White folks born into the rural Midwest are often conditioned by absence into a kind of default, amorphous racism. Or if not capital R racism, you’re set up at least for automatic, pre-conscious, racial other-ing. Let me explain. The simple lack of black or brown faces makes their occasional appearance something that’s noticed. That slight shock is a barrier to being 100% real with someone. But that in itself it shouldn’t be defined in moral terms. It’s a conditioned (not natural) response to what’s really just a lack of experience. What matters is what comes after the noticing. You can try to understand your response, or even better, the person who occasioned it. Or you can just kind of slide that person into the mental category of people whom you don’t have to interact with often.
Weird racial politics are exploding right now in white America. There’s this urgent, alarming sense of “Which side are you on?” I resent feeling forced into dichotomies. But I hope anyone who has watched the full George Floyd video knows exactly where they stand. The best response might not be clear–but that shit demands one all the same..
The last couple months though I’ve been burnt out by the double whammy of the lockdown era–and working overtime through it all. After seeing that video, my rage and exhaustion took on a political dimension. But then I felt kind of depressed that, here in the hinterlands, it seemed like there was nothing I could do. There wasn’t the time, energy, or outlets. It felt like, especially with the anti-quarantine protests, (white) folks who had been doing nothing for two months were luxuriating in a full explosion of their repressed fascist and Karen energies. There might be a little of that in the BLM protests… if so though just in bored college kids eager to get out some energy. The demands of BLM are (mostly) concrete and righteous. It’s a terrifying thought–but if civil war came to America I think it would be between marginalized people (and allies) up against a wildin’ middle class just getting its fascist kicks out. I’ve been processing all this, and feeling kind of useless.
I live in a suburban midpoint between the Cincy downtown and truly rural areas. We’ve got a strip (Main Street basically) that has a couple hip coffee shops and breweries. (They even let the hipsters open-carry their $10 craft beers; only block in town you can do that.) Early June I was driving home from work down that strip, thoroughly exhausted. Quality time with the daughter had sadly been put on hold as of late, and I was hoping to make up for that. Driving down Lila (the hip street) I noticed something that had never been there before. About 10 people with black facemasks, BLM signs, and white skin. I drove by looking closely. At the moment of eye contact, they shoved their signs directly into sight. After the fact, a couple distinct trains of thought swam through my head. First was, huh, maybe I could swing back, hang out for a bit, and just see what’s going on. Second train though was recollecting what they looked liked. They all had pretty nice clothes and sunglasses. They looked like they had come from a middle-class PTA or, more to the point, from the hip breweries a little down the street. They seemed like the type I help with Amazon returns at work. Just a constant stream of useless, pricey shit going back all the time–and the well-off (maybe woke?) returnees verbally terrorizing you at the slightest inconvenience. Eh–I justified to myself that I wouldn’t fit in. I went home, and took one of those naps you feel worse from after you wake up. Then I took my daughter to the park.
That self-justification was also malignantly prodded, though, by people I hate. Like a dog returning to its own vomit, I had started browsing Twitter again about the times things got crazy. The “left” on there is a shitshow. There are universalist DSA-type influencers; they usually have some stable writing or activist gig. And there’s the reactionary “left,” mostly podcasters and shitposters, funding themselves with Patreons and mercilessly hacking away at idpol and “PMC” inclusion-ism. Micheal Tracey is a tweeter on the reactionary side. I don’t understand his popularity–he doesn’t have a real viewpoint or politics. And he isn’t particularly thought-provoking or insightful. He just trolls whatever the party line is among more sincere online leftists. (I imagine a large part of his readership is masochistic suckers like me, who imagine that digging their finger into a wound for long enough will help them figure out what’s causing the pain.)
Tracey’s shtick recently has been simply compiling photographs of the protests, and pointing out all the white people. It’s all white people–BLM has nothing to do with blacks–it’s all racial projection and narcissism. His piece de resistance was a retweet from a black conservative man in New York City. In the video, he went among protesters, demanding the white ones bow before him in recognition of historical racism. He got a few sucker kids to do it, which proves… in the view of the reactionary left, that anti-racism is despicable–a self-abnegating, and yet paradoxically self-serving thing. The imperative being to efface the guilt of whites. In my view, this is an incredibly toxic and ultimately nonsensical critique. It’s only a few steps before you’re twisting anti-idpol thinkers like Adolph Reed to argue that racism is good, actually. And when that POV becomes a little too transparent, they cry that any seeming racism is merely projection by race-obsessed critics. “We’re doing pure work down in the historical materialist lab. Materialism means we’re free of biases and self-serving oversights like other people…”, etc.
