“There isn’t one why.”
Topics Discussed
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Episode Resources
Winning Fan Art Designs (Instagram)
How to Reduce Shootings (The New York Times)
Tressie McMillan Cottom on the Moral Panics of Our Moment (The Ezra Klein Podcast)
Guns Should Be Safe, Legal, and Rare (Bulwark+)
AFTER DAUNTE WRIGHT’S DEATH, ADVOCATES PRESS LEADERS TO GET POLICE OUT OF TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT (The Appeal)
A secular sermon on race, grief, accountability, and change. (Pipe Wrench)
Transcript
Sarah: [00:00:00] Questioning, asking those why questions, sitting with my discomfort, witnessing someone else's discomfort and maybe seeing a little bit of myself in it is uncomfortable and it's much easier to scratch the itch of you're the villain, because that pushes you away from me. Villainizing other white people, excuses our participation in the system. I think that that is a cheap and easy fix because that makes them, them and us, us, and forgets that we all benefit from that system as white people.
Sarah: This is Sarah
Beth: And Beth.
Sarah: You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.
Beth: The home of grace-filled political conversations.
[00:01:00] Hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for a new episode of Pantsuit Politics. We are both back here together, and I know that I'm really relieved because as we've been talking about elsewhere, it's really become important to me to have this chance to sit down and process the news with Sarah and we have a lot of difficult news to process so we're going to do that today.
Before we begin, we just want to remind you that we want our episodes always to start a conversation and we try to continue that conversation in lots of places and one of the best places has become our Patreon page, where there is such a robust discussion thread for every episode of the show.
It seems not to matter what we talk about. We have this richness of experience among our members on Patreon that just carries that thread along and evolves it in new and interesting ways that I always learned something from. Those discussion threads are open to patrons of every level. So you can click the link that's always in our show notes. If you would like [00:02:00] to join that conversation.
Sarah: [00:02:01] Yeah. I was saying on Friday show that that's the part of Patreon that I really did not expect, is that I expected to be there giving more content, but I did not expect for it to become such a community and the comments and the discussions and the perspectives. It's so helpful every news brief to talk about something and have a patron go, okay, I live there. Let me add this. Like, it's just amazing. It's such a gift.
Beth: [00:02:26] We also want to congratulate Jen and Emma, who are the winners of our fan art contest and thank everyone who submitted art for that contest. You will see lots of it again, not just the winning designs, but Jen and Emma's designs are up in our T public store so you can click the link here to see those designs and order your new Pantsuit Politics merge, if you would like.
Sarah: [00:02:47] Also just so you know, because we're in charge and my least favorite part of being an adult is when somebody asks me to pick and because we're in charge, we don't have to pick. We're so excited for the winners, but much [00:03:00] more of the art is going to be showing up on our T public page, FYI, cause we're in charge and we don't have to pick and that's the best part.
Beth: [00:03:05] So in today's episode, we are going to talk about gun violence. We are going to talk about police violence. We'll spend a minute talking about the decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and to increase the refugee cap. Outside of politics, we're going to talk about the vacations that we just had. You'll want to stick around for that.
We do want to take a minute and acknowledge that we're recording on April 19th, which is the 26th anniversary of the Oklahoma city bombing. It is impossible to look at today's news cycle and not trace it back to Oklahoma city and to think pretty deeply about white supremacy and terrorism in our country, domestic terrorism and so just holding everyone from that area impacted by that bombing with a lot of care today, because I can imagine that that date alone would bring on a lot of emotion. For it to come in this context [00:04:00] must be especially difficult. So we're thinking of everyone.
Sarah, just while I was on vacation, we had three people killed in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Three people killed in Austin, Texas. One person killed and five wounded in Columbus, Ohio in a drive by shooting while they were attending a vigil for a gun violence victim. Eight people killed in Indianapolis. With all of that happening against the backdrop of the Coronavirus deaths that this country has accumulated over the last year, it's really becoming difficult to know what to do with those kinds of headlines.
Sarah: [00:04:49] As we were talking about when we started the show and we had an extensive conversation about this on Patreon is, I don't process them when you're not around. [00:05:00] Even as is survivor of the school shooting of, uh, of gun violence, of what I would categorize as a mass shooting. Even though I don't think my school shooting fits the definition of a mass shooting anymore, I just get it's. I said, I'm either rage or numb and somebody described it as numb rage. And I was like, yeah, I think that's it. I think it's like a numb rage.
What sounds like an oxymoron, but in the face of this increased violence I don't know another word for it and I'm, it's so bizarre to me, the way that it has ratcheted up. And I don't know if maybe that's wrong, but it's not like the entire country was shut down for the last year, right? Like people in different places were in, in lots of different levels of lockdown, lots of different levels of attention to COVID-19. And so [00:06:00] there's a part of me that's like, I don't think coming out of the pandemic is the full and total explanation of why this feels like it has increased in intensity to me. It has to do with so much more than that. Is that your sense?
