Broken Pieces

I’ve been following the story of a campaign mailer sent by County Council Candidate David Yungmann. If you haven’t, you can bring yourself up to speed here, here, and here. Blogger Scott Ewart has assembled pertinent posts as the situation has been evolving.

In short, Mr. Yungmann included the following as one of his main accomplishments on a recent campaign mailer:

Led opposition to huge school/mosque in the rural west

There’s been much discussion as to Mr. Yungmann’s motivation in wording this item as he did. Some have suggested it was a sign of an outright anti-Muslim mindset. Others suggested it was a carefully calculated “dog-whistle” to appeal to anti-Muslim voters. Still others maintained it was merely a statement of fact and that anyone who called it out was actually the one guilty of “playing the race card.”

Mr. Yungmann himself went through a process as he responded to this public pushback. He went from appearing somewhat stunned to being ardently on the defensive to walking that back and showing some thoughtful remorse. I’m not sure that the angry folks who defended his actions on his campaign’s Facebook page are willing to follow him through to that last step. And that concerns me.

Here’s my takeaway from this entire event. Yet again we see people saying “it isn’t racism if I didn’t mean for it to be racist.” This is implicit bias in a nutshell. There is no such thing as benign racism, or benign religious intolerance. Or benign homophobia. There is always a victim. Someone is always harmed.

Why did Mr. Yungmann send out a mailer with these words? Unless we know him personally, we can’t really know for sure. My opinion? He just didn’t think. He didn’t think about how those words would affect people different than himself. He didn’t think about what that statement would mean to Muslims in Howard County. Why? Perhaps because he doesn’t know many, or work with many, or consider them an important voter group?

When someone is important to you, you think about how your words and actions will affect them. When it is possible for you to make your decisions without considering others it betrays a kind of privilege: I don’t know you, I don’t think about you, I don’t need you.

This will never be benign.

I’m glad that the Howard County Muslim Council called him on this. I’m glad Mr. Yungmann took this to heart. But I’m still saddened by the damage that has been done here. There are consequences to “othering” a group of one’s fellow humans, whether you meant to do it or not. Our Muslim neighbors have still experienced a feeling of public vilification and shaming that was completely unnecessary.

And those supporters who were foaming at the mouth to defend Mr. Yungmann? Do we think they learned anything from this? No, more likely this entire episode has left them more entrenched in their views.

It may seem as though this was merely an unpleasant blip in the campaign season and that it has been wrapped up in a neat and tidy way. “Nothing to see here, move along.” But, if you go down the street and see someone sweeping up broken glass, the message is not simply that clean-up is in progress.

It’s also a sign that something has been broken.