In a recent post I wrote about some of the less comforting aspects of the metaphor of “one American family” as invoked by President Obama after the murder of 3 Muslim students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Today I am much less concerned about the members of our American family who live in Chapel Hill, than I am about the members of our American family living right here in Phoenix, Arizona. The violence that erupted from the man who murdered those 3 students in Chapel Hill, much like the violence that is constantly erupting in America’s fight against ISIS and extremism, can easily be reduced to an idea that is very separate from the fact of my very comfortable daily life. However much outrage I might express at any one incident of violence, such outrage is easily put on and taken off. That, of course, is part of the problem. As an American from the United States it is easy for me to forget that a war is being conducted this very moment in which other people’s families are violently destroyed — some of them “collateral damage” in our war against the apocalyptically minded ISIS. As I live consumed in the details of my daily life there is nothing tangible that makes me shake out of my ability to easily ignore (a willful ignorance) the violence that is so much a part of so many people’s lives.
Recent events at Arizona State University have brought to light the many reasons why we cannot be satisfied to see the problem of extremism as something “over there,” as something that when pressed out of our mind is easily pressed out of existence to us. The English Department at Arizona State University offers a course entitled, “U.S. Race Theory & the Problem of Whiteness,” and it is taught by Assistant Professor Lee Bebout. This course and Professor Bebout became the focus of national media attention when Fox News ran a segment that itself promotes extremist thinking. The claim made in this news segment was that the main point of the course is to treat “all white people as the root cause of social injustice in this country.”
The video can be viewed here: (http://video.foxnews.com/v/4007055760001/problem-with-whiteness-course-offered-at-arizona-state/?#sp=show-clips)
This assertion was made without the benefit of reading the course material, talking with the students or with Professor Bebout himself. The assertion itself reveals a deep ignorance about what scholars who study the complex and long history of race, racism and race relations in the United States actually do. It is a judgment that is itself extremist and based in an ideological presumption that to talk about race or racism is to perpetuate “reverse racism.”
ASU’s English Department issued a statement in response to the publicity generated by this Fox News segment. The statement affirms ASU’s commitment “thoughtful conclusions” over “gut reactions.” The full statement can be viewed at http://english.clas.asu.edu/eng401-statement.
This is my point — it is easy to live our lives following gut reactions, but thoughtful conclusions require thought, inquiry, and evidence discovered rather than presumed. Yet, without motivation to see more than what our initial way of thinking tells us, we will never reach thoughtful conclusions. And in the meantime our initial way of thinking about our place and comfort in our American family allows us to miss the fact that herein lies a person capable of acting in murderous rage against people whose names allow him to have a gut-level reaction that in his mind legitimates his actions in the moment he pulls the trigger on the gun leveled at people he otherwise knows nothing about.
Here in Arizona, on the campus of Arizona State University we have people who are actively promoting violence driven from the same logic of extremism displayed in the Fox News piece quoted above. The Phoenix New Times has reported on this group’s activities.
See: http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2015/02/white_supremacists_neo-nazis_target_asu_professor_and_his_family.php
Professor Bebout and his family have been directly targeted through a vicious campaign of fliers spread in his neighborhood, on campus and through social media. This kind of extremist campaign ferments the misplaced rage that speeds the movement from gut level reaction to forever undoable action that can shatter the lives of people we know and love. Professor Bebout and his family are close personal friends of mine. Professor Bebout’s teaching and work is essential in the effort to help us all “reach thoughtful conclusions” during these racially contentious and complex times. His family brings the kind of human relatedness that is essential for any community seeking connection through love and genuinely human understanding.
ASU and its police department are monitoring the situation, and the local police departments are also at work dealing with these direct and violent threats against Professor Bebout and his family. Fortunately, there are organizations, and the police are among them, that keep somewhat regular track of these extremist groups that are part of our communities, part of our “American family.”
I pray that these efforts are adequate to keep Professor Bebout and his family safe. Part of me wants to put together my own “posse” and set up permanent body guards around Professor Bebout and his family. But in the absence of being able to do that, I can refuse to be comfortably ignorant of the realities of what constitutes our “American family” and be ever aware of the thinking that leads to extremism and the gut level reactions that level a gun aiming to kill someone who happens to be an easy target for rage.
I welcome your thoughts.