the victim offered no resistance.

All this in the midst of a global pandemic that here in the United States is both taking advantage of and putting a spotlight on existing systemic inequities as it disproportionately kills people of color.

And now, police are violently cracking down on protesters against racist police violence, just weeks after police exhibited remarkably peaceful restraint when faced with heavily armed White protesters who stormed state government buildings because they were angry they couldn't get haircuts.

Noticing a theme?

My Facebook feed is full of people expressing well justified outrage at these events. I'm not criticizing people for posting hashtags. I'm glad that so many people want to do something to make a difference. But what can we (and by "we" I specifically mean White people) do to actually make a lasting difference? Plenty of awareness has been raised about these issues by now. I'd guess that most everyone who is going to care about the issues already cares about them. People who still don't care, even now, aren't going to start caring because they saw another hashtag.

I'm absolutely not faulting people for posting statuses on Facebook to raise awareness, but that's the easy part. We also have to do things that aren't easy.

In this day and age, with a virulent racist occupying our nation's highest office and with white supremacists emboldened by this fact, it is not enough to be "not racist." (It has never been enough to be just "not racist," but I think that's become far more obvious over the course of the last decade and especially last few years than it was for most of my own lifetime.) We have to be actively anti-racist if we want to do something about the underlying racism that affects everything in our society. What are some things we can do to be actively anti-racist?

I've thought about this a lot in recent years, ever since Ferguson, really. I won't claim to be an expert. But I'd like to share some of my thoughts relating to my own life experiences.

"Who would really have it any other way?"

It's so easy for White people to live in a bubble. I know this very well from my own life. And White people, generally speaking, have no idea what it's like to actually experience racism. But we know that racism is bad, because we've been told that all our lives. And we've been told that racists are bad people. And we don't think that we ourselves, or our close friends and loved ones, are bad people. Therefore we must not be racist and we must not be contributing to the racism that is everywhere in our society.

Being told that something we did or said was racist, or contributed to racism, does not feel good. I know this. It hurts our feelings. But that doesn't mean it's not true. (Nor does it necessarily mean you're a bad person.) We have to stop being so sensitive to our own hurt feelings. We have to stop being such snowflakes. If the worst racism-related thing you can imagine happening to you is being called a racist... imagine what it's like to actually be a victim of racism.

The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, for me, unavoidably recalls memories of events that demonstrated to me just how hard it is for White people to recognize and confront racist sentiments expressed by people close to them. Floyd was quoted as saying "I can't breathe" while that police officer choked the life out of him with a knee to the neck.

The phrase "I can't breathe" entered the national consciousness after a similar incident almost six years ago when Eric Garner, another unarmed Black man, uttered the same words while the life was choked out of him by an NYPD cop.

A relative of mine wrote an infamous newspaper column about Eric Garner's death. The column began [content warning: extremely inflammatory sentiments about victims of racist police violence]:

Eric Garner and Michael Brown [the victim of the police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri] had much in common, not the least of which was this: On the last day of their lives, they made bad decisions. Epically bad decisions. 

Each broke the law — petty offenses, to be sure, but sufficient to attract the attention of the police. 

And then — tragically, stupidly, fatally, inexplicably — each fought the law. 

The law won, of course, as it almost always does.

On a family email list, an email thread about this column - or more specifically, online reactions to this column - came up. Family members were offended at the insults online commenters were slinging at my relative who wrote those words. Some family members did, yes, express disagreement with the column's sentiments. But no one said anything remotely to the effect of, "hey, that's pretty... racist?"

Another passage in the infamous column was this:

Second, and this speaks to the ubiquitous allegation that cops are treated “differently” than ordinary citizens in deadly-force cases: Indeed they are — and it is the law itself that confers the privilege. 

The law gives cops the benefit of every reasonable doubt in the good-faith performance of their duties — and who would really have it any other way?

I'd say that the overall sentiments in this column are pretty racist, and it would require a pretty narrow definition of what qualifies as "racism" to deny that - but this is something of a semantics issue. It's literally impossible to have lived in society and not have racial biases that affect our thinking, because we're constantly bombarded with messages that implant these biases in our brains. Whether these biases rise to the level of being "racist"? Does it matter that much?

Whether or not it's "racist," that statement - the law itself... confers the privilege... The law gives cops the benefit of every reasonable doubt... and who would really have it any other way? - in light of the things that keep happening to Black people at the hands of law enforcement - over, and over, and over - is probably one of the most blatant examples of being blinded by one's one privilege that I've ever seen. Like, maybe you can't imagine why anyone would really have it any other way... but maybe the people who have to constantly live in fear of what cops might do to them or to their loved ones, maybe they would have it another way?

(Because people's feelings get hurt so much by any hint that they're guilty of racism, other terms have been invented to try to illustrate the same concepts in different ways. Such as "white privilege." "White privilege" is basically just another way of saying that society is racist against non-White people. And it doesn't mean that White people's lives are easy, just that when White people's lives aren't easy, the color of their skin isn't one of the reasons for that. But again, as with "racism," people get their feelings hurt by the term "white privilege." Stop being such fragile snowflakes.)

Although this newspaper column is nearly six years old now, it came up not too long ago on the same family email list, in an unrelated topic, but before all the current craziness (that is, COVID and mass protests) in this country started. And in that recent thread, family members from different parts of the political spectrum all seemed to scoff at the idea that the relative who wrote that column was racist or was even "racially biased."

Because of course. Racists are bad people. My relative, a person I care about, is not a bad person. Ergo, my relative is not racist.

It doesn't really work that way.

I reiterate, it is impossible to live in society and not be racially biased. It is a question of whether we actively work to recognize and confront those biases.

Not unrelated to this line of discussion, the relative in question, in other emails, has also favorably cited the writings of Charles Murray, author of noted work of pseudo-scientific racism The Bell Curve. Specifically, an article was shared that in essence claimed that if different racial groups had equal opportunities in society, that wouldn't necessarily result in the different racial groups having the same outcomes - "the same mean income, the same mean educational attainment, the same proportions who become janitors and who become CEOs."

