(The Modern Dodge)
Twice this year I’ve heard that phrase directed to me. It came from two different people in two widely separated forums. Both times they were offered when I called out someone for an indefensible and disturbing statement they had made.
I’ll get to the problem in a bit, but first I’ll briefly explain the interactions.
The first was in late winter, February or March, I believe. It took place while playing team trivia at a local pub. A man I’ve known for years (I’ll call him Jim as an alias), and with whom I had previously been a teammate, approached me after one night’s game was over and brought up Alex Haley, the author or Roots.
Let’s be clear, none of the night’s trivia questions or answers had anything to do with Alex Haley, or with Roots the book or Roots the TV miniseries, and there was never a mention of slavery or race relations at all. Oh, and Alex Haley died more than three decades ago. It seemed clear that Jim brought the topic with him to the pub that night.
Jim and I got along well enough, even having rode together to a regional trivia tournament six or seven years before. He is an odd man, perhaps more odd from his life circumstances. He was the last or only child of a mother who lived to be very old, and with whom he lived as a bachelor all that time. She had died a couple of years before, leaving him the house. During those years she guilt-tripped him into staying with her, and keeping her company much of the time. It was impossible for him to form any romantic relationships for the attention his mother demanded, and to which he subjected himself. I sympathized with him, as I was the last of a large litter myself, and knew all too well the nature of life around a clinging mother not ready to have no children at home. I joined the Navy to get away from that.
That night Jim launched into what can only be described as a screed about how Alex Haley had lied about his personal history, and that none of the Roots story was real. (This is not really true, Haley admitted to taking someone else’s story and claiming it as his own. The story wasn’t invented from whole cloth).
To Jim this meant that none of the Roots miniseries was true, and that the entire nation had been misled about slavery because of the popularity of the book and TV shows. And, he further added, none of the whippings and bad treatment were true either. And that the country had been manipulated by “the Jews” in order to make white people hate themselves.
I called him out on it, and told that this was nonsense, and that our understanding of history is built on far more than a popular TV miniseries, which along with the book, accurately reflected both many individual circumstances, as well as the entire institution of slavery. And I made it clear that I understood the white supremacist background behind this gaslighting about slavery, and that it was born from the “Lost Cause” myth that had been invented in the late nineteenth century, and which led to the Jim Crow era. And that such talk had gained new momentum in light of the racist and fascist populism that has risen since Trump came to power. (Even Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been floating and demanding that his state’s high school curriculum include the skills the enslaved benefited from learning. Yes, the claim is that slavery was like an apprenticeship).
I told him to never bring it up again to me, and that I thought it revolting that he considered such claims credible at all.
I left with the intention of discontinuing associating with him at all.
A couple of days later I got a letter from him. There were many excuses, such as saying this was just something he ran across on the internet, and that he had black friends he would fight for, and the like. But ultimately what matters is that he was sorry that he had offended me.
I wrote back a stern letter advising him to lose my phone number, and abandon any thought of interacting with me in the future, pointing out that men in their sixties don’t just happen upon racism and white supremacism on the internet.
Further, I said that I was not offended, but rather disgusted by his comments.
The second incident happened online and more recently. (The occasion triggered my writing this today).
An acquaintance of mine is visiting Japan and had posted on Facebook a series of photographs he took around Tokyo. Someone else he knows commented on his post asking if he was introducing himself to people as J. Robert Oppenheimer Jr. (A reference to the father of the atomic bomb, whose biopic was gracing the theater screens across the country).
I saw this comment when looking at the post, and responded that I couldn’t imagine anyone finding that funny. It was, after all, a crass joke about nuclear holocaust victims.
We had a brief exchange where he said he thought our mutual friend would find it funny, and suggested that he should have sent it as a private message; and I responded that such a change wouldn’t do anything except hide his trivializing of hundreds of thousands of deaths from the two atomic bombs we dropped, and then suggested he visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum for a perspective.
He then said that he didn’t mean any offense, and apologized for offending me.
I said I wasn’t offended, but rather disturbed. And I said that were I to have made such a joke and been called on it, it would lead me to feel great shame, but that “you do you.”
It is this use of an apology for offending me, and the assumption that I was offended by both of these two people that struck a nerve, and made me think about why this had happened.
I realized that what they were both doing is defending their horrific comments, and putting the blame for being called out on me for taking offense. As if the problem wasn’t what they said, but rather who heard it. Like a guy at a bar telling his buddies his favorite Sambo pickaninny joke in his best Uncle Remus voice, and then apologizing to the black couple at the table behind them, by saying he didn’t notice them there. As if the problem wasn’t the racist joke, but letting that joke be heard by black people.
This is what both men were doing. Dismissing their own racism (and additionally antisemitism with Jim) by offering that it was my offense to it that was the issue. It wasn’t.
Over the years I’ve had countless occasions with groups of people where one person starts to say something, before carefully looking over both shoulders to see who might be within earshot before completing the statement. It was rare that whatever came next was not problematic. Almost invariably they are seeking to ensure that something they are saying would not be heard by someone outside of the group, and they are always surprised to find someone within the group calling them out for the comment. Sorry, they say. I didn’t know you were a (fill in blank).
Racism, xenophobia, nationalism, white supremacy, antisemitism, and overall bigotry is widespread in America, and surely throughout the world. But it won’t be curbed until people of good character refuse to let it slide when brought up around them. Joining in the laugh is tacit endorsement of their particular vitriol, and gives comfort and community to those who expound those vile ideals.
Don’t accept those apologies. The problem is what they said, and not who heard it.
“I’m sorry for offending you” is a copout. It is a dodge to avoid facing their own inner evil. A way to blame others for not sharing their bigotry. We cannot control what people think, but we (collectively) can make it so they find themselves alone when they say it.