2017…

Julie & Jemma, Brian & Casey, Philip & Lauren, Mom & Dad, family & friends, Roundhouse & Squarehouse, Snow Day, Jemma Lemma DingDong, Noto, IIA fundraiser, Keybank, Harry C & Playground, Women’s Network, city council, Social Code, Ben Sasse and JD Vance, teaching through game playing, composting piles and tree herding, Charlottesville, Goodbye Annie, Hello Boomer, Fire & Fury & crotch grabbing & police shootings, Colin respectfully kneels, Puerto Rico ignored, who lost the 2016 election, a shared commitment to aggressively not listen to competing perspectives, Meet John Doe rains windfall on self and top 1% buddies, anti-intellectualism takes center stage white house, thin-skinned juvenocracy masquerading as governance (the problem with disruption alone as an approach to leadership)…

Thankful. Yes, there is a high risk that our petulant president will destroy the planet in a nuclear war started only to boost his poll numbers...but I remain thankful to share my life with Jules and the gang, to teach, to work with amazing colleagues, to live in Akron and Charlestown. Very thankful.

 "When it seems like people are voting against their interests, I have probably failed to understand their interests." This is the quote this year that challenged me most to rethink my own approach to the conflicts we face today (and, just to be clear, JD Vance’s book is garbage and he is a phony.)

Many threads came together this year to push me to think more deeply about race and racial conflict. As we watched counterprotesters in Charlottesville and yet were repulsed by the president’s suggestion that both sides were to blame; as we watched more police shootings and were repulsed by the president’s suggestion that respectfully kneeling in protest was somehow disrespectful to veterans; as we watched white supremacists take positions as top presidential advisers and were repulsed by the president’s suggestion that removing monuments to our nation’s history of racism was itself racist …it became more important, for me at least, to again sort out the meaning of racism.

“Racism is about the abuse of power and privilege. If your race denies you power and privilege, then you can’t be racist.”

This definition is persuasive to me. And important. It is about power & resources, institutions, processes, and traditions.

At the same time, one of the many reasons these conflicts become gnarly is that I do not get to decide what is important. One side does not get to decide the definition of the phenomena in question—this is always part of the conflict itself, usually the most important part.

So, persuasive to me is not enough. Persuasive to my group or sect or party—not enough.

To work toward resolution or a better understanding requires us to try to achieve agreements (including on the definition of key terms). These cannot be imposed at the start to stack the deck to favor our own side, but instead are creative & collaborative efforts to dialogue in inclusive ways that account for the concerns and experiences of as many parties as possible.

What if we accept these two dictionary definitions as an approximate statement of what someone mobilizing a non-academic understanding of racism might be thinking?

“Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.”

“The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.”

These share the idea that racism is an antagonism based on race (that is, active hostility based on race). Before we dismiss out of hand the use of dictionary definitions for such a loaded concept, consider this: anyone who might see racism operating in reverse, as wrong-headed as we might think they are, might be observing an antagonism based on race.

For me, this changes our question and reframes our challenge.

When someone brings a lens that mobilizes these more ordinary language understandings of racism we need to recognize that this has its own internal logic. It makes sense to them and simply asserting that it is incorrect is unlikely to persuade them or improve the situation.

This is where we need to be able to translate on the fly.

This is where, if we believe it is about power, that we need to use our alternative understanding to demonstrate that it helps us see more clearly and find better solutions to real problems—not to simple assert our correctness to silence their incorrectness.

We have internalized a powerful argument that has resulted in us concluding that racism, dictionary notwithstanding, is about power imbalances and privileges allocated on the basis of race.

From this perspective, the ordinary language understanding of antagonism based on race is a rudimentary starting point. But it is a real-world starting point and where we need to start if we want to persuade.

For me, this is one instance of a larger point from 2017: we all need to do a better job of listening to others, particularly those who see and experience the world differently than we do, and to then use this listening to find ways (together) to think & talk about the challenges we face in ways that do not silence or dismiss our opposition by fiat—but instead, name the challenges in ways that make achieving agreements, no matter how small, more likely.

Thankful for family & friends in 2017 and hopeful that 2018 will see more listening, empathy, reaching out, humility and appreciation.