This is pretty much by definition a racist claim by Murray.

Think about how many times in the average Black person's life they must encounter an Amy Cooper (the Central Park dog leash lady) or a Derek Chauvin (the Minneapolis cop who murdered George Floyd), and that Amy Cooper or that Derek Chauvin has some ability to influence the course of events in that Black person's life - grades they get, job hirings, promotions, criminal charges, etc.

In the real world we inhabit, it is impossible to test Murray's hypothesis that, given equal opportunities, different races would not attain equivalent outcomes, because we are so incredibly far away from equal opportunities.

This all happened a long time ago. But for whatever reason, these incidents just have a way of sticking in my mind forever. Incidents where someone put forth racist ideas and no one in the family stood up and called it what it was. I myself would sometimes try to push back, but I wouldn't go so far as to say, "hey, that's racist."

And perhaps that wouldn't have accomplished anything anyway, because, again, of the whole White people being fragile snowflakes about accusations of racism thing.

But how often do conversations like this happen in White families all over the country, and no one tries to advance the anti-racist narrative, and impressionable people - impressionable children, especially - are watching and listening and having their world views shaped by such statements going unchallenged?

So one not easy thing we have to do is, when someone we know says something racially problematic, we have to be able to point that out, ideally in a way that will encourage others to listen and not just shut down (that part of it is even less easy). Another not easy thing we have to do is, when someone does point out that we have done or said something racially problematic or that we bear some responsibility for the racism that permeates society, we have to get over our hurt feelings and make a good faith effort to listen and learn. White people's feelings are not the important thing right now.

Let me be very clear, this is not just a problem among conservative White people. This is a problem among numerous liberal White people as well. For another example from the dreaded family email list, a fairly liberal family member shared a statement by a fringe group of conservative African-American pastors decrying the Supreme Court's 2013 decision that the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional. The statement was, "We are devastated that the Supreme Court succumbed to political pressure by voting to weaken the sacred institution. They neglected our most precious children who need a mother and a father united in marriage for healthy development."

This liberal family member strongly disagreed with the Black pastors and expressed that they did not even know how to respond without being labeled racist. Basically, they felt that it was hypocritical for a Black person to say this because of the high rate of Black children being raised by single parents.

Obviously I do not agree with the Black pastors' stance on gay marriage. But saying that they're hypocrites because they're Black? Yes, yes that would, in fact, be racist.

And again no one else in the family seemed to have a problem with this.

Again, a long time ago. Again, something that stuck in my mind. That's just the way my brain works.

The point is not to demonize specific people in my extended family, it's to illustrate how pervasive these attitudes are, and how casually accepted they are, even among people who harbor no conscious animosity toward other races and who would absolutely never think of themselves as racist.

I don't want to just call out other people here. I'm not going to pretend I'm immune to this stuff.

Bubbles

I grew up in a total white privilege bubble. In school I learned about the Civil Rights movement and the message that came across was that, although there might still be racist individuals out there, and those individuals were bad for being racist, racism as a structural, societal issue had largely been solved in the 1960s.

I was in such a bubble that I actually believed this to be true until at least several years into my adult life.

(The most ironic part was probably learning about school integration in a classroom that was at least 95% White and no one ever pointing out that disconnect.)

I remember when I was in college, thinking that if affirmative action was used for school admissions, it should be focused only on economic status, not on race, because I thought disadvantages Black students faced in modern society were due to Blacks tending to be poorer as a result of racism in the past, but not because of racism that still existed in the present. And that low income White students were just as disadvantaged as low income Black students.

This seems completely crazy to me now. But when I was in college, I actually believed this.

(And just in case it's not clear - I am not saying that low income Whites face no disadvantages. Just that Blacks, of any income level, face many other obstacles that Whites don't face.)

I also remember making enormous use of "ironic racism" for the purpose of Internet humor when I was in my mid 20s. I thought I was just being absurd because I thought that people generally didn't believe those things anymore, for real, in modern society.

Talk about being in a bubble!

Truth is, I can only think of two Black people who I knew in person over the entire first eighteen years of my life. Both were people I went to school with and got along with but neither was a close friend. I had literally not the slightest comprehension of what it was like to be a Black person in America, because no one ever tried to tell me.

This is a map showing the block-by-block racial demographics of where I lived when I was growing up (from justicemap.org which uses Census data):

Purple indicates Whites are the most common race. The darkest shade of purple indicates greater than 90% White. I lived in one of the purplest of purple regions on this map.

Where I live now looks very different.

On this map, purple again indicates Whites are most common, red indicates Blacks are most common, and the deeper purple or red indicates a larger percentage of that particular race. I live right at a transition point between plurality White and plurality Black. I didn't choose where I live based on the racial demographics, I just happened to find a place I liked in this location.

So here's the thing. When I was younger, if I had been passing through this neighborhood and seen the people who lived here, there would have been a little voice in my head saying, in essence, "A lot of Black people live here so it's probably not a very good neighborhood."

No one in my life ever tried to instill racist values in me. Not remotely. But when you grow up around all White people, and don't really know any Black people, and most of the Black people you see in the media are either pro athletes (who are obviously very rare to encounter in everyday life) or people accused of crimes, that's just what happens to your brain.

(It's also worth pointing out the inherent privilege in these "good neighborhood" assessments. Most White people would see a neighborhood like the one in which Ahmaud Arbery was murdered for jogging while Black as a good neighborhood.)

So as I said before, it's not a question of whether or not someone is racially biased, because it's impossible to live in society and not be racially biased. It's a question of whether you recognize that those biases exist in your brain and then make an effort to actively confront those biases.

I'm not looking for a pat on the back, like "oh what a great guy you are for overcoming your biases." I mean honestly the biases are still there and it's a constant process of confronting them, and it's not easy to do, but it's also not nearly as hard as it must be to be a person who is constantly on the receiving end of those biases. So I think the least I can do as a decent human being is try to recognize and confront those biases and I hope other people can do the same.

School integration (or lack thereof)

If we zoom out from those maps I showed to the metro area level, we see two areas that are both quite segregated, Cleveland (second map below) even more than Columbus.

