Juliet Hooker-Black Grief, White Grievance

Show Transcript

Juliet Hooker: Black Grief/White Grievance

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: In the United States, the racial divisions among us seem to be deepening, fueled at least in part by political opportunists who prey upon fear and emotion. Our guest today is Juliet Hooker, a leading thinker on democracy and race, and author of a new book. Black Grief/ White Grievance. Her book examines racial politics and argues that both white and black communities must learn to accept loss for different reasons and to different ends.

[00:00:34] Professor Hooker is the Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence in Political Science at Brown University, where she teaches courses on racial justice, black political thought, Latin American political thought, democracy Theory and Contemporary Political Theory. Before coming to Brown, she was a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin.

[00:01:00] She also is the author of Race and the Politics of Solidarity, Theorizing Race in the Americas, and editor of Black and Indigenous Resistance in the Americas, from Multiculturalism to Racist Backlash. Professor Hooker, thanks so much for joining us on our podcast today. 

[00:01:23] Juliet Hooker: Thank you for having me. 

[00:01:24] Bob Gatty: Can you first talk to us a little bit about your book its premise and what prompted you to write it?

[00:01:31] Juliet Hooker: Of course. One of the main arguments of the book is that political loss has been unequally distributed in the history of the United States. That because of white supremacy, black people , in general, have had to shoulder a disproportionate number of losses and that whites as a group have been able to avoid loss more because of their position as the dominant group, politically, economically, socially. Now this uneven distribution of loss has consequences for democracy because it means that some citizens are making more sacrifices on behalf of the stability of the country than others. And in democracy, everyone is supposed to lose, right? That's the definition of democracy. There's change, there's rotation, no one wins all the time. And so that's one of the overall arguments. And I came to, to start thinking about these questions, actually I started writing a piece that became part of a chapter in the book on black protest, the second chapter in 2016, after the Ferguson uprising in after the death of Michael Brown, and then the. Clashes between protesters and the police. And and watching all of that unfold and the way that some people were very critical of the protesters, right?

[00:03:01] Very critical of their anger. And so that led me to start thinking about, what are expectations of how black citizens can mobilize to ask for redress for things like police violence. And of course, so I started writing this in 2016 and then the 2016 presidential campaign. Donald Trump, of course, as the as a major candidate and his rhetoric that was profoundly anti immigrant, sexist racist in, in many ways.

[00:03:34] And so I started thinking about how what I. Came to call black grief and white grievance were these two forces that were really driving and mobilizing people in US politics today, and that we needed a way of framework for thinking about them simultaneously rather than separately.

[00:03:55] Bob Gatty: Okay, so let's see. You say that in the United States, the fundamental civic capacity of being able to lose is not distributed equally among the races. I know you touched on that just a bit in your response to that first question. But can you expand on that just a little bit?

[00:04:21] Juliet Hooker: Absolutely. So first one of the things that I think, is a a key claim in the book is that if it's that we, we tend to think about democracy as being about empowerment, right? You go out there, you participate, you vote, you you, you get your election, right? Your preferred policy enacted.

[00:04:44] And so you're empowered as a citizen. But democracy is also about losing, right? If somebody wins, that means that somebody else lost. And it's counterintuitive to think about it this way, but being able to lose if you fought the good fought and the rules are fair, and yet you lost, is as central to democracy as winning is.

[00:05:09] And and so one of the things that I argue in the book, looking at these various moments in US history that have been very important in terms of racial Progress and change is that that every time there has been some movement towards progress towards racial equality, that there has been backlash, right?

[00:05:31] That that black citizens have had to engage in a enormous amount of activism to try to gain equality. And whenever they have done that, they have been met with backlash and resistance. 

[00:05:45] Bob Gatty: Okay, I understand. Now, in your book's introduction, you write that black grief and white grievance are linked because white grievance obscures and supplants black grief and is often mobilized in response to it.

[00:06:04] Can you explain that for me? 

