Recently, I’ve started opening conversations by asking, “What do you know about Tara Reade?” So far, the answer is “Not much,” over and over. As frustrating as that is to me, I can’t be entirely unsympathetic. Like America, I have had a habit of ignoring things I don’t want to believe.
In 2016, I was a senior in high school, and I was all in for Hillary Clinton. Although I was just barely too young to vote, I talked to people about Hillary, shared articles on Facebook, and ran phone-banking parties on the weekends.
I remember talking to a woman on the phone, the week before Election Day, and having her tell me that she was impressed with my commitment, but she just couldn’t trust Hillary to protect Black people. She may have mentioned Hillary’s 1996 comment about “superpredators.” I felt panicked. I said something about how Trump was so much worse. And the woman on the phone said “Well, thank you, but I’m not going to vote this year.”
At the time, I was desperate for Hillary Clinton to be a hero. I was aware that people criticized her for her foriegn policy, for racist comments she had made, and for a range of policies she supported during Bill Clinton’s presidency. Yet I chose to dismiss that criticism without looking at what it actually was, because I thought that I needed her to be perfect to defeat Trump. I was afraid of what it would mean if her critics were right.
What I have learned is that ignoring something is accepting it, and accepting it is maintaining it.
When my friends and family respond to questions about Tara Reade with assertions that they “don’t believe Joe Biden would do that” or that he is “much better than Trump,” I hear the process of maintaining American ignorance at work. I am reminded of James Baldwin’s book, The Fire Next Time, and his discussion of white America’s prodigious effort to remain ignorant of the realities of racist violence and inequality in Black American life. Dismissing Reade’s accusation involves a much simpler, easier ignorance, but it plays into the same framework, protecting the powerful through a refusal to engage with the facts. My friends aren’t really saying that they don’t believe it’s possible that Joe Biden is a rapist. What they’re saying is, “I know it’s a possibility, I’m afraid of it, and I’ve decided it doesn’t matter.”
There are various strategies for maintaining ignorance. For Biden, people are turning to the immunity afforded by character testimony.
Hosts on the ABC talk show “The View” responded to Lucy Flores’s description of her discomfort when Biden kissed the back of her head at a Democratic rally with something close to anger that she would say such a thing. Whoopi Goldberg said “That pisses me off… I don’t want Joe to stop doing that.” Meghan McCain added that Biden was a “good, decent man” who had “never made [her] feel uncomfortable once.”
Fox News pointed out in a recent article that these same hosts strongly supported the credibility of Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford’s sexual assault allegations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Yes, there is a gap between uncomfortable touching, or a kiss on the head, and sexual assault. Yet the same character defenses are being used to defend Biden from Reade’s assault allegation. Regardless of whether he’s a good man, he’s been in politics so long, he’s a Democrat, he’s never seemed predatory to you, or anything else, the core of the #MeToo movement is that no one is exempt, no matter how powerful, or charismatic.
And yes, the testimony of one woman, or of any one person, is not proof.
In Tara Reade’s case, however, we have much more than her own word. I could lay out for you the five pieces of corroborating evidence: testimonies of four people Reade described the events to more than twenty years ago, and a recording of a phone call made to the Larry King show that suggests, at least, that the Biden campaign is not telling the truth about never receiving a formal complaint from Reade.
Maybe that evidence still doesn’t command belief. But who are we, if we see sexual assault victims as liars until they are proven beyond a doubt to tell the truth?
I can’t help but think: if I were sexually assaulted, who would I tell? How clearly would they remember what I said? Would I be willing to tell my whole story publicly, at once, or would I start with a less serious version of events, knowing that accusing a powerful man of rape would get me death threats?
Maintaining ignorance is not neutral. It is active, affirmative, contagious support for the status quo. Even if Tara Reade’s allegations are false, dismissing them without considering them affirms that sexual assault victims don’t matter, and that powerful people can abuse their power without consequences.
Reade’s accusation doesn’t negate Meghan McCain’s experience of Biden as a good man, nor does it negate every other fact about Biden, his history, and his policies. Only you can decide if it tells you who to vote, or not vote, for.
But you owe it to Tara Reade, and to the thousands of people whose stories will never be heard to look squarely at the facts, and come to terms with them for yourself. Averting your eyes isn’t going to change reality. Your thoughts and actions can.
For more on James Baldwin’s discussion of ignorance in The Fire Next Time, Elizabeth Spelman has an article, “Managing Ignorance” in Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, edited by Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana.
Intended audience: The New York Times OpEd readers, word count 400-1200 (This is out of my reach but best approximates the audience I want to read this. I may create a shorter version to submit to the Seattle Times)