With this shitstain dialectic bouncing in my head, I showed up to work again thoroughly pooped. “You do anything cool over the weekend?” we asked, knowing full well that two days isn’t enough time to fight back the fever. I heard something new from a coworker though. “Out in Bethel, bus-loads of Antifa showed up to protest. My boyfriend’s in a motorcycle club and they showed up to kind of make sure things didn’t get out of hand. Shit got pretty crazy.”
It took me a second to process that. Bethel is one of those small towns—thirty square miles really–that people either get out of quick or spend their whole lives swirling about. It’s not my locale really. It’s adjacent (and further country) to the thirty square-mile block I’ve spent my whole life in. But protests–there? It’s like hearing that the town in the Last Picture Show had a BLM rally. Big swathes of lives get erased in towns like those–you end up thinking the only people who live there are MAGA middle-classers and junkies-in-decline. I couldn’t think of who in a town like that would attend a BLM rally.
The rumor was that those “busloads” of protestors had been shipped down from Columbus–Ohio’s biggest claim to a cultured college-town metropolis. I felt a wave of resentment pass over me. If so, why would college kids pick a dying town like Bethel? It seemed awful close to MAGA tourism–swooping in on backwater yokels to score some quick superiority. “I don’t understand–why Bethel? Has there been some police brutality there recently?” My unspoken line of confusion was, “It’s just white people there.”
Turns out though, the “busloads” were bollocks. The gathering was organic, and was started on a measured whim by some like-minded locals. A couple educators and some folks connected with a local “arts group” or collective thought they should organize an event in solidarity. They expected maybe 50 to 80 people to show up. Don’t glaze your eyes at “art collective.” It means something radically different in a rural context when all jobs are either Dollar Generals or good-old-boy reference networks. What popped up was a group of usually-silent counter-witnesses to rural America’s stultifying veneer. And the comforts of class don’t explain their liberalism. Assume the worst–they’re all teachers or local social workers. Even so, in the rural hierarchy that’s only a precarious rung up from Maggie working register at the Family Dollar.
The protestors showed up in the A.M. at one of Bethel’s main squares. They planned to occupy one side of the street. Backlash was expected, though it wasn’t clear how hard. Imagine the personal surprise I told you about–but by people in the moment, and with hearts already set against the national news of riots, etc. The counter-protestors were granted the other side of the street. They’d watch–and hopefully not much else. Cops showed up early already anticipating trouble. Quickly, word spread around town that folks were standing on the street holding signs that said “Black Lives Matter” (!). The bus rumor started then–phony calls were made to the police– the point being I imagine to make the cops more on edge. Motorcycle gangs showed up to “keep the peace” like my coworker’s dude. It seems like they’re the ones who started making physical contact with the protestors. Bethel, Ohio was in a state of panic.
It didn’t take long for the separate sides of the street to get disregarded. And, contra the happenings in some big cities, the violence was horrifically single-sided. Onlookers became active participants as they ripped signs from the protestor’s hands. “Get the fuck out of here–we don’t want this in this town” is heard a lot in the shocking videos that came out later that day.
The protestors were largely–though not all–white. That’s just how Bethel is. Those few POC reflect the increasing black flight out of gentrified urban areas. But their numbers were small enough for haters to bash the whole. One of the videos shows a lady accosting the protestors. “WHERE’S THE NIGGERS?! WHERE’S THE NIGGERS?!” She seems confident she’s making a damning point. Micheal Tracey couldn’t have said it better–and I recognize a more malignant shade of my own misgivings. The protestors, to their credit (and like in other recent videos of crazy people wilding), just kind of filmed her with dumb astonishment. The fuck about saying “Black lives matter” makes people act out like this? Christian leftists have compared it to an exorcism, and I’m inclined to agree. The lady caught on camera shouldn’t get fired or be subjected to online mobs. She probably makes $12 an hour at a nail salon or something, I don’t know. But to pretend that protests are vain middle-class virtue signaling, when a statement of such self-evident truth can raise a whole town to a fever pitch? I just can’t get behind that.
