On an episode of “The Problem With Jon Stewart” three years ago, Jon Stewart had a discussion about taking responsibility for systemic racism and white supremacy with Charles “Chip” Gallagher, a professor of sociology at La Salle University who researches social inequality and race. Lisa Bond, “The Resident White Women” for Race2Dinner and Andrew Sullivan, editor of the Weekly Dish, also joined the discussion.
A summary of this conversation is important to the topic of how black people can achieve true equality in the U.S.
Their discussion on this platform shows us why racism still exists and why we see frequent police brutality involving black people as well as the removal of any symbol promoting Black Lives Matter and DEI policies being removed.
Race relations between white and black people
Jon Stewart opened with his thoughts to the question, what holds back conversations on race in America?
“At its core, I think white people put blame on black people for the position that they are in and then believe that white people will lose something in order for black people to gain it and that’s what creates that resentment and difficulty to overcome.”
Stewart began with Charles Gallagher for his opening statement on race relations, who stated how a significant amount of white Americans see race relations through a colorblind lens. This means white people believe we live in a race neutral environment where the playing field is leveled, Gallagher explained.
Stewart called it a meritocracy and Gallagher added it makes white privilege invisible to the common white person.
White privilege is a phenomenon where society favors white people over minorities through societal expectations and economic circumstances.
“It also makes whites feel that whatever they did, whatever success they had, had nothing to do with what happened 50,100, 200 years ago,” Gallagher said.
Stewart, playing devil’s advocate, remarked it’s reasonable white people are defensive because they did not have a direct impact on systemic racism. Their lives may be hard and they don’t understand how the idea of privilege factors into their lives.
Systemic racism is a pervasive form of prejudice embedded in laws, policies, practices and established beliefs and attitudes that perpetuate an unfair treatment of people of color.
Lisa Bond responded by saying the system of white supremacy teaches us that racism is evil. “When we say you’re racist, it’s a character flaw,” she offered.
White supremacy is the notion white people are the superior race, meaning they should dominate society and exclude non-whites. She explained white people like her should acknowledge their complicity in conversations about how they uphold structures and systems of racism daily.
“If we don’t talk about it then we are never going to see movement ever,” Bond said.
Can immigrants relate to black people?
Stewart asked Sullivan, “do you think because it always gets framed on that moral level; does the moral qualifying of it make resentment the natural outcome of that?”
“I think one of the issues is that it’s very hard to agree with some of the very premises that are being expressed tonight. We know this country is, for example, a white supremacy, well I don’t believe that. I think it’s possibly the most absurd hyperbole I’ve ever heard,” Sullivan responded.
He then explained his perspective is coming from that of an immigrant. Sullivan claimed the U.S. is the most multi-racial, multi-cultural, tolerant and diverse melting pot in history. He pointed out how 86% of our immigrants at the time, in 2022, are non-white.
Stewart told Andrew his perspective as an immigrant spoke volumes, but he can’t compare perspectives of immigrants to black people because they didn’t choose to immigrate to America. They were kidnapped, murdered, raped and taken to this country from Africa. The foundation of his perspective is fraudulent, or as Stewart put it, a “foundation lie.”
How do you define white supremacy?
Stewart asked Lisa Bond to define white supremacy in the framework of the conversation after Stewart challenged Sullivan about his idea of what white supremacy means, which he referenced as being aligned with the Ku Klux Klan and taking away rights from minorities.
Bond said when she talks “about white supremacy and when I talk about racism, I’m talking about power and privilege. The power and privilege we hold as white people in society. The way in which our structures, our institutions, our systems, how everything was designed with white people in mind and only white people in mind.”
Stewart added how white immigrants came to the U.S. and increased the white population.
Bond said white immigration has made white supremacy stronger because of the white population becoming bigger than any non-white population. The majority has the most say in how society operates in terms of structures, institutions and systems.
Sullivan said he didn’t believe systems existed as he was unaware society put them in place to distinguish the majority from the minority.
Systems
Stewart brought up one example of a racist system put in place, redlining neighborhoods. Sullivan explained redlining was a state enforced policy from the Jim Crow era and added how it’s an accurate depiction of white supremacy in action.
Then, Stewart brought up more examples such as the following:
- New Deal where black people were explicitly not allowed to have access to loans.
It was a series of programs enacted between 1933 and 1938 that insured mortgages to only white neighborhoods.
- Homestead Act that allowed white people to acquire huge masses of land and farm it while black people did not have access.
This policy was enacted in 1862 and required for people to be over 21 years of age or the head of the household to apply for free land. It came with two stipulations, being a U.S. citizen or declaring the intent to be one and no history of fighting against the U.S. or aiding any enemies that fought against the country too.
At that time, black people were not citizens of the U.S. until the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The law was repealed in 1976 in 48 states.
