The Decency Paradox

The following is a three-part essay that reflects on my political journey over the past five years, and shares my hopes for the country post-2020. This essay is personal and confessional, in that it looks at relationships that have broken down in my life. It is critical of tolerance, of President Trump, and of this era’s fascination with hate. Lastly, it is hopeful that what is broken can be repaired, and is slightly instructive with that hope. Thanks in advance for reading.

Decent, definition 1 – marked by moral integrity, kindness, and goodwill.

Merriam Webster’s Dictionary

Pt. 1. What makes us decent?

A white car with tinted windows pulled up to the curb in front of the Phi Kappa Tau house coming to a near stop. It was the summer of 2015, a few weeks before my final year at Centre College, and the August heat rained down in waves on the red-brick houses of Greek Row. We were covered though by the roof above our porch, and by the drifting smoke of cigars still smoldering between our lips as we sat—only God knows for how long—entrenched in drink and conversation.

My white, conservative friend and I were debating campus politics, national politics, and everything else that was even remotely political. And despite our conflicting ideologies, we yearned for moments like this when we could drink and argue and learn from each other. Even when emotions ran high I felt, as I’m sure he did too, that those conversations made us better people; and as a result, better leaders. Besides, I had grown up hearing that it was these very friendships, ones where both individuals could tolerate the differences between them, that made us Americans decent.

It’s now 2021 and I’m writing this essay to challenge our nation’s understanding of decency.

The summer of 2015 was also the summer when a news banner flashed across my tv screen reading that nine Black people had been murdered a couple states over in South Carolina. They were churchgoers, and they had convened that day for a Bible Study, an ordinary activity, made unordinary only by the presence of the unassuming white man that joined them. When the bible study ended, that man brandished a handgun and murdered nine of the churchgoers, injuring three more, in a blood-stained massacre directly before the eyes of God.

He was arrested (gently) by police the next morning and not too long afterwards a manifesto for white supremacy was found, describing his racial motivation for the slaughter. On the same website where the manifesto was discovered, the man could be seen in pictures proudly waving the confederate flag. The next day, as conversations around removing that flag from public buildings began to sizzle in our country’s discourse, a tv personality rode down an escalator to announce his candidacy for President of the United States.

Back on the porch though, our minds were far away from all of that. We were 21, and swooning in the sweet elixir of youth as the wind cracked like whips around us. We leaned into our decency, reveling in the back and forth of friendly debate on theoretical topics, puncturing every tense moment with a joke. Had the street not been so quiet neither of us would’ve noticed the white car creeping our way.

When it got close enough to our house a tinted window slid about one-quarter the way down, not enough to capture a good look at the people inside of the car. But from the passenger window an undeniable word leapt from the mouth of a young man with a local accent; “NIGGER” in our direction before the car peeled off.

I froze, shocked and confused. I’d heard that word several times before, but never directed violently towards me until then. While my mind struggled to register what had occurred, my friend sprang into action. Not action really, but a verbal display of emotion. He talked about how angry he was, how ignorant the occupants of the mystery car must be, how unacceptable and uncalled for the whole incident was. He was frustrated, like his social order had been tipped over for a moment; like we had been playing a game and another player had broken the rules. Finding my voice again, and uncomfortable with his outrage, I tried to make a joke: “It’s okay, I am a nigger. I’ve been one since ’93! They aren’t telling me anything I don’t know.” It flopped.

At that time neither of us knew that the tv personality who came down the escalator proclaiming that “when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people¹” would be our future President. In our privileged college bubble, we could not have predicted then that, in America, you could brag about sexually assaulting people, scamming the poor, and hating immigrants and be elected to lead the Land of the Free. Our trust in American decency led us to believe that the unprovoked  “nigger” hurled in my direction came from a forlorn voice of a dying minority of racist opinion. We didn’t know then that the same white supremacy that killed 9 in Charleston, that labeled Mexicans as rapists, that called me nigger; would be the same white supremacy that killed one more in Charlottesville, that would attempt to ban Muslims from the country, that sent armed white nationalists to state capitol buildings and voting booths to intimidate the rest of our nation…and that our future President would endorse all of these actions.

Instead, the moment passed, and memory won’t allow me to say exactly how. We must have let it go and moved on to different subjects. What haunts me though is that in the years that followed, all of those things above that we could not have imagined, happened; and many of my peers weren’t bothered enough by them to voice their opposition.

I’d spend the years 2015-2020 listening to people who I disagreed with but loved either argue in defense of the President’s behavior, or at least decide that this kind of hate was not disqualifying . They’d rather support their Party than stand up against the disrespect and indignity hurled at their peers. Worse, some of them even mimicked the behavior themselves.

To be decent, I’m supposed to maintain these relationships while swallowing the pain they leave with me.

A good friend, while we were out celebrating my birthday, mocked efforts to remove a prominent Confederate statue from a strip of bars in Lexington called Cheapside where slaves were once sold. He made his snide comments with confidence as if we all agreed with his white, male opinion. This, during a year when armed white nationalists had planned, but failed to execute, a march just three blocks from my apartment in the same city.