Who are these protestors? I’m sure their numbers were helped by college kids, home from school for the summer. But a town isn’t brought to its knees by 19 year olds styling for the Gram. I suspect the instigators were normal locals with a difference–they felt compelled to act. Yokels want to paint anyone with lib tendencies as somehow spoiled by outside influences–alien in a way. But “lumpenproletariat” don’t describe it when you work your ass off 40 hours a week just like your MAGA neighbors–the mythical white working class. That ghoul Kevin Williamson wished death back in the day upon small towns like Bethel OH. He got what he wanted. I think conflicts like this reflect that economic holocaust. Locals are stepping out from their underground bunkers of heroin, comfort, or denial. A lot turn to MAGA-ism as another balm. Some, though, while seemingly greatly outnumbered, see a chance to rebuild into something stronger and more inclusive. We were born in this town; will probably die here. It’s our right as much as anybody else’s to have our say which way the wind blows.
There’s not many black folks in Bethel, true. And this activist vanguard from one POV is white folks who simply can’t breathe in current rural America. But that doesn’t mean it’s just white people masturbating at each other. Solidarity by definition is partly self-interested. It’s a self-interest that interlocks with the interests of others–even folks who live half-way across the country. And that interlocking interest pushes you to acts that can’t be reduced to me myself and I. Even now that video of those NYC’ers bowing to a black troll flashes in my mind’s view. But I think it’s ok to say “Fuck that.” I won’t bow–but I’ll sure as shit put my ass on the line for you if you’ll do the same for me.
I know BLM isn’t about recruiting black bodies to become white allies. It’s time to stop something like what happened to George Floyd from ever happening again. But at its best, even a shaky, distant coalition pays future divides for all involved. It’s my hope BLM achieves some concrete results rather than just consciousness-raising. Those material interests–an inflamed sense of justice really–always point the way towards future struggles and gains. Consciousness-raising like workplace diversity workshops probably make some lives more tolerable. They also tend, though, to lengthen culture-war backlash bullshit. But nobody can argue when a cop can just shoot a black man down. Or restrict a family’s access to housing or jobs. In a mass movement, imperfect by definition, you can insist on clarity and concrete goals. But that doesn’t mean joining the other side.
The protests in Bethel are threatening the rear up again. The town has instituted a 9 PM curfew. But I think everyone’s heading home early a little surprised. My coworker who turned me on to the happenings was a little outraged that her dude of the motorcycle gang ended up getting tazed by the cops. Rural cops are often vanguards of reaction and racism. There’s a thin blue line holding back but also up the truly terrifying fascist dregs. But in Bethel they acted honorably and defended the protestors when they started getting the shit beat out of them.[1]
I hope for the concrete. But I also know there’s a lot of identitarian craziness that needs to burn itself out. It’s more subtle and insidious, perhaps, among those who think they’re above it all. It seems, though, that–even amidst this intra-white fighting–we’re headed towards something significant. I suspect it’s the moment when white America can look at a black man and, without color-blindness or racialism, take in his full humanity. There’s both concrete action and introspection that needs to take place before that can happen. I don’t know what that moment will look like–except that for white people it probably won’t be noble or shining. More likely it will be a moment of lowdown dirty heartbreak. But a change has got to come. In the meantime we can argue over means and goals. But my heart will lie with the protestors in Bethel.
The protestors have felt their way out of the empty-hearted status-quo. But equally as important, they’re not aping received coastal concerns. Their courage is their own. Forgoing the privileges of apparent racial homogeneity is a risk. And risking seeming alien is the first step towards building an alternative base. Enlightened underdog-ism is a trap that ends up back in passivity. But for the moment, a small gathering grouped against a city feels like a right step. Sometimes the Midwest seems stuck in a never-ending, dreamless sleep. In the darkness, though, the smallest sparks flash that much brighter.
Note
1 There were a few shameful exceptions. One video shows a demonstrator getting socked in the back of the head: an onlooking cop doesn’t budge. What’s clear though is that the violence of the counter-protestors wasn’t backed by the full apathy of the state. That’s more, I think, than they (and I) expected.