Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 6 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Je Ne Regrette Rien
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.13.2013
Eli: "Zach was just telling me she was going to do that, and now she is doing that."
Maddie Hayward and Eli and Jordan have a long negotiation about how many debates and what the rules will be, and it's all dick-swangin' and whatever, because the team, and we, are being given time to stress out about the racial stuff. Which has always been a little less true than Geneva Pine thinks, but a thousand times more true than Peter, Eli, or even Cary (who is reconstructed in a lot of ways, being younger than the other two) believe.
Which is why this episode is fascinating. Geneva's kind of crazy, and kind of a bitch, but she's not wrong. Which means Maddie Hayward is doing the right thing for the wrong reasons -- which, at least on this show, is worse than doing the wrong thing for the right ones. You can say that Peter hired Amanda Peet because Alicia told him to -- and that he loved Cary because Cary is kind of family and also connected to Alicia -- but cronyism/nepotism don't rule out racial bias, they're both related and rooted in the same system of privilege to begin with:
1) You know who you know, and 2) You don't know what you don't know.
So much of this stuff is easier to talk about if you leave off the us/them language, because while that has a point and a use, in this conversation it's distracting. A person cannot objectively examine their built-in racial prejudices if all they hear is you accusing them of racism, because then it becomes about proving they're a good person/not a racist, which is not the point of the conversation. And if you think it is, or this isn't radical enough for you, you need to think very hard about who you're trying to impress, because bringing about positive change is not what you actually intend to do.
Rule #1 For A Happy Life: You never explain privilege to a person while they're actively demonstrating it, because that's an ontological attack that makes no sense and bounces right off their worldview, and it will do you no good. A thing Geneva Pine is better at negotiating than I ever would have thought possible.
Peter: "You look like you're gonna barf."
Eli: "Preferential hiring and promotion in the SA. It's going to be a thing..."
Jordan: "Race is a scab. Do not pick at it."
Eli: "Zach told me she's got ASAs who wanna go public."
Peter: "Then I'll just summon them one by one into my richly appointed office, show them a paper copy of their paychecks, remind them who hired them, crack my knuckles, and then ask if they feel like they're happy at their jobs. It's the perfect solution!"