Another acquaintance told me, after a long morning of banter and drinking, in a serious voice; “you know what Dexter, the Congressional Black Caucus is the most racist institution in America” and when I demurred, moving us to other topics he told me I’d make a great lawyer and that “you’d definitely get a scholarship to law school because you’re Black. Trust me.” Not because at 24 I had proven myself to be a sharp and ambitious person, but because I was Black.

A third white friend berated a Black kid we went to high school with for receiving “an affirmative action scholarship” to undergraduate school. This friend thought the kid shouldn’t have gotten his award because “he’s lazy.” The friend at least acknowledged that he himself had received a scholarship—in that his parents paid completely for his college education without him having had to do anything to deserve that help. He did not, however, acknowledge that he was an average student himself, and could have been seen by others as lazy too. There was no acknowledgement that maybe they both should have the opportunity to pursue higher education, regardless of other people’s opinion of their worth or their parent’s income.

Then there were my white trivia friends at the Irish bar calling Kaepernick unpatriotic and disrespectful for peaceably protesting state-sponsored violence against Black lives. All of this while I sat, dismayed and outnumbered, sipping a beer I could barely afford and thinking “I wonder what the people in this room would say or do to me if they knew that I wasn’t always proud of our country either?” None of them offering any word of support for their Black peers. None of them offering an explanation for why they felt standing for a song was more important than taking a stance to make our nation better.

My friend, enraged that another white man had called me a “nigger,” would later graduate and move to DC where he would work for members of congress who would spend the next four years defending our future President through repeated racist dog whistles, blatant lies, and attacks on democratic norms. All of them, friends and acquaintances, think of themselves as decent, good people. On some level, I think that they are too. But it must be acknowledged that their comments and behaviors cause far more damage than any angry young man shouting the n-word from his window. All of them feel marked by moral integrity, kindness, and goodwill for simply tolerating the same people that their words and political actions are fashioned to harm.

At the same time, there’s an unspoken expectation that I tolerate them too. That I, despite all of these actions that cut me to my core, should be able to compartmentalize their words and behaviors in the abstract. To be decent, I’m supposed to maintain these relationships while swallowing the pain they leave with me. That’s the paradox of American decency.

Pt. 2 The problem: decency as tolerance

Paradox, definition 2c – an argument that apparently derives self-contradictory conclusions by valid deduction from acceptable premises.

Tolerance, definition 2a – sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own.

Merriam Webster’s Dictionary

In this paradox, decency is tolerance. People with greater social power—white people, men, heterosexuals, Christians—understand decency to be defined by one’s ability to function civilly around people with opinions they disagree with, and they expect that same decency from others in return. When the difference of opinion is trivial, I think this definition is fine.

It shouldn’t be the burden of those harmed by the status quo to tolerate the opinions of those who exercise their power in society to defend it.

The issue is that our cultural and political disputes are not trivial. As I’ve tried to illuminate in the stories above, these disputes are deeply personal. When your stance on an issue is derived from principles instilled in you from an early age and information you’ve selectively consumed, your disagreement with another person’s view might bring you frustration or discomfort.

When your stance on an issue is derived from traumatic elements of your lived experience, when you or your loved ones have been hurt by that issue’s status quo, opposition on the same issue from another person will present itself to you as a material threat.

In this scenario, from whom do we expect an act of decency? Is it really on the woman to show friendship and civility to the man who believes she should have no reproductive freedoms? For the Mexican American to invite into their home the white woman who, through her vote, supports ICE raids and family separation on our southern border? For the Black woman to respect the white man who goes on Facebook and opines that the police should be more forceful with protestors demanding racial justice on our streets?

It shouldn’t be the burden of those harmed by the status quo to tolerate the opinions of those who exercise their power in society to defend it. When your political priorities are anti-Black, anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQIA, anti-immigrant, and anti-poor; the people of those life-defining identities should not owe you a civility that diminishes their ability to exist safely and fully. Tolerating you despite the damage your words and actions cause them is not, on their part, an act of decency—it’s an act of self-harm.

It’s because of this calculation that I no longer apologize for the behavior of people in my circle who spend their lives belittling people who aren’t straight, cis, well off, and white. With love still for them, I’ve put distance between myself and these connections because those relationships left me exhausted and saddled with shame. I know that when I allow such close relationships to continue as they are, I harm myself. Worse, I give folks their one Black friend, their one liberal friend, that allows them to feel as if they aren’t personally dealing in the politics of hate, because politics is somehow separate from their relationships with individual people like me. By allowing such mental separation, I enable this belief: that there are no consequences to the harm one’s politics causes others. And every day I look both inward and at the world around me and I see that that isn’t true.

Still…I can’t help but miss those leisurely porch conversations, defined by difference. While I’ve turned my back on unconditional tolerance, I still want there to be a way to wrestle with disagreement without excusing political hypocrisy and hate. For each of us to continue growing, there has to be a way to have challenging, intoxicating conversations with people we disagree with, without compromising respect for ourselves or our empathy for others.

If tolerance isn’t enough, and I hope this essay so far has convinced you that it’s not, we need something stronger to replace it with. That way, at least some of the relationships we’ve seen die in this polarized era can be revived. For the country to move past hypocrisy and hatred, we need a stronger answer to the question; what makes Americans decent? That answer, I believe, starts with individual culpability.

