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In the days before the Super Bowl, President Biden told an interviewer that the NFL is too white and should be held to a "reasonable standard" in hiring minorities. He's right, of course: In a sport that's 57 percent Black, just 2 percent of coaches are Black. But Black coaches—and Black bodies more generally—are not the only diversity challenge we face when it comes to elevating Black America.
While it's true that Black Americans are underrepresented in the hallways of power, there is another form of suppression we face: the silencing of Black voices that are different, and the constant attempts to shame dissenters into compliance.
The Black community is not a monolith. There are diverse voices and perspectives that are often overlooked. I've never known white people to have one leader or group that represents all white people. I've never heard it implied that they all collectively think the same. Why is this different for the Black community?
But it is different. Black celebrities and politicians who refuse the party line of America being an irredeemable white supremacy—people like Dave Chapelle or Senator Tim Scott or Morgan Freeman or Condoleezza Rice—are smeared as sell-outs who betrayed their race for refusing to say what others want them to. And this behavior is supported by the liberal establishment across the board.
And I've seen people call anyone who uses anything different than the woke language called all sorts of derogatory terms—"Uncle Tom," sell-out, "House N****," and other condescending remarks. It's happened to me, and to every Black person I know who refuses the party line, either behind closed doors or in the court of public opinion by way of social media.
I can never help but consider the irony, that I have never been called such awful things by anyone who identifies as white.
I am one of those people who dissents. I don't believe that America is racist. And my experience as a Black woman living in many Black communities has taught me that a lot of Black people agree with me.
Are there racists in America? Yes. And yet to me, it seems that they are extremists deliberately wanting to be separatists, rather than representative of the nation as a whole, or even a part of it.
But my view is not one that it is acceptable to have. There is a cancel culture that actively seeks to suppress those of us seeking an accurate accounting of racism in America. And a shifting verbal code quickly puts people not "in the know" on the wrong side of those in power. Then we cancel people for what they don't know is wrong—and say that they should should have known.
I often find myself wondering, where is the woke dictionary? Who contacts all the people on Twitter and updates them on what's appropriate to say and what isn't?
This constantly shifting set of rules about what it's ok to say and what it's not makes it increasingly difficult to do the work of accurately assessing things like whether the education system is actually educating our children about the racial and ethnic diversity of American history, or if it's brushing over it. I'm a leader in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work and there are even some things I don't know because the code is constantly evolving.
There is no set standard on who gets canceled or for what reason. And while we spend a lot of time talking about equity, this, too, is inequitable. Am I the only one who sees the inequity in the call-outs? Am I the only one who noticed my people tell white people that "white silence equals violence" and then when white people speak up they are often shut down with "not like that"? Then we are silent when some members of the Black community call each other the "n-word."
If you are a Black person who is an independent thinker, you are often "put in your place" by reinforced messages from unofficial spokespersons from the Black community. For example, when the infamous pictures of the Democratic leadership kneeling in Kente cloths emerged from the Capitols Emancipation Hall, I almost fell out of my seat; it seemed in my opinion cultural appropriation at its finest. But when I posted against it, someone replied, "The Congressional Black Caucus sanctioned it!" While I'm proud of their accomplishments, they do not speak for me, and I'm sure a whole lot of other Black folks would agree.
I was taught that you teach people how to treat you. We all need stop the double standards, acknowledge the past, learn from it, and collectively work together to build equitable and inclusive communities.
We can't fix the past, but we can learn from it. It's time to hear all voices and stop silencing those that don't agree with the use of abusive, racist language we so firmly stand against.
President Biden is right: We need more diverse leadership. But we also need more intellectual diversity in who is leading us now. We should be welcoming not just a plethora of Black Americans into positions of leadership, but a plethora of Black voices saying different things. This would be the true hallmark of success.
Kitara Johnson is a speaker and trainer for state agencies, schools, businesses, hospitals, and municipal organizations. In addition to working at her own firm, she also serves as the Chief Human Resource Officer at the second largest Behavioral Health Organization in the Inland Northwest.
The views in this article are the writer's own.
