Decompiling Oppression #15
Sam McVeety
As the rush of demonstrations and uprisings trickles into the more mundane business of crafting legislation and policy, I thought it would be appropriate this week to situate our current moment in history, and examine how that should inform our present and future approach to racial justice. We'll be looking at Derrick Bell's famous theory of interest convergence, which examines major advances in formal racial equality against their broader historical context, and asks hard questions about the motivations behind and durability of those advances. Specifically, he argues (and convincingly demonstrates) that "the interest of blacks in achieving Racial equality will be accommodated only when it converges with the interests of whites" (Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma).
I expect that this week's topic will be a challenging one for many white readers, because it cuts to the core of how we might see ourselves vs. how we might be seen by others. As a white person, I've certainly struggled with the disequilibrium that follows some of the implications of interest convergence as a theory, but I think it's critical that we push through this discomfort. After all, it is one thing to pursue racial justice work when seeing oneself as part of a long line of ancestors who are presumed to be the "good ones", fighting for abolition, voting rights, and integration along the way. It is another to sit with the uncomfortable truth that we have been part of the problem, and will only be part of the solution with conscious effort. While it's human nature to want to assume the best of those close to us, white people need to move beyond this generational defensiveness. If we're going to demand the removal of Confederate icons and statues (as we should), we should also be willing to sit with the truth that many, if not all of us, had family who were against (or only narrowly for) integration, who were part of the 63% of Americans who disapproved of Dr. King during his lifetime.
Diving into historical events, Bell examines the advent of desegregation against the twin backdrops of domestic capitalism and the Cold War's global framing of capitalism vs. communism. In the former case, business interests were keenly aware of the challenges that segregation posed to further industrialization in the South. In the international arena, politicians observed a pervasive trend of Black activists' increasing comity with communist interests and the Soviet Union (for all of its flaws), casting about for an alternative to ongoing indignities of the American system of "freedom". Worse, the hearts and minds of the so-called "third world" were at stake, and the United States couldn't afford the hypocrisy of failing to achieve formal equality domestically while stumping for freedom abroad.
Bell argues that these adjacent interests (in opening up the South and burnishing the image of capitalism abroad) created the critical mass of political will among white interests for mid-century civil rights movements to succeed. To be clear, he isn't framing this as a story of heroic white benevolence; these movements also obviously wouldn't have succeeded without the massive mobilization of political force from Black communities. What he is saying is that the Black desire and will for liberation will be (and always has been) present, but it will only become reality when its aims converge and coincide with dominant white interests.
One of the strongest arguments for the theory of interest convergence is looking at what happened afterwards. During the 1970s and 80s courts and politicians walked back many of the gains of earlier movements, either explicitly through court rulings, indirectly through the War on Drugs, vilification of welfare, or resistance to de facto school integration. It's by no means a stretch to imagine that this history would have played out very differently if there had been a continued national push to entrench and expand the gains of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Going even further back, lest we forget, President Lincoln famously said, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it". After the Civil War, the rapid progress of Reconstruction was cynically subverted and dismantled through the reemergence of racist political and corporate power.
This theory might feel pessimistic, but I bring it up because we are writing the history books of the future every day, and we don't have to repeat the mistakes of the past. Optimistically, this is why "Black Lives Matter" is such a fundamentally powerful, transformative statement. It centers the conditions of the victims of a racist system (and not the perpetrator), and it speaks to a core moral statement, one that is not given temporary or illusory relief through sterile changes in legal language. If we let it, it steers away from the modern pitfalls of interest convergence, because it tells us exactly whose interests should be centered. Concretely, it means that we should engage in anti-racism work as a project of ending historical subordination, because it is the right thing to do, and we must not lose sight of this end when trying to accomplish secondary goals. In the tech industry, this means being cautious around the interest convergence framing of "diverse teams produce better outcomes", and ensuring that there is also a moral component to this argument. "Black lives matter" gives us a north star to follow and a standard to constantly examine the outcomes of our actions against.
With that in mind, here are this week's invitations:
Personal: Think about how to continue moving from a moral reaction to individually mediated racism to a moral reaction to structural racism. See if you can expand your focus to structural racism and its outcomes, including education, wealth, and health outcomes.
Communal: Spend some time sharing your personal reflections above, and identify and share a concrete action in your community related to dismantling structural racism.
Solidarity: Support the national Movement for Black Lives and familiarize yourself with their platform. Use your voice and power to amplify their message.
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