When Derek Black apologized for his role in taking white nationalism mainstream, one of the more printable responses from former fans posted to his father Don's racist Stormfront website, was that Derek had become "part of the population that doesn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, so [they] ignore and bury the real science" (Saslow 222). Facts and rational argument were as important as race to Derek before he changed, and remained so after. His distraught father argued with his estranged son for hours, and was shaken because "It wasn't like he couldn't use his brain anymore. He still made rational arguments," leaving Don only "pretty sure" that racism was right (233). Rational arguments and facts got Derek over the line from racism, but it was by his concern for feelings and relationships that, in his own words, he "grew past" his "bubble" (218).
Author Eli Saslow shapes Derek's story almost like a romantic comedy. First, Derek's a fish out of water at New College in Sarasota, Florida, 80% white but "a hotbed of multiculturalism" (22). Nevertheless, his proud father boasts on their radio talk show, "It's not like any of these little commies are going to impact his thinking. If anyone is going to be influenced here, it will be them." The first person Derek meets on campus is someone he's prepared to despise, a young Hispanic man named Juan. Both arriving late for orientation, they help each other to find their way, and stay friends from then on. Then Derek's attracted to a friendly young woman who finds him fascinating; she's Jewish. Derek thinks, if his friends knew who he really was, they wouldn't like him. Tension builds, and Derek can't get up the courage to "come out," so he does the Cinderella thing: his glass slipper is a magazine he leaves behind in the gym that features an interview with Derek Black, rising star of the White Nationalist movement.
Once outed, Derek is a pariah on campus until a Jewish friend, Matthew Stevenson, invites him to join a diverse group for Friday night Shabbat dinners [see photo - Derek at left, Matthew standing]. Stevenson tells Saslow that he genuinely liked Derek. "Matthew [and friends Moshe and Juan] offered him an implicit agreement: They would pretend to be oblivious about his white nationalist convictions, so long as Derek treated them with respect and kept his beliefs to himself" (82).
Gradually, Derek opens up enough to engage in talks and long email exchanges with a young woman, Allison, who exposes the discredited science and incomplete history upon which Derek had built his rational racism.
More than just data, Derek tried to think about the perspectives of the friends he'd made during weekly Shabbat dinners at New College. There was Moshe, whose family had somehow survived the Holocaust; and Matthew, who didn't feel comfortable wearing his yarmulke in parts of the South; and Juan, a first - generation college student who was saving money during his senior year by forgoing student housing and sleeping instead in the gym. Sometimes there were ten people seated at the Shabbat table on Friday nights: one gay, one black, one Hispanic, two Jewish, several female. And then there was Derek. He was white. He was male. He was straight. He had his college tuition fully paid for and his parents' credit card tucked into his pocket. "In no reality am I the person at that table who's been discriminated against." (202)
Allison urges him to speak out, not to keep his change of heart to himself. He's convinced when he hears classmates speak of their experiences at an anti - racism rally, and he owns his part in causing their trouble.
The last part of the story, where he's a new man, stops being a comedy. Saslow has interviewed Don Black and other members of Derek's family, along with Derek's godfather David Duke and former colleague Richard Spencer. When Saslow relays their stories, dismay shows through. Don tells Derek on the phone that it would have been better had the son never been born; then calls back some minutes later, voice trembling, to say he was sorry, he didn't mean it. That's painful.
After that rupture, Derek changed his name and retreated into obscurity, until he heard his own vocabulary and concepts promoted by Donald Trump. Following the election, he wrote an op - ed in the New York Times, and cooperated with Saslow on this book.
Derek's story demonstrates one of the main points of Shankar Vedantam's book, The Hidden Brain. We decide what we believe, first; we find rational support, second. (See my blog post, 9/21/2017).
"White Episcopalian reads Living Into God's Dream" (12/17/2018) surveys a book of essays about "dismantling racism in America," and the gist of it is what we see Matthew and friends doing with Derek in this book. The relationship opens up a crack in the rationale.
"'Rule of Law' and Sympathy" (12/26/2018) questions whether a cool, rationalistic approach to law is good enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment