Dispatches from the Race War. Tim Wise

      BULLYING PULPIT

      THE PROBLEMATIC POLITICS OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

      SOMETIMES, WHITE PRIVILEGE isn’t about having better opportunities, jobs, money, or other material items relative to people of color. Instead, white privilege is as simple as knowing that, generally speaking, if you’re white, you’ll be perceived as competent and hardworking until proven otherwise. And unlike the case for people of color, no one will ever feel the need to lecture you about the importance of hard work and personal responsibility, as if these were foreign concepts.

      To wit, President Obama’s recent commencement address at historically black Morehouse College—one of the nation’s preeminent educational institutions—during which he lectured the graduates about taking responsibility for their lives, and not blaming racism for whatever obstacles they may face in the future.

      It’s hard to know what’s more disturbing. First, that President Obama thinks black grads at one of the nation’s best colleges need to be hectored about such matters. Or second, that white America so desires exculpation for racial inequity that we need him to say such things, and he knows it—hence the scolding of black men that he knows will be transmitted to us by way of media coverage. Either way, the result is tragic.

      If the former, then Barack Obama has revealed himself to be not nearly as deep a thinker as many have long believed. After all, Morehouse men are not the type to slack off, or make excuses for their shortcomings, or wait for others to do things for them. They earned admission to a fantastic school and have now graduated from it based on their own hard work. To speak to them as if they were supplicants looking for a handout is crass. Even more, it is beneath the dignity of a president of the United States, especially one who shares the complexion of most, if not all, of those graduates.

      Barack Obama knows full well how demanding Morehouse is. So to preach hard work to these men as if they had never heard of it not only insults their intelligence but also feeds every stereotype already held by too many white Americans about black males, no matter how educated. And yes, I realize that admonitions to hard work and personal responsibility have always been prevalent in the black community, in no small measure because of the history of racism, which the president rightly acknowledged in the address. But those typically are offered behind closed doors, not in public and by the most prominent person in the country, within listening range of white ears that are more than a little prepared to hear only the parts that reinforce preexisting biases.

      Meanwhile, if the president thought it necessary to upbraid this year’s Morehouse graduates about not being lazy or using racism as an excuse for their shortcomings, precisely because he thinks (or perhaps knows) that white folks love that shit—the second possibility—then that, too, is pitiable. That Barack Obama seems to think he still needs to go out of his way to please white people is maddening. The white folks who are open to liking him don’t need him to serve as black folks’ moral scold, and the ones who need that will never be satisfied until he does the full Herman Cain. They will not be sated until he is prepared to lay almost all the problems of the nation at the feet of black folks and sing Negro spirituals in white churches while little old white ladies, either literally or figuratively, rub his head.

      Since the president is in his second term, he no longer needs white votes. Thus his pandering to white biases—as with his father’s day entreaties to black men, and only black men, to be better dads (as if white men need no similar instruction)—suggests perhaps it is he whose views of the black community are to blame here. Maybe it is he who has internalized the idea that black folk, even highly educated ones, are would-be malingerers, just waiting for a reason to go soft and, as he put it, “blame the world for trying to keep a black man down.”

      Needless to say, Barack Obama will never tell white people at a mostly white college to stop blaming affirmative action for every job we didn’t get, or the law school to which we failed to gain acceptance, though we’ve used this excuse often for both. He won’t tell white graduates at a traditionally white college to stop blaming Latinx immigrants for “taking our jobs,” which excuse we’ve been known to float from time to time. He would never tell graduates at a mostly white college to stop blaming immigrants, or so-called welfare for our tax burdens, even though these remain popular, albeit incorrect, scapegoats for whatever taxes we pay.

      To President Obama, it seems as though only black people need lectures about personal responsibility. Only they make excuses when things don’t go their way. Only they need to be reminded to do their best, because white graduates—such as the majority of grads at Ohio State to whom he also spoke recently—have all that on lock. Our work ethics are unassailable. We would never make excuses for our failings. We would never blame a 35 percent tax rate, or capital gains taxes, for instance, for causing us not to invest our money or create jobs. Because white people never make excuses for anything.

      And so we get to remain un-lectured, un-stigmatized, un-bothered, and un-burdened with a reminder of our own need to be responsible. We get to remain, in short, privileged and presumed hardworking, presumed responsible until proved otherwise. Meanwhile, some of the best and brightest black men in America will start their careers having been weighted down with the realization that even the president, at some level, doesn’t trust them to do the right thing, unless they are reminded to do so first, and by him. Quite a mixed blessing, such a graduation gift.