MONDAY, MAY 23 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
Racism is bad for all of us, White
people included.
Racism is immoral and has,
again and again, led to deadly
violence toward our fellow human be-
ings. It is also a dysfunctional force in our
polity. It has been used to divide those
who should be allies. It casts politics as a
zero-sum struggle. It blocks us from
seizing shared opportunities. Racism ad-
vantages demagoguery over thoughtful-
ness and hostility over empathy.
In response to the killing of 10 Black
Americans in Buffalo by a gunman com-
mitted to the madness of the “great
replacement” theory, President Biden
rightly condemned “white supremacy”
as “a poison... running through our
body politic.” He offered the bracing,
old-fashioned argument that racism is
wrong because “we’re all children of
God.”
Advocates of the replacement con-
spiracy have ignored this truth in the
past when they invoked the theory
against not only Black Americans but
also White immigrants — Irish, Italian,
Jewish, Greek and so many others — out
of fear that they would undermine the
country’s “Anglo-Saxon” majority.
“The people who today think of them-
selves as regular Americans, people with
surnames like Stefanik, Gaetz or Anton,”
conservative writer Bret Stephens ar-
gued in a powerful New York Times
column, “would, on account of their faith
or ethnicity, have been seen by previous
generations of nativists as uncouth and
unassimilable, dirty and disloyal.”
Stephens’s observation points to why
we must battle laws aimed at making
teachers skittish about offering an accu-
rate version of our country’s complicated
story. It’s a tale of exclusion and inclu-
sion; racism and the struggle against it;
efforts to deny liberty to some of our
fellow citizens and a determination to
extend it widely.
Perhaps because the term is thrown
around so freely, I’d insist that those who
condemn racism should not be accused
of “virtue signaling.” I’m not fond of the
phrase because, in principle, advancing
virtue is an absolute necessity in a demo-
cratic republic. The idea that free societ-
ies depend on public and private virtue is
no less true for being ancient — and
condemning racism is always the right
thing to do.
Nonetheless, the popular meaning of
the term speaks to an understandable
impatience with those who appear to be
casting themselves as morally superior
and flaunting a more elevated con-
sciousness.
Those who would defeat racism need to
promote the urgency of solidarity across
racial lines without conveying self-satis-
fied arrogance. In particular, othering
White working-class Americans as an
undifferentiated mass of unenlightened
souls is about the worst strategy imagin-
able for promoting greater harmony.
Perhaps because of where I was raised
— as a middle-class kid in a White
working-class town who had the good
fortune to get a great education — I am
especially bothered when educated elites
look down their noses at the people I
grew up with.
White working-class racism exists and
needs to be confronted. But as a moral
matter, White working-class grievances
created by economic injustice deserve a
response. As a practical matter, the im-
peratives of coalition politics in a diverse
nation require advocates of equal rights
and social justice to build alliances
across the lines of race that include all
Americans facing forms of marginaliza-
tion.
This is why I appreciated Heather
McGhee’s argument in her important
book “The Sum of Us,” summarized in its
subtitle: “What Racism Costs Everyone
and How We Can Prosper Together.”
Zero-sum thinking, she wrote, “has al-
ways optimally benefited only the few
while limiting the potential of the rest of
us, and therefore the whole.”
As McGhee told Vox’s Sean Illing, “The
zero-sum story is the idea that there’s this
massive dividing line between Black peo-
ple and white people, that they’re on
opposite teams, and that progress for
people of color has to come at white
people’s expense.”
Fighting this idea is central to over-
coming racism. The possibility of shared
advancement helps explain the finding
of political scientists Paul Frymer and
Jacob M. Grumbach that “white union
members have lower racial resentment
and greater support for policies that
benefit African Americans.”
Unions, they note, need to recruit
diverse memberships and are in the
business of selling and realizing the idea
that workers, no matter their back-
grounds, can move forward together. It’s
no accident that provoking ethnic and
racial division has long been an instru-
ment in the toolbox of union busting.
