More than 20 years ago, MTV's The Real World set out to alter the landscape of American popular culture by finding out"what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real." The Real World hasn't reached any meaningful insights, save for the pliability of young people under the influence of alcohol, but its tagline reminds us that realness lies somewhere beyond politeness.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has similarly argued for the value of blunt truth-telling in a public square dominated by politically correct discourse. Each time he breaks the rules of polite political engagement, elites on both sides are certain his supporters will abandon him. And yet his bluntness has done little harm to his core support. Trump is what happens when candidates stop being polite and start getting real.
The pressing question for America now is not how to throw off the strictures of political correctness for the purposes of self-promotion, but how to supersede superficial politeness in order to create more robust democratic engagement. Naysayers aside, Trump tapped into a legitimate concern many Americans feel about our inability to engage one another in honest, difficult conversations.
And yet, the solution he offered—a kind of radical "honesty" that often relies on falsehoods—understandably left many feeling even more reticent to enter the public sphere. The fault was not Trump's alone. Secretary Clinton's characterization of Trump supporters as belonging in a "basket of deplorables" is a reminder of how readily partisan contests dehumanize. International media has consistently reported on 2016 as among the most ugly and acrimonious in recent history.
With fewer than two weeks until the American people make a final decision in the 2016 election, it is important to remember we are going to have to live with one another after November 8. Whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton wins the presidency may prove less important than what neighbors in Chicago and Charlotte and Colorado do on Wednesday morning. To paraphrase the first lady, when the candidates go low, the people need to go high. Here is the problem: We don't have much practice.
That is why it's worth revisiting a broadcast that aired live on C-SPAN in August. The guest was Heather McGhee, the president of Demos, a progressive public policy organization. The caller was Garry from North Carolina, who introduced himself by saying, "I'm a white male and I am prejudiced." What happened next is a very different example of what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real.
I talked with Heather McGhee about the experience, her ongoing relationship with Garry, and the lessons we can all draw from it.
At what point did you decide how to respond to Garry when he admitted to you that he was racially prejudiced?
Having frank conversations about race with white people has been a part of my work as a movement leader and as the leader of Demos. This is a scenario I've experienced repeatedly during the past decade in my work, though not usually not mediated through television, but often in church basements and VFW halls and union halls. Part of what I do is have conversations about [prejudice] in mixed company.
We live in a time when very few people admit prejudice still exists even when their own words and actions may demonstrate conscious or unconscious bias. This widespread disconnect, when white people won't admit racism still exists even if they have prejudiced beliefs or stereotypes, is part of what fuels the frustration that many African Americans and other people of color feel right now. When Garry simply admitted his prejudice, it was taboo to many. My immediate reaction was, 'Thank God! Now we can have the conversation.'
I felt he was inviting a conversation even as he went on to express some of the dominant negative stereotypes about black men. It was difficult to listen to those views about black men. At the same time, he left an opening by acknowledging those prejudices are limiting him. I felt a sense of responsibility and empathy to meet this man where he was and to take the hand that he had extended toward me.
Can we pause on your choice of the words "responsibility" and "empathy"? As a college professor, I frequently hear students of color balk at the notion of educating white students to be more racially tolerant as being in any way their responsibility. Exhaustion, not empathy, is what they most frequently express. Why did you feel a sense of responsibility for Garry?
I've taken a role in public life to talk about issues of racial inequality. This is the mission of my organization and it's my personal mission—to try to move us to a place where we feel like we are one people, so that we can create structures to create opportunity and voice for all of our people.
We all have a certain shared responsibility for the unfinished business of racial healing in this country. I hope that many other people would feel a sense of responsibility if someone came to them and began by saying, 'I am prejudiced. It is stopping me from being a good American, and I want to change.' If white people are willing to say racism still exists and prejudice is part of how they see the world, then we can take a step forward to be in dialogue about it.
I understand fatigue. Since the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida and Mike Brown in Ferguson, we have been in a life-altering period of consciousness raising, particularly for young people. It feels like we are constantly faced with the reality black lives don't matter. Every conversation is a debate and we are in our camps and in our corners. What if more of us were willing to step into the zone between those two camps and have a real dialogue that is not papering over the historic and the existing inequalities? I think it is our responsibility to do that.
You also used the word "empathy." How do you cultivate empathy for someone trafficking in stereotypes? The young people I work with will sometimes tune out the moment they hear particular words or phrases.
Negative stereotypes against people of color are woven throughout our dominant public narratives, our imagery, our news reporting, and our most basic understanding of the world. Segregation is real. We do not live with each other, or worship with each other, or have enough institutions bringing us into fellowship with one another. We know this, and therefore we must have empathy for the fact that white people are going to hold negative stereotypes.
I feel empathy for all of us who live with the sickness of racism in this society. This is not a zero sum issue. There are many different ways that our racist society causes personal harm to white people. The pain in Garry's voice is real. I've had many conversations with him since our encounter on television. He is not the hero in his own story, because of the prejudices that he holds, and that have been communicated to him in many different ways throughout his entire life. These are some of the personal costs of racism to white people.
There are economic costs as well. Our business-world decision makers are less generous when they are acting with presumptions of racial bias. The same occurs for government policy. Government has been degraded because it's been associated with people of color. That hurts people of color, of course, but it also hurts white people who depend on government for a flourishing economy and society. If we believe that we're all connected and that our fates are linked, then there is absolutely a place for white people to see their own self-interest in eradicating racism. And it is not that hard to understand why black people would feel empathy for white people harmed by their own racial prejudice.
During this presidential campaign, I have often felt empathy was as likely to be lacking among progressive voices as conservatives ones. It is as though we have forgotten that no matter what the election outcome on November 8, we must continue to live with one another on November 9.
It is critically important to locate responsibility in the right place, which is usually with systems and structures rather than individuals. It's typically not your neighbor benefitting from his racist thoughts and ideas, it's actually media, political parties, blogs, who may be a great deal more subtle, but who deploy race for ratings and political gain. The wealthy and the powerful scapegoat people of color so regular folk believe immigration is the reason for the loss of manufacturing jobs rather than corporate-written trade deals.
Donald Trump's candidacy has been a wake-up call for both parties and among activists, that you cannot neglect the story the white working and middle class is telling itself. That organizing among people of color has to happen, and also multiracial, cross-racial organizing has to happen. And that we are on the verge of becoming a country with no dominant racial majority, which changes everything about the way we organize, the stories we tell, and the policies we pursue. People who want an America that works for all of us must take seriously the challenge of solidarity across race as our guiding imperative. Everything else will flow from a sense that we're all in this together.
Some have argued the election of President Obama led to increased expressions of racial animosity in the public sphere. If Hillary Clinton is elected president, are there tools for discussing gender or sexism we should be ready to use assuming her election would not signal the end of misogyny?
Just as we saw with race and President Obama: birtherism, the unwillingness to accept the legitimacy of a black president, rampant racial stereotypes, we will see similar anxieties around gender if Hillary Clinton is elected president. We will have to fight to defend the idea that women are equal citizens and deserve to make decisions about ourselves and to guide the direction of our society. I welcome it. It is overdue.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.
