He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Democracy Is Awkward: Grappling with Racism inside American Grassroots Political Organizing, and reported the following:
Democracy is Awkward is a study of grassroots political organizers and how they respond to racial inequality in politics and society. It focuses on a political organization I call the “Grassroots Action Party.” This matter is clearly relevant to our contemporary struggles to protect rights and democracy through the power of multiracial coalitions that take racial justice seriously. Page 99 of Democracy is Awkard lies in the middle of the chapter on how whites participants racial habits shape grassroots political strategies, it specifically tells the stories of participants who regard conversations about race with people of color as inherently stressful and conflict-laden. As an ethnographer, I have many tools in my toolkit for studying the social world of my participants. In this case, I used a vignette during interviews where I presented them with a hypothetical situation where a white person is uncomfortable discussing racial issues with people of color and therefore avoidant. The vignette seemed to resonate with several of them. In particular, a participant that I call Jacqueline connected it to the following story,Visit Michael Rosino's website.“I had a dear friend, and I still consider her a friend, but I haven’t talked to her in many years. We just hit it off, you know, and had a wonderful friendship, and she was having some struggles at a certain point, and we were in a phone conversation, and it just kind of went down this road where, you know, she was really upset, and she just got more and more upset and she ended up screaming at me which I mean she is one of the sweetest people I know she just screamed 'fuck you' at me and hung up. […] I was kind of like, wow, what happened and what is going on, and I couldn’t… I sort of… it is like do I call her back or do I not? […] She called me back, and she was really upset, and she is like, 'you know, I am really sorry,' and I am like “'it is not a problem, it is really not a problem.'”This page illuminates a critical example of the argument in Democracy is Awkward – that our feelings of discomfort, particularly around unwieldy confrontations with the reality of racial injustice, can undermine real strategies for building grassroots democracy amid racial oppression. The book examines the overall situation and the promise of cross-racial coalitions for grassroots organizing, the shared motivations and experiences of organizers, and the distinct awareness, habits, and strategies of white organizers and organizers of color. Documenting and theorizing the stark contrast between participants of different racial backgrounds is a major plank of the book’s contribution. It represents how racial oppression produces social distance and inequalities that shape our everyday lives and underlying assumptions.
Jacqueline told me that if she could talk to her estranged friend now, she would say,
“I love you. You are one of the people that I have been closest to in my life, and I know I am a white person with stupid white person stuff, and I am sorry, you know, and, you know, I am responsible for my behavior at the same time, but there is a way that nobody is to blame for growing up, you know, being born into a racist society […] my guess is that she was angry or, you know, she knew, and you know, knows that I have privilege as a white person, as a middle-class person.”
White participants avoided situations that took them out of their comfort zones. Their organizing stuck to the neighborhoods they knew well, the people they felt they had commonality with, and the rituals and routines that they’d come to expect. In contrast, in the next chapter, I highlight the many participants of color who recognized and leaned into productive conflict and attempted to rectify the contradictions and limitations of the organization. These participants, for instance, noted that although the party advocates for racial justice and the empowerment of people of color, it remains overwhelmingly white and struggles to actualize its antiracist agenda. In many ways, navigating conflict, awkwardness, and ambiguity was an inherent aspect of their lived experiences. The point of this book is not simply to describe what people in the Grassroots Action Party did or theorize why it happened but to build real and practical insights about how confronting these racialized contradictions, awkwardness, and conflict inherent in building coalitions for democracy can be a catalyst for making grassroots organizing more effective and inclusive.
--Marshal Zeringue
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