Beth: [00:06:16] It's interesting that you say this because I went searching this morning as I was preparing for the show for, for reasons. Can we trace this to.COVID? Can we trace it to far right extremism? Can we trace it to gun fetishization? Can we trace it to copycatting because one of these happens, then we see all of these other happen? I read so many articles in those genres just looking for a why. And when I came away with, I think the answer is, is yes to all and some of them not captured by any of those. Right.
And that is what makes [00:07:00] policymaking in this area so incredibly difficult because we all come in with pretty strong agendas, myself included at this point and we rarely get something that neatly lines up with our agenda. And so we use that to kind of tear away at the other side. I don't ever believe that it's hard is a reason not to try because I, I find this status quo, wholly unacceptable.
And at the same time, even just getting to the motivation and I felt this way a little bit after the Atlanta killings, you know, I was searching and searching and I think you absolutely have to look at the Atlanta killing through the lens of racism and through the lens of kind of purity culture and Christianity and what happened there and, and some probably through internet culture, lots of things. Right.
And there's a point at which I don't know that the motivation matters. Um, it's [00:08:00] not that I don't think the motivation matters. I'm coming to a place where I've got to recognize that as a citizen, I am not judge and juror and so fully understanding the motivation and the details and what an appropriate charge would be and what an appropriate sentence would be, that is just all out of my hands. I think that what's in my hands is grieving the victims as, as best as you can grieve people that you've not met, just knowing that you are connected to them as humans.
Grieving for the family of the killers. When I read that statement out of Indianapolis, we tried to get him the help he needed every part of me just shattered inside and then thinking on a larger level, what am I personally willing to try? What am I personally willing to give up? What [00:09:00] might we do to make a dent in this problem?
Sarah: [00:09:04] Nicholas Christoff wrote a piece for the New York times arguing as many people have argued that we should treat gun violence as a public health crisis. The reason it really clicked for me speaks to what you just said. It feels like politically we've been trying to decide one why and one solution and the reality, whether we're talking about mass shootings or whether we're talking about gun violence, which many more people lose their lives to, particularly death by suicide.
When there isn't one why it's incredibly complex in the same way that the reason people lose their lives in car wrecks is very complex. The same reason that people pick up and continue to smoke is very complex. And you know, public health, even though we're in the [00:10:00] middle of this pandemic. And it feels like the psychological complexity of dealing with public health ordinances or, you know, recommendations just is, is never ending and is always this psychological nut we're trying to crack.
It just, it feels the closest that I can think of to the problem we're talking about, right? Because it is so complex, all the different components of what contributes to gun violence from the, just the most basic issues of, we have too many damn guns to the complex issues, political issues like right wing extremism and white supremacy and toxic masculinity and all these things.
And so instead of waiting around for all of us to decide and agree on what we think the one problem is, and the one solution that will perfectly solve it, [00:11:00] it feels like, okay, well we need to start treating this like the public health crisis that it is particularly with regards to research so that we have. You know, we have the capacity to take an enormous amount of data and to start to sort it and then analyze it and categorize it and we don't, we don't even collect it much less try to start breaking it apart when it comes to gun violence.
And so that's why we're all left in this truly awful, truly disempowering, just horrific situation where it keeps happening and we keep fighting and nothing changes. And so we're just compacting these traumas on top of each other, both for the communities that experienced in them and for the nation at large. And it feels awful and I think that's always why, you know, moms demand action has [00:12:00] appealed to me because they you know, they modeled themselves over mothers against drunk driving who saw something and we're like, well, look, we can, we can sit around.
I mean, what if we'd done that with drunk driving? What if we'd sat around and said, well, I don't know. I mean, people drink, it's not the, it's not the driver, it's the car. People drink for all manner of really, you know, complex psychological reasons and it's really, you know, everybody has the right to freedom of movement. So it just seems so. Impossibly hard. Let's not even tackle drunk driving. What if we'd done that? I mean, we were doing that for awhile.
First of all, that's why mothers against drunk driving came about. And so we just continued to be traumatized and people continue to lose their lives and tragic situations because it was hard and complex instead of saying, okay, well, it is hard and complex, but we don't have to wait for the light to shine down and us all get on the same page about this.
Let's just start trying [00:13:00] things because people are dying and the really frustrating part, I think, particularly about gun violence is you know, I did say we don't have a lot of medical research, but we do have some data in that we have States with very different approaches to guns, and we know that States have very different rates of gun violence based on those different approach to guns and we all sit around going, I don't know what would work. It's just it's infuriating. And I think shifting our approach to like a more public health foundation could be really helpful.
