Like many of you, I attended this year’s Robert L. Polk Lecture on Race & Social Justice with guest lecturer Dr. Thema Bryant in the Heckman Auditorium. There are not enough kind words I can levy towards Doane for hosting this event.
It’s something that will remain relevant, inspires hope and change and the promise of a better future for all people. But there was something I took away from this lecture that was completely different from the lecture’s stated goal of addressing the scars of racism head-on. It was the concept of tolerance and toxic positivity.
Now, when Bryant spoke of both of these concepts, they were from a psychologist who specializes in therapy and healing of racial trauma; her definition of racial tolerance was that a society chooses to accept racial integration but deep down is still opposed to it, they essentially put their beliefs of superiority on pause until the time is right to enact hierarchy.
Racial toxic positivity was a narrative that white society pushed in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement to dismiss ongoing racial struggles and tension, those in media and politics would say society was in a post-racial society and that any current complaining about racism was needless complaining, rather minorities should be happy and grateful for how systems are today.
Both of these concepts together prevented further conversation about race and effectively silenced groups, as, according to white America, they were ungrateful for their current positions in society and that white people put their racism on hold to allow integration.
It’s worth mentioning that Bryant is a psychologist and to her, she could see these concepts on the individual level and I’m going to make the stretch that these concepts of fake positivity and tolerance extend past not only race, but to a larger class struggle.
American workers have been called lazy by national media at nauseam and are being told that they are mindless, deserving of their poor living conditions and that things like homelessness and poverty are solely on the individual. To those who are working class, they are told, again at nauseam that the economy is at an all-time high and that this is an economy that works for everyone.
The people who pushed back the most against racial integration were rich Southerners who benefited from the economic systems that exploited Black Americans. In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, this demonization of the other extended towards all Americans. Those people with obscene wealth passed down those beliefs of hierarchy and superiority, this time across class lines and not racial lines (though are we ever surprised when the richest Americans are often practitioners of racism).
These billionaires and millionaires in government and media put on a face to tolerate the working class. They will also do everything they can to steer the conversation away from how much wealth they are hoarding at the detriment of society, towards individuals who are struggling. There’s a reason Martin Luther King Jr. turned his attention towards class conflict later in his political activism. He saw that these systems of oppression extend towards all Americans and that a larger, even more unified fight needed to happen.
As with anything you read or hear about oppression and oppressive systems, make sure you take that next step into seeing the larger picture. All oppression and hierarchy systems are linked, whether it’s sexism, racism, the persecution of the LGBTQ or classism.
