Melissa Harris-Perry and Things Unsaid

Confession: I am one of those who likes words and who often uses writing to sort through ideas, to reconcile internal dilemmas, to clarify concepts within my professional realm, to share affecting tales, to attempt comfort to friends in sorrow or crisis, to record and document, and to exorcise the deeply-felt angst that American life—especially in the political and civic realm—currently generates in me. The outlets for those swirling ideas range from professional articles, to letters and emails and texts to friends, to this very blog.

As a Winston-Salem fan and downtown dweller of almost two decades, I am an avid reader of discussion board, the forum in the Winston-Salem Skyscrapers and Tallest Buildings blog. [EDITOR's NOTE: that site is no longer functioning.] Unlike what seems to characterize many of these city discussion sites, this one stays incredibly civil and even-keeled. Every wild once in a while, we might endure a troll’s incursion and his meager attempts to rile board members up…but overall it is a very thorough, up-to-date, forward-looking, and often news-breaking site for info and details about current and coming projects, businesses, culture, industry, and so on.

All that comfortable good will, esprit de corps, and collective cheerleading makes my daily visits to the forum a happy necessity. I get excited along with everyone else when we get previews of projects and see renderings before the newspapers publish them, and we seem to always know first when restaurants are opening . . . or closing. For the most part, we don’t know each other and it is the rare forum member whose handle is actually his or her name. I am on there as RoedigerHouse, predictably!

I occasionally comment, and if I see something interesting will post about it, and I try regularly to post photos of things relevant to any discussion thread, like the construction of an apartment community nearby.

Modern American life should have prepared me to be unsurprised when an active and otherwise pleasant forum member started a thread about Melissa Harris-Perry, the former MSNBC host, author, journalist, and professor who has come to Wake Forest University as the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair Professor of Politics and International Affairs. It was an altogether ugly thread, which is no longer accessible to read.

But I’ll highlight how Professor Harris-Perry was described on that otherwise civil and civic-minded forum:

• overly self-absorbed
• enthralled with the sound of her own voice
• victimhood
• a terror to work with
• nut job
• ringing narcissist
• bonkers
• off her rocker
• broken record
• self-satisfied
• one-dimensional
• screaming
• does she get along with her Washington Park neighbors?
• WFU made a huge mistake

Like many comfortable white men, I kept hoping someone would push back or raise an objection or that the original poster would have better second thoughts. Social media fights are pretty far down my list of to-dos and the community is otherwise so amazingly civil (but not without occasional short-lived dustups). Time passed, discussion in that thread died out, and the comfort and ease of being white allowed me to move forward with my life without calling out the racism that riddled that thread. Then the guy came back with more and I had too many thoughts but took far too few actions. I did pose the following question to the board: “I find myself thinking it might not be a bad idea to consider the wisdom and the implications of maintaining a thread that appears to be dedicated to demonizing an African-American woman in our community.”

His response said something about moving, but not deleting, the thread to “assuage feelings.”

Here are the things I should have said.

In the spirit of Truth in Advertising, you should retitle your forum thread: “I Hate Black Women Who Talk Too Much about Race…Amirite?”

I’m happy to continue the conversation in the DMs/PMs, or over email or via Zoom or over a cup of coffee. We exhibit such dedication to the civility of our dialogues here, so unique and rare in social media, that this very uncivil thread sticks out like a sore thumb. Even if silence is not always approval—sometimes the best thing is to give the arsonist’s handiwork no additional oxygen—I believe I erred in not speaking up when this thread first appeared.

Alas, if keeping this a public discussion is preferred, I’ll predict there will be no winners and it will ultimately cost us both.

It is entirely possible that it is completely coincidental that it is an African-American woman who has been targeted with such passionate and personal disdain. Is coincidence the only reasonable possibility? To the original poster that may seem irrelevant, but it is not insignificant, and whether something is merely a coincidence or not isn’t bound by our beliefs about it. One of the pesky features of “coincidences” is that sometimes they’re not. (Carl Jung has some thoughts about that, but I’m not smart enough to discuss them at length.)

I’m sure that more grievous offenses that were more impactful to our city have been committed by others but without a corresponding discussion thread designed to memorialize the denigration. In the City Discussion category, only three other people have been the named topics of discussion threads, and it was because they died. I missed the part where she did something significant that was either beneficial to or detrimental to the City, to merit this focus in the City Discussion.

Dr. Harris-Perry’s unforgivable offense is apparently found in saying provocative things to very small audiences, which also inexplicably includes the original (and resurgent) poster here. It just seems odd that it is the worst of all possible things and makes her more worthy of pointed and highly personal critiques and insults, above and beyond anyone else…and seemingly more egregious than anything done or said by any other person, because no one else has been bestowed with quite so vicious an attack thread on WSTB. What comes through clearly is how much some people hate it when a Black woman talks too much about race.

There is not a day that goes by that Melissa Harris-Perry, in the course of daily living, is not reminded in ways large and small that she is a person of color, because that’s the society we have thus far made. I’m not surprised it is therefore always on her mind. And while it might seem tiresome to the vast population of people who don’t have to think about it every day, I can’t muster up the same shock that she sees it where maybe the rest of us do not. To me, those who live in the face of disparities of race are more credible witnesses than those who only think about it because they had to endure the momentary indignity of hearing about it. Those who get extra angry that some people see racism where it isn’t are themselves quite good at not seeing racism where it is.

Throughout the discussion thread, the writer implies that it was Professor Harris-Perry’s notoriety and not her credentials (Wake Forest University alum, PhD from Duke University, faculty member at Princeton and Chicago) that landed her in her “posh” role—once more, the not-so-subtle trope that “They only gave her that job because…” It’s an utterly unsubtle affirmative action dig, low-hanging fruit on the tempting tree of this pervasive stain of casual racism.

I’ve not studied the vast library of all her writing and speeches and commentaries, but I’d wager that she has been right about the pernicious influence of racism many more times than she has been wrong. The poster reserves a particular vitriol, with an unseemly dose of glee, for any singular instance where she might be mistaken. It is oh-so-enticing to disregard the weight of her valid observations if we can sink her for an occasional missed mark, especially if we layer it with smears and dismissals because her personality is deemed not to be to your tastes. Just because “It’s not always about race” does not mean it’s never about race. Unwavering confidence that it’s not always about race means you will never see when it is. You believe you’re merely saying she’s not your kind of commentator; what shines through is she’s just not your kind.

Whether this is or is not a “racial” thing, initiating and maintaining a line of personal attack is of dubious value anyway. It’s interesting that the moment in which this thread was birthed, when apparently it did not appear taboo, also happened to “coincide” with a target who was a woman of color. For those of us who recognize this is not a coincidence, it indicates that her race it the most important thing about her to you, but you do not think it should be the most important thing to her. It highlights the sad reality that way too often white people can be way too exhausting.

“Inadvertent” racism persists because the people who engage in it work really hard to never entertain whether they *might* be engaging in it. You can argue about how it should be perceived, but I can tell you pretty plainly how it’s received, at least by me. If you still insist it’s not racist, I’ll begin to believe it’s not inadvertent.

But let’s give credit where credit is due: at least you’ve offered us a master class in casual racism, with the especially beneficial reminder that it has nothing to do with intent or motivation or whether you are generally a good person or that some of your best friends are Black. There is reassuring comfort to be found in convincing yourself it’s her fault you hate her, and not yours.