- The emergence of Social Security which omitted black people from unemployment insurance and retirement benefits
This policy was enacted in 1935. The act exempted agricultural and domestic workers that included black people. The provision was insisted on by Southern politicians. Even so it was an act that was supposed to benefit the general public. The exemptions for the act would get repealed in the 1950s.
- GI Bill that denied black veterans from getting benefits
This policy was enacted in 1944 where black people struggled to receive loans and higher education. “In some southern states, they were steered to menial jobs instead of college” along with other restrictions too. The original version of the bill ended in 1956 as it has gotten reformed to not deny black people.
With all these examples that Sullivan should be aware of, Stewart was puzzled how Sullivan lends no credence to the concept of white supremacy.
Gallagher said, “With the false analogy is this, equating 250 years of slavery and then 100 years of Jim Crow, the immigrant experiences of white Europeans from 1870 to 1924, I grew up in an Italian-Jewish neighborhood, Philadelphia working class, [these folks made it by] getting jobs in the government. These were all off-limits if you’re brown or black.”
He pointed out how white people owned everything from buildings to land and when black people tried to buy-in, pushback occurred in the form of terroristic and busing incidents.
Both Sullivan and Stewart said how they have to acknowledge our bad history, but Sullivan added how we should also acknowledge the good parts of our history too.
Stewart thought Sullivan was only minimizing the bad parts of American history with the inclusion of the good parts and came to the conclusion Sullivan was generalizing white people perpetuated all evil parts of American history.
White people are the ones who put systems in place for the access of resources that weren’t privy to black people, Stewart claimed. Again, Sullivan asked him to explain the systems put in place with examples as Stewart reiterates how he did with the GI Bill and the New Deal.
Stewart was confused about Sullivan’s questioning of systems as he cited multiple examples. Sullivan responded by saying that he doesn’t live in this same country figuratively as most Americans. Sullivan called Sewart’s position on the matter a product of anti-white extremism which is losing popular support, creating a backlash, electing Republicans and undoing a lot of the positive impact he thinks he is making.
Bond talked over the ending of Sullivan’s response to Stewart and stated how Sullivan is portraying the dog whistle trope. She thought that if we have these tropes on platforms like Jon Stewart’s people will keep reiterating it.
Then, Bond said that she didn’t come to Jon Stewart’s platform to engage with a white man as it is one of the reasons why her platform doesn’t include any white men. She doesn’t think white men can do anything about racism as they hadn’t for the last 400 years.
Sullivan’s refute was he is not responsible for anyone before me as he talked over Bond.
“I am so tired of engaging in this conversation and this deep hurt Andrew [Sullivan] has in talking about racism..” Bond said. She includes all white people in this sentiment regardless of their political affiliations. “Every single white person upholds these systems and structures of white supremacy and we have got to talk about it” she continued.
Stewart said that Sullivan “is taking words out of context and blowing them out of proportion so that he doesn’t have to deal with having to find a way to deconstruct the barriers that were put in place for black people in this country and give them a better chance.”
Sullivan called Stewart’s opening segment biased, one- sided and reductionist. Stewart started talking as Sullivan was ending his criticism of Stewart’s opening segment.
Sullivan asked Stewart, “Have you lived in the same country as everybody else in the last 30 years? It was a strawman that you created . . . in which every white person is bad, every black person would have the same position.”
Stewart responded, “You can appreciate where you live, you can love where you live and you can honestly diagnose a terrible, terrible illness that has lived in this beautiful place that you call home and love that you believe has metastasized into a cancer that can kill the very thing that you believe in so deeply in about this country. To improve that place and make it into the country that it stated it was in its founding documents is the duty of everybody who lives here so do not tell me who I am and what I believe.”
Solutions
“What is the future? How do we heal a country that has a real difficult time dealing with this as we see from four people that I think.. like and respect each other and yet still can’t have a conversation?” Stewart asked Bond.
Bond thought white people are responsible for having these conversations of race on a regular basis.
Stewart asked her how we can prevent those conversations from getting “heated,” in terms of one side thinking they’re being attacked for having a difference in opinion. He added that we are all trying to do the right thing, but we differ in how we do it.
Bond’s response is to hold people accountable with grace and compassion.
Gallagher then said, “on the individual level, there are things we can do. At the big level a lot of racism when you strip it away is about someone trying to take my resources and status is a resource. We [should instead] invest in our infrastructure: schools, bridges, I mean the list is very, very long.”
Stewart told Sullivan investing in infrastructure would appeal to him because it is essentially rebuilding poverty-striken areas.
Sullivan doesn’t think white people talking about issues black Americans face helps their plight. He thinks we as a country need to intensely focus on youth education.
Another point Sullivan brought up is to figure “out a way to help black kids to have a stable family.” Stewart said that he grew up in a single parent household to refute how much the breakdown of the family is not only a black issue.
Sullivan stated how the data showed 30% of African Americans don’t have stable families and it’s the biggest factor to getting people into college and succeeding in life. If we ignore it, we are going to let black children down.
