Banning Discomfort: Sadness Is Part of Being Human

I think that sadness is a part of becoming aware of the world around you. Being human is a problem. Being human has always been a problem. Being human will always be a problem. There is not an era of humanity that I can point you to that I can tell you that was less sad than this. What you face is what generations and generations and generations of people before you faced, and often it was actually quite worse. There is no not-sad point where you can choose to exist in human history. Part of maturing is learning to recognize that this is not unique to you. Sadness is natural, sadness is part of being human, sadness is part of being aware.

 ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates (see below)

There has been an overwhelming amount of news lately about efforts to do away with discomfort. Efforts large and small, national, state, and local. In elections, by elected officials, by protestors. Community efforts. Schools and school boards. Libraries. People are organizing efforts to do away with, however they can, sources and ideas that make them uncomfortable. We are seeing a resurgence of book banning. Teachers are feeling more policed than ever. Ideas are on trial.

I use the word "discomfort" very deliberately. In some instances, that is literally what is being said. Any teaching about the history of race, systemic racism, interracial dynamics, and similar has been broadly mislabeled "Critical Race Theory," and many policies and laws have been created banning the teaching of "CRT." How do these efforts define "CRT?" Anything that makes white people uncomfortable for being white. Literally. That's what they say. They are trying to legislate away the existence of discomfort.

Accompanying those efforts are others attempting to remove books from all kinds of settings for all kinds of reasons.

As I say, there is simply too much to keep up with. Some may try, but I don't, other than skimming headlines and my feed and having a general awareness of the constant news. So I haven't delved into it enough to articulate a response. Though I did share the American Library Association's wonderful Freedom to Read Statement last summer.

In the same way, I haven't taken a look at too many of the outraged responses to these efforts, even though they express what I feel. One did catch my attention, though, and it is excellent. From the New York Times, by Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen. Some excerpts: 

My Young Mind Was Disturbed by a Book. It Changed My Life.

Books can indeed be dangerous. Until “Close Quarters,” I believed stories had the power to save me. That novel taught me that stories also had the power to destroy me. I was driven to become a writer because of the complex power of stories. They are not inert tools of pedagogy. They are mind-changing, world-changing.

But those who seek to ban books are wrong no matter how dangerous books can be. Books are inseparable from ideas, and this is really what is at stake: the struggle over what a child, a reader and a society are allowed to think, to know and to question. A book can open doors and show the possibility of new experiences, even new identities and futures. . . . 

Here’s the thing: If we oppose banning some books, we should oppose banning any book. If our society isn’t strong enough to withstand the weight of difficult or challenging — and even hateful or problematic — ideas, then something must be fixed in our society. Banning books is a shortcut that sends us to the wrong destination. . . . 

Those who ban books seem to want to circumscribe empathy, reserving it for a limited circle closer to the kind of people they perceive themselves to be. Against this narrowing of empathy, I believe in the possibility and necessity of expanding empathy — and the essential role that books such as “New Kid” play in that. If it’s possible to hate and fear those we have never met, then it’s possible to love those we have never met. Both options, hate and love, have political consequences, which is why some seek to expand our access to books and others to limit them. . . . 

Would it be better that he not see these images, or is it better that he does?

I err on the side of the latter and try to model what I think our libraries and schools should be doing. I make sure he has access to many other stories of the peoples that Hergé misrepresented, and I offer context with our discussions. These are not always easy conversations. And perhaps that’s the real reason some people want to ban books that raise complicated issues: They implicate and discomfort the adults, not the children. By banning books, we also ban difficult dialogues and disagreements, which children are perfectly capable of having and which are crucial to a democracy. I have told him that he was born in the United States because of a complicated history of French colonialism and American warfare that brought his grandparents and parents to this country. Perhaps we will eventually have less war, less racism, less exploitation if our children can learn how to talk about these things. . . . 

Books should not be consumed as good for us, like the spinach and cabbage my son pushes to the side of his plate. “I like reading short stories,” a reader once said to me. “They’re like potato chips. I can’t stop with one.” That’s the attitude to have. I want readers to crave books as if they were a delicious, unhealthy treat, like the chili-lime chips my son gets after he eats his carrots and cucumbers. . . . 

So it was with somewhat mixed feelings that I learned some American high school teachers assign “The Sympathizer” as required reading in their classes. For the most part, I’m delighted. But then I worry: I don’t want to be anyone’s homework. I don’t want my book to be broccoli.

To pick out some briefer bits:

• Books are inseparable from ideas, and this is really what is at stake: the struggle over what a child, a reader and a society are allowed to think, to know and to question.

• Those who ban books seem to want to circumscribe empathy, reserving it for a limited circle closer to the kind of people they perceive themselves to be.

• And perhaps that’s the real reason some people want to ban books that raise complicated issues: They implicate and discomfort the adults, not the children. By banning books, we also ban difficult dialogues and disagreements, which children are perfectly capable of having and which are crucial to a democracy.

• I want readers to crave books as if they were a delicious, unhealthy treat, like the chili-lime chips my son gets after he eats his carrots and cucumbers.

