The shocking but not surprising expulsion of two young Black men by the Tennessee State Legislature while their 60-year-old White colleague was spared ouster despite breaking house rules in the exact same way is a blatant display of racism, pure and simple. It may sound ridiculously obvious, but it needs saying. Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were clearly kicked out because they are Black, and also supposedly not “apologetic” enough for their White, male counterparts who decided to pursue the nuclear option and remove them from office instead of using other, lesser punishments such as censure. Representative Gloria Johnson, who a few days earlier had joined Jones and Pearson in taking to the house floor to demand an assault weapons ban following the slaughter of three little kids in their school, was protected by her whiteness, as she herself publicly stated.
The Tennessee 3
This is an important moment in our society as it exposes both an ugly truth and an opportunity for progress. The ugly truth is obvious: two young, Black men in Tennessee—the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan — were expelled for breaking rules of “decorum” while their White colleague who, again, joined them every step of the way still has her job. As Rep. Jones pointed out, there have been only two other expulsions from the Tennessee House in the last 157 years. In 1980, a representative was found guilty of accepting a bribe while in office and in 2016, another was expelled over allegations of sexual harassment. Recently, neither an arrest on charges of domestic violence nor admitted child molestation nor alleged urination on the seat of a fellow legislator was enough to warrant these offenders’ expulsion, but loudly protesting inaction on gun violence after three 9-year-olds are executed—and especially protesting such horror while Black— was reason enough for a Republican supermajority to take this extreme action. In a particularly repulsive and condescending comment, Rep. Andrew Farmer, R-Sevierville, blamed Pearson for throwing a “temper tantrum with an adolescent bullhorn”. He continued addressing Pearson, “That yearning for attention, that’s what you wanted? Well, you’re getting it now.” Farmer may as well have preceded his ugly rant with the word “boy” for good measure.
But take heart! Farmer is right in one sense—these young men are clearly going to get attention, just not the kind of attention Farmer was hoping for. This is clearly not the last we have heard from Jones and Pearson, both of whom are extraordinarily talented young legislators and orators. In fact, the Tennessee Republicans picked the wrong targets if they are hoping for this issue to go away. I personally have hope that their strong and powerful voices, particularly on the epidemic of gun violence, will not be silenced by this temporary, unjustified setback.
I would like to focus on the opportunity— and more specifically the lesson— that this sorry episode presents. Too often, white people (or any people whose own “tribe” acts in such a blatantly racist way) look for alternative explanations for such behavior. But if it walks like racism and quacks like racism, it’s racism. Due to our tendency toward homophily, our knee-jerk reaction is to start explaining away the bad behavior of people who look like we do. But we have to stop it. And the best way to stop it is to put the episode through the “all-things-being-equal” test (otherwise know as the “but for” test), as in, would these young men have been expelled “but for” their race? Well, in this case, our answer was served up on a silver platter because Rep. Johnson was spared while her two colleagues lost their seats.
Typically, it’s a bit more subtle. Would I have been called “confident” in teaching evaluations but for my gender? The answer is no, because not one single one of my male counterparts ever saw that adjective on their evaluations. Their confidence was simply assumed. Would Joe Biden have called Barack Obama “clean and articulate” but for Obama’s race? No, because in the next breath he called him the first “mainstream African American”. Would a young woman I recently interviewed have been asked by an older male colleague what she was making her boyfriend for dinner had the gender roles been reversed? Again, very doubtful (she swears she doesn’t cook and never told this man that she does). Would George Floyd still be here today but for his race? Would a young, Black female former student of mine have been told by her White male boss that she could get promoted more quickly if she just “told a few more jokes” “but for” her race and gender? You get the idea. . .
Assumptions, stereotypes, and the natural human desire to hang around with our “Amen Choir” only serve to further divide us and to keep certain members of society from reaching their full potential. I suspect that those conservative, White, male Tennessee legislators would be a lot more comfortable with Reps. Jones and Pearson if they tried harder to conform to their ways of dress, behavior, speech and “decorum”. In fact, Representative Pearson’s previous decision to wear a traditional, African dashiki on the house floor really got some of those guys riled up.
But the promise of America is that it is a melting pot where we are called by our better angels to treat all fellow citizens with respect and tolerance. And the punishment for rule-breaking (or law-breaking) should be proportionate to the transgression, and the same for everyone. The quest for fairness in all areas of society, from law to politics to business to our many daily personal interactions, would benefit from the regular application of the all-things-being-equal test—“but for” the individual’s race, gender, age, sexual orientation, etc, would things have played out in the same way? In Tennessee, if you’re a young, Black male in the statehouse, the answer is clearly no.