Beth: [00:13:40] I think that drunk driving is a really interesting parallel for a whole bunch of reasons, including, um, all of those that you mentioned and, well, there is something that we do there that parallels something that we do in the gun conversation, because we said let's tackle drunk driving and we didn't really [00:14:00] blame the alcohol in the process and that comes up in the gun conversation all the time. Right? It's not the gun, it's how the gun is used and we do that with alcohol.
Because here's the other thing that I think paralyzes us in the gun conversation. We know that one action, because this problem is complex is not going to solve it and so we say, well, that's not going to solve it so we're not going to move forward. Working towards creasing drunk driving has not eliminated drunk driving, and it has certainly not eliminated all of the violence and death and trauma that alcohol creates.
There is so much more work to be done around alcohol, some really hard conversations that we need to have, and I'm ready for them. I will pull up a chair and have those conversations about alcohol. And I think we just have to take a similar approach to gun violence. Okay. [00:15:00] We can't fix it all at one time. Let's start. Let's pick a thing and start and work toward that thing and figure it out.
You and I have been talking so much about a wonderful interview that Ezra Klein did with Tressie McMillan Cottom, who is just she's brilliant and I love everything she writes. I think about her Dolly Parton piece at least once a day, but she was on his show and one of the most profound things that she said for me in that conversation was that she sometimes forgets that people hear a discussion of the problem and if they are in any way contributing to that problem, consciously or unconsciously, they feel like personally attacked and as though they should loathe themselves, because they're part of the problem.
Sarah: [00:15:46] Yes. I love this part of the conversation.
Beth: [00:15:48] She said I D I don't do that. I can see myself as part of structures that are problematic without hating myself or believing that other people hate me. So I forget that other people do that. And as a person [00:16:00] who has a tendency to do that and has to work on that in myself, I feel that
Well
Sarah: [00:16:04] she linked it to church attendance, which I thought was really like, she didn't, she was like, yes, the religious component of like, Oh, well, if it's a problem and you're in it, then you're part of the problem and you need to beat yourself like the demoralizing Lord. We love demoralized.
Beth: [00:16:17] You should go listen to that one twice. Honestly, she said so many impressive, profound things that have worked on my thinking since I listened to it. But anyway, when she said that, I thought that is what we need for the gun conversation because right now, if you say we have too many guns, everyone who has one has that moment of oh, I can't accept that because then I would be part of the problem. And what I'm certainly not saying is that you individual gun owner are part of the problem.
I'm not saying that. I'm saying there is a societal issue here, and I do believe that having a gun for [00:17:00] hunting or personal protection, even we can debate the statistics about personal protection all day, right or just the merits of it or the morality of it or whatever. We can talk about that till the cows come home. That is very different than the way that we hold up violence in this country. I loved an article from Tim Miller at the Bulwark where he said we have a U S Congresswoman who poses with guns behind her the way that terrorists do for her photos.
That is different than you have a gun in your house somewhere, for whatever reason you have it. So can we talk about this problem in the big picture context with all of us doing our very best to drop the sense that we despise each other, or that we're asking each other to loathe ourselves or change everything about us in order to be able to move forward together. We did it with drunk driving. Lots of people worked on drunk driving who still drink. Like there is a way to do this. We are capable.
Sarah: [00:17:58] Lots of people worked on drunk [00:18:00] driving who were drunk driving. Lots of people were drunk driving. Lots of people still drunk drive. Like it's not like we're still not working on that. And I think that, you know, I was getting in a space where I thought I was feeling despondent even before the mass shootings really began to ratchet up cause I just thought we have so many guns. What are we going to do? We have so many guns out there and I was talking to a friend and he was like, you know, guns, aren't enternal.
They break they age, they rust and what you would see and what you did see with the previous assault weapons ban is that when there's no new ones being manufactured constantly then the number reduces because some people just kind of let them rust away in their closet or they break and they're not easy to fix and like we would eventually, you know, and maybe a generation have fewer [00:19:00] guns. And I had not even thought about that. And I thought, yeah, you're right. It's not like, just because they all exist right now, they will exist into perpetuity. Right.
It's just like small mind shifts like that, where you remind yourself like, We are not stuck here forever. It feels like that. And it certainly feels like that with every new headline, it feels like the despondency in that moment is the reality of every moment to come. And that is really hard. And that is something that I have to work through constantly.
But lots of things have changed in America and issues of public health, obviously in the last year, but even, you know, beyond that things that felt like they were part and parcel of every bit of who we were and we shifted and we changed and we've done it at varying speeds, but it is available to us [00:20:00] and we don't have to keep watching communities traumatized by gun violence and families ripped apart by gun violence and suicide. And it, it just, it's so hard to remember that it doesn't have to be this way and that any small step in a different direction matters and that those steps are something that we can take together.
