By Douglas Murray
Thursday, October 29, 2020
For several years I have marveled at, and become worried by,
the depiction of America that has been playing around the world. Despite being
a lifelong admirer of this country, I’ve not been in America for a couple of
years, and during that time even I have occasionally wondered whether my image
of America might have been wrong all along. Might the country have been — or
become — what its detractors both internal and external say it is? Now I have
had a month traveling around the United States, and I feel as though I may have
come to a better understanding of a problem that afflicts this country. Perhaps
an outsider might share a modest insight?
The problem first clarified during a conversation in New
York with several people, two of whom happened to be comedians. Looking forward
to shooting the breeze, I found myself instead marveling at the forensic detail
in which everyone was going over the death of Breonna Taylor. Why were we
talking about this so furiously? Why were comedians discussing ballistics
reports? Why did everybody — whatever his viewpoint — need to have this much
knowledge? And the obvious truth dawned on me that in this era every single
detail of every single wrongdoing or alleged wrongdoing on the part of America
matters, because the focus of light on America today operates in the manner of
a magic-lantern projector. The light shining on this country today is so great
that it does not just illuminate — it magnifies. Shift the tiniest detail in
the picture and the image projected is monstrously altered.
Over recent years I have watched a very particular image
of America projected onto the wall of the world and worried about it as much as
any other friend of America. For it is an image of a society riven by many
conflicts, just one of which (but worst of all) is the racism problem from
which America is said to suffer. It is hard to exaggerate how starkly this is
perceived by the rest of the world. While Americans argue over and eventually
litigate every police interaction gone wrong, the rest of the world sees only
one vast blown-up version of the problem.
Outside the U.S., George Floyd is seen as having been
deliberately murdered by a racist cop. Just as Breonna Taylor is believed to
have been slain by an institutionally racist police force. The friend of
America abroad may say that the country he knows is not racist, or that he does
not believe that American policemen set out in the morning to kill black
people. But to say this at present is in vain. And of course in the era of
Trump it has been especially easy to portray the worst slip-ups as manifestations
of this thing that Trump is also said to reveal: the true, terrible face of the
nation.
When protesters turn out in their thousands in London,
Berlin, or Stockholm, it is in response to the image that they see projected
from this country, with its subtle manipulations infinitely magnified. They
honestly or otherwise believe that the American police can kill black people
with impunity. And they believe this because a portion of the American public
has set out — some cynically, others sincerely — to make this the image that
the world, like America, should understand.
Yet it seems obvious to me, at least, that this picture
is wrong. Not that there is no racism in American society, but that the racism
has been carefully magnified into a greater force than it is. The culture is
tearing itself apart over something that is, if not a mirage, then at least a
demon so diminished that it exists only in the most shriveled and ostracized
form. Any honest analysis must observe that white supremacy has never been less
tolerated than it is in America today. Racism has never been more discredited
and unacceptable.
Yet from the nation’s bookstores to the streets of many
American cities, people are responding to a version of America that is subtly
but significantly wrong. Bookstores are packed with books telling white people
how they can retrain their minds so as not to be racist. Across the country I
have witnessed a similar off-kilteredness. In Seattle there was a Whole Foods,
boarded up like most of the buildings in the center of the city. The main
banner at the front of what remained of the storefront said, “Racism has no
place here.” As though the Whole Foods in Seattle had recently been caught
permitting the Klan to gather in the fruit-and-nuts aisle. In another U.S.
city, Uber had taken out a vast banner, unfurled down one whole side of a
building. “If you tolerate racism, delete Uber,” read the banner, adding,
“Black people have the right to move without fear.” How bad is the situation
here, that this is the tone in which commercial companies presume to hector the
public? What is the situation they believe this country to be in, exactly?
In Oregon, among other places, Antifa/BLM activists
continue to protest and riot because they actually seem to believe the image
projected about their country. Nightly they take to the streets to oppose
systemic racism and white supremacy. For a couple of nights in Portland, I
stayed among them, seeing firsthand how a part of a new generation really does
believe the image that so many non-Americans have about the reality of American
racism.
Yet even a mildly curious traveler can see that the image
is off. Even in the event that fueled the latest bout of claims, there are
things that would alter the projection if mentioned. For instance, if the
police in the video intended to kill George Floyd, then what are we to make of
the Asian-American officer who is present? Is he an honorary white supremacist?
In this incident, as so many others, we might discern the supply-and-demand
problem in American fascism (the demand is huge, the supply is mercifully
small). Everywhere there are similar glitches in the narrative that any
observer or participant should be able to note but too few do. For instance,
why are so many of the figures in groups now classed as white supremacists
either minority-ethnic themselves or married to nonwhites?
Doubtless many people would like to leave these questions
unaddressed for the sake of personal ease or comfort, unwilling to look like
they are defending groups that may yet behave reprehensibly. Yet it is
precisely when the details are allowed to slide that the picture that is
projected becomes so unreal and monstrous. Some Americans obviously realize
this, which is why they litigate, debate, and fight over every single aspect of
police brutality. Yet while they come in for a disproportionate amount of flak,
it is only the work of the relatively small number of people who are unafraid
for their wider reputations and who remain sticklers for the truth (and who
cannot allow the tiny details to pass because they know the resulting picture
that will be projected) who show the way out of a situation that will otherwise
continue to deteriorate.
Just how far it may deteriorate became clear to me while
speaking with black residents and police in Oregon — people such as the black
business-owner who a few days earlier had bullets fired through the windows of
his restaurant by Antifa/BLM activists. Why had these mere followers of “an
idea” done this? Because the owner is a patriot whose business has photos of
American first responders on the walls. If you believe the version of America
that has been projected, then this is where it will lead — with people firing
bullets through the window of a black-owned business in the name of countering
white supremacy. And if you are the local authorities, you will play your part
by failing to pursue the people who did this, because it is all too detailed
and difficult.
It was the same story when I spoke to a black policeman
in the neighborhood who had been on the force more than two decades. Talking
about the problems in his precinct, he was both bemused and depressed by the
claims of the protesters in the streets. Regarding claims that the police are
institutionally racist, he said, “I’ve never seen anything that supports that.
Certainly we’ve had problems in the past, for sure. But I don’t see those
things here. You know — we have African-American officers. And certainly if
those things were going on, we’d be shouting from the rooftops. But you don’t
see them. We have a black police chief. If there was a race problem here it
would be solved pretty quickly — especially in this day and age.” Yet this same
officer, and his colleagues, both black and white, must see themselves
constantly attacked because of a projection of America that too few people in
the wider culture have been brave enough to counter or correct. Indeed, many
have benefited from letting it slide.
As the policeman points out, Americans live in a country
where professional athletes such as LeBron James, “who weren’t even born when
civil rights were going on,” glibly announce that they and their family “are
afraid every time they go out on the streets.” It is a maddening claim. “That
just couldn’t be further from the truth. Especially for somebody like him.”
But there are personal costs to all this. When I ask this
police officer whether he would have joined the police if he had known that he
would end up in this situation, he offers a swift and weary “No.” There are
many costs to the lies that have been embedded about this country. Some of them
are felt by individuals at the front line. But all of them will be felt at some
point by the country. If a truer picture of America is to be projected on the
wall of the world, it is going to require more people concerned about getting
the details right: people not content with allowing the little lies to slide,
people who won’t permit an inaccurate view of this country to be projected
domestically or internationally. It will require sticklers for details —
difficult though they may be — pedantic and unafraid.
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