Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism

The law professor heads out to Oregon to visit old friends but decides to spend an afternoon writing in a national park in the Willamette Valley. He has only had his laptop out for a few minutes when Erika Wechsler, a white woman dressed in camouflage and holding a rifle, fires a shot that lands near him. Very conscious that he is out in the woods with an armed white person dressed like a militia member (groups not always known for their racial tolerance), the professor is afraid.

Erika insists that they talk, and the professor is too afraid to deny her. She labels him a liberal because of his criticism of her carrying a gun. She believes that liberals, especially African American ones like the professor, need to arm themselves to be ready for what Erika is sure will come one day, a “Black holocaust”(116), the natural culmination of the current reactionary political environment. She believes in racial realism, which includes arming herself and other white people as well as preparing safe houses for African Americans for when society finally explodes.

The professor cannot believe what he is hearing. Erika points out that a militia like hers is important not only for African Americans but also for white people. Supporting a racist system damages white people because they benefit from this system. Talk without such action is just an effort to gain social status by white liberals. Her militia is all-white mostly because the goal is for white people—not African Americans—to bear the cost of the system.

Erika is interested in talking, but she warns the professor that her real mission is to monitor the activities of a white supremacist militia group that is in the woods near the professor. The professor is frightened but is so intrigued that he retreats with Erika into the woods to hear more about her group. Her group is premised on just a few beliefs. They believe there is no such thing as progress against racism. They see economics as the center of making African Americans whole after the burdens of racism. Struggle—not achieving one’s aims—is the measure of a righteous life. Accepting the reality of racism’s permanence is a must for perceiving truth and having any possibility of justice.

The professor finds himself nodding along. He talks about how American history and law bear out Erika’s perspective on racial realism. For most of American history, the courts have been too caught up in legal principles and the letter of the law instead of thinking about the impact of such laws in action in the real world. For example, recent court rulings have ended or substantially curtailed affirmative action based on the principle that the law should be colorblind. These rulings ignore the reality that the real world has racial inequalities. Valuing the principle over making the U.S. more equal means the law isn’t neutral. It instead supports the racial status quo. Holding the line by declaring there are unchanging principles may have seemed to be sensible during the historical moment when the world feared instability as a result of Nazi totalitarianism, but the world is no longer in that moment.

Guy Jenkins, a member of a paramilitary group, interrupts their conversation. He insults the professor using a racial slur and Erika for being a white woman in an African American man’s company. He is armed and demands they become his prisoners. Erika distracts him by reminding him that harming them will bring his group to the attention of the FBI. She disarms him as he considers the threat. She then gets him to leave by threatening to tell his group that he let a woman outwit him. Erika points out that this encounter shows how effective self-interest can be in making white people respect the rights of African Americans sometimes.

Erika leaves to follow Guy, and the professor finds that Geneva Crenshaw is standing over him as he sleeps in the woods. She tells him this whole episode was in part a test to see how he would conduct himself around a white woman and to make him see that African Americans do need refuges like the ones Erika proposes. The professor concedes she might be right, but most white people and some African Americans would fail to listen to the professor even if he pointed that out.