I don't listen to much music that evokes a visceral reaction. Songs don't usually leave me mouth agape, mumbling incoherently, shellshocked by lyrics' gravity and devastating accuracy.
But Bob Dylan's "Only a Pawn in Their Game" is no ordinary song. It's universal and specific all at once, identifying the central cause of American societal strife. Dylan, of whom I am no superfan, speaks the unspeakable truth about race and class in the United States: white privilege is a deal made between the ruling class and white people with nothing. And it's a deal, as Dylan says, that makes everyone -- every working family -- worse off.
I understand that "white privilege" is a phrase loathed by folks who see it as a whiny outgrowth of what they might call PC culture, a culture centered on not being a total asshole. They hear the phrase as convoluted college speak, as academic and detached from life outside the Ivory Tower. White privilege isn't only misunderstood by those who hate the mere mention of it, but by those who might wield the phrase as a weapon in political discourse.
Dylan in "Only a Pawn," which he performed at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, explains in gorgeous prose what white privilege really means, not just for the person of color who faces the evils of systemic oppression, but for the white man who made the deal with his monied masters. More than a song about the assassination of Civil Rights activist and NAACP leader Medgar Evers, "Only a Pawn" is an explanation of the rot festering at the dead center of American society almost twenty years into the 21st century. It is a lyrical dissection of a cultural, political, and economic arrangement that has lasted for centuries, infecting every part of American life.
A South politician preaches to the poor white man
"You got more than the blacks, don't complain
You're better than them, you been born with white skin," they explain
And the Negro's name
Is used, it is plain
For the politician's gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game
The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man's used in the hands of them all like a tool
He's taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
'Bout the shape that he's in
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game
From the poverty shacks, he looks from the cracks to the tracks
And the hoofbeats pound in his brain
And he's taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide 'neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain't got no name
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game
Much of this might resonate if you're surrounded by white people and understand the prism through which they view race and class. They separate the two, of course, because that's part of the Grand Bargain With White Workers: you won't face the abject horrors of black and brown folks, you will not find solidarity with them, and you will not ask for more than you're given. We've granted you privilege, the politician says, so take it and shut your mouth. Your skin color protects you, as Dylan sang. What else could you possibly want?
Something you may notice about how many white Americans see race and class: they can't see clearly. They view it through blurred fear goggles. Too many are consumed by anxiety and hate and fear that doesn't just change politics, but brain chemistry. The way we function as humans is affected by the consumption of messages designed to make one afraid of the Other, of the religious minority, of the person of color, of the non-gender conforming person, of the woman. Dylan sings that these carefully tailored messages "keep up" the hate of the white man, which ensures that he'll never think straight about his condition. There's no time to wonder why one is scraping by, paycheck to measly paycheck, in the Land of Milk and Honey when one is overcome with terror and hatred. It's a toxic combination and it's available 24 hours a day in our burning dumpster of a media culture.
Flip on the TV and get your hit of hate. Slurp up the fear. Don't be shy -- there's enough for everyone. Please just never consider who is to blame for the fundamental unfairness that has slashed the life expectancy of white people in the poorest parts of the country, as these beleaguered folks die "deaths of despair." Please never consider what once made the American middle class so vibrant and secure. Please never consider that one's country of origin is an abysmal predictor of one's likelihood to commit a terrorist act, or that U.S. law enforcement agencies “consider anti-government violent extremists, not radicalized Muslims, to be the most severe threat of political violence that they face.”
Please never think straight. That's central to the arrangement.
I wasn't in a particularly political and confrontational mood last week when a decidedly politically confrontational discussion broke out at an informal get-together. One guy -- we'll call him Joe -- had just watched a Fox News segment in which undocumented people were blamed for every imaginable American woe, economic and otherwise. Joe's position was predictably hardline: kick 'em out, every last one, even if they were brought to the United States as children, serve in the military, or have fled horrific violence abroad. Joe parroted the message he had been spoon fed by a cable network designed to keep up the hate of its viewers: purge America of undocumented families using any means available and things will improve. The message was to be afraid for your finances, afraid for the safety of your children in the face of the invading unwashed hoards from the southern border, and not to think straight under any circumstance. This conversation predictably devolved into name calling and invective as me, my wife, and Joe were unable to bridge the gap between what we perceive as reality. This isn't a quip about the computer simulation in which we may or may not exist, but an acknowledgement that modern media culture has created at least two distinct political realities that annihilate truth. Joe's evidence-free truth was that a war against undocumented people would benefit him -- just as he's been brainwashed to believe.
"To be a pawn, then, is to serve as a front-line defender of the powerful, putting yourself at risk because you incorrectly believe, due to indoctrination and illusory benefits, that you are defending your own interests," Avery Kolers wrote in the compilation, "Bob Dylan And Philosophy." "A pawn is most straightforwardly a piece in a board game -- a mechanical plaything moved around by the whims of a transcendent agent."
Expendability defines a pawn. In chess, a pawn is only useful for protecting the more important, versatile pieces. It's not hard to complete the metaphor. The pawn, that downtrodden white man working longer hours for less pay like his black neighbor, is but a useful tool ensuring unfixable fissures in the middle and working classes. This pawn is important in only one way: he is the centerpiece of what makes the ruler's kingdom tick. His refusal to side with those who share economic interest is the grease that keep the wheels of crushing inequality spinning. This pawn doesn't know what he means to the elites who use his hate and fear to keep us divided among bright lines of race and class.
But what if he did? What if.