This is pretty typical of American cities. Why? There's a long, racist, history there that I won't get into (but look into redlining if you aren't familiar with the term).

Oh, one of the upshots of this clustering of Black Americans into inner city areas is that they are exposed to higher levels of pollution (thanks, urban freeways!), which has all sorts of negative health effects on both the brain and body. One of these is higher rates of asthma. Eric Garner's daughter Erica, who became an outspoken activist after her father was killed by the NYPD, tragically died at the age of 27 after an asthma-induced heart attack. Erica Garner was a victim of our racist society just as much as her father. It's also very likely the case that her health conditions were exacerbated by the stress of living in a world full of people making derogatory and deliberately inflammatory statements about her and her deceased father.

That said, I mainly bring up this segregation because it goes to one of the other important but not easy things that my life experiences have convinced me White people need to do.

Everyone wants what's best for their children. A big part of that, society tells all of us, is making sure our children go to a really good school. I have no doubt that most people, when thinking about where they are going to raise their children (a very big decision, to be sure), look up the ratings of the schools that their children would potentially attend.

Ohio school district report cards show that the Grandview Heights school district, where I grew up, gets an A grade. The Cleveland Heights-University Heights school district, where I currently live, gets a D grade.

"I would be a bad parent if I sent my kids to a D-rated school!" a lot of people undoubtedly think.

What those people may or may not know is that these school ratings are largely proxies for the socioeconomic statuses of the students who attend the schools, and do not really tell us anything independent of that about the quality of the schools.

The school funding system in the state of Ohio, where school districts are funded by local property taxes so that wealthier districts have better funded schools, has been declared unconstitutional multiple times going back to 1997, and yet still nothing has been done to fix this problem.

Furthermore, because Black people face numerous structural obstacles at every step of life as a result of living in a deeply racist society, Black students, on average, are more likely to struggle in school. Therefore a majority Black district will tend to get lower ratings regardless of how good the teachers in those schools are.

At Grandview Heights High School, by the most recent report, the student population is 91% White (non-Hispanic). At Cleveland Heights High School, it's 76% Black, 15% White.

This is interesting when compared to the overall demographics of the cities. Grandview Heights is 93% non-Hispanic White. Cleveland Heights is 46% White, 42% Black. The former's school demographics match the city demographics. The latter's are drastically different.

This is because in Cleveland Heights a much larger percentage of students, especially White students, attend private schools.

So the pattern is: White parents who live in a racially diverse area tend to either (a) move to a not diverse suburb (like the one where I grew up) or (b) send their kids to private school (like the schools a lot of White kids in my current city of residence attend), either way so they can ensure their kids go to a high-rated school.

(Cleveland Heights, by the way, is one of the most liberal cities in the entire country. Out-and-out, virulent racists are extremely rare here. So this is definitely an example of what I mean when I say these problems that contribute to a structurally racist society are present among White people of all political stripes.)

"Separate but equal" was ruled unconstitutional in 1954. The Supreme Court correctly ruled that there could not be equality under segregation. Yet today, school segregation in much of this country is almost as bad as ever.

This is definitely one of those things that's not easy, because society bombards parents with messages that they have to make sure their kids have the best possible path to success and they have to make sure their kids go to the best schools and they would be irresponsible parents if they didn't. And one part of solving this is that we have to demand equitable school funding. But I also contend that any time a well-to-do White family living in a racially diverse metropolitan area makes a decision to send their children to largely segregated schools - public or private - that decision contributes, in its own tiny way, to the vast racial divide that is tearing our country apart.

Now this does not mean that White parents who make these decisions are racists or bad people. Okay, some are, but most aren't. They're just doing what society tells them they have to do to be good parents. But as this ongoing pandemic is also illustrating, we have to think beyond our own selfish interests and think more about society at large. Everyone doing what they think is in their own best interests creates a disaster for society.

I expect this is uncomfortable for some people to think about because I know that lots and lots of the people I know come from families who made the decision, or are people who made the decision themselves, to enroll children in largely segregated schools because that's what society told them was what they had to do for their children. But we have to confront this issue. This is part of what I mean by doing things that aren't easy.

And I don't mean that all well-to-do White parents have an absolute moral obligation to send their kids somewhere like Cleveland Heights for school. There are a lot of factors that go into a decision like that. I'm just saying promoting diversity and equity in society should be one of those factors. I'm saying that what we do have an obligation to do, at the very least, is to reject the notion that being a good parent means making sure your kid goes to a "highly rated" school, when we know that those school ratings reflect the socioeconomic statuses of the student bodies and little else.

If I had gone to a school like Cleveland Heights instead of Grandview Heights, would I have any less success in life? I really doubt it. I think my ability to be successful comes a lot more from the resources and nourishing home environment my parents provided me than it comes from what school I attended. (Underprivileged children, of any racial background, would undoubtedly have much more to gain from attending exceptionally well funded schools that someone like me.) I also know that friends of mine who attended Cleveland Heights, both White and Black, seem to have gotten good educations and turned out just fine.

And if I had attended such a school, it would have helped me to not be in such a ridiculous white privilege bubble for the first two-plus decades of my life.

I think everyone benefits from getting to know people from diverse backgrounds, as well as from having adequately funded schools. Right now, poor kids who would have the most to gain from really well funded schools are mostly trapped in underfunded schools with other poor kids, and therefore have neither adequate school funding nor diversity. Rich kids who have far more resources at home and could get by more easily with slightly less well funded schools but would really benefit from more exposure to diversity are often in really well funded but also not diverse schools. Some places like Cleveland Heights do genuinely have a lot of socioeconomic diversity, but I suspect the increasing reliance on school ratings by parents who have the most ability to choose where to send their kids to school is making it harder to maintain that socioeconomic diversity in their student bodies.

