It’s gotta be He’s the good guy and She’s the bad guy. Or She’s the good guy and He’s the bad guy.
But life is more complicated than that. Very often it’s not This or That. It’s This AND That.
Simply acknowledging as much is a step in the right direction. But it’s usually not enough to really get it right. Cause it’s often This and That, along with a few other Things, and That is actually more important than This, but if you ignore This you’re just not gonna get it.
Let’s take those MAGA hat-wearing Kentucky kids and singing Native vets on the Mall in DC as an example. All of the following are quite possibly true statements:
- Those privileged, private school white kids have shitty politics.
- It’s not entirely their fault. They’re still kids, and their parents and teachers used them as political pawns on a trip to the nation’s capital.
- Their parents and teachers don’t realize they’re using their kids as political pawns at a protest, instead telling themselves they’re helping the kids learn, grow, etc.
- Liberal parents can and do the exact same thing with their kids sometimes, just with different politics.
- The Hebrew Israelites are lunatic fringe, homophobic nut jobs. They’re probably the real ass holes in this story, and that’s kinda slipping through the cracks because nobody’s gonna score political points by harping on those whackos.
- The Native people, including drummer Nathan Phillips, trying to defuse the tension between the MAGA teens and the Hebrew Israelites were engaging in a complicated cultural action that’s quite foreign to American culture, and no one there really understood. It’s not about condoning the stupid shit that either side is saying, but neither is it about critiquing it. It’s about bringing something spiritual and honest to the moment, something that everyone should stand back and acknowledge as a way of re-centering and purifying the dialog.
- Most Americans don’t know shit about Native peoples and cultures, seeing them only has historical relics, costumes, and clichés.
- The white kid (Nick Sandmann) didn’t do anything wrong.
- In fact, given that he’s just a HS kid in way over his head in that moment, he kinda did okay to just stand there quietly. Good for him.
- Lots of people jumped all over Sandmann for all the wrong reasons, indulging in their own stereotypes along the way.
- All the other white kids tomahawk chopping at the Indians are dumb, spoiled shit heads who need to grow up.
- Sandmann initially got the raw end of the deal when: Critics made incorrect presumptions about him and his actions based on incomplete information that was reinforced by their own stereotypes about his skin color, class background, and politics.
- This will probably be the only time, and I mean the only time in Nick Sandmann’s life that he faces serious, deleterious, and wholly undeserved consequences because people made incorrect presumptions about him and his actions based on incomplete information that was reinforced by their own stereotypes about his skin color, class background, and politics.
- And because he’s white and skin color matters in America, his situation was almost immediately and resolutely reversed by the larger society, and he is now seen by most people as the real victim.
- Black and brown people spend their entire lives facing serious, deleterious consequences because people make incorrect presumptions about them based on incomplete information reinforced by stereotypes. Just ask Trayvon Martin, or Tamir Rice, or all the other innocent black and brown people killed by cops and the George Zimmermans of the world. Or just ask any old black or brown person who hasn’t been killed, but constantly has to deal with smaller versions of these same indignities and attacks.
- Black and brown people rarely have their situations and resolutely reversed by the larger society, either immediately or at all. Instead, black and brown people live their lives under a veil of suspicion and accusation.
There’s wrong and there’s right and there’s right and there’s wrong and the real world is all of them mixed together in a complicated stew, some spoonfuls more wrong than right, some spoonfuls more right than wrong, and all of it a fuckin’ mess because humanity’s a mess.