I can’t muster up any real feeling over this story that’s been making the rounds among the usual suspects; outrage is for the television and radio bobbleheads, and besides, this story and its outcome is so completely normal now that the attempts to conjure up indignance are forced and artificial. “They pack the nine/they fire it at primetime” indeed. This is the world we live in and have inhabited for years, so to pretend that this is a fresh affront to dignity strikes me as disingenuous at best.
What happened? A student at Smith College, Oumou Kanoute, decided to have lunch in a dormitory closed for the summer. A janitor and campus security officer asked her what she was doing there. The janitor and campus security officer were white; the student, black. Hysteria ensued. The now-familiar pattern repeated: Individual takes to social media and sends up the outrage Bat-sign; the horde descends; and the individuals at the mercy of the mob grovel, offer up the pablum of our hybrid New Age/corporate jargon (“honoring experience”/”impactful”) we use to signal acquiescence.
The ACLU got involved, claiming the student had been profiled for “eating while black”. The president of Smith college bent the knee, writing that “This painful incident reminds us of the ongoing legacy of racism and bias in which people of color are targeted while simply going about the business of their ordinary lives”. Further:
Smith College officials emphasized “reconciliation and healing” after the incident. In the months to come they announced a raft of anti-bias training for all staff, a revamped and more sensitive campus police force and the creation of dormitories — as demanded by Kanoute and her ACLU lawyer — set aside for Black students and other students of color.
Smith College hired a law firm to investigate (side note: as a lawyer, I marvel at my colleagues’ ability to ooze into any field of inquiry. What a great racket!)
The law firm found “no persuasive evidence of bias.” Indeed:
Kanoute was determined to have eaten in a deserted dorm that had been closed for the summer; the janitor had been encouraged to notify security if he saw unauthorized people there. The officer, like all campus police, was unarmed.
Seems like a mistake, then, right? Maybe let bygones by bygones, shake, call it good, etc.?
That’s absurd. There are no mistakes anymore; only moral error.
Let’s look at the New York Times’ framing of the incident:
The story highlights the tensions between a student’s deeply felt sense of personal truth and facts that are at odds with it.
So, we have the student’s subjective belief-the “deeply felt sense of personal truth”-that she had been discriminated against because she was black, and the facts “at odds” with that belief—the investigation that concluded there was “no persuasive evidence of bias”.
We used to conclude that a subjective belief not supported by evidence was illegitimate (For example, QAnon weirdos’ belief that our government is controlled by a ring of Satanic pedophiles) or, in the example of religion, defined loosely as “any belief in a Sky Daddy/Mommy that created the universe and who’s existence provides the basis for proscribed behavior”, cordoned off from civic life, as shown by our doctrine of the separation of church and state. You could believe whatever you wanted, but your beliefs, no matter how personal or powerfully felt, were not sufficient grounds to alter the conduct of others. Jesus might frown on Penthouse, but by golly Mr. Flynt could keep on publishing his smut rag to satisfy the legions of damp-browed masturbators worldwide.
This bifurcation of individual belief and the conduct of others no longer holds in our post-truth era. Certain deeply felt personal truths need no objectively available evidence to form the basis for others to change their conduct. These personal truths to which we must now bend the knee revolve around structural racism, the now-familiar belief that the institutions of American life are corrupted to the core by bias. Racism, our new dark matter of the universe, is so plainly obvious that its allegations require no facts to support it. Sure, there can be a “tension” between someone’s personal belief and the facts, but we dare not say that the facts contradict these beliefs. To do so runs the risk of being labeled a “reactionary”; to dismiss Kanoute’s belief means that at best, you lack “empathy”; if you put up much more of a fuss you’ll be placed right next to Governor Wallace and the rest of the BADWHITES.
Now, I believe Kanoute believed that she had been questioned about her presence in the closed dormitory because she is black. It must really suck to feel that way. But, does that feeling provide sufficient grounds for the president of a private liberal arts institution to apologize, and institute a series of changes at the college? Remember, Smith “announced a raft of anti-bias training for all staff, a revamped and more sensitive campus police force and the creation of dormitories…set aside for Black students and other students of color.”
To deal with the next objection: “So What?”, you might say, “who gives a shit? The incident led to a conversation at the school about race, the staff had to take a few classes they got paid to attend, and students of color got the additional option to live among other students of color. Kindly fuck off back to your miserable rathole, you racist.”
For the purposes of argument, I’ll concede that the action they took and the changes Smith College made were proper. So what’s the problem?
If a passionately held belief need no verifiable component to form the basis for changing the conduct of others, then we’ve abandoned one of our primary tools of consensus-making, and we allow power to operate unfettered. If you agree with the results it’s no issue at all, but it’s easy to imagine a situation where you might not agree with the results—so you may want to hesitate before you endorse outcomes consistent with your own beliefs.
I’m afraid of people like Oumou Kanoute. Here’s a kid, an individual with as yet to be fully formed brain, a still-developing prefrontal cortex, who got to take a gigantic hit off the crack pipe of sheer power. One day, she was just another student, having a bologna sandwich; the next, she had brought her entire world to its knees. Can you imagine? The sheer rage boner, the clitoral swelling, that would result from having the President of the college groveling at your feet, the oceanic flood of dopamine soaking your skull as the retweets soared into the tens of thousands, the pure freebase of righteous anger and external approval chiming away on your cell, the rush of belonging, of being part of the struggle and changing the system, the pure, unmediated, assfucking of the Man? Circuits get fried when you put too much voltage through them; without a fusible link they catch on fire. Reason is a fusible link, but one we no longer concern ourselves with when it comes to race.
Oumou’s in the workplace, and thousands of others like her, neurologically developing semi-adults with fried circuits. Fuck. Don’t make eye contact, and definitely don’t ask any questions.