I want to again emphasize the point that it's not enough, it's never enough, to be not racist, we have to be anti-racist. Let's imagine that, somehow, tomorrow, suddenly everyone in the whole world stopped having any racist motivations whatsoever, but everything else was the same. Black students would still tend to be in less well funded schools, as a result of our country's racist past. Financially comfortable White parents, taking a totally "race neutral" approach but still following the paradigm that they have to send their kids to the top rated schools, would continue to move to mostly White suburbs and/or send their children to private schools. Black parents, having on average less financial resources because, again, of the effects of past racism, would generally find it much harder to make those same decisions about where to enroll their own children. Despite no one being racist anymore, racial segregation and inequity would continue for generations if not into perpetuity!

That's one of the reasons why we can't, can't ever, settle for just being not racist. We have to do more.

Going forward

With the chaos engulfing our country now as cops nationwide choose to violently crack down on protesters rather than accept the possibility of being held accountable for their actions, and the president encourages that police violence, and an increasingly authoritarian and white nationalist Republican Party seems hellbent on dismantling our democracy, I fear everything I discuss in this post is insignificant next to the urgency of this moment. Things seem to have gotten so much worse even in the time since I began composing these words.

The most important thing for the remainder of this year is ensuring Trump and the complicit Republicans in Congress are removed from power. If that doesn't happen, there's a very real possibility all will be lost.

After that, I hope and pray we will all have the opportunity to come together and rebuild our country into a truly more perfect union. The suggestions I'm making are not quick fixes for anything. They're things we'll have to make a consistent effort on for probably the rest of our lives.

I'm not an expert on these issues. I'm just someone who has thought about them a lot and who is hopefully less naive than he was as a young man who had lived his whole life in a bubble, and who likes sharing his thoughts with the world. I've only touched on aspects of the race issue that I can directly relate to my own life experiences. There are other, exceedingly important, elements, that I haven't explored. Police reform seems like the most pressing issue at this moment and I haven't really touched on it, but this is already a long post. And although the problems with police forces are the most blatant right now, if we want lasting change we need to address so much more than that.

The message that I want all White people to hear and process is this - "racism," "racial bias," call it whatever you want, but it's something we all have in our brains, something that affects how we all view the world, whether or not we want to admit it. We've all been told that racism is bad, so it can be uncomfortable to admit these things about ourselves. But we can't prioritize our own comfort over other people's lives. We have to directly confront these biases both in ourselves and in the people around us.

When someone we consider a friend or loved one says something that illustrates racial bias, we can't just let it slide for the sake of avoiding conflict. I get it. I'm generally a conflict-averse person. One thing I've had to work on in therapy is recognizing that avoiding talking about uncomfortable issues to avoid conflict tends to lead to bigger problems in the long run. This is true for societal issues just as much as for personal issues. Maybe the Trumpists' ongoing looting of our country and everything we took for granted is the price we White people are paying for our failure to directly address these issues for so long.

Of course, vulnerable communities and people of color are paying much worse prices for our failures.

When I was a kid, not only did I not really know any Black people, but the people around me didn't really talk about race in any meaningful sense. It seems like people thought, "Well, MLK said we shouldn't judge people by the color of their skin, so if we just tell everyone to not judge people by the color of their skin, it will all work out. No need for any more in depth or uncomfortable conversations about the many ways MLK's dream isn't being realized in society."

It's obvious now that approach didn't work.

I will strongly credit my parents for raising me with good values, even if those values weren't race-conscious. I learned to recognize the fact that my family was very fortunate, that there were a lot of people in the world who didn't have nearly the same good fortune, and that people who are very fortunate have a responsibility to help people who are less fortunate. I didn't learn that rampant racism in society is one of the reasons some people are much less fortunate, but once I became educated as an adult on these issues, my passion about them naturally grew from the values I'd been instilled with as a child.

We have to recognize now that part of instilling our children with a complete set of good values is teaching them about racial justice. And how to be anti-racist instead of just not racist.

We have to reject widely held beliefs that help perpetuate structural racism even in the absence of active racist intent, such as the commonly held beliefs about schooling that have resulted in segregation getting worse, not better, in certain parts of this country over the last few decades.

And we have to do so many other things. This is nowhere close to being a comprehensive list. My heart hurts at what is happening in this country. Writing this is my little attempt at making a difference. I hope it can make a small difference. I vow to do more in the months and years ahead to try to continue to make those small differences. If we all do something every day to make just a little tiny difference, that can add up to enormous change.

But only if we don't settle for doing the easy things.

Any of us who has been settling for doing just the easy things, we have to recognize that time is over.

We have to do the hard things too if we're going to save our country.

Fair and balanced?

I returned home yesterday from a wonderful week of vacation, but while I was away I could not help but to feel more and more troubled by events unfolding in our country. Most shocking was Donald Trump essentially taking a "both sides are to blame" stance after violence broke out at a white supremacist rally and a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, murdering a young woman.

That Donald Trump is a racist is a well-established fact (even Paul Ryan had to admit Trump had made the "textbook example of a racist comment" when Trump, last year, said that a judge's Mexican heritage made him unqualified to hear a case involving fraud at Trump University), but this was a new low. One would think that even if someone who sympathized with white supremacists managed to become president, they would keep those sympathies quiet. Trump is so far outside the bounds of normal that perhaps nothing should be considered shocking. Trump's attempt to blame both sides for the violence, though, highlights a problem plaguing modern political discourse. I'd describe it as the problem of false equivalency, or "both-sides-ism."

When there are two sides in a debate, it's easy to assume that the truth must be somewhere in the middle. Easy, and also intellectually lazy. Often the truth is nowhere near the middle. When you have a group of people marching in favor of white supremacy, and another group of people opposing them, there can never be a moral equivalency between those two groups, regardless of the exact details of how physical violence broke out. By waving Confederate and Nazi flags, white supremacists are implicitly calling for the violent subjugation of African-Americans and Jews. There is no such thing as a "peaceful" white supremacist demonstration.

The truth is not in the middle.

That's something that most people can see in this situation, but there are many other situations where the same principle applies. I've fallen into the both-sides-ism trap before. I remember in 2003 when massive protests occurred against the Bush administration's disastrous and immoral invasion of Iraq. One day, protesters blocked traffic at my school. I don't know for sure whether the war is justified, but on the other hand the protesters are kind of annoying, I thought. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. I cringe looking back on it, at what a naive idiot I was.

