when I arrived at the construction site. They were standing in a small parking lot in front of what had been, some weeks ago, an expanse of four tennis courts. Now a smooth field of dirt was there, overlooking a private lake, in a country club, in the kind of suburb that is synonymous with country clubs.
All of us were white and middle-aged, some maybe a few years older or younger than that. There was me, and my client, who represented the suburban local government, a couple of managers of the country club, the project engineer, the project landscape architect, and some guys from the construction company hired to build new and improved tennis courts where the old ones used to be. They needed to hear my advice on a regulatory matter pertaining to the construction.
One guy was wearing a MAGA hat.
I took a moment to focus on my breathing and on the pleasant surroundings. Then I turned to the matter at hand.
I asked some questions, discussed some options, and summarized some next steps. I still like being a consultant. I conferred with my client as we walked back toward my car. I was glad to get on the freeway and head back to the home office.
While driving, I thought about the guy with the hat. He was being deliberately offensive, of course. I didn’t mind that. I also flout social convention, sometimes. Besides, Mr. MAGA hat had proposed what I thought was the best engineering solution for solving the country club’s problem with their tennis courts. Mr. MAGA hat had a bad leg, most likely crushed my some accident–I guessed a construction accident many years ago–and the game way he limped along with the group, keeping up with us as we walked around, prodded my sympathy for him.
At the same time, I was aware of something very wrong.
The nine of us white men–all well-paid and enjoying the morning lakeside air while on the clock–were benefitting from the subtle and not-so-subtle mechanisms that keep white privilege and male privilege going.
Thinking about those mechanisms, I mused that maybe it wasn’t only about the hat or the guy wearing it. Maybe it’s really about him being allowed to wear the hat to the meeting.
It sure wouldn’t have been very comfortable for somebody Black to be walking up to eight white men, one wearing a MAGA hat, in a parking lot.
Which is a kind of key to the way the MAGA thing and the country club thing work together. By allowing the MAGA hat, the country club folks get to have their liberal let’s-all-just-get-along tolerance, and they get their racial exclusivity too. The threat of mayhem and racial violence suggested by a MAGA hat is one thing; the nod and free pass given to it is worse.