Beads from the week of 7/12 to 7/18 2020

“Cowing people is not the same as converting them.” (1) Michelle Goldberg, who a couple of weeks ago was feeling guilty about not rejoicing that her editor was fired in the Tom Cotton affair sounded this different note regarding cancel culture this week. Goldberg, like many folks ordinarily proud of their progressive credentials, found herself alarmed by the brutality of the thought police. Robin Acbarian wrote, “... yes, to my surprise as well as yours, I am defending a middle-aged white man I’ve never met. I guess we could all use a little compassion and empathy right about now.” (2)

Oddly enough, some clear thinking amplifies compassion and empathy. Ross Douthat risked 10 theses about cancel culture, one of which worked especially well calming my upset - “There is no human society where you can say or do anything you like and expect to keep your reputation and your job.” (3) We and our times are not so extraordinary. Helen Lewis lifted up a distinction between what she calls “social radicalism and economic radicalism.” She argues that corporations which at first glance would seem to be immune to cancel culture pressure are actually more than happy to take part in it because they get to signal virtue without paying any real price. “For activists, the danger lies in the cheap sugar rush of tokenistic cancellations. Real institutional change is hard; like politics, it is the “slow boring of hard boards.” Persuading a company to toss someone overboard for PR points risks a victory that is no victory at all. The pitchforks go down, but the corporate culture remains the same. The survivors sigh in relief. The institution goes on.

Remember the iron law of woke institutions: For those looking to preserve their power, it makes sense to do the minimum amount of social radicalism necessary to survive … and no economic radicalism at all. The latter is where activists need to apply their pressure.”

And “Here is another option for big companies:. get your staff to read White Fragility on their own time and give your office cleaners a pay raise.” (4)

If you aren’t, you almost certainly have a friend or family member who is reading “White Fragility” Comment about the book and its author Robin Di Angelo is ubiquitous. Although he reports being favorably impressed and profoundly influenced by Di Angelo in the process of researching his profile of her, Daniel Bergner’s piece confirmed my suspicions of her. She hides her real agenda. “Then she said abruptly, “Capitalism is so bound up with racism. I avoid critiquing capitalism — I don’t need to give people reasons to dismiss me.” She openly urges people to dismiss the beauty, skill, determination, grace and strength of heroes like Jackie Robinson. “She tells her audiences — whether in person or, now, online — to alter the language of the narrative about the Brooklyn Dodgers star. Rather than “he broke through the color line,” a phrase that highlights Robinson’s triumph, we should say, “Jackie Robinson, the first Black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.” Robinson fades, agency ablated; whiteness occupies the forefront.” (5) DiAngelo would of course dispatch me in an instant with a wave of her imperious hand, “be gone persistent and pernicious racist.” So be it. I will not give up my admiration for Jackie Robinson.

I do not share his enthusiasm for French Revolutionary thought, but I appreciated Roger Cohen taking on the likes of DiAngelo in a defense of the dead white men who laid down the foundations of western democracy in the 18th century. “In an age of absolutist moral certainty, the perfect becomes the enemy of the good.” “The words that issued from Paris and Philadelphia between 1776 and 1791 have served the cause of freedom, even if they were the product of minds and cultures foreign to the Great Awokening of recent years, whose own chief flaw may prove to be self-righteous intolerance.” (6)

Ed Yong, science writer for The Atlantic acknowledges what frustrates us about Covid - “But much else about the pandemic is still maddeningly unclear. Why do some people get really sick, but others do not? Are the models too optimistic or too pessimistic? Exactly how transmissible and deadly is the virus? How many people have actually been infected? How long must social restrictions go on for? Why are so many questions still unanswered?” Yong contends that “No one knows it all, and those who claim to should not be trusted.” But he does not excuse solipsism… - “The idea that there are no experts is overly glib. The issue is that modern expertise tends to be deep, but narrow. Even within epidemiology, someone who studies infectious diseases knows more about epidemics than, say, someone who studies nutrition. But pandemics demand both depth and breadth of expertise. To work out if widespread testing is crucial for controlling the pandemic, listen to public-health experts; to work out if widespread testing is possible, listen to supply-chain experts. To determine if antibody tests can tell people if they’re immune to the coronavirus, listen to immunologists; to determine if such testing is actually a good idea, listen to ethicists, anthropologists, and historians of science.” (7) Hard is not the same as impossible.

And we are in some crucial weeks… How often have we said/heard that? Still once more from John Barry, professor at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and the author of “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.” writes that we have a second chance now but “Had we done it right the first time, we’d be operating at near 100 percent now, schools would be preparing for a nearly normal school year, football teams would be preparing to practice — and tens of thousands of Americans would not have died.” (8)

Making the most of this 2nd chance will no doubt mean more widely and more carefully observing the basics: wash your hands, keep your distance and wear a mask. Virginia Heffernan lifted up an archetypal character who couldn’t abide a mundane treatment. The Old Testament prophet Elisha prescribed bathing seven times to cure warrior king Naaman of leprosy. Naaman wanted magic. “He’d rather die than bathe.” (9) On the edge of Covid lockdown I posted somewhere…”if I have to wash my hands for 20 seconds, just kill me now. Naaman got over himself...so did I. Would that our “king” could do so.

We lost a magnificent nobleman, victoriously injured in one of the most important battles in our nation’s history, John Lewis. Everyone knows that Stokley Carmichael led the SNCC. I did not know that, “A turning point in the Southern civil rights movement and Lewis’ role in it came in 1966, when Lewis lost the chairmanship of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to Stokely Carmichael. Al Sharpton said of Lewis, “We saw him not only fighting white racism but standing up to Black rejection of his philosophy.” (10)

What kind of nobility might be gestating in these weeks. Nancy Darling, a researcher in emerging adulthood and professor at Oberlin College tells her students - “This is the defining event of your cohort. It’s going to be hard, but it offers unique opportunities. Rather than doing a crummy internship while you’re learning from home, go do something exciting!” And then asks them, “What do you want to build?’ ” (11) That is so like a question I ask all those I coach, “what is the gift to us all that wants to come through you?”

Timothy Egad describes an unexpected gift of Covid lockdown. No quote….it would ruin the punch...and I mean punch line. (12)

A bad luck injury and questionable medical treatment left Angela Madsen paralyzed from the waist down. A bad temper and questionable choices took her living with her pre teen daughter in a car. “The only things I could count were my losses, not my blessings.” Then she turned, shook off the victim mentality that held her back and “started being thankful for what I had.” In her book, she put it this way: “If you don’t paddle your own canoe, you don’t move. You row or die!” You row or you die!!!

Angela went from that point to being an elite level paralympic athlete. She went through the throwing events - shot put, javelin and eventually found her way to rowing. She rowed across open water expanses solo and in boats of 2 and 4 rowers. In April Madsen set out from Marina del Rey to row by herself to Hawaii. A couple of weeks later she went over the side of the boat to make a repair and did not make it back. She drowned in the Pacific. In a way it is not the usual ending to stories like this...but really it is the way they all end. Madsen was only partially correct. The choice in a given moment is Row or die….but in the long run, the reality is always Row and die. The question is where do we want to be and what do we want to be doing when we die?