The both-sides-ism phenomenon is exemplified by the pervasive influence of the Fox News channel and its long-time "fair and balanced" slogan on our society.

It used to be that most Americans got their TV news from either NBC, CBS, or ABC, and everyone who consumed TV news was getting the same general information. There were large differences in political opinions, but most people mostly agreed on the basic facts of what was going on in the news. In the 1990s, media options began to diversify. Prominent right-wing media figures realized it would be greatly profitable if they could convince their consumers that all other media outlets were the "liberal media" and could not be trusted. And eventually we reached the point we're at today.

It's probably a safe assumption that very few if any readers of this blog entry are big Donald Trump fans. Thinking that Trump is a bad president, I'd contend, is something that does not require one to hold any particular set of political beliefs. Conservatives should abhor Trump just as much as liberals do. The man is utterly self-serving and incompetent at executing the duties of the presidency; even if you're a party-line Republican voter it shouldn't be hard to see that.

A national poll released by Suffolk University at the end of June revealed an incredibly striking phenomenon if one dug into the crosstabs: one of the questions asked was what source of TV news respondents considered most trustworthy. Of respondents who answered Fox News, Trump had an 89% approval rating. Of respondents who answered any other TV station, Trump had an 18% approval rating.

Saying that Donald Trump is doing a good job as president is a claim I'd consider to be on a similar level as saying that the sun revolves around the Earth. It's just not supportable. For a long time, many people have contended that Fox News is a dedicated propaganda outlet that convinces its viewers to believe falsehoods. The results of this survey are the best evidence I've seen to support this notion.  There truly are two Americas. There's the America of Fox News viewers, and there's the America of everyone else. Only one of those two groups of people is inhabiting something that resembles reality.

And yet, even if political moderates (who largely disapprove of Trump) recognize that Fox News has a heavy right-wing bias, Fox News has still succeeded in poisoning the well when it comes to how those moderates view the political debate. Because people tend to think that the truth is in the middle. So they think there's the Fox News side, and there's the "liberal media" side, and the truth is in the middle.

The truth doesn't have to be in the middle. Whatever the biases of other mainstream media sources (biases, I might add, that can go in many directions), they aren't dedicated propaganda outlets. Fox News is.

Let me remind you again that 89% of Fox News viewers approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as president. It's hard to fathom of what sort of garbage would have to go into someone's mind for "Donald Trump = good president" to come out.

Furthermore, both-sides-ism has come to plague the non-Fox media - Trump was the most unqualified and scandal-ridden candidate in history, so mainstream media sources, not wanting to appear "biased," made Hillary Clinton's single (and utterly benign in comparison) scandal over her email servers the most covered story of the campaign, and thus helped Trump win.

If there are two sides to a debate, and one side is the Fox News side, you're more likely to arrive at the correct outcome if you disregard the Fox News side than if you assume the truth is in the middle. This applies to almost every issue, not just the question of whether Donald Trump is doing a good job. (Is Black Lives Matter a "hate group"? No, it's not. Is human-caused climate change a problem? Yes, it is. Are tax cuts for the wealthy good economic stimulus? No, they aren't. These are all questions that have correct answers. The truth is not in the middle.)

This media polarization is going to continue to be a big problem going forward. Solving the problem is much trickier than identifying the problem. Hopefully having to suffer through the shame of having an unabashed racist in the Oval Office will at least help more people wake up to the problem. In the short term, to mitigate the damage we're going to have to keep pressure up on our other elected officials and we're going to have to turn out in massive numbers in the 2018 election.

Recognize the both-sides-ism trap when you or others may be falling into it. And don't stay silent in the face of hatred. None of us can afford that now.

A plea to all Republicans and independents

Donald Trump has chosen a white supremacist to be his chief policy advisor.

In case that didn't really sink in the first time, let me repeat it: Donald Trump has chosen a white supremacist to be his chief policy advisor.

Under Steve Bannon's leadership, the conservative news website Breitbart took an extremist turn and became an online haven for the "alt-right," basically a conglomeration of a new generation of white supremacists, misogynists, and online trolls. Here are a few examples of headlines from articles Breitbart ran under Bannon:

Hoist it high and proud: the Confederate flag proclaims a glorious heritage

Bill Kristol: Republican spoiler, renegade Jew

The solution to online 'harassment' is simple: Women should log off

Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy

No doubt there are plenty of people putting forth the idea that Bannon is really an okay guy and of course he's not a white supremacist, that's just crazy talk! So let's see what some notable white supremacists think of the hire.

Former KKK leader David Duke?

"I think that's excellent," former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke told CNN's KFile. "I think that anyone that helps complete the program and the policies that President-elect Trump has developed during the campaign is a very good thing, obviously. So it's good to see that he's sticking to the issues and the ideas that he proposed as a candidate. Now he's president-elect and he's sticking to it and he's reaffirming those issues." 

Duke . . . argued Bannon's position was among the most important in the White House. 

"You have an individual, Mr. Bannon, who's basically creating the ideological aspects of where we're going," added Duke. "And ideology ultimately is the most important aspect of any government."

The American Nazi Party?

Chairman of the American Nazi Party, Rocky J. Suhayda, who wrote a post after Trump's election night victory celebrating it as a call to action, said he was surprised at the pick of Bannon, but said it showed him Trump could follow through on his campaign promises. 

"I must admit that I was a wee bit surprised that Mr. Trump finally chose Mr. Bannon, I thought that his stable of Washington insiders would have objected too vociferously," Suhayda wrote in an email. "Perhaps The Donald IS for 'REAL' and is not going to be another controlled puppet directed by the usual 'Wire Pullers,' and does indeed intend to ROCK the BOAT? Time will tell."

Need I go on?

Bannon isn't alone. Another key member of Trump's transition team, who has even been rumored as an Attorney General pick, is Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. In Arizona, Kobach was the architect of what has been called the most racist law in the country, the "papers, please" law that let police officers stop anyone they suspected (read: Hispanic people) and demand proof of citizenship. Kobach was recently a featured speaker at a white nationalist conference.

