The White Pages Awards: 2021
The stars are out for the most glamorous event in niche social change newslettering
So here’s the thing, I have a pretty good sense of my own brain right now (feels weird, thanks for asking!) and a decent hypothesis that many of you are also feeling a little off-kilter as well, so I feel it’s perhaps best to give all of us some time off from another dense screed about the last fifty years of White politics. Instead, let’s do awards! But let’s not do the type of awards that you would find in a real publication with “editorial standards” and “good instincts as to what people want to read.” Why? I don’t know! I mean, you don’t need my “Best Books of 2021” list… I already wrote a whole post about the book I most want White people to read this year.
What I’m saying is, I thought this might be fun! Again, lotta weird vibes over here right now. Forward!
The First Annual1 White Pages Awards2
American Institution Of The Year (Real)
The Public School System! And no, I’m not saying that in a saccharine “I teach! What’s Your Superpower?” way. I don’t think every single school in America is a perfect place to be a kid nor that our country has ever truly cared about making that the case. I do know, however, that we lose what we don’t fight for and appreciate. I also know that the only time we talked about public schools this year was when people were yelling at their school boards, either for understandable reasons (remote school is and was really hard!) or because a few conservative dudes with expensive haircuts and a very high opinion of themselves were, sadly, better organizers than most of us on the Left.
Here’s what we didn’t talk about this year: Across the country, millions of children—scarred from the pandemic in innumerable ways— were welcomed back into in-person classrooms. They have been met by teachers and staff who are currently charged not only with loving them and teaching them to read but helping diagnose and catch them up, giving space for a laundry list of traumas and anxieties, enforcing new routines to keep them safe and pivoting on a dime when they or their students need to quarantine. That’s remarkable! It’s a freaking miracle! And I get to watch it every day— not because my kids go to a cloistered ivory tower private school. I get to witness this miracle— a building full of love and intentionality and teachers just absolutely giving it their all— at a “low performing Title I school” in a “low performing” big-city school district.
And yes, all teachers are working their tails off, not just in public schools, but what I’m grateful for specifically is the tattered-but-still-hanging-on idea that ours is a country where there are free institutions- paid for with our tax dollars and accountable to us as voters- whose mission is to take care of every kid who walks in their door.
Would you like a lecture on everything that is wrong and inequitable about American education? I’ve got thoughts! That’s one aspect of loving something fiercely! But in the meantime, I would lay down in front of a bus for our public school, for a nation of public schools and a nation of public school teachers.
American Institution Of The Year (Imagined)
A national health service! Like, you know, a national system of free, public hospitals and clinics that took care of every citizen, cradle-to-grave, free-at-the-point-of-service? And that we invested in enough such that people received consistent, dignity-respecting care? And that was so trusted that people are more likely to pitch in to do their part to support their neighbors’ public health when asked? I don’t know, I think that would be very good! No particular reason, just something I’ve been thinking about lately!
Runner up: Monthly child allowances (that don’t disappear) and paid leave and universal daycare with well-compensated staff and baby boxes and… you get it. Again, no particular context for why that seems important these days!
Culture War Dispatch Of The Year
I saw this while out running one day this fall! I have a lot of questions! I also hope that Calvin doesn’t find this newsletter!
bell hooks Book That I Hope Everybody Reads By This Time Next Year
Belonging: A Culture of Place. The common theme that runs through hooks’ best work was her ability to stare down systems of domination and isolation and propose a solution that draws people closer to one another. In this case, the solution is returning to our roots, sustaining our attention in places that others have left, and building relationships even when it’s hard. For hooks (and Wendell Berry, who plays a big part in the book) that place was Eastern Kentucky. But it’s only partially a book about Kentucky. It’s about your place too— the one you still are, the one you’ve left, the one to which you might return.
Very Cool Basketball Thing Of The Year
No further commentary needed, except perhaps that it would be cool to see this clip set to “In the Air Tonight” By Phil Collins.
Very Cool Basketball Thing Of The Year Set to “In The Air Tonight” By Phil Collins
Thing That Made Me Sad This Year
Oh, this is easy: Our loneliness and isolation from one another, especially in a year where “we’re all in this together” (always just a platitude, but still!) fully devolved into never-ending declarations and counter-declarations of individual righteousness and personal purity.
Connected to that: Our continued insistence that politics is merely about having the correct opinion and not about the long-term commitment that takes to build a different political reality.
When did I feel this? Oh, a lot of random times. I felt it this week in a largely maskless Home Depot. I felt it every time I got an email from a Brand telling me that I was a part of a community because one time I bought a jacket from them. I felt it every time I heard somebody I care about saying that they thought unvaccinated people shouldn’t be given emergency care. I felt it as I read diatribes from hundreds of online smarty pants who (correctly) yell at the Democratic Party for not giving us social democracy without acknowledging that a Party that fights for social democracy actually needs to be built, over the course of decades, and we haven’t done that.
Thing That Made Me Happy This Year
All of the thousands of times I got to experience a counter-point to that culture of loneliness, isolation and aversion towards building-things-together-slowly: Teaching and learning with hundreds of Barnraisers trainees across the country; getting to hear about and sometimes witness their organizing projects first-hand (out of nowhere yesterday I just got a dispatch from Spokane and the Palouse Valley! A delight!); Group texts that were kind and silly and inspiring and not gossipy and mean; Union drives and strikes (our local coffee shop is unionized now!); Dozens of friends and family members across the country telling about the Mutual Aid effort in their neighborhood; Loved ones who got to know neighbors who they didn’t know a year ago; Asking my mail carrier brother for advice on “mail carrier gift ideas” on behalf of friends who love their carriers…. I could go on!