[00:06:07] Juliet Hooker: Yes, of course. I think one really good example of this is if you think about the Black Lives Matter protests right against police violence and we know that black people are disproportionately the victims of police violence. So saying this the claim Black Lives Matter is meant to say, okay, why are black people being killed by the police if we take their lives to be to be important and meaningful. And yet in response to that, you have the folks who felt like saying Black Lives Matter wasn't, was a problem and would say in response, all lives matter, right? So this response to Black Lives Matter, all lives matter, because Black Lives Matter isn't saying all lives don't matter.

[00:06:58] It's just saying, let's look at this way in which actually people aren't acting like black lives matter. So for me, that's an example of how, when you say something like black lives matter, there's some people who feel like that's taking away something from them and that they need to respond by saying actually all lives matter.

[00:07:19] Bob Gatty: Yeah, I understand. Now you mentioned Trump administration coming into power. I suppose we could go on for six hours on this one, but how did the Trump administration exacerbate all of these problems that we're now experiencing, these problems of racial division that seem to be increasing.

[00:07:41] Juliet Hooker: There's no question that that the Trump presidency, has made those problems worse. Absolutely. One of the arguments that I make in the book in Black Grief, White Grievance is that White grievance or, backlash to seeming moments of racial progress is not new. So this is not the first moment that we've experienced it in the history of the United States, but it's definitely the case that we're in a very fierce moment, I think, of backlash.

[00:08:11] One way to think about this is to think about the Trump presidency as a reaction to the Obama presidency. 

[00:08:17] Bob Gatty: Yeah, I was going to ask you that because it seems to me that it seemed to me that, after Trump was elected, I was at a softball game. I used to play softball with a bunch of guys and here in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

[00:08:36] I had just moved here. aNd, it was right after maybe the day or two after the election. And I overheard a bunch of the guys that I was playing softball with talking in the in the dugout. And one guy said to the other now we can say whatever we want. We can do whatever we want.

[00:08:59] Meaning that Trump has given them permission to be racist. Basically and that attitude seemed to me that had been, held within. They were angry that they had a black president in Obama, and now they had the opportunity to have their own guy and to react in their own way. Is that what you're talking about?

[00:09:29] Juliet Hooker: Yeah, absolutely. I think if you look at the, the political behavior the public opinion and the polling people who do that kind of research, it's clear that they found that there's been an increase in, what they call racial resentment during the Obama presidency, right?

[00:09:50] Feeling of being displaced Especially among white voters. And and I think that there was definite at least, there's definitely a way in which you know, part of the appeal of Trump, I think, was precisely what you were saying, right? That he said all these things that weren't weren't PC that violated all these norms.

[00:10:12] And it made people feel empowered to say, Oh, he did that. That means I can do that. 

[00:10:18] Bob Gatty: Yeah. We're talking about loss. Trump hates to lose. And the other night at the Republican debate, they were all complaining that all they've been doing is losing. And January 6th was, a reaction to Trump's 2020 loss in a huge way.

[00:10:40] Is that an example of white grievance? What happened on January 6th? 

[00:10:47] Juliet Hooker: I think it is. Of course, there are a number of different things that were going on that fueled January 6th, but I think We one way to think about or one of the factors is definitely this mobilization of the sense that that certain people aren't supposed to lose right in the US that they are the true Americans, right?

[00:11:08] If you remember that from Sarah Palin, the real Americans, right? I think this gets Yeah. Mobilized a lot. Where people are saying, if we lose, it must be because something there was some cheating because we're not supposed to lose. And if you look at the rhetoric around Where people were upset the most about in terms of the states that they lost or the cities.

[00:11:34] There was always the suspicion about the big cities right where you have a lot of voters of color. And whether there was cheating there in a way that you didn't have people going, Oh, there's this rural small town in Ohio that voted, for Biden, that must be an anomaly. So I think there's really a sense that certain, certain voters, certain Certain kinds of victories aren't as legitimate.

[00:11:58] And also then that fuels the sense that that we are not supposed to lose. And if we lost, it must be because there was some kind of fraud. And I think January 6th was definitely an expression of that and an example of all these people who were mobilized by this rhetoric of the big lie of the that the 2020 election was stolen.