Pt. 3 A potential way forward: decency as culpability²

Culpability – responsibility for wrongdoing or failure.

Merriam Webster’s Dictionary

An aging millennial, I’ve come to believe that the only non-paradoxical way to reach decency in our nation is to stop focusing so much on this dusty idea of tolerance, and move towards genuine culpability. Culpability is the state of being responsible for wrongdoing. Allow me to demonstrate by being critical of my own behavior in the last leg of this essay.

I acknowledge that there are likely people in this world who’ve needed to cut ties with me because of the toxic things that I have said and done. The very fact that I didn’t seriously review my relationships with people who were anti-immigrant rights, anti-Muslim, and controlling of women until they ALSO proved to be anti-Black reveals, at least, limitations to my empathy. That on its own could be disqualifying for someone considering whether I am a friend they can trust. This is not to mention the ableist jokes I’ve made, sexist behaviors I’ve exhibited, and anti-Black opinions I’ve held throughout the years. I’ve no shortage of wrongdoings or failures.

None of us are immune yet, subconsciously, we all create the perception of ourselves as good, decent people. In our minds, we are the good guys. We seek evidence (no matter how flimsy) that supports the stories we tell ourselves, and we perform mental gymnastics to justify our behaviors no matter how intolerable they are to others. Even those of us that come from the groups receiving the President and his supporters ire over the past few years are ourselves deeply flawed people—at times ignorant and harmful people—who fail to see ourselves as anything other than decent.

The challenge of our times will be to overcome our culture’s reluctance to engage in critical self-reflection, and to resist the temptation to justify our worst thoughts and behaviors. It is now my belief that real moral integrity involves acknowledging the harm our actions have caused others, and being willing to have some level of accountability imposed on us in effort to repair the emotional damage we’ve done.

…our politics are not separate from our relationships with individual people.

This is the challenge of all Trump supporters who have lost friends due to the personal and hateful nature of “cry about it, liberals” politics. It’s easy to invoke the First Amendment in an effort to absolve oneself from the damage one’s words inflict on others. It’s difficult to reckon with the person on the receiving end of that harm and explain why you, a good person, came for them with bad intentions. It’s also the challenge of my friends who don’t embrace this brand of politics, but never found it disqualifying enough to stand against it.

It’s the challenge of liberals and leftists too. As we smite all dissenters in our campaign for fairness, it might do us some good to remember the times when we benefited from the grace of others who left us space to challenge our worst instincts. And, it couldn’t hurt to remind ourselves from time to time that we also have a lot more growing to do.

If our goal is to repair our friendships, our families, and the disparate communities of dejected people across America, we will need to redefine what it means to be decent and center this new form of decency in our political actions.

Here’s what that looks like to me in 2021:

2021 Decency Guidelines

1. Retell the stories in your head as if you are the villain. It’s the only way for us to stop rationalizing our own toxic behaviors.

2. If someone tells you that your actions hurt them, believe them. Full stop.

3. When you have done wrong, be brave and apologize. Full stop.

4. Once you have apologized, be even braver by being willing to have others hold you accountable for your actions. Recognize that apologizing on its own does not affect change. Accept the consequences of your actions and show, don’t tell, how you will behave better moving forward.

5. When others harm you and refuse to do steps 1-4, understand it’s okay to cut ties with them. You deserve to be treated with decency too.

6. Remember: relationships that tolerate insult and pain are not decent. Relationships that elevate culpability, apology, and accountability are.

In conclusion, our politics are not separate from our relationships with individual people. What made that summer porch-sit in the heat of 2015 memorable wasn’t just the shock of being called “nigger.” What haunts me still is that the man sitting next to me would go on to be more closely aligned with the man who shouted that word than with me: his fraternity brother and close friend. It’s when people are willing in individual moments to stand up for those near to them, while later going into the voting booth and negating the sentiments they preached, that I hear the veil of American decency shatter.

To mend the broken pieces, each of us will need to wake up to the fact that we are capable of, and already guilty of, political harm. Understanding this can lead us all into a new era of decency, one built on our ability to act in good faith, engage in self-reflection, and lead with the intention to correct our past wrongdoings.

Wouldn’t that world be better than the one we have now? Let’s start being decent, actually decent, this year.

Happy 2021.

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1. Excerpt from President Trump’s, candidate announcement speech in 2015. Transcription found in the article “‘They’re rapists.’ President Trump’s campaign launch speech two years later”, written by Amber Phillips of the Washington Post.
2. A special shoutout to Michael Fryar, whose conversations with me on the topics of tolerance, accountability, and the human instinct to paint ourselves as the good guy in every story informed a lot of what ended up in Pt. 3 of this essay.
3. An additional shoutout to Amy Clay for pulling me up whenever my writing gets stuck, and heavily editing the final few paragraphs.
4. Tulip silhouette image from http://www.clipart-library.com

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Note: the views and opinions expressed on PolitiFro are those of myself only and do not necessarily reflect the position or views of my employer or any entity with which I am associated. Welcome to my mind and beware: it changes.

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