I have met white women who pretend sincerity like her. Like her they work in race theory or the equity industrial complex, love animals, show up on paper and sometimes on foot for every liberal cause under the sun. But their interpersonal integrity often reflects their code. They make props of the people and causes on which their identities and livelihoods are formed.
The weight of our impact and the pressures it brings are familiar to me. So I hold Professor Davis in so much love and light. I hope she is being well supported. I hope we all are, in the quiet work that happens outside performance reviews and tenure packets; as we hope it will not be us but quietly accept the possibility and responsibility.
We have a social contract in which our measuring stick for harm is familiarity and this contract puts us all at risk. Communities divest from perceived offenders (part of the premise of prisons) until and unless we perceive the offenders, not as offenders but as homies and relatives; dates or partners; familiars. Though they may have harmed or admitted to harming or being party to harm, to call them out is disruptive or shameful to the community unit, so we don’t name them offenders and absorb the harm, effectively normalizing it.
darlene anita scott 