Gas Station Pizza Of The Year
It will always be Casey’s General Store, whose politics I’m sure are problematic (don’t tell me! I’m deliberately avoiding finding out!) but whose slices are the literal platonic ideal of the Ice Rink/Bowling Alley/School Cafeteria/Costco genre of pizza and which you pick up from one of those little glass boxes with the spinny trays. It is one of the top five arguments for life in the Midwest.
If, in the next year, I find a gas station pizza I love MORE than Casey’s General Store, it will be big news. I don’t think I will.
Reindeer of The Year
My family gets tested for Covid fairly frequently, which is the kind of thing one does when your spouse’s job gives her a key line of sight into why regular testing is so necessary. And I know most of you don’t live in the City of Milwuakee but holy cow I hope that whoever runs your city or county’s testing sites (which I hope you have!) are as kind and funny and lollipop-and-sticker-giving and over-praising-but-it-helps-when-your-eight-year-old-is-feeling-weird-about-a-thing-in-his-nose as the staff are at our sites. I love them so much. I am so unspeakably grateful for them. Oh, and I think their weird reindeer is cool.
Actually Good White People Organizing Project Of The Year [People I Know]
Again, so many! Seriously, which is why I actually spent much more of the year feeling generally decent is that I got to discover so many examples of the kind of organizing that we often imagine isn’t possible— communities that are taught to be individualistic and out-for-themselves instead rallying around the common good.
Thanks to Barnraisers, I’ve gotten to know some of these organizers personally. And though I could shout out folks in Western Massachusetts or Eastern North Carolina or Portland or Minneapolis, I’m going to cheat and choose “Oakland organizers” so that I can highlight two cool projects, both of which are directly focused on the two primary ways that White families have recently bent that city towards their whims. The Oakland Reparations Project is helping White homeowners tangibly rethink their accountability to and relationship with Black Oaklandites (many of whom are being priced out by gentrification), while Get Schooled Oakland is helping an audience of parents usually inclined towards Greatschools.org and cut-throat competition to completely rethink what matters in committing to a school community. They are both so cool, and neither existed until 2021.
Actually Good White People Organizing Project Of The Year [People I Don’t Know]
I’ve already said kind things about Reclaim Idaho this year! I want to say more kind things about Reclaim Idaho, though… like all the time! All the things that we yell at the Democratic Party for not doing— actually organizing in “Red States;” inspiring folks around ideas for the common good (like universal healthcare and increased education funding) taking on corporate and political interests; not caring about how they look to people who already agree with them—- are things that Reclaim Idaho is out there doing right now, in a state that a good percentage of Liberal/Left America just writes off.
Actually Good White Person From History Who I Thought About A Lot This Year
I mean, the honest answer is always Anne and Carl Braden (I visited their house in Louisville this year! It inspired thoughts and feelings! And I took that picture!), but this year that award goes to Henry Wallace, who I’ll be writing about in the future.
A quick teaser though: Like other good things (my father, Casey’s General Store) Wallace was an Iowan. He and Eleanor Roosevelt were the Leftiest folks in FDR’s circle, which is why it was a big deal when Wallace got to be FDR’s Vice President. He was eventually forced out of that spot by the party machine and ended up leading a Sisyphean third party campaign for President in 1948 (proposing many of the Good Things That We Wish Our Country Would Have Done In The Twentieth Century But Didn’t). As you can guess (since I’m not referring to Former President Henry Wallace), he lost big, his campaign undone by the growing specter of the Red Scare. While he’s often remembered as a “what could have been” footnote, here’s the cool thing— the progressive organizing infrastructure that was built in the South for his campaign would eventually provide key institutional heft for what, a decade later, would emerge as the Civil Rights Movement. Henry Wallace ended up having a legacy much deeper than he intended because the people he inspired didn’t quit organizing after they lost a single battle.
Songs of The Year [General]
These probably aren’t the best songs, but they are the ones I liked the most this year. Maybe you’ll like some of them too!
Song of the Year [By A Norwegian Man Dressed as An Angel In Sunglasses As Part Of His Performance In The Eurovision Song Contest]
Our family got really into the Eurovision Song Contest this year. It’s a long story! But when I say we got into it… we got really into it. We had brackets. And strong opinions. And we watched hours of it— both the Swedish preliminaries (Melodifestivalen) and the continent-wide finals. Again, there’s a longer story there, but suffice to say: We know our stuff.
Anyway, here is a Norwegian man called Tix. He is a “Fallen Angel.” Good for him!
Hamfisted Lesson Of The Year [Or, Why Did I Mention Henry Wallace Up Above?]
I don’t think 2021 is going to be remembered as a year where those of us who dream of a better, kinder world had a lot of victories, particularly in the United States. It’s ok to say it: When a year is marked by multiple Covid variants and a lot of yelling at school boards about how White Fragility is a satanic text and oh yeah A COUP ATTEMPT… well, that’s not one of the good years! And that’s a bummer! I’d much rather live in one of the good years. There are very few human lessons, it seems, that aren’t about reaping and sowing. And I think that’s what we’re dealing with these days. I truly want to celebrate good years next year, ten years from now and twenty years from now. And that means that the Bad Years need to be Building Years. They need to be Staying Connected years. They need to be Rooting Ourselves In Place, Whatever That Means years. This year, my life was full when I was building and rooting, and it was anxious and harried when I was reactive and fixated on Being Correct And Smart. Seems like a decent lesson for the upcoming year.
I am doing that solely to frustrate people in my life (you know who you are) who yell when something is called “The First Annual” because something can’t be annual if it hasn’t happened multiple times yet.
No, I’m not going to call them “The Whities”
Thanks for helping us build, stay connected, and root in place, Garrett!
This was the bolstering read I needed to see out the year -- thank you!