[00:12:22] Bob Gatty: Yeah, we're going to come back to that in a minute, but I wanted to ask you a little bit about Trump's attacks on immigrants. How he constantly denigrates them, bringing in drugs, terrorists, all this stuff and the Republicans, the Republican candidates that are trying to, win the nomination despite Trump.

[00:12:47] aT the debate the other night, that's all they talked about was doubling down on not all they talked about, but one of the things they talked about, doubling down on closing the southern border with all these scare tactics. Can you talk a little bit about that? 

[00:13:02] Juliet Hooker: Yes, absolutely.

[00:13:04] So I think, one of the ways in which, one of the things that I argue is that One of the features of white grievance is this is this sense of are these apocalyptic right scenarios, these visions that you're having this these enormous changes in the United States, and that in particular, I think, white people, white Christians, white men are being displaced. And immigration plays a big role in that, right? Because it becomes the sort of the threat from the outside, right? Think about the rhetoric that people use to talk about immigration, that there's a kind of invasion, right? What's an invasion? It's a military attack usually by another country. So when people talk about immigrants in this way, it's this, I think it, it points to the sense that they are coming in, they're taking over, they're displacing rightful Americans. And it, Takes away attention, actually, from the serious problems that have nothing to do with the presence of immigrants.

[00:14:14] But that might be maybe that you know you have growing economic inequality in the country, right? That affects people in really negative ways or whatever the case may be. And I think a lot of those fears. Those resentments, those those, challenges are then displaced on immigrants as if they're the cause of these dislocations that people are experiencing, particularly I think in terms of a fear that U. S. People talk about this all the time. How U. S. Demographics the demographics of the country are changing. And I think this is there's a lot of fear that the country's moving in a direction that some people don't support and immigrants become a scapegoat for some of those fears.

[00:15:06] Bob Gatty: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And it just doesn't seem to be stopping at all. Matter of fact, it seems to be getting worse, I think. Now you write that black citizens are expected to protest only in the most civil non disruptive ways in order for their losses to be legible. Refusals to contain black rage are said to be counterproductive because they alienate potential white allies.

[00:15:37] Are you saying that violent, disruptive protests are justified? 

[00:15:43] Juliet Hooker: What I am saying is that we have this idea this idealized notion of what the right way to protest is, and we tend to assume that And Particularly in the case of black people, there's these historical fears dating back to slavery that you're going to have these kind of a black violence right of this idea, you're going to have these violent black uprising.

[00:16:07] So I think whenever there is mobilization For racial equality that comes into play. One of the, one of the moments that I write about in the book is, this comment after January six by by Ron Johnson, the Senator from Wisconsin, where he says he's being asked, right? Were you afraid when, there's the attack on the Capitol?

[00:16:30] And he says, I wasn't afraid because I knew that these were good people and they were patriots. I would have been afraid if it had been Black or Antifa protesters. And that for me really encapsulates this way that it doesn't matter in a way if you are violent and you attack the, the capital, the seat of representative democracy United States and you can still be seen as a, a patriot and a law abiding person, but you just, do any kind of protest for equality, for social change, you're a threat.

[00:17:06] That's what that quote encapsulates to me. And I think that's part of what I'm trying to say that that script that we have about how people need to protest actually plays out very differently for different groups. So think about my other example I'd like to talk about with regards to this is the, um, the athlete protests, which are the most peaceful thing you can imagine, right?

[00:17:31] When they knelt on a national anthem, no rioting, no looting, nothing destructive. And yet people were just as upset about those. As marching on the streets. 

[00:17:43] Bob Gatty: Yeah, incredible. Okay now let's talk a little bit about the January 6th event. Many of those protesters have received lengthy prison sentences for their actions.

[00:17:58] But you write that armed white anti mask protesters in various state capitals and white insurrectionists at the Capitol received kid glove treatment compared to the heavy handed. violent repressive tactics unleashed on racial justice protesters. Do you believe justice is being served in these January 6th cases?

