Osler's Razor

Over the past decade, nearly all of my work has been in collaboration. I have had some remarkable collaborators, too: Rich Sullivan, Rachel Barkow, Jeanne Bishop, Mark Bennett, Hank Shea, and Eric Luna, among others. 

Two of the most important of these collaborators have been Dr. Joanne Braxton and Nkechi Taifa. Professor Braxton, as I have described here recently, has been a profound influence on me, and today we work on a variety of social issues through the Braxton Institute (she is the President and I am the Vice-President). Ms. Taifa and I have worked together for years to advocate for a broader and fairer use of executive clemency.  I have had the good fortune to see them both in the past month, which has made it a pretty good month.

Here's the thing, though: they are fierce opponents of patriarchy and white supremacy, and I am, of course, a white male. Some people have wondered how that works. The answer is "very well," but I realize some might want me to flesh that out a little.

Yes, I am a man. Yes, I have been advantaged by patriarchy my whole life. I have also benefited (in ways realized and unrealized) from being white in America. So why would Dr. Braxton and Ms. Taifa work with me?

I think the first and most important answer is this: because they are good and generous people, who have a moral breadth that does not link deep moral belief with personal vindictiveness. And how rare is that these days? 

Second, perhaps they see that I am educable. I am willing to see what they describe: that we inhabit a world that systemically, cruelly, and continually harms women and people of color, and often endangers their bodies and very existence. I did not grow up with a full understanding of that; part of the insidious nature of racism and patriarchy is that they hold those who are advantaged by racism and patriarchy so far away from the costs of those evils that the most advantaged can imagine that those costs do not exist. I am seeing, gradually, slowly, but certainly. And I do so only because these two and others continue to lead me out of the cave of deceptions that Plato described.

If I see the reality of racism and patriarchy, that does not mean I hate myself, and I don't. I am fully capable of fighting both while acknowledging who I am and where I am from.  I am what I am. But I am also changing and growing, and that is all to the good.

How lucky am I?