Alt-Other
It might surprise those who read essays in “Our America” with any frequency, that I am subscribed to some “alt-right” newsletters (I even somehow ended up on the “Trump for President” mailing list – I didn’t do that!!). Part of the original mission of “Our America” was to try to explain the success of Donald Trump to a 2017 shell-shocked “Resistance” movement. It was, and still is, important to hear what “the other side” is saying – if for no other reason than to get past the “Those people are all ignorant” mindset.
“Those people” aren’t by and large ignorant. And “they” are our neighbors, and co-workers, and the person in the car next to us on Broad Street. To quote Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and he is us”. But they have selected a set of information sources that only give them a specific view of their world. (By the way, “they” certainly believe that “we” do the same. There are many times I’ve been warned, “Stop listening to the ‘mainstream media’ and learn the ‘real facts’ of hydroxychloroquine, or vaccines, or voter fraud, or Joe Biden’s mental state.”)
Pre-Disposition
One of my self-assigned duties is to gather some of that information, to get a better understanding of how seemingly normal and reasonable people, believe what seems to be such outlandish things – such as taking de-wormer will cure Covid. Some of our friends and neighbors are told by their trusted sources that Ivermectin works. And they have been conditioned to belief that whatever the “mainstream media”, sometimes even Fox News, says is not to be trusted. So when their source says “the ‘mainstream’ is lying, this is good stuff,” they are pre-disposed to believe it. And they do.
Pre-disposition is an important concept. We, they, all of us, want to believe “facts” that fit into our preconceived notions. The “skids are greased” for ideas that already match our mindset. Those ideas slide right into our thought process, because we want them to be true. And thoughts that are “against the grain” of our ideas find it tough going.
Every Problem is a Ball
Need a non-political example? So it would make “pre-conceived” sense that good soccer players would make good track athletes. Soccer players run, a lot. They run fast sometimes, and slow other times, but they are always on the move. They are well conditioned, and that should translate well into track speed. And sometimes it does. But “speed” in soccer is different than “speed” in track. A fast soccer player still needs to maintain body control, an ability to change direction and manipulate the ball. All of that makes for a skilled running posture, with hips low, and arms high, ready to change position and direction.
A sprinter in track is on the sheer edge of out of control. A famous track coach, Brooks Johnson, described sprinting as continually almost falling. It’s a maximal straight-line effort, with no need to change direction. In track, if you make a right turn, you’re wrong. In coaching soccer players for track, it takes a significant amount of re-adaptation to change their “natural form” to get maximum success. Hips are higher, arms are lower; there’s no holding back. One thing’s for sure though. They are awesome at the team handball game at the beginning of practice. It’s right in their “wheel-house”.
So if you’re great at soccer, every athletic problem looks like a soccer ball (that’s a steal from one of my favorite phrases: “If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”). You use your pre-developed skill to resolve the new problem. But when a coach asks that same soccer player to run with knees up and arms down, it feels completely un-athletic to them. It goes against “the grain” of all of their previous training. They are literally “pre-disposed” to run the way they were taught, from “bumble-bee” times.
Color Blind
The alt-right has found another edge to reinforce their audience’s pre-dispositions. It has to do with race and “color-blindness”. An article by the founder of Prager University, an alt-right “information center”, rants about how racist us “lefties” are for demanding that our nation recognize the inequalities caused by color. The article claims that the ultimate form of non-racism is color blindness; that if we simply treat everyone “the same” then everything would be “just fine”. In fact, the article posed the question: “If we were all blind, would there even be racism?”
The answer to that question, by the way, is yes. But that’s not the point. The point is: Slavery ended in 1866, but it took ninety-eight more years to enact laws to end segregation, the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Today, if you are a young man of color, the sixth leading cause of death is violence from the State, particularly the police (UMich). That’s more than twice that of young white men (US News).
Starting Lines
Being “color blind” leaves those of color in the same position they are in now: behind. To use another track and field analogy; if everything is “color blind” then everyone presumably is at the same starting line. But because of our history, that’s not the “real” truth. The truth is that there are two starting lines – one ahead, and one behind. And that means that our world is NOT equal, and we can’t just be color blind and make everything “OK”.
Color blindness “feels” right, if you are a white person, it fits right into pre-conceived notions. Like the soccer player playing soccer, it fits with a lifetime of training. But, this life is a track race, and the soccer form doesn’t fit. The “common sense” solution of “just treat everyone the same” doesn’t work if everyone didn’t and still doesn’t get the same opportunities, the same chance to succeed. You can’t ignore history (some of my alt-right friends are now screaming “CRITICAL RACE THEORY”).
Before everyone is “equal”, everyone has to have a fair start, at the same starting line. And when we get to that (we ain’t near close yet), then we can start using words like “color blind”. That’s the goal, but not reality in these United States.