[00:18:23] Juliet Hooker: So I think it's a welcome development that they are being prosecuted. It took a while for that to begin to happen. And for a moment, it seemed like they, they weren't really going to face many consequences. So I do think that, the, one of the key elements of citizenship is this idea that you are going to abide by the results, peacefully accept the results of legitimate elections. And so for people to try to subvert, the results of an election is, as Is essentially to reject one of their key their key duties, their key responsibilities as citizens. I think it's important if we don't want to keep having these instances of people marching on the capital, if they're preferred candidate doesn't win to just to say we need to hold people accountable for those actions and call it what it was right and not an insurrection or an attempt to subvert a legitimate election, rather than saying you know they were just tourists or they were just sightseeing even though we've all seen the images. I Think it's important for democracy to 

[00:19:38] Bob Gatty: do that. 

[00:19:39] Yeah, I worked at the Capitol for seven years for two different members of Congress back in the day. And I never saw any protests like the one that occurred on January 6th. I'll tell you that. To me, that was just an incredible thing. It was an awful event.

[00:19:59] Now, do you think that Trump will face justice for these acts, for his actions regarding The election in January six. If so, why? And if not, why not?

[00:20:09] Juliet Hooker: I don't know if he will. And I think if he doesn't, it will be because unfortunately, the Republican Party, rather than choosing to stand for democracy, A large swath of it has chosen to go along with this idea that the 2020 election was stolen. And so I think a lot of their voters agree with that because they're receiving this information.

[00:20:35] They're believing these these claims that it wasn't that it wasn't really that the election was stolen and that therefore it was a righteous act to, to try to to subvert the transfer of power. So I think that, I think it's a really it's a really scary moment for us democracy right now, because you have so many people who don't trust in 

[00:20:58] Bob Gatty: the process.

[00:21:00] I think so, too. And. I Worry that, I for one hope the guy gets convicted and thrown in jail. bUt if that happens, I shudder to think what will happen in this country with his supporters. I just read a book that talks about a second civil war. Do you think that kind of thing is possible?

[00:21:28] Juliet Hooker: So I would hope that it doesn't come to that. But I think the real, the very dangerous moment that we are facing right now is that there are a significant number of people in the country who are willing to dispense with democracy if they don't prevail in elections if they're not able to win elections, they're willing to dispense with democracy.

[00:21:56] One of the things that I found extremely, that is extremely worrying. I don't know if you saw this, but after the Ohio voters voted in favor of the right to abortion is people who came out and said, that. Maybe democracy isn't the way to make these decisions.

[00:22:15] And I think that attitude is the really worrying thing that could lead to the second civil war outcome that you were mentioning, because if you write, if you don't believe in democracy, that means you believe in tyranny. That means you're willing to force other people to follow your political beliefs.

[00:22:34] And that's a real, um, 

[00:22:37] Bob Gatty: that's a serious threat. 

[00:22:39] How do you feel about what Trump has been saying these most recent days about going after his opponents if he wins if he wins a second term, using the Justice Department to hunt down and prosecute those who opposed him? 

[00:22:57] Juliet Hooker: That's a Tried and true tactic of authoritarian governments, right?

[00:23:02] You use the judicial system to to to root out your opponents and to to to get them out of the way. And it politicizes The justice system and subverts the rule of law. And so I think that this is precisely the kind of rhetoric that is deeply deeply problematic. And and that, and that encourages, people to be lawless and to become violent because it, it's this worldview that says, In some ways, it's a kind of messianic thing, right?

[00:23:37] I'm your savior and mine is the only way and if I don't prevail, then we have to we have to engage in these very extreme tactics. To make sure that that our side or our views prevail and the other side is the enemy and we can never find common ground with them. That doesn't work in democracy because you have to be able to work with people.

[00:24:01] If if you have this rhetoric where it's the other side is the enemy. And and they need to be eliminated. That just needs that's a classic, um, authoritarian

[00:24:13] Bob Gatty: attitude. 

[00:24:14] I'm wondering what you're seeing in your students, how they're reacting to all these things. Do you have any observations about that?

[00:24:23] Juliet Hooker: Yeah, I think it's a very it's a very difficult moment for a lot of a lot of students. I think a lot of Of them feel a real disconnect between their own political positions and those of, for example some of the people that they see in power and some of them.