In his 2015 eulogy in Charleston, S.C.,
for nine people slain in another racist
massacre, President Barack Obama
urged us to view history as “a manual for
how to avoid the mistakes of the past —
how to break the cycle.” As McGhee
demonstrates, one lesson from our past
is that racism has always been an imped-
iment to the nation’s progress. Breaking
its hold is in the interest of every
American.E.J. DIONNE JR.Racism holdsback all of us,includingWhite peopleBY THOMAS J. BALCHIam strongly pro-life and have
strongly opposed former presi-
dent Donald Trump. Equally
strongly, I hold that abortion
rights advocates should not be pre-
vented from demonstrating outside
the homes of Supreme Court justices,
and that Elon Musk is right to say
Trump should not be banned from
Twitter.
It is troubling that, increasingly,
advocates across the political spec-
trum are abandoning the insight of
Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural ad-
dress that “error of opinion may be
tolerated, where reason is left free to
combat it.” Lacking confidence that
criticizing error will be adequate to
suppress it, some now urge censoring
it.
On one side, there is an effort to ban
books and such topics as critical race
theory that might be “divisive” and
make primary and secondary students
uncomfortable. On the other side,
some argue that students — especially
in colleges — must be protected from
“microaggressions” and given “trigger
warnings” to protect them from emo-
tionally disturbing material. And
many are convinced that the effective-
ness of social media platforms in
spreading disinformation calls for
more and more censorship to protect
those who would be led astray.
In the 1988 case of Frisby v. Schultz,
the Supreme Court regrettably upheld
an ordinance — motivated by picket-
ing at the residence of an abortion
provider — that banned picketing of
individual homes, ruling it was justi-
fied by “protection of the unwilling
listener.” The court wrote, “The devas-tating effect of targeted picketing on
the quiet enjoyment of the home is
beyond doubt.”
Indeed, hearing opposition to one’s
beliefs and actions is uncomfortable.
It is disturbing to have to deal with
challenges to the orthodoxy of whose
truth one is convinced. But when we
are “protected” from challenges to
what we think we know, our intellects
stagnate in the bubble of agreed be-
liefs and assumed facts. To paraphrase
John Stuart Mill, we risk preferring
the life of a contented fool to the life of
a dissatisfied Socrates.
But such protection of undisturbed
conformity can prevent or delay the
righting and reversal of great wrongs.
Before the Civil War, Southerners
blocked abolitionist tracts. Nothing
could be permitted to disturb the
tranquility of the enslavers. In Russia
today, even calling the invasion of
Ukraine a “war” can send one to
15 years in prison.
Jarring us out of our complacency,
forcing us to confront the consequenc-
es of our views and actions, upsetting
our equilibrium, is essential to making
us question and rethink what we
believe and what we do. Of course,
those who challenge our views and
actions are not always right, and what
we have believed and done is not
always wrong. But the very fact of
having to confront opposition and
think through the merits and demerits
of contrasting arguments can ulti-
mately increase our understanding of
the basis for their validity.
Nor can we be confident in the
judgment of those who would decide
from what to “protect” us. The Roman
poet Juvenal asked: “Quis custodiet
ipsos custodes?” — “Who will guardthe guards themselves?” Who in pow-
er, however sincere and well-motivat-
ed, can we be sure has the insight to
differentiate — accurately and free of
bias — truth from disinformation,
right beliefs from wrong ones, so as to
allow the one and censor the other?
And who can be trusted to do so
without being tempted to use their
power to advance their own interests
and suppress opposition?
In an August 1941 broadcast ad-
dressing Europeans in lands occupied
by Germans, Winston Churchill urged,
“Make them feel even in their fleeting
hour of brutish triumph that they are
the moral outcasts of mankind.” Resi-
dential picketing is similarly designed
to make its targets uncomfortable, and
to publicize their alleged wrongdoing
in the hope that their fellow citizens
will join in the denunciation. That
such pressure could cause the targets
to shrink from doing what is right is
the cost of the possibility that it could
induce them to stop doing wrong.
Assuredly, homes can appropriately
be protected from attack and even
trespass, and noise ordinances might
perhaps appropriately limit decibels
to a greater extent in a residential
neighborhood than outside the Su-
preme Court. Similarly, as the 1969 Su-
preme Court held in Brandenburg v.
