Whew, last week was a big one here in Tennessee, huh? I have all the feelings. I’m pissed that six people in our community can be killed in cold blood and literally the best our governor can do is propose making sure every school is as well prepared as Covenant. Which ... um, I mean, Jesus, the level of disconnect is amazing.
Check out Melissa Brown’s story in The Tennessean. Lee is proposing schools have to have their doors locked. The Covenant shooter was not stopped by locked doors. Lee wants to pay to put armed people in every public and private school in the state. Covenant reportedly had armed people in it. He wants to focus on mental health and making sure people get help. The Covenant shooter was being treated for a mental illness. It would be hilarious if it weren't so sickening. Lee's big solutions are to make sure all schools meet the standards of a school that a shooter was easily able to breach.
It’s really no wonder Tennessee Republicans would rather have huge public displays of being mean to Black people than to talk about meaningful gun reform. Their ideas are stupid.
I’m proud of Tennessee Democrats, which as a Tennessee Democrat is not a feeling I’m used to having. But watching the bullshit that resulted in the ousters of state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson did make me so damn proud. I loved hearing people just speaking the plain truth in the face of a rigged and unjust system. As much as I get tired of all the God talk in our politics, I was glad to hear from people whose understanding of God is with the helpless and the hopeless. I was so glad to hear John Ray Clemmons get angry. I was moved by Jason Powell getting emotional about the memorial to the children killed at his kid’s ball game.
I have very mixed feelings about G.A. Hardaway. (I just realized I have been holding a grudge against him since at least 2011!) But I stand by that grudge. Anyone willing to get into bed with Stacey Campfield deserves skepticism and dirty looks for the rest of his days. And even so — even as I am deeply biased against him — hearing him speak on Thursday, I was ready to move him into the governor’s mansion myself. He was the elder statesman Tennessee needs, instead of these racist dumbasses who would not let themselves be moved by the words of their wise colleagues.
I said it before and I’ll say it again, just based on Thursday: Who do you want to stand with? The people who care about their constituents and the Tennesseans who have lost family and friends to gun violence and who care about each other, where white people are allies with people of color? Or the folks who clearly were insulted that these Black people did not “know their place”?
But everyone has already said those things. So I want to talk about two moves Republicans made that we white people need to know and understand. The first is the failure to oust Knoxville's Rep. Gloria Johnson. I’ve seen people say that the deciding vote to keep her was Justin Pearson’s, but Justin Jones had both Johnson's and Pearson’s votes, and he was ousted. It is important for white people to understand that Republicans kept her. That was the decision they made.
The second thing: the allegations going around that Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland is lobbying to keep the city from returning Justin Pearson to the legislature. Memphis politico Tami Sawyer tweeted: “Word on the street is that the Mayor is lobbying behind the scenes against @Justinjpearson’s reappointment. Nashville is telling him that if Justin is reappointed #Memphis won’t receive funding to remodel FedEx Forum. Money is talking. #TennesseeThree #TenneseeTwo.” Strickland is white.
When I was in college, my favorite history professor was Paul Bushnell, a white guy who had come to Nashville during the civil rights movement. I took a class he taught on this time period, and it was amazing. He knew everyone and had personal opinions about them. And his knowledge of people and his obvious fondness for them made everything more real. This wasn’t something that people did at some other place in some other time. This was something Professor Bushnell and his friends cared deeply about. He, however, didn’t say anything about what he, himself, had gotten up to in Nashville. He always kept the focus on Black leaders, not on his own efforts.
I happened across his name recently in The Tennessean, in a story from May 31, 1960. Here’s the relevant part:
Last week a group of 13 students sent a letter to Branscomb protesting the Rev. Mr. Lawson’s expulsion, and asserting that they had taken a more active part than the Rev. Mr. Lawson in the sit-ins.
Two of the group, Paul Bushnell and Dick Dickinson, said they were on the leadership group for the sit-ins. All 13 said they asked Branscomb to deal with them in the same way he dealt with the Rev. Mr. Lawson if he was not readmitted—by expulsion.
One of the reasons the sit-ins in Nashville were so disruptive and alarming to the white power structure is that they were interracial — white people were working with Black people for Black liberation. (I don’t want to get sidetracked too much from my point, but I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that Professor Bushnell constantly stressed to us that many of the internal disputes within the movement were because well-meaning white people could not let go of their bullshit, and men who wanted equality for themselves did not want to give it to women.)
And one of the somewhat effective tools of white supremacy that Nashville used against the student movement was to continue to treat the white people in the movement better than the Black people. There was simply no way for the average white activist to have the same kind of skin in the game as the Black activists. Even when they were doing the exact same things, Black people received harsher punishments for it. Because of how the system was set up to benefit white people, it was virtually impossible for white people to not benefit from it. Which means it’s very hard for white people to stand in true solidarity with Black people, because the risks are never exactly the same.
This isn’t to say that white people don’t also suffer for rebelling against white supremacy. White people have lost their lives trying to dismantle this racist nightmare. But not in the numbers Black people have. And white people get to opt into caring about this stuff. Black people get conscripted into it at birth.
If Tami Sawyer's tweet is to be believed, the state legislature is allegedly, effectively bribing Memphis Mayor Strickland so he sees that it will be easier on him if he just puts the wants of the white state government ahead of the will of Black Memphis. Just let them extend to him the privilege of being able to fund what he wants funded by falling out of community with his own city.
This is a pretty straightforward move to sever trust within a multiracial coalition — by having a white guy show that he wants things to be easy for him with other white people more than he wants things to be easy for him with his constituents, many of whom are Black. It is hard to have a multicultural movement if white people keep betraying it. So the state legislature could really use a big public betrayal where a white person throws his lot in with them, even if it goes against his city and his party. Because the events of the past couple of weeks have shown a lot of Tennesseans their common grief and outrage.
The Tennessee Three, from left: Reps. Justin Jones, Gloria Johnson, Justin Pearson
What they did to Johnson was a little less straightforward but more insidious. They showed that, even if a white person is willing to go with Black people straight into danger, even if she stands before them and just as clearly as the two Black men she’s with tells that old racist body all its sins, they’re still going to treat her differently because she’s white. They will even use their enemy — a woman they literally put in a closet — to uphold white supremacy, by not letting her suffer the fate reserved for Black politicians.
Unfortunately for them and fortunately for the rest of us, Gloria Johnson called that move out for what it was. It would have been easy enough for her to crack under the pressure and conform to what Republicans want, but she did not.
This is a truly important lesson for white people who want Tennessee to change. Look for the ways you’re treated differently. Recognize when you’ve been sheltered from the harshest realities. If a Black person tells you, “Well, Tennessee is just going to be Tennessee,” don’t immediately reply with, “But this is not who we are.” Recognize that you don’t know — aren't able to viscerally know — what this state is really like in all its ugly glory, because everything has been set up for you not to know. And your not-knowing, whether willful or just on account of how you were raised, is a privilege. It is a way you have been protected from ugliness that might upset you.
For white people, this is always the temptation white supremacy asks you to give into: Just succumb to being treated better, for your life to go easier. Look away.
Instead of that, look at Covenant — a private school supposedly “safer” and “better” than a public school, where people carried guns, where teachers hobnobbed with governors — and recognize that we’re in a rare moment when both sides of the con are visible. How it’s reinforced and that it doesn’t work. Republicans can punish Black people for pointing it out, but they can’t make it less true: Our stupid gun laws are getting people killed, and we could have laws that would at least somewhat mitigate that, but Republicans don’t want to pass them.