To get even more concise, grabbing just the core thought:

Perhaps that’s the real reason some people want to ban books that raise complicated issues: They implicate and discomfort the adults, not the children.

As award-winning teen author Laurie Halse Anderson has said, Censorship has nothing to do with protecting children. It has to do with protecting adults who don't want to have difficult conversations with those children.

(Found in my feed, from somewhere in memeland . . . )

They want to do away with discomfort.

I did recently respond once on Facebook. It seems to me these efforts are an amplified confirmation of Robin DiAngelo's concept of White Fragility. White people don't want to even consider the idea of race or racism because it makes them uncomfortable, and they're too fragile to deal with those difficult feelings. So I reshared what I led with in my post about her book, You Are Racist.

In response to yet another headline about yet another silly kerfuffle,* instead of a rant I simply recommended this short educational video to help people find out how they can be more white-sensitive:

White Fragility In The Workplace

Raising racial awareness of white discomfort with racial awareness.

Workplace discrimination is a very serious issue. We have to be sensitive to our employees' different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. And just as it's important to be sensitive to our Black, Arab, and other non-white co-workers, it's also equally important to be sensitive to our white co-workers' sensitivity to that sensitivity.

A simple system to help you foster a non-hostile work environment for your white employees and co-workers:

Stop

Ignore

Listen

Empathize

Never

Complain

Eat

The SILENCE System

*The Kerfuffle:

A Kansas principal shared a video about speaking up against racism. He was ordered to apologize.

Members of the Derby High girls basketball team were shown the same video in response to race-based comments made toward some team members on social media late last year.

Hamblin shared the video with staff members in January so they would be aware of what the students had seen, he explained in the email.

A teacher who attended the meeting told a Derby school board member the video was offensive and created a hostile work environment. The board member then directed Hamblin to apologize for showing it.

This is so very typical of what has been happening lately.

One of the best responses I know to this dynamic comes from Ta-Nehisi Coates, and I heard it live, in person. An initiative I'm part of hosted a conversation for teens between Coates and Jacqueline Woodson, facilitated by Tanner Colby. It comes near the end of this video at around the 1:12 mark. This is his full response to a question asked by one of the students in the audience: "What would you tell us students who have a drive for social justice, but feel depressed by the state of our country's racial relations?"

I think that feeling--that sadness--is a part of becoming aware of the world around you. I think all of us can identify points when we really begin to comprehend how deep it really was. You never fully comprehend, but when we first got our first inkling--it is sad. It is sad to be brought up and to have a worldview broadcast to you that the world is one way and then to realize that it is not.

I would say this--and I hope this is encouraging even though it might not sound like it is at first--being human is a problem. Being human has always been a problem. Being human will always be a problem. There is not an era of humanity that I can point you to that I can tell you that was less sad than this. What you face is what generations and generations and generations of people before you faced, and often it was actually quite worse.

I love European history, and I think about the Black Death, for instance, when one-third Europe just died of the plague. I think about the 30 years war where you had people just sort of maraudering across Germany just killing innocent people at will. I think about the Civil War here in this country where you had some seven, eight hundred thousand people just died. I mean, we would go crazy if 800,000 people die within a four-year period as a result of a war in this country. I think about World War II, where folks were dropping atomic bombs on major cities. I think about Vietnam. My dad went off to the Vietnam War worshipping John Wayne, thinking he was going to serve his country, only to become conscious and realize that in fact he was a mercenary sent to kill other people of color.

It's always a problem. So there is no not-a-problem point. There is no not-sad point where you can choose to exist in human history. Part of maturing--and I'm not asking you to be at this place right now because I think this is a process that young people go through--but I think you need to recognize that this is not unique to you. They say every generation of young people thinks they invented sex and I think the same thing could be said of this broad sort of sadness too. This is part of it. This is part of being conscious, this is part of being aware, being "woke" as you guys now say (I can't use that term in earnest; I'm a little too old to say that). But this is part of it. This is actually part of it. Being sad, feeling the full range of human emotions that you feel, it is part of it.

So if you have moments in your life where you feel like you're being overwhelmed with sadness, one of the things I do as a Black person is I think about my ancestors. I think about people being packed in ships and brought over here. I think about people being in the tobacco fields of Virginia. And, if they had to look back, and look at their parents and their grandparents their great-grandparents and all they would see is slaves, and they would look forward towards their children and their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren and all they would see is slaves. Some 250 years of enslavement in this country. A longer period of enslavement in this country than actually of freedom for Black people. And then one has to ask oneself, when considering that, what right does one have to be sad? What right do I really have to indulge in my sadness?

They say I'm pessimistic, but I'm telling you that actually when you can get the history of it, I think it actually can be quite inspiring. Sadness is natural, sadness is part of being human, sadness is part of being aware, but it's important not to become paralyzed by it.

This is Coates' encouragement to those working to dismantle racism, yet I think it speaks just as eloquently to white people who don't want to face the idea of racism.

First, it's not about you. Everyone suffers, including you, but your suffering has not been exacerbated by this particular dynamic.

Second, refusing to deal with sadness and discomfort is a sign of immaturity.

It's time for white people to grow up.