Beth: [00:20:33] Thinking about intractable problems is a good segue to our moment of hope today. We wanted to talk for a second about the administration's announcement that US troops will be leaving Afghanistan by September 11. I Sarah have a mixed bag of emotions about this announcement and I've been interested to talk to you about it.
Number one, I don't, I don't love the invocation of [00:21:00] 9/11 this way. It feels very strange to me and I get it, but I, it just something about it doesn't sit right with me. The thing that I most wanted to talk to you about is kind of the narrative of failure versus success and what, what will it mean if our troops leave and what the experts believe will happen, happens?
Like maybe the Taliban gets really strong again, and the climate for women degrades, or maybe you see something like ISIS come in again and maybe you see people starting to cultivate international terrorists in Afghanistan. Like what would it mean if there are just a parade of horribles following the withdrawal of American troops?
Sarah: [00:21:44] Well, I think this is a really good thing to talk about post a conversation on gun violence, because this is another area of American life that for most of my adulthood just felt permanent, that felt intractable, that felt [00:22:00] like it would never change. That the war authorization would stay, that we would stay, that we would be there forever and so to feel movement. And I actually think the tying it to 9/11 is really important because a lot of things that we talk about on this show, which is like, we don't deal with our traumas. We want to move on.
We want to close chapters. And I know in some ways that can feel like a really forced thing like they're trying to like close this chapter and link it to the 20th anniversary of 9/11 but I also feel like sometimes we talk about 9/11 separate from these actions in Iraq and Afghanistan and I think linking the 20th anniversary very deliberately to our presence in these countries is important for the processing of those events, to the American psyche.
And I am incredibly encouraged that this is happening, you know, Even [00:23:00] if all those things you listed happened, I hope that we can still understand while it was why it was important to close the chapter, to take the troops out of the area, to have this hard stop this very deliberate end, if for no other reason than it gives us a chance to like really have conversations and process.
I think some of the reporting and speaking to the veterans who, who aren't trying to do, what we were all doing in 2001, which is like, this is going to it's all good. It's like this very like rah, rah energy that was so you know, disturbing to me at the time and remains disturbing and to hear the complexity and vulnerability and willingness to examine our presence there and all its tragedies in some of its victories, I think that's really, really important. And I'm just so encouraged that this is happening. [00:24:00] What about you?
Beth: [00:24:01] On the whole, I am encouraged as well and I do agree with the assessment that a conditional withdraw just means we're staying and that at some point, if the decision is that American troops need to exit because they have accomplished what they can accomplish, that you just need to make the decision and do it and I respect the courage that it took to make that decision.
I also want to make sure to say, just as an American citizen, who has tried to follow this, I also just want to say as an American citizen, that I hope we reject the binary of this was a failure or a success, because I, I believe that there were a lot of successes that we'll never understand. Just you can't appreciate everything that has been presented and you can appreciate some of the acts of just goodness that our troops do on the ground when they're deployed overseas.
[00:25:00] And at the same time, we can't appreciate all of the horror that has happened and unfolded to, for, by our troops in different places and when I think about the reason to withdraw. I can't make as good a foreign policy case for withdrawal as I can a domestic policy case for withdrawal because the number of people over these 20 years who have been exposed to the horror of war, who have received the kind of combat training necessary to serve, who are dealing with the ramifications of having served, even the people doing that in the, the most healthy, constructive ways that we would all feel so proud of in a way as Americans, there is so much domestic suffering because of this conflict. And that to me is the reason to say enough.
And, and I really struggle [00:26:00] when I think about some of the arguments for staying about what happens to women's rights in Afghanistan and what becomes of people who, who did rely on us troops to bring some amount of stability. I struggle with that. And I also think that the administration is right at this moment in our history to say, we got to work on within right now. And that is, to me, what this decision represents more than anything else is a moment of just saying, you know, There are no good answers from a foreign policy perspective, but we have to look inward right now and this is a huge part of doing that.
Sarah: [00:26:40] Also I'm tempted to put on my Rose colored glasses, but I don't think it's just about inward either. I think it's about outward threats from China and Russia and Iran and other places that we want to pay attention to and I think, you know, even if it is motivated by a foreign policy that is still not perfect, [00:27:00] it does speak to a foreign policy acknowledgement that like, we can't do it all.
We can't be everywhere doing all the things, especially in every area where there is unrest or instability or threat and acknowledgement of like, they're not that that's not a role for us to play in the world because I very much believe it is, the Biden administration believes that it is and I agree, but that there still has to be prioritization to me. That's what I think would a lots of what's going on here as well.
