I often hear people like John McWhorter refuting people like Ibrim X Kendi by saying, “Yes racism is still a problem and it has been a problem. But it’s false to claim that things haven’t changed or at the same or worse than they were in the past. Maybe in 1950 a black man couldn’t get a fair trial and the police were openly hunting them and racism was universal. But that’s not true today, and it’s disengenuous to claim that it is. Maybe in 1950, but let’s stop pretending that it’s 1950.”

    Even in 1950 and in 1850 these things weren’t true in way that D’Angelo and Kendi say they are, with their monolithic, conspiratory rhetoric. They weren’t true in that way, as a universal, reductive, uniform reality, in 1650. They were certainly completely true about some situations and some people, and for others the situation was something else. Not what it is now, not perfect by any stretch, not even good, but it was a lot of other things other than the simplistic, universal racism these two authors espouse. 
  There was enormous complexity, both here in America between different groups, and abroad throughout the world. Even hundreds of years ago there were people who strove for universal brotherhood, and there were people who didn’t care if you were black or white so much as whether you were inside or outside their group, and there were others who took a refined, progressive, intellectual approach to race relations (who believed in slavery), and there were some people who thought it was every man for himself and might makes right, and there were those who took slavery for granted as a human universal, and there were those who didn’t like it but didn’t know what to do about it, and there were a hundred other perspectives.

    There were African tribes who made their living off of slavery and that had to be stopped by white people from trading flesh, and there were those who thought we had no right to interfere in the affairs of others, and there were black slave owners, and there were white slaves, and there were plenty of people both slave and enslaving who were neither black nor white.
    It was a very, very complicated world, as far back as you could wish to go. There wasn’t just some single conspiracy of white against black. History isn’t that simple. It took a lot of time, money, effort, and blood to get us to where we are today. And a lot of it was spent by white people, because it seemed to those specific people that it was the right thing to do. And as a result things are a lot better in many ways. 
     So as much as slavery is a fact, the reality is that it’s a bigger, more complex fact than we give it credit for. It is a human universal. And relations between the races being perfect and harmonious was never been something that was guaranteed, or even expected, by anyone at any point in history. Quite the opposite. The fact that we are where we are isn’t something we can only criticize and only take for granted and only attack. It’s not something we can casually endanger, assuming the natural state is for everything to be just fine, and that no effort has been put in, no price paid, to get us to where we are today. If we don’t understand that we are somewhere particular and got there by a particular process and don’t have some appreciation of what it is, we may not be able to maintain it. We may even destroy and hurt those we are trying to help.
    Life and history have never been as simple, nor judgements about them as cut and dry, as Kendi and DiAngelo would like to imagine them. It makes for a good story, especially if you’re trying to whip people up and sell books and gain political power. Reductionism and oppositionism are very well-worn tools for that use them. But it’s no way for a serious thinker who genuinely wants to understand and to make things better to behave. It’s the playbook of petty dictators, rabble rousers, and political opportunists, not saints, wise men, or heroes. But they certainly seem convinced that that’s what they are. 

    The deception is in convincing people that unless you take such attitudes, that you’re aren’t taking the problem seriously. That if you don’t approach things through the lens of reductive extremism and political antagonism, that you don’t really care about the problem. This is a common tactic, and one of the reasons why extremists so often manage to lay claim to the position of moral authority in a conflict. People who won’t take a side and buy in simply and absolutely for the cause are seen as wishy washy, or even traitors. People who genuinely care and who have excellent ideas that differ from the rabble rousers and populists often get sidelined. It’s harder to market a complex and nuanced view of the world, and easy to sell ideologies that play to our emotional and tribal instincts. 

    I’ve seen people who have been branded race traitors shed tears over the plight of their people, seen them struggle and suffer indignities and slander at the hands of the very people they wish to help. But they’re willing to pay that price because they do genuinely care so much. As for those who win money and influence and praise for encouraging balkanization and reductive ideologies, I’m not really sure how much they care. But since I cannot know their hearts I will have to assume good intentions and misunderstanding on their part rather than ill intent and capture by the darker forces of their ego. Even being on the right side of an issue isn’t any protection against that risk, and it’s something even the best of us should fear (and I hardly count myself among that group).