by Don Hall

There’s no question that following WWII Communism was a legitimate threat to the United States. Global positioning of military, spies on both sides, nuclear domination was at stake. It was a scary time. Intertwined with the anger and fear was a pernicious thread within that, in response to the national angst, in turn poisoned the reasonable fear with demagoguery. Born from that was the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

There is no question today that the time has come for the United States to deal fairly and effectively with the demonization and wholesale deprivation of black Americans in our country. Both the stories we hear and the data we parse through is a damning indictment of righteous laws written only to be enforced by the bigots who fought so hard against them.

It is hard, however, to see a cause so fundamentally right and long overdue be intertwined with demagoguery.

You’ve recommended Robin DiAngelo’s book on white fragility but you haven’t read it, have you? You regularly use the terms “systemic racism” and “anti-racist” but you haven’t waded through any of Derrick Bell or Ibram X. Kendri, amiright?

When it comes to Critical Race Theory, I was an early adopter. I dove into Bell’s Faces at the Bottom of the Well in 1997. At the time I thought it was interesting but flawed and good red meat philosophy for the college campus.

By 2016 I was twice divorced and living with an avowed anti-racist activist whose godfather was 1960’s radical revolutionary Bill Ayers. I saw America and specifically white Americans as fundamentally racist.

Following the third of three blow out breakups with her I had what was to be my final mentoring lunch with The Moth’s resident Latina storyteller.

“Racist is a term that includes anyone benefitting from a racist system,” I mentioned as the conversation turned to Chicago’s history of gentrification. “Bigotry is individual but all white Americans are racist by definition.”

“Even you?” she asked.

“I’m white so, by definition, I’m racist. I don’t think I’m a bigot, though.”

A month or so later, after coming to the fact that her own personal insecurities and need for a following had sent her head first into a path of radical indoctrination, I unfriended her on social media. All hell broke loose. She had people call and text me with threats of violence. She manufactured several fake Facebook accounts, had them engage her real account with insults, and then claimed I had created the fake accounts. She posted a video of her emoting heavily over the fakeness of my friendship.

One of her most potent missives to her following went something like this:

Don Hall is a racist! He even admitted it to me!! He is a confessed racist!!

I should’ve seen it coming.

Now, if this were the fifties, the HUAC could’ve branded me a communist or at least a communist sympathizer.

“Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” 

“No, sir.”

“Have you ever read the works of Karl Marx?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you ever attended a meeting with communists?”

“No meetings -“

“Parties?”

“Parties...?”

“Yes. Meetings with alcohol. And communists.”

“...yeah...”

This guilt-by-association thing was the most damning and pervasive aspect of the HUAC and led to blacklisting, careers destroyed, terrified citizens quickly falling to their knees in supplication and naming names to avoid the stigma of being labeled a Commie.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines McCarthyism as "the political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence." No one subpoenaed by the HUAC was ever convicted of being communist but a fair number were fined and jailed for refusing to play along. With the definition of who was or was not a communist being so open-ended and ill-defined, only those who either declared their fealty to anti-communism or named names were spared.

My guess is that if Senator Joseph McCarthy had had a Twitter account, his damage to the individual lives he publicly destroyed would’ve been a thousand times worse.

Mind you, the #BlackLivesMatter organization has very specific goals and outline them clearly. The Racial HUAC does not include them or, I’d suggest, the vast majority of those out there in protest.

Several arguments today, in the McCarthyism in Blackface, do their best to minimize the damage done. 

There is the thread that claims that those who are publicly accused of racism who then are fired from long-held jobs are just fine. Losing a job isn’t the end of the world, it is argued. I’d argue you go back and stream “The Front,” “Trumbo,” or “Good Night and Good Luck” and tell yourself how fine these people have it.

There is the claim that, in these sorts of cultural shifts, there is always some collateral damage. The term “collateral damage” comes from the Viet Nam conflict as a way to dehumanize and minimize the killing of non-combatants (also a dehumanizing term meaning “innocent people”) and accidental destruction of non-military property. The idea of there being collateral damage in the current culture shift is nice and abstract unless you are the collateral being damaged.

The troubles with our current cultural push is in exactly the lack of specifics and false justifications. Mind you, the #BlackLivesMatter organization has very specific goals and outline them clearly. The Racial HUAC does not include them or, I’d suggest, the vast majority of those out there in protest. While these protests represent a tiny slice of the population (polls suggest that the serious majority of Americans trust the police force and have no interest whatsoever in abolishing it; they are more in tune with the idea of substantive reform) the effect of these marches are showing some measure of progressive gain.

The RHUAC is motivated to upend the power dynamic completely and their means is in a definitive lack of specifics.

Structural racism is both quantifiable and data-proven. Organizational bylaws, economic measures taken, the laws of the land. Corporate hiring practices, diversity initiatives, and funding of public schools. These are structural and we can fix these things.

Systemic racism means that everything in the system of society is racist by default. It is racism in the gaps much like God’s will is divinity in the gaps. Prior to the Enlightenment, when someone couldn’t explain why something happened or offer proof one way or another, it was boiled down to Divine Providence. The Will of God.

Today, when something cannot be explained in terms of racial disparity, it is boiled down to systemic racism. White people are racist so anything that demonstrates a different outcome from black people (and strangely absent from disparities between Latin and Asian people) is, by default, racist.

For example, a common stereotype is that while white people generally prefer mayonnaise, black people generally prefer mild sauce. No big deal. Maybe it indicates that whites are more bland in their condiment choices while black people like things a bit spicier. Under the Derrick Bell theory, this is due specifically to white supremacy. How? Who the fuck knows aside from any difference between whites and blacks is automatically racist.

OK. You didn’t read any of Bell’s work. Here’s a quick breakdown of a few central tenets of his worldview:

Critical Race Theory believes racism is present in every aspect of life, every relationship, and every interaction and therefore has its advocates look for it everywhere. He posits a theory called “interest convergence” which states that reforms in the supremicist system are only created for black people when they also benefit white people thus no reform instigated by whites is to be trusted.

According to Bell science, reason, and evidence are a “white” way of knowing and that storytelling and lived experience is a “black” alternative. Pointing out logical exceptions to that lived experience is a sure sign of systemic racism.

As I wrote earlier, it’s a rather brilliant narrative frame. The RHUAC doesn’t have to define any behavior as racist or not because everything is racist when white. Everything. 

“Are you now or have you ever been a racist?” 

“No, sir.”

“Have you ever attended a meeting with white people?”

“Sure —“

“Parties?”

“Parties...?”

“Yes. Meetings with mayonnaise. And white people.”

“...yeah...mayonnaise...?”

“Are you white?”

In the 1950s most Americans were easily manipulated by the fear of Communism. In schools, children learned to “duck and cover.” The Red Scare was pushed on national media and the blind terror of bucking the system and refusing to play along with the game of public accusations of subversion was too great. This was a threat to the American Way of Life, they were told. Commies could be your next door neighbor, they were told. And they believed.

Today we are faced with another manipulation that far too many right thinking people are buying — that “white” equals “racist” without regard to behavior. To be white is to be fully complicit which is both ludicrous and horrifying to consider. There is a cult mind at play with racial hucksters driving an unrelenting academic campaign to grab power through money and influence. No subpoenas necessary, no Congressional hearings.

I grew up watching the movies about McCarthy and his crusade. I’ve read the manifestos of the zealots behind the Red Scare. I’ve read the theories behind the White Scare. They’re too similar for me.