No doubt you’ve heard about the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. Eight construction workers were filling potholes on the bridge when a huge cargo ship lost power and crashed into a main support. The bridge fell apart completely in seconds, terrifying and captivating at the same time. Two workers survived; a couple of the dead workers have been found as I write this, but not all of them.
It was frightening. As the parent of a child who once harbored a fear of bridges and having my own reservations at times crossing some long bridges, it is a sobering event that reminds of us of the fragility of our lives and even the most sturdy of structures. It reminded me of how two airplanes and rampant fire could take down the twin towers of the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Whether by accident or design, the most impressive feats of engineering can still come crashing down and be turned into nothing but twisted wreckage and debris.
But two things stand out to me as I look at comments on social media and commentary about the Baltimore tragedy, and the first is that people need to stop being armchair experts. We’ve seen it with random folks suddenly spouting off about the COVID virus and pandemics as if they were infectious disease and public health specialists. We see it with people denying climate change and the disastrous effects of it now—with worse likely to come—saying things like “where’s that global warming now” when ice storms hit Texas, as if that’s some sort of refutation of climate change. And other issues besides.
And now we have our armchair civil engineers going off about how U.S. infrastructure is failing and getting old and while they aren’t wrong, that’s not what happened here. A ship the size of a skyscraper carrying untold tons of cargo lost power and the ability to navigate or stop. There is nothing and no preparation that could prevent it from toppling that bridge. Even sturdier bridges would have been ruined—even if they didn’t utterly collapse like the Key Bridge—with many lives potentially lost and transportation challenges created, and reconstruction costs incurred.
The second thing that bothers me, and this bothers me even more—and not just because my day job is anti-racism work—is how this presented a chance for cowardly know-nothing racists who wish they could use the N-word publicly to call Baltimore’s Brandon Scott a “DEI mayor.” DEI being “diversity, equity and inclusion, of course. As if he was a “quota hire” (another myth such people peddle incessantly, that is a rare occurrence) and not a man who won some 70% of the vote to get his job.
These people warn of “more of these kinds of disasters to come” with “these kinds of people” in office, as if the bridge wasn’t built long before Scott became mayor. As if he somehow caused it to degrade in his brief time in office. As if he could have foreseen this disaster—if only he were a proper white male mayor—and somehow prevent it from happening.
People will look for any excuse to blame people of color, or women, or LGBTQ+ people, or Muslims—or whomever else who isn’t part of prevailing white, male, cishet, Christian power structure—for problems that occur on their watch when white men do no better preventing or responding to such disasters or other societal problems.
In fact, a bigger problem than “DEI politicians” (which don’t exist) is mediocre white men who think they know better than everyone else and get by on connections and bluster and little else. That’s a real problem, but not one we want to talk about enough, much less address and solve.
Because those mediocre, poorly informed, willfully ignorant people who run so many companies and fill so many political offices and hold other positions of power are the ones we need to watch out for. They are the ones who defund infrastructure efforts or lay off necessary staff to please shareholders, or conduct any number of other abuses and crimes against us. They are the kind of people who are just like those ignorant “armchair experts” and just the kind of people those armchair warriors cheer on and support.
In the wake of the Baltimore tragedy, the uncalled-for use of “DEI mayor” as a stand-in for the N-word, and the stupid conspiracy theories along with complaints the bridge should have been stronger—let’s resolve to start weeding out the mediocre leaders who can’t lead, and stop denigrating the people trying to make real, lasting, and positive change.
Coming, as I do, from that world, I couldn't agree more: "... a bigger problem... is mediocre white men who think they know better than everyone else and get by on connections and bluster and little else."