You can’t address an issue unless you acknowledge it.

You can’t address an issue unless you acknowledge it openly and honestly.

You can’t address an issue unless you acknowledge it openly and honestly and want to change.

You can’t address an issue unless you aknowledge it openly and honestly and want to change, and are willing to do the hard work required to realize that change.

I’ve been thinking about what’s been going on in Virginia and the debate about how to address past behaviors of politicians, which behaviors do not align with the needs of the people whose votes put them in office.

The topic of youthful indiscretion, which is a popular defense, is the one that interests me the most. And the reason it interests me is that youthful indiscretion doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Kids are creative, but for the most part, what they’re doing is remixing, not inventing. When they are doing something that they later regret, they are imitating something they’ve been taught. From friends, from family, from school, from cultural leaders, and from the media they consume.

So here’s the thing; if we’re going to accept the excuse of youthful indiscretion–and I admit that’s a big “if”, but run with me–it seems like doing so is a clear admission that things like systemic racism exist. I mean let’s think about that yearbook picture. Someone had to be willing to put on blackface. Someone had to be willing to dress up like a KKK terrorist. Someone had to take a picture of it. And pay to get it developed. And submit it to the yearbook. And put it in the layout of the yearbook. And approve the layout of the yearbook.

Every single person in that process might claim that this was just youthful indiscretion. But that means that every single person in that chain had been socialized in our society to think that a white man in blackface next to another man (presumably white) in KKK terrorist attire was at least acceptable, and maybe even funny.

Did you, dear reader, find this sort of thing funny, or even acceptable back in the early ‘80s? Maybe, maybe not. If you did find it funny or acceptable, do you still? If you don’t still, can you point to reasons why you changed your mind and reasons why it seemed acceptable in the first place?

Me, I know I didn’t ever put on blackface or dress as a klansman, but that stuff was everywhere. In 1986, there was a mainstream movie called Soul Man where a white guy put on blackface to get into college. Right there at your corner theater. I’m sure there were things I said or did in the early 80s that I wouldn’t stand by now, and certainly things that I let stand–things my friends did or said that I didn’t call them on–because I was a kid in a world where that stuff was everywhere.

The thing is, there’s a large segment of our society that doesn’t want to admit that structural racism exists. My gut feel is that this is the core constituency that would defend the VA governor and attorney general by saying that their behavior was youthful indiscretion. My point is that by sugesting that, it tacitly proves that structural racism exists.

The funny thing about this group is that they don’t believe in structural racism; they decry it as a conspiracy theory. But somehow, they believe that they’re structural political correctness. People get really tied up in a knot about being told that they are acting racist, immediately shouting down thier opposition of cries that they won’t be intimidated by the so-called PC police. I’ve heard it said that these days, it’s considered worse to call out racism than to actually be a racist.

And let me be clear: we’re not just talking about racism. It’s all the -isms and -phobias here, starting with sexism, but moving on to all the others. People who complain about the “PC Police” are quick to say, “What even is the patriarchy?” and brush it off like it just doesn’t exist. And they defend ablism by making quasi-profound statements about meritocrisy. And homophobia by quoting the bible. And so on.

We have structural problems. If we’re going to accept “youthful indiscretion” as an excuse, we have to accept the implication that the people who run the show were reared in an environment wherein bigotry, hatred, and abuse were the norm, and that this environment has affected how they think.

And unless the people who’ve made these “indiscretions”–especially those in power–don’t even acknowledge the environment which inspired those actions, then how can we believe that they’ve learned anything since then; and how can we believe that they understand those systems still exist; and how can we believe that they are going to do anything about it?