During the Dignity Workshops held on January 19 in celebration of MLK Day, every Deerfield student watched excerpts from the documentary The Color of Fear, where participants engaged in discourse about their American-ness. In these clips, David, a white man, asked Black, Asian, and Hispanic participants to “just be American” instead of emphasizing their racial differences. Victor, a Black man, then responded that such an approach was implicitly white-centric.
Afterward, we discussed, was David dignified?
First, let’s rephrase the question. Does David respect Victor’s dignity? In the end, dignity is not about the speaker’s gentility, but rather the listener’s sense of self. In the video, David has manners but that shouldn’t distract us from what he says, which promotes assimilation as the only legitimate approach to American identity. Victor is assertive and harshly accusative, yet nothing he says is unreasonable.
David repeatedly refuses to accept other participants’ identities by rejecting the notion that race can be a part of someone’s American-ness. When an Asian-American participant says that he feels American, David says, “I think that’s a correct and proper attitude,” while criticizing another Asian-American participant for not describing himself the same way — as if he has a right to judge whose identities are worthy.
David also takes the bait of assuming he was an innocent victim of accusations of racism. Racism is fundamentally a white problem, but he flips the script. He asks the people of color in the room, “Is this clinging [to your heritage] the problem?…For years, I’ve said, ‘Why do these guys have such a problem being a color? Why can’t they just be individuals and go out and make a place for themselves?’”
Victor knows that he shouldn’t have to compromise his identity to be validated by white America and avoid an uncomfortable confrontration. As Dr. Donna Hicks wrote, “Stand up for yourself… A violation [of dignity] is a signal that there is something in the relationship that needs to change.” His confrontational manner is necessary to defend his dignity, and necessary to force David to reckon with his privilege. He is not “Blaming and shaming others to deflect [his] own guilt.” What guilt does a Black man bear for racism?
If what you took away from the Dignity Workshop was that David is a role model for navigating conversations about race whereas Victor is out-of-control and totally crosses a line by calling out racism, then the exercise has failed you. The school can’t (or at least shouldn’t) force you to give Victor the benefit of the doubt, but instead of evaluating his argument, try to understand it.
I like the idea of dignity. But maybe we should be more explicit about whose dignity we’re focused on in an unequal society.
In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not…the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.” Often, the most pernicious kind of racism is the form that seems most tame. Dr. King was for harmony, but that doesn’t mean he respected racist opinions, no matter how socratically phrased. We should reward and encourage inclusive opinions, not inclusive manners.
At the January 18 school meeting, Terrence Hayes said that he preferred the term “humanity” over “dignity.” I think I know why. It’s too easy to think of “dignity” as “dignified,” which then bleeds into “civility” and even “politeness,” whereas “humanity” conveys authentic acceptance.
David doesn’t respect the hyphenated identities of Americans who are considered foreign by virtue of being non-white. He didn’t understand why his viewpoint was offensive, but it is. We shouldn’t praise David for stating his perspective in a well-packaged way. We should give him credit because (in a moment that we didn’t get to see in the workshop) he eventually validated Victor’s perspective.