Obviously, progressives like me are up in arms about these stories. Many Democratic politicians have strongly condemned the Bannon hire. Prominent Republicans such as Paul Ryan don't seem to be so concerned.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) defended Steve Bannon as a top advisor in Donald Trump's White House, praising the political strategist despite critics who note he has provided a platform for white nationalism. 

Ryan, who said he talks to Trump every day now, dismissed the furor over Bannon, saying the former editor of Breitbart News was crucial to the Republican president-elect's success. 

"This is a person who helped him win an incredible victory," Ryan said Tuesday. "We’re confident about moving forward. We’re confident about the transition."

There have been some Republican voices speaking up against the presence of white nationalism in the White House. John Weaver, strategist for Ohio's Governor John Kasich, tweeted this:

Sadly, such voices seem few and far between.

We can be sure that Democrats and liberals will speak up against Bannon and other white supremacist intrusions into Donald Trump's administration. But that's not enough.

Think about what it would say for our country if "Should white supremacists have positions of high power and influence in the presidential administration?" became just another left-vs.-right partisan argument, rather than the white supremacists vs. literally everyone else argument that it should be. We would be headed down a very dark path.

Many of you may have voted for Republicans in the past, in some cases on a regular basis, but did not vote for Trump. To you, I say thank you for recognizing how uniquely unqualified for the presidency Trump is compared to past candidates of both parties. But now that he has been elected, simply not having voted for the man is not enough. Some of you have thought or said, "We need to give Trump a chance now that he's been elected." I would not agree with that, because the way Trump ran his campaign was a clear indication of what sort of president he'd be. But I can understand why people would think that way. To those people I'd say, Trump has now had his chance, and hiring a white supremacist shows that he's failed. We all need to speak up against this. Call your representatives in Congress. Engage people you know. Write letters. Maybe even come out to a protest! The idea that Trump would be checked by more reasonable Republicans in Congress is looking more and more like a pipe dream, as evidenced by Speaker Ryan rolling over to men like Trump and Bannon who trashed him throughout the campaign. The only way that elected Republican officials will stand up to extremism in the Trump administration is if the constituents of those officials, including people who have supported them in the past, make it loud and clear that that support will not continue unless those officials stand up and take action.

There are also those of you who did vote for Trump. And a lot of you are probably resenting how Trump voters are being labeled as sexists and racists. I understand that being labeled as a sexist or racist can be very hurtful. But here's the thing. Your right to not have your feelings hurt does not outweigh the rights of people who will have their lives and well-beings damaged in very concrete ways by sexist and racist policies, like those that Steve Bannon will promote. If you don't want people to think you're a sexist or racist, if you truly believe that Donald Trump can be a president for all Americans, stand up and speak out against this.

(If the majority of Trump voters actually don't have a problem with the president-elect hiring someone endorsed by Nazis and the KKK, I'm not sure what to say other than that I weep for this country and its people.)

And to all of my liberal friends who are already outraged, don't let that outrage stay within your liberal bubble. Engage people who don't share your political views, who might be on the fence about these issues. If the next presidential administration has its policy decisions dictated by white supremacists, the damage done could be so enormous that our country might never recover. Don't think "it can't happen here," because anytime that "it" has happened, "it" started with people thinking "it can't happen here." Anyone who loves the United States of America and who loves the people of this great nation must take action to make sure that it does not happen.

Dear white people

Some of the thoughts in this post have been bouncing around inside my head for much of this year. Events have transpired that make it impossible to keep them inside any longer.

The United States of America just elected to the presidency the most dangerous and least qualified candidate ever - a narcissistic bully with the temperament of a toddler, with no apparent grasp of any important policy issues, and with a long history of denigrating women and members of various minority groups, and probably of sexually assaulting women as well. Said bully received the majority of the vote share from both sexes and all age ranges of whites, and was roundly rejected by all other voters.

There is something deeply wrong with White America.

Donald Trump's campaign was largely based on demonizing groups like immigrants, Hispanics, African-Americans, and Muslims. He actively courted the support of white supremacists, often retweeting them, and was endorsed by the KKK. The sad reality is that anyone who would support the man who ran such a campaign is at worst an active supporter of, and at best fairly indifferent toward, white nationalism. And therefore the majority of white people in this country are at worst active supporters of, and at best fairly indifferent toward, white nationalism. I do believe, and hopefully it's not just me trying to be charitable, that for most it is indifference, not active support, and that this indifference comes out of ignorance, not actual malice. Nonetheless, it is all extremely troubling. I weep for all the people out there, especially the children, who are members of these already marginalized communities. The message this country has just sent to them is appalling.

I know that most of the people reading this will not have been Trump supporters. But that doesn't mean we shoulder no responsibility for the situation in which we find ourselves. Figuring out how this happened and how to find our way out requires confronting some uncomfortable topics.

I remember when I was growing up, and the civil rights movement was covered in school. We learned about how black people used to be held as slaves. Then the Civil War happened and slavery ended, but they were still discriminated against in many ways. But then, in the middle of what's now the last century, we had the civil rights movement. Discrimination was outlawed! Schools were desegregated! Racism (at a societal level, even if some individual folks continued to hold racist beliefs) became largely a thing of the past! Or so it seemed, based on what we were presented in school.

No one ever brought up the curious fact, when we learned about desegregation of schools, that we were sitting in a classroom in one of Ohio's best public school districts and our classmates were almost 99% white. And just miles away was a much larger district with failing schools, in which most of the students were black.

This isn't something that happened by accident. And it certainly isn't the fault of those black students or their families. It's the result of centuries of discrimination at every level of society. Discrimination that may have lessened over time, but did not go away. And even when it lessened, the carryover effects of more overt discrimination in the past are not easily washed out. I'm not going to expound here on all the ways in which this is true. There's a lot of good reading out there if you want to know more about it. One such article is The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

It really astonishes me how I was able to go so long in life being oblivious to all of this. It's only in the last couple of years that I've become fully aware of my past ignorance, thanks in large part to the heightened focus on police killings of unarmed black people, killings that have gone on for ages but have only now received widespread attention thanks to social media and the ubiquity of smartphones with cameras. The Black Lives Matter movement has done a great service in bringing these issues to the forefront of the national consciousness. And the reaction by many to that movement has done so much to illuminate just how big of a problem racism still is.