Beth: [00:27:27] And I think that that's probably what was going on with the confusion and, um, What seemed like an about face on the refugee cap. I think you see a little bit of the strain around the Biden administration and immigration. There's been some reporting that there's frustration with one of our cabinet officials about the way immigration is unfolding, immigration policy and services are unfolding. And I, I so strongly believe that we should be a nation that takes a very large number of refugees in every year. I don't know who we are as a country if we don't do that.
[00:28:00] Uh, and at the same time, I believe we owe it to those refugees to have a very healthy process for them and so I felt a lot of grace for the administration in what seemed to me to be an unstated we're not quite ready yet. Uh, and I also appreciate that they were responsive to an outcry from a large and diverse community of people saying you got to get ready. You know, we have to do this.
Sarah: [00:28:32] Yeah. That I was talking to a friend and she said, I read this story and I thought, Oh, well, people get mad and they'll fix it. I didn't even get like mad or upset in the same way I would have in the Trump administration. Even though during the Trump administration, there were times where they were responsive and I was encouraged.
Like the response every time there's like a responsiveness that it feels like people are like, Oh no and there's a reaction like, yes, what I've always prefer it to be preemptive policy, of course, [00:29:00] but in a time, like we were just talking about where often we feel so powerless and silenced and disconnected from our government to see like a policy went out, people are like, absolutely not. And the administration responded with, okay, you're right. We'll fix it is just as so nice. It was just really nice.
Beth: [00:29:17] We're going to take a quick break and then talk a little bit about police violence.
As we are recording today on Monday, closing arguments are unfolding in Derek Chauvin's trial for the murder of George Floyd. We have in Minnesota, the killing of Daunte Wright on our minds and in our hearts. We have just this incredibly disturbing video of the police killing of Adam Toledo out of Chicago and throughout the nation, we have [00:30:00] videos emerging of really aggressive police management of crowds that are coming together to protest and demonstrate.
And really when I see the images out of Minneapolis, I think just sort of wait together for this verdict that is carrying so much weight around it and so we just wanted to spend a little time talking about that and extending a lot of support, everything that we can to our friends in Minnesota, because we know that whatever the result is here, the verdict itself is going to be another marker in history that will not be forgotten and that will carry it will just carry so much emotion.
Sarah: [00:30:46] I was also reading about the arrest of that 72 year old grandmother, where they were really like they hog tied her and put her in the car and I think there seems to be a progression of the conversation that I [00:31:00] find encouraging about the ways in which the ways in which the situations escalates so quickly and that is there a way to reform our way out of this.
Most people, I think particularly people who advocate for racial justice and changes in policing say now, like reform is not available to us, that we really need to reevaluate and I think you see you when you see a grandmother being tackled the way that she was, or, and it lets, and here's where I want to be vulnerable and honest.
I think some of this happens and some of this has happened around particularly the killing of Dante Wright because it was a female officer and because it was a female officer, some of the complexity that we were talking about in the first part of the show with toxic masculinity is removed and we can think about it in a different way.
And I [00:32:00] think, you know, for me, even though I believed this before. I think there's like this opening up of the idea of like, it doesn't matter, right? It's the escalation, it's the way that police show up at it, like a simple shoplifting or a traffic stop or whatever, and the tools and training available to them feel like an inevitable funnel to violence and that's not speaking to the even bigger complexity of white supremacy and that toxic masculinity and all these other different societal and cultural factors and so it feels like the conversation, as uncomfortable and [00:33:00] impossible and traumatic as it continues to be for, particularly for people in communities of color, is getting us somewhere.
It's not getting us fast enough. It's certainly not getting us fast enough for Adam Toledo or Daunte Wright or the people that continue to lose their lives, but short of a magic wand, I'm still encouraged by any like increased understanding of the issues of escalation, the issues of training, the issues of racism and toxic masculinity and all of these factors that contribute to the problems and the tragedies taking part inside our policing system.
Beth: [00:33:49] I don't think that I would exempt the woman officer who shot and killed Daunte Wright from toxic masculinity because I [00:34:00] think that women in very heavily male dominated organizations are often under incredible pressure to take on some of the traits of those organizations and so I think everybody within the institution is, is subject to the, the good and the bad of what that institution has.
As I watch all of this unfold and think through that discussion of, can it be reformed or not? I've been trying to ask myself if I can name the social needs met by police without using the word safety or safe or any version of it, because I think the very least that I can do as a white woman right now is acknowledge that police do not make everyone feel safe and police explicitly make some people feel unsafe for reasons that are quite rational as we take a look at the last couple of years of evidence.
Sarah: [00:34:59] And they make them [00:35:00] unsafe as we see right. Not just feelings.