[00:24:46] So I think there's two things I think sometimes, There's a sense that, we as young people don't really have a say or views aren't listened to or aren't attended to in the same way by elected officials. And then on the other hand, I think there's a lot of activism, right? I think and and there's a lot in the news right now and has been for a while where people, take on college students as these, these, they're out there, they're doing these things, they're not thoughtful, they're, they're extreme.

[00:25:17] But on the other hand, I find it really hopeful that students are You know are they're doing, are out there trying to to advocate for the positions that they believe in. Sometimes they might do it in the wrong way, but I think that's what we want, right? We want.

[00:25:36] We want young citizens to be engaged. We want young people to think that they have a say in what happens in the country. And so I, I actually find that in terms of thinking about my students that, I, what I want, what I would hope from that for them is that they're, they're mobilized, they're engaged rather than they're apathetic because they think, oh, nothing we do matters because we can't actually change anything.

[00:26:06] Are your students 

[00:26:07] Bob Gatty: mostly black, or do you have a mixture, or what? 

[00:26:12] Juliet Hooker: I'm at Brown, so we have, we definitely have a mixture. I think it's a, certainly a majority white institution. I do have a mix of students in my classes. But I think the, some of the things that I'm describing are things that are shared across 

[00:26:30] Bob Gatty: those groups.

[00:26:31] Yeah, okay. So would you say you're hopeful about the new generation coming in people that will be coming into positions of power in the, in the future. I 

[00:26:45] Juliet Hooker: am, I think, you know that. Yeah, they don't always get it right. I don't always agree with everything they do, but I think they, they're very thoughtful.

[00:26:54] At least if I think about my students, they're they want to learn and they have and they're trying to figure out. I think in a really difficult moment, think about this younger generation, right? They just went through a pandemic, they're looking at what's going to happen with climate change, what kind of, future there might be.

[00:27:14] I think these are young people who are facing a lot of challenges and and I think are trying to think about how to address some really big problems. 

[00:27:23] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Okay. You mentioned police shootings a little while ago. What needs to happen in your opinion to curb this kind of behavior by the police?

[00:27:35] Juliet Hooker: Ah, that's a very big question. I think that the problem has proven pretty intractable so far, right? So I think I was looking at statistics that said that 2022 is the had the highest number of police shootings to date or something like that. So it's not getting better necessarily.

[00:27:59] I think 1 of the things that Is really important is accountability. I think there was there's this way in which these you get these kind of panics around crime and people then then say, we have to have these huge police budgets and we have to have this militarized.

[00:28:20] policing. And I think that has shown that it hasn't really worked. And I think that the lack of accountability for for police officers for, the sort of ways in which I'm a fan of unions, but police unions I think have been really problematic in shielding police officers from accountability.

[00:28:40] So I think. All of those things are things that we need to rethink how how we think about safety. And for example maybe the police aren't the people who should be responding to people having mental health issues. I think that's been clearly shown that a lot of police killings have been instead of helping, they've actually ended up making the situation much worse.

[00:29:02] So I think we need to be creative in thinking about how we We address some of the, how we rethink policing, but also think about how do we, reimagine, I don't know, things like the safety net or investments in, in, in people so that we don't get to the point and in communities so that we can have less policing, right?

[00:29:27] Because right now, these are the people you call for all sorts of situations. When people find themselves with, with facing a range of problems that aren't really about crime necessarily. 

[00:29:39] Bob Gatty: You're not saying defund the police, right? 

[00:29:42] Juliet Hooker: I'm saying let's rethink the police, let's rethink what the police do.

[00:29:47] Let's rethink how we think about, What the police do. You remember that slogan? This is from the the the Black Lives Matter protest, which is who do you protect? Who do you serve? How do we get people I think, to think about what policing means differently, right?

[00:30:03] So instead of being there to, to, to impose your power over people that you're actually there to, to serve the community, Can policing do that or become that? That 

[00:30:17] Bob Gatty: would be a good idea. I think it would also be a good idea to spend some more money on mental health training, don't you? Absolutely.

