Expressing a Right to be Shocked

Following is my response to an article by blogger Courtney Parker West (right) titled "On 'Woke' White People Advertising Their Shock That Racism Just Won a Presidency," in which she asserts that the way people express their feelings should be dictated by their race. My sense from an examination of her social media presence overall is that her primary goal was to emotionally bully her white liberal friends rather than make statements that would clearly be outrageously racist if the word "black" was substituted for "white" throughout. In short, and to emulate her tactic of using made-up words as a device for controlling the dialogue, "West performs a macroloathsomeness in order to merely achieve microloathsomeness." One would think this was not the time for liberals to be turning on each other, or to be relinquishing their commitment to speech that promotes racial parity. 

Suffice it to say that I find this article offputting and even a bit pathetic, in that it takes a poke not at people who voted for Trump because they support his racist rhetoric, not at those who voted for him in spite of that, and not even at those who did not vote at all — but rather at those who took a stand against him because the author does not approve of the way they are processing their own grief and fear.

Yes, I was shocked and upset that Trump won this election, because I fought like hell to the extent that I could to keep that from happening, through personal interactions, attendance at political events, posts on social media, and articles on websites and in the local newspaper. As a resident of rural Texas, my political and social views are in the minority where I live, and I have publicly spoken out against Trump in a local city where white supremacist events are now being organized. My supposed “white privilege” is probably not worth as much to me in this environment as Courtney Parker West would like to imagine. And if something happens to one of my biracial daughters or grandchildren, or one or the many people I care about deeply who are members of minority groups, should I still feel “privileged”? And will that then be something I am allowed to express feelings about, or will West still want me to keep quiet simply because of the color of my skin?

So, being both white and surprised that Trump won, even though I did everything in my limited power to keep that from happening, makes me the villain of West's unpleasant little narrative. I can only wonder if West is going to follow up with articles on large groups of minorities who stayed home on election day and did not vote at all, or on the DNC, which undermined the candidate the majority of Democratic voters wanted. It would seem to me that their indifference and malignance, respectively, are far more relevant than my after-the-fact surprise at the results of the election.

On the day of the election — when I thought Hillary Clinton was going to win but before the results were known so that it would not look like I was trying to curry favor with either side — I posted on Facebook that I have never unfriended someone merely because of their political views. I was thus interested to learn that, according to the meme West included with her article, that this makes me a “douche.” I have, in fact, unfriended plenty of people who have used racist epithets or advocated violence, just not ones who have simply stated a specific political preference or candidate, and I have been unfriended by plenty of less-tolerant rightwing friends and relatives. As soon as I unfriend large numbers of people who have opposing viewpoints, however, I lose any kind of platform for influencing them. If West thinks a verbal circle jerk where only talking to people with similar points of view is productive then I will direct her to the results of the most recent election.

Finally, as an aside, I don’t know if I’m “woke” or not, because I’m 50 and therefore not accountable for learning new slang. I will note, however, that one of the organizations I have always admired most in my capacity as a writer is the Black Panthers, because they traditionally made a point of producing materials only in standard written English (i.e., in the 1960s and '70s), so that everyone would be able to quickly and easily understand their message.

Suffice it to say that I have found this article to be divisive, unproductive, and hurtful and that it has made me a little sad and angry. And now, I am going to soldier on, because the world is full of douches and dumb jerks who look like me — and also ones who look like Courtney Parker West, it turns out — and we have got more work to do than ever before. 

This is the picture that appears with West's article.