Last week, I talked for a little bit about what I was calling the opportunistic “we,” which is really nothing more than a rhetorical sleight of hand that surfaces a lot in our public discourse. This tactic, no doubt sometimes intentional and sometimes not, defines “we” as broadly as possible when talking about entitlements and as narrowly as possible when talking about responsibilities. It’s an oscillation between two sets of referents. And it’s an oscillation that, like in the Lone Ranger joke, frequently leaves certain hapless palefaces holding the bag when it comes time for a reckoning.
Originally, I had wanted to continue this discussion by talking about Eric Holder and his “nation of cowards” speech. And I planned on offering some suggestions on how to formulate our own positions in response to the maneuvers of the opportunistic left. I still plan on delivering such pearls, don’t worry. But between last week and this one such a prime example of the opportunistic “we” cropped up that I felt I would be remiss to leave it unaddressed. So please permit me a brief interlude here. The example I’m referring to, as you might have guessed, is an article out of that once-august, now-pretty-much-clickbait periodical The Atlantic. Specifically, it’s the one by Ta-Nihesi Coates on “The Case for Reparations.” It’s such a good example that you might suspect some sort of collusion between myself and Mr. Coates. But let me assure you that he and I run in fairly discrete circles in this wide world of online punditry.
Now it’s important to note that reparations talk isn’t anything new. It’s a discussion of race in America, the kind which we have most every day of the week in our evening TV regimen, our Oscar-winning movies, our major newspapers. And it’s important to note that the subtext of any discussion of race in America is, well, black dysfunction. I’m not trying to be flippant here, or cruel. I’m just saying that’s what it boils down to. Any discussion. Whence cometh the tribulations of the black community? Who’s to answer for them? How might we remedy them? These questions are the subtext—not actually “racism” itself as an abstract phenomenon or even really the plights over other minority groups within the States. There’s an elephant in the room whenever it’s time for another of Holder’s “honest conversations.”
Problems within the black community are serious, too. Black Americans lag behind their co-citizens in educational achievement and financial stability. They outpace their co-citizens in criminality and rates of incarceration, often living in urban centers that differ from the bombed-out wastelands of Detroit by degree only and not by kind. Drugs, gangs, and the violence that attend them. And the black American family is increasingly a thing of the past. Nowadays almost three out of every four black children are born out of wedlock, a testament to perhaps nothing moreso than the devastation of inter-generational welfare dependence, which is itself another source of social pathology. Moreover black leadership is often scandalously corrupt. Black “community organizers” are frequently hustlers and shakedown artists. Popular black public figures tend to be propagandists like Ta-Nahasi himself, beating horses long dead that they’ve dragged from “critical race theory,” pushing for the same old reforms despite the fact that all they’ve got to show for them thus far is an gradually-accreting pile of failures. It’s everywhere, at almost every level of the black community, and it’s enough to depress almost any interested observer.
That’s what I mean when I say dysfunction. And that’s what underlies discussions of race in America. There is a sense of exhaustion and frustration on this topic, largely because the promised day never materialized. The hopes, many of them perfectly sincere and heartfelt, that animated the Civil Rights Movement never amounted to much for vast sections of the black community. This disappointment eventuates in repeated inquiries as to the causes of that failure, of which Ta-Nehisi’s article is a fairly representative sample.
And here’s the thesis of that article, plopped right down at the onset of the essay:
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
And here it is again, this time with the opportunistic “we” corrected for:
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until you, white America, reckon with your compounding moral debts, we, black and white Americans together, will never be whole.
Am I being uncharitable? Am I incorrect? Does Mr. Coates think that black Americans have any “compounding moral debts” of their own to atone for? Or have they been blameless these hundred fifty years or so since emancipation, these fifty years since desegregation? The question practically answers itself. Ta-Nihisi knows the answer. He knows who is responsible for black dysfunction, and he says so in plain words right there on the screen: “It is we who are responsible for all of this mess (by which I mean you, paleface). And we (you again, paleface) have a lot of work to do if we (this time I actually do mean us) are ever going to prosper and live peaceably together.”
This pattern persists throughout the article. You could, in fact, probably amuse yourself for a minute or two by control+f searching for “we” on The Atlantic’s page for it and trying to decipher for yourself who exactly he means in each consecutive instance of the word. If you’re into that sort of thing, of course: homework, exercises for the reader. But you’ll probably notice, as you can see in the quotes above, that the whole argument loses a bit of its weight and seriousness when you edit the opportunistic “we” out of it. It becomes a bit simplistic and clumsy. A bit transparent. It’s that same old saw again: the black community would flourish in America all of its own accord if only the white community would cease and desist its machinations contrawise. This dysfunction is all your fault, not ours. We’re powerless against it.
I know. I know. There are plenty of folks would accept even that latter formulation, simplistic as it is. They would accept that white America holds the entirety of the responsibility for the various struggles and hardships that black America faces. But, if you’ll excuse my optimism, I don’t actually think that everyone would. I don’t even think a majority would. I know that blame-white-America opinions get a lot of play by journalists and ivory tower types. But I think that there are even more folks out there who would reject that formulation, either in whole or in part. Folks who happen to think that race relations ought to be collective endeavor with mutual expectations rather than a list of demands to loft over the aisle.
And these are the people that the opportunistic “we” bamboozles. If a guy like Ta-Nesushi had to say in plain words what he meant, I doubt if he’d get a buy-in from most anyone but the aforementioned progressive “thought leaders.” People’d see it for what it is: pandering, a-historical rentseeking. If he’s allowed to persist in such weasel words, however, he can avoid that rejection. That’s the rhetorical power of the opportunistic “we.” That’s one trick that gets them a lot of mileage. And you can thank The Atlantic for such a timely illustration.
“But, if you’ll excuse my optimism, I don’t actually that everyone would.”
Seems to be a missing word here.