I really did spend most of my life living in a bubble. I'm fairly certain that in the last year and a half I've had easily more interaction with black people (in contexts other than their being employees of businesses I was patronizing) than I had in the entire rest of my life combined, which is due mainly to three events: I became very close friends with a black woman who was one of Cara's best friends, another black woman joined the research lab in which I work, and I started participating in pickup basketball games at the fitness center at work. And looking back now over the course of my life, it just stuns me how easy it is for a white person to go through life like that in a country that supposedly prides itself on being a diverse place in which people of all backgrounds can chase that American Dream.

In the online game Psychobabble where Cara and I met, our group of players often enjoyed trying to make very offensive sentences - we found it hilarious to take a set of innocuous words and come up with something shocking. Some of the offensive sentences were racist in nature. I totally did not believe any of those racist statements were true. To me, it was all absurdist shock value humor. Looking back on all my old screenshots today, I still find a lot of the other offensive sentences funny, but the racist ones now disgust and embarrass me. Because there are so many people who still genuinely hold such beliefs, and the effects of such beliefs continue to be so embedded in the power structures of our country, I no longer find it at all funny to make "ironically racist" statements as jokes. Yet somehow, ten years ago I was apparently under the impression that racism was no longer a major problem in our society!

Fortunately I had a good upbringing and was raised to respect all people, and I never held any overtly racist beliefs, but I still picked up prejudices that I've had to try to shake (as all people inevitably do in a society that bombards them with subtle and not-so-subtle racist messages). The reality is, though, that if you go through life not knowing any people from a certain group, it is much easier for demagogues to instill in you a fear of that group. And so we see that the places with overwhelming Trump support tend to be the places in which white people can go through their daily lives without interacting on a personal level with any minorities. Trump played to the fears that have been stoked by the right-wing media for decades and told those people that he would "make America great again." Which means what, exactly? When in the past was America more great than it has been in the Obama years? Was it when Jim Crow was legal? Really, "make America great again" means make America a safe space (yes, that concept so derided by conservatives) for white people who are afraid their privileged position in society will disappear.

What is there to do about all this?

That's a very difficult question to answer.

But one thing that has become clear to me is that we as white people have the privilege of basically ignoring racism because talking about it is too difficult, and it doesn't have a direct effect on our lives. Whereas minorities don't have that privilege. So when I see or hear someone express a prejudiced opinion, I can just shrug it off and not challenge them because I don't want that conflict. I'm sure a lot of us have had that experience. Today it seems like a lot of white Americans find calling someone racist for their expression of racist sentiments to be a greater offense than the expression of those racist sentiments. That is really not right and it has to change. We have to be willing to challenge prejudice where and when we see it.

It's a conundrum, of course, because if someone says something racist and you call them out on it, it's not likely their mind will be changed. They will probably take being called out as a personal insult, and might even cling more tightly to the racist belief. But there are other people watching and listening. People whose beliefs aren't so set in stone. Especially children. And it is the battle for the hearts and minds of those people that we have to fight.

I have a lot of experience with seeing prejudiced comments from people I know and just letting them slide because I wanted to be polite and didn't want to cause conflict. This is primarily with certain relatives. Let me be very clear that there are no purely good or purely bad people. These relatives of mine have many good qualities and in most ways are decent people. I don't think of them as "deplorable" people. But at the same time, they do hold some deplorable beliefs.

Furthermore, I think one of the problems with the discourse on race is that most people associate racism with extremists like the KKK, and when someone says "that's racist" to a prejudiced statement they make, what they hear is "you are racist, and therefore a bad person." When in reality it wouldn't really be inaccurate to say that everyone is racist, in the sense of harboring (often subconscious) racial biases that affect one's worldview, because it's impossible to avoid picking up such biases when you live your whole life in a world full of them. The important thing is how you respond to them - do you actively work to suppress them, or do you let them control you?

The point I'm trying to make is that when I talk about these examples of racism by people I know, I'm not saying that they are terrible people, or that I don't care about them. But I also can't continue to just let such troubling and destructive views go unchallenged.

I have an uncle who has made racist statements on a number of occasions over the years, in a family email list. Not KKK-level racism, not even close, but still things that are undeniably racist. Such as saying that the generally worse outcomes for members of the African-American community must be the fault of African-Americans, because other minority groups (such as Asian immigrants) tend to be more successful. Which ignores the whole history of anti-black racism in this country, from slavery through Jim Crow through all sorts of things that still persist to this day. Years ago there were a few times when I would, often snarkily, challenge something he said (usually not even a directly race-related issue but something else political), and there would be a little spat on the family email list. And then I learned to be more polite, but I also learned to most of the time just ignore such troublingly prejudiced claims. And I've watched in dismay over the last eight years as some of his siblings seem to have become more influenced by that sort of worldview.

Here's the thing: none of them supported Trump. They all despise Trump. My uncle is appalled by Trump. But my uncle also spent years as an editorial columnist in which a number of his columns, without using explicitly racist language, nonetheless helped to promote fears of blacks and of Muslims in his readers. And it seemed like most of the time no one in the family would challenge this. So I mostly gave up trying to do so. Because I was tired of the conflict and tired of being alone in putting up an opposing voice. Obviously, my trying to be a more active anti-racist voice would not by itself have prevented Trump from being elected. But if all of us who care about such things and have been silent because we cared more about politeness and avoiding conflict had instead repeatedly spoken up over the years? Who knows?

On the other side of the family, I have an aunt who is a Trump supporter. When I posted something on Facebook about the plagiarism in Melania Trump's convention speech, my aunt replied with something about how Melania had still done a better job than "Aunt Esther." I didn't know what this meant so I looked it up and learned that Aunt Esther was a character on the TV show Sanford and Son who was basically a stereotypical "angry black woman," and that some right-wingers call Michelle Obama that. So basically, that comment was racist as hell. I just ignored it. I know, speaking up probably wouldn't have changed my aunt's mind about anything. But if all of us together make an effort to consistently speak up on such matters, it can change some minds.

