The Counterpublic Papers vol. 2 no. 24

February 20, 2017

So just last week, after four years of White Zinfandel and Sprite, about 15 years of Boones Farm before that, and another ten plus years of Riesling, I’ve finally gotten to the point where I want a Malbec. 

I start off this week’s newsletter with this not so interesting tidbit because I wrote the first draft while drinking Dunkin Donuts Blueberry Muffin Coffee. I figure in another ten years or so I’ll migrate to real coffee, but, just saying.

….

Last week I gave a talk at Dickinson College entitled “Trump, Race, and the Slow Death of Democracy” I didn’t actually get around to the “death of American democracy” part (which might not really be all that slow) because telling people about the neoliberal turn, how it plays out in increased inequality, responsibility, anxiety, and debt, and how the turn itself becomes possible because of racial politics ended up taking about 45 minutes or so. But it was a good conversation. 

Two things stood out.

The first was heightened security. The chief of police was there in plainclothes and walked us through security before the event and people had to go through a metal detector as they entered the auditorium.

I’d given a talk at Dickinson several years ago, in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s death. In the same auditorium. No problems. But given where Dickinson is located—about a half hour from Harrisburg in a county that voted for Trump—and what it is (a liberal arts college), some were concerned that the Clarke Forum event might not only bring people from the town but that they’d be belligerent. 

Which is all good. I can deal with belligerent. (I am belligerent.) But it kind of ironic. I grew up going through metal detectors at basketball games, at parties, and other high school related events in and around Detroit during the eighties. I don’t think I’d ever have imagined having to go through metal detectors at a liberal arts college in the country, much less going through one for one of my events. 

(As an aside this drove home how complicated the police issue really is. Although I’d like to think I could’ve handled myself, you think I wasn’t happy to see the chief there on my behalf??)

This brings me to the second thing. 

Dickinson isn’t far enough away to fly. And not really close enough to a major city to take a train. So they send a driver to come pick me up.

I hoped it would be the same driver who picked me up years ago. 

It was.   

The first time I’d given a talk at Dickinson College it was the year Trayvon Martin was killed, in fact I gave a talk about Martin’s death. I don’t remember talking to the driver on the way up but I picked up a conversation with him coming back to Baltimore. Turns out he was a retired police officer, and conservative. Single father (his second wife passed away). Four kids (all girls). Retired from the force because he’d become less and less able to professionally deal with adults accused of child abuse. I wanted to get a sense of what someone like Bill thought about what happened to Martin, and about police and race in general. The hour plus drive back to Baltimore flew. We talked about police, about police brutality, about race, about black boys. I don’t get a chance to interact directly with folks like him, and he probably doesn’t get a chance to interact directly with folks like me. I enjoyed talking to him so much that I kept intending to reach out to his employer. 

When he knocked on my door and I answered I recognized him almost immediately. (It took him a second because I’ve got a lot more gray.) 

We ended up talking about Trump (he voted for him), Clinton, Obama’s transcript, the media, Trump’s businesses, policing, Reagan’s career after the presidency, killings of police, until I looked up and we were on campus. And then on the way back we talked about Chicago, the murder rate, drugs, black parents, Elon Musk, Sanders’ education plan, $500 toilet seats (folks born before 1975 or so probably get this reference), immigration, the Muslim ban, the Koran, Dylan Roof. 

And “voter fraud”. 

As we talked about police killings I was able to pull up the figures, and show him that the number of police killings (around 45 in 2015) weren’t that high, even though we spent a lot of attention on it. Having this conversation enabled me to get him to understand that however many “illegal votes” there were, there weren’t enough to really justify all the resources we’d spend on on “keeping votes honest”. 

However, he also understood pretty clearly that if we increased the number of voters to include undocumented workers for example, the Republicans would never win an election.  Which meant it was in his interest (as he understood it) to withhold the franchise from as many as possible. 

“You know what?” he said to me as I finally got out of the car, “I told my daughter about you. I told her he almost turned me liberal.”

It’s not everybody’s job to go into the hinterlands to have open conversations. And I don’t think conversations are the thing. But in our conversation the driver made a whole lot of equivalencies that weren’t really equivalent. He thought for example that Obama not turning in his college transcripts was the same as Trump not turning in his taxes. He also thought that Obama might have been born outside of the United States. However, he also understood how “seed planting” functioned…how you could plant a seed of doubt into someone ideologically predisposed (a la Inception) that wouldn’t leave even in the presence of disconfirming information. I think there’s a lot of room for grassroots civic literacy work. There’s still going to be a residual that bringing people together won’t quite solve. If it’s done well though, I think that residual can be….for lack of a better word, productive. 

The question is how productive? 

I don’t know the answer. 

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