George the Insufferable

Jonathan Turley releases onto the internet so much writing, so often, on so many different topics, that I no longer try to read all of him even though so much of it is so valuable and so worth attention. Most mornings I glance, delete and move on; but his piece this morning so catches my eye that I not only stop to read it but wonder why I did so, and I pause to ponder, not only George Yancy for his interesting combination of correct but hostile and therefore less effective; but also myself for stopping by to read. 

Yancy in a moment, first myself: I stop to read because the title catches me up in a not so hasty generalization with which I agree and have agreed for as many long years as I’ve been contemplating both the subject and myself. Two subjects, in fact, related, coming from Turley’s article and Yancy’s position: All males are sexist and All white people are racist. 


Yancy is correct in both propositions, his error is that he lets his hostility, arrogance, self-righteousness and absolute certitude block the opportunity to converse and sell his point. Insufferable, he makes himself ineffective. I’ll bet he’s too detestable and angry an essohbee for conversation, not helpful to bring into a debate; into an argument or fight, yes, but not into debate that is not meant to be a fight between angry antagonists but to provoke thought, affect viewpoints and maybe change minds among those in the audience who are there to be convinced. In a debate course I took once, I won my first debate less because of my presentation than because my adversary lost his temper, grew red-faced and angry, and began to shout, losing any advantage. Yancy seems just such an AhHa — but then he would call it creating dangerous space for whites. 

His effectiveness is arguable. Forty years ago, well it was fall 1974, I’d have to stop and count on my fingers, I had recently reported to my final Navy assignment in Washington, and I along with captains, other commanders and maybe a lieutenant-commander or two, for some reason the newly reported admirals were not required to take the course with us, I found myself in a mandatory course on racism and self-awareness of one's racism. The three-star deputy commander introduced the course, put us all under the authority of a first class petty officer in white sailor suit, and left. The petty officer was black, rude and arrogant in the position the vice admiral had given him over us, and extremely hostile the entire several days of the course. I don’t know whether I learned, perceived, more because of being so put down by one who normally would not have dared so to speak to me without endangering his rate, or whether the entire experience was precisely as the vice admiral intended, but I did finish the course more thoughtful in the long-term than humiliated for the moment.

So, all whites are racist and all males are sexist. Not only do I agree, but it’s true. Furthermore, Yancy is correct both in his premise and in his solution: be a consciously, deliberately anti-racist racist and anti-sexist sexist. As a Southerner, born and bred to be what I know myself to be, I have, since becoming self-aware, always worked to make it not so. And in my own life as the father of beloved daughters, especially because of one who is of such ability and extraordinary intelligence who has always had a strong mind of her own, I have made a point of seeing and taking the feminist position; even to the point, for example, that I decided years ago that, for love of her and all that she is to me, I will always vote for her candidate in an election over deciding differently for myself: for and because of her, her father is a feminist anti-sexist sexist.   

For a while a generation ago, we had a priest in the diocese who, warm and friendly person-to-person, was so overwhelmingly obnoxious person-to-group, that everyone, even the bishop, would groan when he stood to speak. It was a time before we had any female clergy in our diocese, or any gay clergy, or any black clergy. He railed at us, angrily shouting, calling us male chauvinists, homophobic, racist. He was not popular. Once, confronting the bishop in the bishop’s office, the bishop lost his temper and shouted GET OUT, pointed this obnoxious, offensive priest to the door, shouting GET OUT. A crusader for all underdogs and every oppressed human, he eventually retired, or just quit, I don’t recall, left the priesthood and opened a bed and breakfast somewhere in the Carolinas from whence he came.


As for Yancy, he is black, which prejudices him, makes him racist; but he is also male, which entitles him. Yancy is correct, but not right.


DThos+

 Humbly, or in some slight move so, I will add that Yancy's insufferable certitudinosity also brings to my own mind that I, in my disdain for theological certainty, am as certain as the worst of them.