Beth: [00:35:02] Correct. Yeah. And I will also say that when I reflect on my personal experiences with police officers, which are very limited, I don't know that I've ever felt increased safety because of the presence of a police officer and certainly in the context of a traffic stop, I felt personally very demeaned by a police officer. Now feeling demeaned is a universe from feeling like, am I going to leave this with my life? And so I am not trying to make a comparison.
I'm just trying to say if I'm just like, White boarding this, everything is on the table and I'm S I'm starting from the ground up. What social needs are met by police officers, or even just what social needs exist that currently we expect police to handle? Can I name them without using the word safe and I have found that to be pretty challenging and I've also found it to lead me in some directions [00:36:00] where a police officer is clearly not the right answer if you were starting from scratch.
Someone armed with deadly force is clearly not the right answer if you're starting from scratch. And I hope that that question, I think a lot of our listeners are struggling with just having conversations with their people about this. And I hope that I can just offer that question because it's opened up a lot in my mind.
Where it's, where I am not doing black lives matter versus blue lives matter but I'm saying, what are we even doing here? What are we asking of these people? What are we asking of the rest of us to accept an armed group of people walking around amongst us with the power to do everything between, give us a parking ticket and solve a murder? It's been helpful to me to think about it that way.
Sarah: [00:36:49] Yeah. I mean, I was reading some proposals for reform and one of the big ones was why do we have someone armed with deadly force dealing with low level traffic offenses? [00:37:00] You can talk to police officers who say a lot of what they do is about addiction and mental health, huge, huge component of what they respond to are mental health calls, which we've seen, have also resulted in the loss of life.
I think that there's just, we've been having this conversation in lots of areas of public life. What, what are we doing with public school? What are we doing with healthcare? You know, I think for better or for worse, this particular moment in history is about, due to the pandemic, due to a lot of things, asking that question, what are we doing? What is the goal? And I think particularly with the most recent tragedies, there's this sense that, well, let's be honest that a lot of the white population is catching up to communities of color and asking like, why are the police here? What are they doing?
[00:38:00] And there's nothing lost in asking that question. I mean, we had that conversation on the podcast. We will all watch the video of the police officers running in to the grocery store in Colorado, without hesitation, seemingly without concern for their own lives. One of whom lost his life. And so I think that's, what's so difficult is that if we make everything all or nothing, we make everything you're either the victim or the villain and without acknowledging that there is a lot of complexity here and that no human being is all one thing or another.
You know, we're talking about mass shooting and racial justice and policing and we have a mass shooting in Texas where the suspect is a former sheriffs [00:39:00] officer and Black. And I mean, like, I think that that's just the, those really complex stories where they don't, like the shooting of Daunte Wright where we have white woman as a police officer and a white woman as the mother of Daunte Wright.
I mean, I just think like, there's just these moments where it feels like to me, That all the facts don't line up to the narrative that we've adopted and they are a moment not to say, well, that means everything's okay or to say that means all is lost, but to acknowledge that the complexity of these situations requires a lot of us. It requires a lot of vulnerability. It requires a lot of honesty. It requires a lot of discomfort when we inevitably have to acknowledge our own roles in these systems, the ways that we have benefited from these systems, and that is really, really hard work.
Beth: [00:39:58] And it's work that [00:40:00] we are equipped to do and I particularly think about other white women who are part of this conversation. We are equipped to do this work. Something that I notice when I spend too much time on social media is that a lot of us in our effort to be a good ally, really start on social media to shut down the people in our lives who are not there with us.
And I have particularly been observing this around the use of the word de-center. I, 100% agree from a cultural societal policy level that we must de-center ourselves as white people, meaning we have got to stop building the world around one identity, which is what most of our world has been constructed around for a [00:41:00] very long time.
Okay. I hold that alongside my observation that I don't see a lot of people walking around who feel very centered anywhere. Even people who demographically unquestionably are. Even people who in organizations unquestionably are. I see a lot of people walking around nursing an awful lot of hurt from somewhere. That doesn't excuse anything. That doesn't mean there's no accountability. It doesn't mean that we don't you know, fight and advocate for policies that require better of all of us.
I think it does mean that to get the support and political will needed for the massive change that we need around policing, whether that looks like some meaningful reform or a complete re-imagining, whatever it looks like it is going to require massive political will and to marshal [00:42:00] the support needed among a broad enough population given the current realities of our political system, I think that means that in our relationships, not in our politics, but in our relationships, we, we like allow people to feel centered. We white women, that's who I'm talking to you right now.