Ohio, speech that is “directed at incit-
ing or producing imminent lawless
action” can be prohibited. But we limit
peaceful picketing and public speech
— even speech that is offensive and
inaccurate — at our great peril.The writer, a professional parliamentarian,
headed various departments of the
National Right to Life Committee from
1989 to 2016.Disturbing, even inaccurate,speech must be protectedCRAIG HUDSON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Abortion rights activists protest outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh on May 7.Possibly the most astonishing busi-
ness development of the past dec-
ade has been the rise of what con-
servatives call “woke capital”: ma-
jor corporations taking increasingly pro-
gressive stances on divisive issues.
Progressives, of course, simply call it
“about damn time.”
Many explanations have been offered
for this phenomenon, but the most com-
pelling attributes it to educational polar-
ization. With educated people moving left-
ward on social issues, companies must use
their market power to agitate for the social
justice causes that appeal to this desirable
demographic. You can tell this story opti-
mistically — “a new generation of idealistic
employees is finally making corporate
America a force for good!” Alternatively,
it’s just cynical gesturing, letting employ-
ees pretend they haven’t sold out to a
corporate behemoth.
The cynics just got some new evidence
from Netflix.
Hollywood has been the bellwether on
many social justice issues, including the
recent #MeToo movement and the racial
reckoning following the death of George
Floyd. In June 2020, Netflix was among
many entertainment firms that hastened
to support racial justice and Black creators.
Now, the company is pulling back on a
number of projects from some of its top
Black names, including an animated series
based on “Antiracist Baby.” It also put
employees on notice that it will not bow to
internal pressure to remove “harmful”
content, pressure such as last year’s em-
ployee walkout over a Dave Chappelle
special.
“If you’d find it hard to support our
content breadth, Netflix may not be the
best place for you,” reads a blunt “culture
memo” from the company.
This seems part of a broader trend in
Hollywood of moving away from the overtactivism of recent years. “During the last
few weeks,” the Los Angeles Times report-
ed Tuesday, “the entertainment industry
has undergone a gradual retrenchment
from liberal social activism at the corpo-
rate level, at least when it comes to making
grand public statements on specific issues.
Companies that issued unreserved state-
ments of support during the Black Lives
Matter protests... have said next to noth-
ing about the U.S. Supreme Court’s proba-
ble overturning of Roe vs. Wade.”
It’s probably too harsh to say Holly-
wood’s purported social justice commit-
ments are merely marketing strategies
that companies abandoned as soon as the
vibe shifted. But a softer cynicism seems
warranted: Hollywood was glad to make
grand, symbolic gestures as long as they
weren’t too costly, but they’re suddenly
looking more expensive.
Educational polarization might have
made taking sides on contentious issues
seem less risky than it used to be for
companies, because the most affluent cus-
tomers — and educated employees — were
all on one side. It seemed profitable to
cater to their opinion, even if this made a
bunch of less well-heeled people mad.
But downscale customers also spend
money on movies and streaming services.
Perhaps more importantly, they vote.
Earlier this year, during the controversy
over Florida’s new parental rights law,
internal activists wanted Disney to use its
considerable power as a major Florida
employer to pressure legislators to drop
the bill. Disney executive Bob Chapek ini-
tially resisted, saying he didn’t want the
company to become a “political football,”
but after news of the dispute leaked, he
eventually caved.
The resulting fracas with Florida legis-
lators saw Disney stripped of its special
powers over the area surrounding Disney
World, where the company essentiallyfunctioned as the local government. Now,
the Wall Street Journal reported earlier
this month, business leaders are asking
one question: “How can we avoid becom-
ing the next Walt Disney Co.?”
At least Disney has a growing streaming
business, with unexpectedly strong sub-
scriber growth last quarter. Netflix lost
subscribers during the same period and is
now facing a slowing economy, inflation-
strained households and rising interest
rates that must be nerve-wracking for a
company built atop a mountain of debt.
Layoffs rapidly ensued, and corporate
idealism has apparently been shown the
door.
That’s exactly what should have been
expected. Netflix is a business, not a chari-
ty. Denounce capitalist greed if you like,
but of course that greed is really just
businesses reflecting consumers back to
themselves.
