Damned If They Do, Damned If They Don’t: Cynicism On Display

Suppose that it had been BLM protestors at the Capitol yesterday, and that authorities had exactly the same level of advance warning that they, rather than a pro-Trump mob, would be there. Would the Capitol Police have reversed course and planned to have the National Guard present? If we accept that they were driven to take a different approach by a desire to avoid the mistakes and criticisms that accompanied the June BLM protests, the reasonable inference is that they would not have done anything differently.

In fact, this is just one of a host of differences between the June and January events which stand as confounding variables to the inference that the different responses were due to race-related differences in the two causes and the two crowds supporting them. To name just a few obvious differences beyond black vs. white, it was reasonable to suppose, in advance of violence breaking out in either case, that BLM protesters are predominantly politically left, anti-Trump, and have a negative view of law-enforcement, while Wednesday’s group was politically right, pro-Trump, and pro law-enforcement. Suppose the fact that conservatives are characteristically more committed to law and order, and to upholding our traditions and institutions, lulled the Capitol Police into a false sense of security. Or suppose the fact that Wednesday’s group was a pro-Trump crowd explains why Trump refused emergency requests to send in the National Guard after violence erupted. Where’s the racism in either of these scenarios?

Of course, many will reject such explanations for the difference in approach. But why? Until more is known, shouldn’t we give the Capitol Police the benefit of the doubt? Shouldn’t we accept people’s explanations for their actions unless we have strong reason to doubt that their explanations are true? Shouldn’t we consider all reasonable explanations before concluding that racism is the real explanation? Not according to CSJT, which teaches people to assume and dogmatically defend race- or other oppressed-class-based explanations while dismissing alternative explanations as oppressive power-plays by those invested in the very systems of oppression that CSJT assumes both to exist, and to be the fundamental realties in which we live and move and have our being.