Facebook Publication Date: 12/9/22 12:12 PM

Lace on Race
Lace on the Race
Georgia Runoff 2022

As I began writing this piece, the polls had been closed in Georgia for about an hour and a half.

Warnock was expected to (and did) take the race, despite the ever tightening election returns, however Metro Atlanta was decisive and consolidated Warnock’s gains.

But, for a moment, never mind that.

For our purposes, one way or another, by the time the election is certified, regardless if the final count is written in red or blue, the state of Georgia will have done what no other states–Dem or GOP–have done. They will have elected a Black man to the United States Senate; either a first one for the second time, or a second one for the first time. Both scenarios; notable, and (arguably) laudable.

Let’s forget that too.

(Edited to add: at time of publication, it has been confirmed that Walker lost, and Senator Warnock will keep his historic seat. Still, even as we either celebrate or mourn, let’s back burner this. Not because it’s unimportant, but because, for our purposes, I think that considering less specific, more universal themes would be most instructive.)

Rather, let’s talk about empathy–authentic and painful empathy. Let’s talk about figureheads and the price one pays to eat cold rolls and seasonless chicken at the masters’ tables. Let’s talk about the relish some (most) progressive white people are enjoying at the prospect of a Black man’s fall–and he *will* fall if he loses (and perhaps even if he wins). There will be no place for him in GOP politics, like there usually is when a high profile candidate loses a race he was solicited for.

There are raised eyebrows at my imperative to empathy, of that I am sure. What is this call for empathy, some, even most, may ask. Empathy for a traitor? Empathy for a man so willing to sell out his fellows? Empathy for a man who seemed to embody the worst traits white people love to level at us?

Either, some say, either he was exactly the buffoon (performative or not) that gave wipipo dopamine hits, or he was strategic in his playing to the worst impulses and attitudes of the 70% (yes) of white people who voted for him.

Again, that doesn’t matter. Even if, especially if the above smacks of truth, that does not absolve me, nor, if your ethic is tied to North Star values, nor does it absolve you.

Back to empathy, yes, but before we confront empathy, first we need to remember just what our shared North Star ethic demands. For ease of use, I will lay it down here:

*Lessening and mitigating the harm endured by Black and brown people, perpetuated by white people and white supremacy.*

Without question, that includes Herschel Walker. And our assessment of both the man and the context demands we keep NS values firmly in mind. Which means, yes, a very particular sort of empathy.

Years ago, that might very well have pained me to write. It no longer does.

Yes, I will say preemptively. Yes, I realize that people–especially, gallingly, wipipo–have had entirely too much fun roasting Walker over the coals. Some of this is a sort of catharsis–a happy-ish catharsis, because Warnock won. I wonder what the national conversation would have looked like had Walker won. No matter.

Here’s why.

Herschel Walker is still under the umbrella of ‘lessening and mitigating harm’ to which we are bound. That means no punch downs.

Because, especially for the invectives coming out of the mouths of white people, because kicking Walker in the ribs *is* a punchdown. Even as his very candidacy was a punchdown to Black people in the state of Georgia. And it was.

In some real ways, Walker is a victim–even if much, if not most, of his victimization was/is self imposed. In any case, Walker confirms the need for the last part of our North Star–’perpetuated by white people and white supremacy’.

No doubt, Walker has been used, and will be summarily spit out by, his white handlers, from Trump on down. No doubt, the myth of Black narrow exceptionalism, allowed only to athletes and entertainers–a myth of white supremacy, to be exploited in this race, coupled with the more sinister and insidious myth of black stupidity and malleability which made for his entering the race in the first place.

No doubt his swallowing, in large hubristic gulps, of these myths allowed him the arrogance (however borrowed) to choose to run against the Senior Pastor who preached in the same pulpit, and marched in the same footprints of Martin Luther King.

And.

No doubt that his willingness, eagerness even, to make sure that white people in white counties who hate Senator Warnock, and, crucially, also those who inherited the legacy of MLK through Warnock, had plausible deniability for their hatred because they preferred a self-branded Toby over a proud Kunta Kinte.

All of this could, along with Walker’s convoluted and so often disingenuous and contradictory policy positions, married to his lack of congruence in his personal life, be seen as the unfortunate choices of an unfortunate–and singular–man.

But it was and is his willingness to stand as proxy for the worst stereotypes and tropes held by a populace who indulged their worst impulses and biases, and in so doing managed to make a vote for a Black man an extended vote for white supremacy.

And that is exactly what it was.

And much of that blame/accountability/fallout is indeed laid at Walker’s feet and rightly so.

But. Again. Empathy.

I looked. Herschel Walker is 18 months older than I. He lived through the farce of post civil rights America, where much of the gains (starting with Bakke in 1978) earned by our elders on behalf of 16 year old Herschel and 15 year old Lacie Janine were already eroding; put another way, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was already cracking, taking blow after blow until 2022 when a co-opted Herschel made cynical and self-serving moves while an appalled Lace looked on.

_________________

There are two ways for abused and oppressed children (who later become adults) to choose to move in the world. Some stand in solidarity with other oppressed, vowing never to do or to live in the way of their oppressors. Then there are the oppressed who cozy up to power, who know which way the wind blows, who will give up their brethren for an extra bland and undercooked chicken wing.

Hear this well. Both are victims.

There would be no Herschel Walker, in this present day iteration, without the pervasive and toxic and fetid stench of continued white supremacy.

So yes–minimizing and denying the humanity (however tragic) of Walker–even for the ‘right reasons’–is still a punch down exercise in white supremacy, whether it be from a MAGA hat decrying the ‘nigger who lost it for us’, or for a liberal in a hemp shirt talking about ‘sellouts’ while living in a world that privileges him.

Because, really yall.

Who, even as progressives talk about how ‘we won’, how many of you voted with your wallets for Warnock? How many of you would have done similar punchdowns to Warnock had he not prevailed? How many of you would have reverted to the blame game which never fails: singling out Black people in general, and Black women in particular for the loss?

This race should not have been a squeaker.

52% Warnock. 70% white voters for Walker.

And we would still have been pilloried.

Back to empathy. What kind of life must Walker have led to this point that allowed him to make the choices he made; to be handled by people contemptuous of him, voted for by an electorate who hated him and his?

I think of Walker and feel sadness to my marrow. And yes, I would have felt that bone deep sadness even had he won. Allowing your soul to bleed out like so much plasma means winning would have been a farce.

So empathy. But empathy for the man does not foreclose upon fighting what he chose to stand for–regardless of the soup–with my last breath.

But it gives me new impetus; new imperative; new call.

I fight so that there will never have to be a Herschel Walker again.

Keep walking.

Permalink: https://www.facebook.com/laceonrace/posts/pfbid0211zYzQqFgvKRmFznBK1Z3kVyESgNfnDFK7p5iLJ6sTF4FcTHHw7KNgYrEVBfgaaol

Post Type: Text

Caption Type: N/A

Is Cross Post: 0

Is Share: 0

Impressions: 402

Reach: 343

Reactions: 6

Comments: 2

Shares: 0