We white women can do the work of listening to the concerns people have about this and witnessing all of the ways that people feel that some particular injustice was done to them. When I really listened to people who will not express any sorrow over the death of the shooting of a Black man by a white police officer, I don't get that and so I try to really listen. I don't understand seeing any of this unfold without your heart just being broken. I don't really get the question of like, well, what was he doing there? It doesn't register with me. Nothing in me requires an answer to that question to be [00:43:00] devastated. But that's not true for everybody.
And so where I have a relationship with someone, I really try to listen to their answer to that and usually as I listen and listen and listen some more, over a long period of time, what is revealed to me is that somewhere along the way that person had something happened to them, that they perceive as unjust and it has somewhere along the way, damaged their sense of what just means and has made them decide that withholding justice everywhere else must just be the way because it happened to them.
Now, again, I am not putting that on equal footing at all, with what our beloved fellow citizens who are actually fearful for their lives are going through. I am saying, how can I best be an ally? I don't think it is by telling my grandfather that he's been centered too much. I just don't think that that's moving the needle. If it works, I would do it, but I don't think it's working
Sarah: [00:43:58] well. It's like the conversation [00:44:00] I had with Griffin on Patreon about, you know, LGBTQ community members and being a good ally and I said, you know, we don't add to the humanity of the LGBTQ community by ehumanizing transphobic or homophobic people. It's not in finite supply that we have to take one group to give to the other. I was having a conversation with a friend and we were talking about sort of gossip and just you know, villainizing people and when we're frustrated being a member of the opposite party or a member of our community or whatever.
And I said, I don't like to just scratch that itch. I don't like to just talk about how awful people are, whether it be, you know, The police or anti-vaxxers or whatever, whatever, you're the group that you are just like, I can't, we, you know, I got this comment on [00:45:00] Instagram. I saw who you are and I can't unsee it and I get that. I get it. It's not like I haven't been exposed in my life to the underbelly of humanity. Believe me, I have, I get it. But just scratching that itch to me is not helpful. And more than that, it's just boring.
Sitting around and talking about how awful people are, is not interesting to me. So what I described it to her as a scratching the itch is not interesting to me. Digging at it is. Digging and saying what's underneath this, not to excuse it. Because sometimes the answer is white supremacy, right? Sometimes the answer is what's underneath this is a deep sense of white grievance and so I just want to be able to face that and deal with it.
But digging at it, questioning, asking those why questions, sitting with my discomfort, witnessing someone else's [00:46:00] discomfort and maybe seeing a little bit of myself in it is uncomfortable and it's much easier to scratch the itch of you're the villain, because that pushes you away from me. Villainizing other white people, excuses our participation in the system.
That's how I feel about it. I think that that is a cheap and easy fix and we have to be really careful about that. We have to be really careful about, well, You know, they're, they're ignorant, they're villains, they're racist because that makes them, them and us, us, and forgets that we all benefit from that system as white people. And I think like constantly digging and facing the reality of like sometimes what I'm reacting to is something I see in myself is hard, but it's worth it and I think it's the only path forward.
I don't think it's, you know, the only political path forward. I think there's a lot of very [00:47:00] strong political actions that are required of us in this moment. But I think in those interpersonal relationships and in that moments, when we, when our heart is broken and we're reading these stories and they feel either far away or too close for comfort, we have to push ourselves and we have to be honest with ourselves and we have to understand that the discomfort is the new reality, right?
We're never going to get back to the simple days. Like we're not, we're not going backwards with regards to our understanding of the police, with our understanding of our fellow citizens or our family members or anything that, to a certain extent it is true, we can't unsee it. But I think just seeing it and the scratching of the itch of like, how awful are they? It's not where we can [00:48:00] stop. We cannot stop there.
Beth: [00:48:02] Well, because you know, all I can be is a white person. Right. So do I want to master the language of social justice or do I want to try to actually effectuate some change among my people? You know, for me, it's the latter and that is difficult, but it's actually kind of a tiny ask compared to what other people are living with and so I have to just, I just have to keep going at it and, and hope that I'm planting something that is helpful to someone's journey along the way.
And I have to keep letting my heart break, like, honestly, I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but like, I didn't the first images I saw of the video from Adam Toledo, I wasn't sure what his race was. If you had asked me to guess, you know, just based on statistics, I would have guessed that he was Black because of the [00:49:00] instances of police violence that they get reported out. But, but I didn't know that I just thought that's just a 13 year old.
That's a 13 year old, you know? And so just allowing myself to keep coming back to the heartbreak and also recognizing that the heartbreak that I experienced from it does not meet the depth of many, many people who I care very deeply about and so I don't get to just be like, Oh, I'm so tired and exhausted and sad that that's not, it's not what people are asking of me, right. That's not what's needed from me. What's needed for me is to work on the people around me, I think. And so I, I keep looking for better questions to try to get there.