Netflix presumably refused to cancel
Dave Chappelle in part because manage-
ment thinks the service will gain more
subscribers from keeping his shows than it
will lose — and canceled “Antiracist Baby”
because it doesn’t believe the project will
generate enough subscribers to justify the
cost. If you think those decisions should be
reversed, your quarrel is with the audi-
ence, not Netflix.
Of course, it wasn’t crazy to think that
Netflix and its brethren might wield their
power to change the minds of some in that
audience. But that power was always
going to be sharply limited by the eco-
nomic needs of the business, which the
left seems to be forgetting as it pressures
companies to take the strongest possible
stance on everything. There is no corpo-
rate shortcut to social change that side-
steps the need for politics and persuasion,
because, faced with the choice, compa-
nies will always choose making money
over making history.MEGAN MCARDLENetflix is showing the limits of ‘woke capital’BY ROBERT FORDW
e at Abbott take great
pride in helping people
with diabetes check their
glucose, providing critical
coronavirus testing and making life-
saving heart devices. And yes, we take
great pride in manufacturing nutri-
tion and formula to feed America’s
infants, including our most vulner-
able. But the past few months have
distressed us as they have you, and so
I want to say: We’re sorry to every
family we’ve let down since our volun-
tary recall exacerbated our nation’s
baby formula shortage.
We believe our voluntary recall was
the right thing to do. We will not take
risks when it comes to the health of
children. The data collected during
the investigation, genetic sequencing,
retained product samples and avail-
able product from the four com-
plaints did not find any connection
between our products and the four
reported illnesses in children. Howev-
er, the Food and Drug Administra-
tion’s investigation did discover a
bacteria in our plant that we will not
tolerate. I have high expectations of
this company, and we fell short of
them.
We know that some children have
been hospitalized because of the lack
of EleCare, a specialized formula for
children who cannot digest other
formulas and milks. Given their
unique needs, children who lose ac-
cess to it can require medical supervi-
sion until the formula is returned to
the shelves. I will not mince words —
this is tragic and heartbreaking, and it
is consuming my thoughts and those
of my colleagues.
Our highest priority is getting ba-
bies safe, quality formula they need as
fast as possible. Our customers want
to know when shelves will be full
again, whether the product they’re
buying is safe, what will prevent this
from happening again, and what
we’re doing to help parents now. So,
here’s what we’re doing.
First, for the families of those
children hospitalized, we wish we
could provide them the formula they
need today and are working to identi-
fy ways to do so. We will prioritize
EleCare when manufacturing re-
sumes and get that out the door first.
In the meantime, we’re establishing a
$5 million fund that will be indepen-
dently administered to help these
families with medical and living ex-
penses as they weather this storm.
Secondly, you can feel safe buying
any Abbott product you find on the
store shelves. What is available has
passed rigorous inspections and is
ready for your babies.
Third, we have been taking serious
steps to relieve the supply crisis. We
converted lines of our adult nutrition
products at our Columbus, Ohio,
plant to prioritize production of
ready-to-feed liquid infant formula.
And we have been air-shipping mil-
lions of cans of our most widely used
powdered infant formula from an
FDA-approved facility in Ireland to
the United States since the recall.
As you may have heard, we also
entered into a consent decree with the
FDA related to our closed facility. This
was a major step toward quickly and
safely reopening. We expect we’ll be
able to restart the facility by the first
week in June. From the time we
restart production at the site, it will
take six to eight weeks before product
is available on shelves. When we are
operating our Michigan facility at full
capacity, we will more than double
our current production of powdered
infant formula for the United States.
By the end of June, we will be
supplying more formula to Americans
than we were in January before the
recall.
Finally, we are making significant
investments to ensure this never hap-
pens again. We plan to expand both
capacity and redundancy. This will
increase the nation’s formula supply
and create the redundancy we need to
never have to stop production of
critical products such as EleCare
again. And we will similarly invest in
upgrading our safety and quality pro-
cesses and equipment.
These steps we’re taking won’t end
the struggles of families today. Some
solutions will take weeks, others will
take longer, but we will not rest until
it is done. I will not rest. I want
everyone to trust us to do what is
right, and I know that must be earned
back.
The writer i s chairman and chief executive
of Abbott.
What Abbott
is doing to fix
the formula
shortage
By the end of June, we willbe supplying more formulato Americans than wewere in January before therecall.