On the final evening in advance of the 2017 special election to elect a U.S. senator from the state of Alabama, at a campaign rally for Republican candidate Roy Moore, his wife Kayle, for some undefined reason during her introductory remarks, felt compelled talk about Jews:
Fake news would tell you that we don’t care for Jews. I tell you all this because I’ve seen it all, so I just want to set the record straight while they’re here. [Waves, smiling.] One of our attorneys is a Jew. We have very close friends that are Jewish and rabbis, and we also fellowship with them.
As a member of the House of Representatives’ Oversight Committee, North Carolina Republican Representative, Mark Meadows, attempted to refute former Donald Trump personal attorney, Michael Cohen’s serious allegations that Trump is a “racist.”
During a congressional hearing, Meadows invited Lynne Patton, a black woman, to stand behind him. Patton is a Trump administration appointee in the Department of Housing and Urban Development and a Trump family friend.
Introducing Patton, Meadows stared at Cohen and said:
She says that as a daughter of a man born in Birmingham, Alabama, that there is no way that she would work for an individual who was racist.
Among several audible gasps throughout the room, Michigan Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib responded to Meadows:
Just because someone has a person of color, a black person working for them does not mean they aren’t racist,” Tlaib said. “And it is insensitive that some would even say — the fact that some would actually use a prop, a black woman in this chamber in this committee is alone racist in itself.
At this point, Meadows became visibly shaken and he asked Chairman Elijah Commings to strike Tlaib’s comments from the official minutes. Apparently, Meadows, and also Kayle Moore before him, had no understanding how their words and actions could have been taken as biased.
Meadows displayed, in the terminology of antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo, “white fragility” emphasizing the emotions of defensiveness, anger, fear, and personal attacks, which discourage meaningful dialogues on issues of race and racism and other forms of oppression.
These instances of Moore and Meadows present examples of the so-called “But some of my best friends are…” defense.
Often, to appear “open” and “accepting,” some people resort to the issue of “tokenism.”
After a minoritized individual meets a compulsory requirement by embodying a socially-fabricated “model” representative of their group, sometimes they are rewarded with a certain level of social or workplace advancement and other forms of social recognition resulting from the dominant group attempting to discredit or dispute any claims of and challenges to oppression.
Social activist Suzanne Pharr enumerates “tokenism” as among her list of the elements of oppression:
Tokenism is a form of co-optation. It takes the brightest and best of the most assimilated, rewards them with positions and money (though rarely genuine leadership and power), and then uses them as a model of what is necessary to succeed, even though there are often no more openings for others who may follow their model.
So, were Moore’s words and Meadows’ words and actions in and of themselves “racist” or “antisemitic” (a form of racism) or any other forms of oppressive actions even though that was not their intent?
Here we must separate “intent” from “impact,” for while someone may claim good intentions, the impact of their actions on others may, in fact, be prejudicial, offensive, or oppressive, which the perpetrators must acknowledge and own.
Therefore, for many people listening to Kayle Moore’s words and Mark Meadows’ words and actions, these were offensive at the very least and entered the realm of oppressive (racist and antisemitic).
We must also separate individuals’ words and actions from their internal personal character structures.
While we may label their overt behaviors, there is no way we can understand their true motives and the deep psychological places from where they come. By labeling persons, we imply that their character is fixed and not capable of changing, evolving, learning, or coming to a truer understanding.
I agree with Tlaib’s characterization of Meadows’ actions as racist. I label Moore’s words as antisemitic. But I can go no further by calling them “racists.”
I will leave that to the professionals.
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