As parents, we’ve all experienced that moment when our child says something utterly mortifying in public. (And, if we are blessed/cursed with perfect recall, we can even remember way back to when we ourselves were the mortifying ones.) Oftentimes these cringe-worthy moments come because of an unexpected encounter with an individual who is facing some sort of a challenge or difference: the woman in a wheelchair, the man with a severe burn, the person who dresses in a way we’ve never seen before. And the mortification comes not from the curious questions we expect (because that’s just ignorance, and ignorance can be quickly remedied with knowledge), but rather from the whining questions we never saw coming. Questions like: “Why can’t I have a chair with wheels?” and “When are you gonna get me a dog like that?” Those kinds of public questions are the truly mortifying ones, because it makes our child (and us, as the parent), seem not just ignorant, but insensitive. And insensitivity is a much harder fix than ignorance.
If you don’t believe me, just look at the latest news, where it seems like an entire swath of the white male population looked at current events and then proceeded to whine to themselves, “But what about meeee?”
The most obvious, of course, is the infamous “Smirk Seen ‘Round the World.” The Smirk© happened when three different groups of protesters came together in a sort of dis-harmonic convergence on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, something that will probably happen again and again in the coming years since there is now so much to protest that groups literally have to take a number. The question of how smirky the Smirk© in question actually was is debatable, but the question of what set the entire process in motion is not, because the group that started it all (by taunting both of the other two groups with slurs and insults) has been occupying that corner in DC for so long that locals regard them as just another form of (really annoying) street theater. For the residents of DC, getting upset at the comments made by the Black Hebrew Israelites would be the same as going to a showing of “Rocky Horror” and getting upset because you got rice in your popcorn: it’s all part of the show.
The smirkers, of course, couldn’t have known this: they didn’t have the life experience. Their chaperones, however, should have been worldly enough to figure it all out, but that’s a topic for another time (probably after I, myself, have finished chaperoning school trips.) Then again, their chaperones (and parents) should have also figured out that being caught in the crossfire between two historically oppressed groups was not the best time to play the “reverse racism” card, despite what their PR firm might have told them.
But what do I know? Clearly it was a successful tactic with their base, a group that was still in the throes of using a razor ad to complain about something they called “toxic femininity” when the whole Smirk© went down. (Something that, while it sounds like the cultural counterpart to “toxic masculinity,” is actually just another symptom of internal misogyny.)
Look, I understand that the Covington boys suffered personal attacks. That makes them the victims of a bunch of assholes, not the victims of racism. Racism isn’t a personal attack; racism is the systemic practice of social and political institutions whose sole intent is keeping one group in a position of power. In the same way the Gillette ad was not attacking masculinity, but, rather, toxic masculinity, which, again, is a hegemonic systemic practice that legitimatizes men’s dominance over women in society.
Neither is personal (although being on the receiving end of either one can cause a great deal of personal pain). And, as someone who is opposed to both, while I freely admit to feeling individual disgust for other individuals who represent these systems, my true goal will always be to dismantle the systems, and not the individuals.
But these aren’t discussions you can have with someone who feels jealousy when they see someone parking their van in the handicapped spot, or responds to an encounter with a historically oppressed group by asking, “But what about my feelings?” In other words, these are discussions you can only have with people who are adults, or who are trying to become ones. Not with people who still see the world through the eyes of an ignorant, insensitive child.
So, for now, the Covington boys get a pass, even though the “aw, youth” argument is not one that their supporters have ever offered or allowed for other young people of color. But as for everyone else out there complaining about “reverse racism” and “toxic femininity”?
Grow up, already.