Sarah: [00:49:56] Anne Friedman linked in her newsletter to a really wonderful [00:50:00] piece from Brie Mason Campbell called Seeing in the Dark and it had this great line where it said "situational grief is momentary. Systemic grief is not." And I thought that's true. That's I think that's what we're all really struggling with in this moment is listen, we struggle with it with situational grief, wanting to like check, check through the phases and move on.
Like I got through anger. Cool. Which one is next? Um, I certainly have felt that in my life and I think facing the hard reality that systemic grief, which we are looking at and facing for the first time on so many levels in American life right now and grieving is hard. Grieving happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, grieving Oklahoma city, grieving 9/11, grieving gun violence, grieving the pandemic, greiving police violence.
Think about what we just listed in this episode, just in this episode of what we [00:51:00] work through and face and deal with and read about and listen to podcasts about and watch news about, and watch not to mention if we actually watch it play out in front of our eyes on a screen. And I think. It's so much, it's so much.
And that's, you know, assuming that we're all bringing some sort of monolithic experience to the grief itself when we know that we're all dealing with a universe of experiences and perspectives and histories and genetics and culture and abuse and neglect and all of that to our own individual experiences within the systemic grief and like we say on the show, like it is time to pass out grace, like candy. It is time to acknowledge and by that, I mean it's time. I mean, because it's a new day in America to remember that there is all of this [00:52:00] trauma and grief and sadness at work in our lives and in our communities and in our country right now.
Beth: [00:52:09] It always feels awkward after our conversation like that one to say, what's on your mind outside of politics, but we feel like it's important to remember that we all contain multitudes and that we all need to be whole people. So, Sarah, what are you thinking about outside of politics?
Sarah: [00:52:25] Well, trying to, you know, get back on that horse after vacation, trying to say thank you, thank you, thank you every moment to just the universe and our listeners and Alise and Megan and everybody who made that vacation possible. It was just such a blessing. That was such a blessing. Did you have fun on vacation?
Beth: [00:52:49] I did. Here's something I learned about myself on vacation. I seem to just be going through life, waiting for someone to say, would you like to play cards? We [00:53:00] played so much Rook and Rummy and nerds and it was a blast. Like I just, I am neither good at cards nor competitive. It's just kind of the right brain engagement level for me. It's like the right social interaction for me. I don't feel a lot of pressure to be an interesting conversationalist over cards. I feel no pressure to win whatsoever. It's just enough. It's just a perfect way to connect with other human beings I've decided.
And so I so loved getting to play cards with my family and also seeing Ellen become initiated into our family rook games. Ellen is a very aggressive bidder. This is what we've learned. Doesn't matter what she has in her hand. She's taking the bid, uh, which was a lot of fun to watch and she was actually a very good card player.
So it was a wonderful vacation and a true gift, especially after the last year to get, to spend so much time with my parents, especially as my mom is about to have an upcoming surgery. So to spend that time with my parents and my brother and sister-in-law and my [00:54:00] sweet eight month old niece, who I am just bananas about it was a true gift. I agree, I have so much gratitude about it. And I also am like why don't more people in my everyday life say, would you like to play cards?
Sarah: [00:54:14] We're usually a big, uh, game playing family. I mean, we have like literal huge, big cabinets full of games. So we, you would think that we would have been like all in over the pandemic. I am struggling with, and I felt this way, even on vacation, at the end of the day when somebody is like, well, what do you want to do? Nothing sounds good. I don't want to watch TV. I don't want to watch a movie. I maybe want to read a book, but I'm probably just going to fall asleep. I don't want to play a game. I don't want to make anything like I don't, I don't know what it is, but there's literally nothing that sounds good to me at the end of the day. I mean, I need help with this. I wonder if our listeners have experienced something similar.
Beth: [00:54:57] I think I've been through a lot of [00:55:00] phases like that. For me, they are usually situational for me. They track pretty well if I pull out my hormone tracking app, I can kind of figure out where I am based on that. But I'm kind of right now. Just, I just want, I think you had Nicholas used the phrase a good hang. That's what I want. I just want to be in a very low key situation with other people where no one is performing. We're all just kind of getting through the experience of being human together. That's, that's what I'm looking for at the end of the day. And a card game helps that I feel like a card game is essential to a good hang.
Sarah: [00:55:33] I love it.
Beth: [00:55:34] Well, thank you all so much for joining us for this episode, for all of the hard conversations for continuing to witness the news, even when it is extremely heavy and can create a sense of powerlessness and for helping us think through how we, as citizens can, can do better.
We'll be back in your ears on Friday with a special guest Niala Boodhoo from Axios will be with us and we really love to speaking with her and can't wait to share that with you. Have the best week [00:56:00] available.
Beth: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.
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