Gallagher acknowledged how Sullivan is talking about the pathology of the black family and relates it to the structures such as the crack epidemic in the 1980s, disinvestment and white flight, just to name a few. Economic stability relating to family stability is not mentioned in Sullivan’s conversation.
Stewart felt that Sullivan’s defensiveness and use of tropes about black families being the cause of entrenched poverty in those communities ignores why they are unstable initially. He points out mass incarceration and the way we view the crack epidemic in the 1980s as examples of the reason for instability in black families.
“You keep trying to remove things from their historical bearings. If you can’t diagnose the problem, you can’t fix it,” said Stewart to Sullivan.
Sullivan said we need to think about how we can help black families restructure themselves.
“Why do you think the family got that way?” Stewart asked Sullivan.
Sullivan stated that marriage being less important, in addition to sex outside of marriage being more prevalent to every race where Stewart challenged his idea by claiming how he is talking about a specific race of people.
Sullivan is upset about the stability of families deteriorating. He said it’s a fact that children have a better quality of life when their parents stay home and take care of them until they leave home.
Stewart asked Sullivan, “How are you supposed to do that when you work a low-income job and you don’t have child care?” to Sullivan saying how we need to address that question too.
Sullivan would spend more on schooling and childcare.
“I do not think you can dismiss culture,” said Sullivan.
“That’s the point I’m getting to Andrew which I think you’ve been dodging around, what do you mean by culture?” Stewart asked Sullivan.
“I mean a culture in which the family unit is not as strong as it might be and in which a sense -” to where Stewart claimed that Sullivan is talking about black people.
“You seem to feel like somehow black culture is uniquely destructive to family, why?” Stewart asked Sullivan.
Sullivan believes this is the truth. Black culture is uniquely destructive to the family.
“It’s social conservatism losing its grip in African-American communities,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan is focused on the retention rate of marriage dwindling over time as he said that it was around 80% in Harlem in the 1930s, jumping to 30% in the 1980s. He thought that if the rate would be where it was in the 1930s then it would bode well for black children to succeed in life.
“People in those communities want a better quality of life, whatever we have to do to get there for them to obtain a quality of life, it’s not about broken marriage [preventions], it’s about how do we get people the quality of life that we all as Americans deserve.”
Stewart said the panel can agree on that sentiment.
“I’ve appreciated everyone taking the time to do this, boy has it pointed out some fault lines; we got to recalibrate and find a way to be open to all different stripes of white people in the conversation whether they be people who study it, people who spend their lives trying to change it, or people who are very upset about having to do that,” Stewart said to close the show.
Conclusion
Was Andrew Sullivan complicit in this conversation of race relations between white and black people?
He is complicit by not acknowledging what the other members of the panel have to say about race relations between white and black people. Others in the conversation informed Sullivan of what holds back conversations of race in America. They gave their position on the matter and explained how black and white people perceive race differently in America.
Sullivan’s perspective came through a colorblind lens and he was not taking in their perspective to find a viable solution to the problem of conversations about race. He blamed black culture for the deterioration of black families in America, which he says is the biggest problem facing African Americans.
But, why does he think black families are unstable? He said that we need to address that issue. He disregarded Stewart’s mention of mass incarceration and how we viewed the crack epidemic in the 1980s.
Stewart said it best, how it always gets framed on a moral level where we are taught that if you’re racist then you are a bad person. The framing of how we are taught systemic racism has to change because being a racist means that you have a closed minded difference of opinion.
A difference of opinion isn’t a bad thing and not being open to take someone’s perspective on systemic racism and how colorblindness and white supremacy factors into it is likely due to a lack of education.
This is where Sullivan’s mention of investing more on schooling is a strong point because our youth need to be taught more about race in schools starting in kindergarten.
Would Sullivan’s perspective be more open minded to the idea of systemic racism if he was educated on it, or in other words, critical race theory, in his youth, or any point of his life?
The problem is Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been limited in the teachings of schools around the U.S. in states such as Oklahoma, Texas and Idaho. CRT is the recognition that race is a social construct. It will make youth feel shame and guilt, which is what Sullivan’s position on race in the discussion was coming from partially.
Schools have to teach our youth about the systems that separated and made black people inferior to white people without making either of them feel guilty and ashamed.
Teachers need to teach black history framed as what people thought about different groups of people back then with context and the evolution of how different groups of people thought of each other to modern times.
Yes, it makes sense white people would be defensive and feel shame and guilt when these conversations are being had because it is an attack on their people and more importantly, themselves.
But, no, we need to treat each other with grace and compassion in order for conversations about race to be more frequent. It’s not currently anybody’s fault why things are the way they are. We just need to critically think about how white people can relate to black people and reach a common ground to achieve equity between us.
Featured image: Photo by BuddyL on Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0
Edited by Abbigail Earl & James Sutton