It's a very difficult and delicate situation. It can be tempting to want to just cut Trump supporters out of your life. But doing that will only serve to further radicalize them. Yet constantly just letting their prejudiced statements slide will only help validate those beliefs in their minds. I think we have to try to constantly show people, regardless of their beliefs, that we do care about them as people, but also that we cannot accept their denigration of those who are different.

It would be so easy to just give in to hating Trump supporters the way that the more extreme among that faction seem to hate so many other groups of people. There's a tendency among many to blame "both sides" of an issue. "Trump supporters are prejudiced against Muslims and immigrants, but Hillary supporters are prejudiced against rural white people. They're both just as bad as each other." And there are indeed many liberals who are too dismissive of the concerns of the white working class. The difference for me, and I would hope for most people on the left, is that although I vehemently disagree with Republicans on most issues, I have no desire to take away their citizenship, their health care, their quality of life. I just want to stop them from taking those things away from other people I care about.

I hope that a coherent message is coming through in this rambling post. This whole situation is so very upsetting to me. Even had Hillary won, the fact that someone like Trump came so close to being elected president would have been deeply upsetting for the ugly truths revealed about our society. The fact that he actually won is devastating to me on a level perhaps only exceeded, in my life, by the death of my wife Cara, and has largely shattered my faith in humanity. But, I don't want to give up hope. Because Cara wouldn't.

I should also mention that, although my post is focused on the issue of racism, the issue of sexism is equally important. Rape culture has been a hot topic for the last few years (I urge you to read Jon Krakauer's excellent book Missoula for more on this topic), and Trump, disgustingly, is now clearly the president of rape culture. I've seen some people today bemoan the fact that Hillary was nominated because they feel Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump. I'm skeptical of the notion that the same country that just elected Donald Trump would have elected a Jewish socialist, but I'll acknowledge it is possible that Bernie would have won. If it is true, though, that Bernie would have been more successful than Hillary, I have to say that the main advantage for Bernie over Hillary would have been that this country is really fucking sexist.

Where do we go from here? We have to all vow to be there for each other, and especially for the members of all groups threatened by Trump (which, sadly, includes pretty much anyone who isn't a straight white male), because unlike Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, we can be very confident that Donald Trump will not be there for those people. Speak out against prejudice, racism and sexism. Don't just let it pass because you'd rather be polite. Organize to resist at every step of the way the potentially catastrophic effects of a Trump presidency (the potential repeal of Obamacare and the likely reversal of progress on climate issues alone are utterly terrifying). At the same time, vow to do good for others - even for those who would do harm to you or someone you care about. Because we are all in this together. And we have to show everyone that that is still true.

My first bike race

On the morning of Saturday, May 22, I woke up thinking that on the following morning I would be competing in my first ever cycling race. The event was the first race of the 2010 Colavita Eastern Time Trial Series, a 20 km time trial race. I've been doing running races all my life, and after getting more and more into cycling over the last few years, I wanted to test myself in a different endurance sport. I was really looking forward to seeing how I could do.

As it turned out, on the next morning I awoke after spending my first night in the hospital with a broken hip.

I still have done close to no running since the injury. Racing has always been an important part of my life. I find it tremendously fulfilling to push myself to my physical limits, knowing my achievements are the results of months and years of hard work. In 2009 I competed in 13 running races. This year? Zero. If I end up not doing any running races, it will be the first year since the 1980s in which that is the case.

So, that time trial series? It consisted of five races, one a month from May through September. By September, I had recovered enough that I could ride my bike pretty well again. With one last race in the series, I had an opportunity to get to race, even if not in my most preferred discipline, and I wanted to seize that opportunity.

The race was Sunday, September 19. I watched the forecast all week leading up to it with a sense of anxiety as the percent chance of rain went up and down. After suffering a broken hip caused by a cycling accident on a slippery road, I did not want to ride in the rain, but I really wanted to ride! The morning of the race Cara and I (for she was also doing her first cycling race) awoke at 5:45 with an hour drive ahead of us. The forecast still showed a chance of showers. We set out in the dark and drove through some rain on our way. I felt a certain uneasiness, no doubt. Thankfully, the weather ended up cooperating beautifully. There was not a drop of rain during the race, the roads had dried, the temperature was about 60, and winds were light. Perfect weather for riding fast.

The time trial was a different sort of event from any running race I've participated in. In a time trial, each rider starts at one minute intervals. Drafting is prohibited; it's a test of individual riding ability. Honestly, I would find a normal cycling road race scary, especially after my fall. Some day, perhaps, but for now I was happy to do a time trial.

For the race in May I had been expecting to go over 23 mph average on the rolling, out-and-back 12.68 (to be precise) mile course. Now my expectations were somewhat more modest, of course. I set out hoping to top 22.

Although the course was not extremely hilly, the turnaround point was about 100 feet higher than the start. After the turnaround, my average speed was 21.5, so I was in good shape. I picked up more speed than I expected in the second half, ending up with a 22.74 average for the race. Quite frankly, I was thrilled with this outcome, considering I was less than four months removed from a broken hip!

At the end of the race, my legs were burning. So was my throat - I really needed a drink, in a way I don't recall being the case after running races. I guess the wind from riding fast might have something to do with this. I coasted into the parking lot, stopped at the car to chug some Gatorade, and then headed back to the finish line to see how Cara did.

She came in, clearly giving it her all with a hard surge to the finish, several minutes sooner than I actually expected. She averaged 18.25 mph. When I think back to where she was when she started riding a few years ago, I have to say she really deserves a huge amount of credit for that accomplishment. She said after the race that she had never exerted herself quite like that before, but really wanted to do another. I realized then that she now understood me better than she had before. It was pretty cool!

I'm sure that next year we will both be back out there, and riding even faster. There's just something about racing that nothing else really compares to. I also highly recommend this time trial series to any northeast Ohio cyclists wanting to test their skills. It was a small event, with about 35 entrants, but it was very well organized, with a good course and friendly people.