[00:30:27] Okay. Now you write that despite recurring anxiety that black rage at ongoing loss will fray the bonds of the body politic. It is in fact white refusal to accept legitimate political loss that is the most profoundly anti democratic force in U. S. politics. Now we've talked about that to some extent with the Trump situation, but you want to talk about that a little bit 

[00:30:52] Juliet Hooker: further

[00:30:53] course. Yes. So I think that that part of the argument in the book is is really saying, how do we grapple with the fact that we have a lot of fear. About what happens when black people protest, right? What happens when people are out in the streets? And we see these as kind of moments of crisis.

[00:31:17] But we have been, I think, much less attentive to the ways in which white grievance and white refusal, right? This resistance to loss has really been damaging historically to U. S. democracy. And if you You know that those have been the moments when U. S. Democracy has been at its worst.

[00:31:37] If you think about, the failure after the abolition of slavery, right? Reconstruction when reconstruction was, Was abolished and, and we moved to Jim Crow and to disenfranchisement of African Americans or in the 1960s when you had right folks who were willing to go to the mat to defend racial segregation that these moments are end up being these moments when the refusal to accept right greater rights for non whites for black people end up costing everyone because you end up with them with a much more degraded experience and And, and democracy suffers. So one example of this in the present, if you think about it is that we can make voting so much easier and so much more accessible.

[00:32:38] But then you have these fears that If a wide number of people get to vote and because of the racial sorting of the two parties where you have right a lot of minorities who vote for Democrats that you end up having these these policies that actually make it difficult for people to vote.

[00:33:00] And that's against the basic tenets of democracy and it hurts everyone. Like what if we had a national holiday rather than having to figure out how you're going to get to vote on a work day around your, your work schedule. There are all these ways in which I think we, we end up with with a worse experience of democracy because we're afraid of the ways in which having a broader number of people have, be able to exercise citizenship fully how that might affect the people who have historically whites who have historically been at the center of U. S. Democracy. 

[00:33:41] Bob Gatty: Of course, the Republicans have said Trump has said that if we make it easier for people to vote, Republicans will never win another election. And so they've been spending their time finding ways to make it harder for people to vote.

[00:33:57] Is that not true? 

[00:33:59] Juliet Hooker: Yes, but think about it like that's right. The thing is like your problem. There is then have policies that will persuade people. It's not. Let's make it more difficult for people to vote. 

[00:34:10] Bob Gatty: How about that? Once you come up with some policies that people can support instead of being.

[00:34:19] Oh, man, I'm telling you what, okay, so you got anything more you want to add before, before I ask you where people can find your books? 

[00:34:31] Juliet Hooker: I Guess all I would say is, that one of the things that, that the book is trying to say is that we, I think you said this at this point earlier that Trump hates to lose and he talks and loser is an insult, right?

[00:34:47] Everybody wants to be a winner, but that's democracy, right? 

[00:34:52] Bob Gatty: Turns out he's the biggest loser of them all. 

[00:34:55] Juliet Hooker: But in democracy, it turns out being a good loser is actually a key thing that we all need to be able 

[00:35:03] Bob Gatty: to do. Okay. All right. Let's talk a little bit about your books. You've got, what, three now.

[00:35:11] This last one, which is black Grief, White Grievance. And I have to confess, I haven't read it all, but I've read a good bit of it. And it's excellent people. You need to pick it up. If you're at all interested in these topics, and if you care about this country, it's worth it. It's worth your time. so People can find this on Amazon, I presume.

[00:35:34] And where else? 

[00:35:35] Juliet Hooker: They can find it on Amazon. It's also available through the Princeton University Press website, but yes. Okay. Also hopefully at some bookstores near you. 

[00:35:46] Bob Gatty: Yeah, you published it in October. Correct. How's it doing so far? 

[00:35:53] Juliet Hooker: It seems to be doing well. I've been really really pleased with the ways in which people have really responded positively to the argument.

[00:36:01] And 1 of the nice things about it has been that. People seem to get it, right? They, it really resonates with some of their own sense of what's been happening in the country. So that's been very very heartening. 

[00:36:13] Bob Gatty: Excellent. Okay. Julia, thank you so much for being with us on our podcast.

[00:36:18] I, I appreciate it. No end. I think it's been a good discussion. And , like I said, you guys pick this book up. It's worth your time. .