Is Jonathan Chait letting Ron DeSantis off the (racist) hook?
Not really. But he's trying something tricky.
Over at New York magazine, Jonathan Chait documents the many, many ways Ron Desantis has been bad for Black people in Florida — the modern-day poll tax he’s instituted on ex-felons, the breaking up of majority-Black congressional districts — and concludes that “without doing or saying anything racist, DeSantis has systematically disempowered Black people.”
I want to be very clear that I am not calling DeSantis a racist. There is no reason to believe he harbors any personal dislike toward Black people or believes they are genetically inferior or privately employs slurs or stereotypes. In 2018, he stirred up controversy by warning that electing his Black opponent as governor would “monkey it up” but insisted he had used the phrase thoughtlessly, rather than maliciously, and deserves the benefit of the doubt. (He did not use any other dog-whistle phrases for the rest of the campaign.)
What I am arguing instead is that DeSantis’s political ambitions have entailed disempowering Black citizens in his state in a calculated fashion.
This prompted some backlash:
I get Scocca’s point, but I also think I get what Chait’s trying to do here.
Let’s boil it down, bullet-point fashion:
When you call people “racist” — even if it’s accurate — it puts them on the defensive.
People who are on the defensive tend not to really listen to what you’re saying. In fact, they often just lash out. Even if you’re accurate.
If they don’t listen to what you’re saying because they they’re defensive and lashing out, it’s harder to make them change course.
So part of what Chait is trying to do here, I think, is say something like: “We don’t know DeSantis believes in his heart of hearts and it doesn’t really matter — what matters is the actual stuff he’s doing that’s bad for Black people. “
Now: You may believe that what DeSantis believes in his heart of hearts and what he does and functionally inseparable. That’s clearly what Scocca believes — and it’s might even be true! — which is why he transmutes “"Ron DeSantis's political ambitions have entailed racism" to "Ron DeSantis does racism."
As an analytic point, let’s accept the argument. As a persuasive point, it’s probably less powerful.
Changing people’s minds
What’s the difference?
The analytic approach tries, as best it can, to describe the world as it is.
The persuasive approach tries, as best as it can, to get people to change their minds — and maybe their actions — about something.
You might argue: DeSantis is unlikely to be persuaded by Jonathan Chait’s writing. And you would probably be correct.
But: There are people who might vote for Ron DeSantis in the 2024 presidential election who might have a knee-jerk reaction to Chait labeling DeSantis “racist” who might also be willing to listen to somebody who says “I’m not saying DeSantis is racist, but I am saying the stuff he does has these pernicious effects.”
Those are the folks — the weirdo independents who vote for Obama one election and Trump the next — who need to be persuaded. Not that DeSantis himself is bad, perhaps, but that the stuff he does is bad. How many of those folks are actually out there? I don’t know. But given the way the Electoral College works, a few hundred votes one way or the other in a swing state or two could make the difference between a DeSantis victory or loss in 2024. It’s important to persuade those people.
We’re so used to writing for and reading people who already agree with us, that I’m not sure we’re used to encountering persuasive writing. It doesn’t mean writing in a fashion that people who already agree with you like — it does mean writing for the other folks, and meeting them on their own terms to a certain extent.
If you already believe “Ron DeSantis” is doing a racism, that’s probably not very satisfying. You might get impatient with it. It might be necessary, however.
But wait…
Let’s not concede the analytic point too quickly here.
The truth is, we really don’t know what’s going on in DeSantis’ heart of hearts.
Which means “I want to be very clear that I am not calling DeSantis a racist” isn’t actually incompatible with “Ron DeSantis does racism.” It separates the sin from the sinner. But it is a relatively subtle point that is bound to be misunderstood by a lot of folks. As, clearly, it was.
I’m under the impression that the rise of “systemic racism” talk in recent years is an attempt to actually make those kinds of distinctions. It’s an attempt to recognize that while individual Americans might be, on the whole, less racist than they were 60 years ago — that the culture has changed — that our politics and institutions have practices and incentives built into them that disadvantage Black people. And to some extent, that talk of systemic racism is also an attempt to get away from accusations of racism — you’re a bad person — and look instead at what’s actually happening (apart from anybody’s motivations) and how to fix it. Chait’s column, it seems to me, is compatible with that outlook.
If you read Chait’s column — and you should — he documents pretty clearly that DeSantis is in fact doing a racism in Florida. It’s a little frustrating that instead of focusing on that, Chait’s progressive readers are arguing with the part that explicitly witholds judgment on DeSantis’ soul. It’s like arguing about the number of angels on the head of a pin while the church building burns around us.