Conclusion

Abstract

There are some forms of cruelty, injustice, or simple unkindness that we can’t help but notice. That they are cruel, unjust, or unkind is clear to everyone: to their sometimes gleeful perpetrators, to those wounded by them, and to everyone else in the vicinity. But there are forms of cruelty and injustice that are not like this. Some forms of racialized harassment, and some forms of sexual violence, are easy to conceal—in the sense that anyone not directly targeted by them can find a way not to notice them. Sometimes, that not-noticing is active and culpable. Sometimes it isn’t. Either way, the shock and dismay of a White person coming to grips with the power and depth of racism in her community, or the shock and dismay of a man coming to grips with the extent of sexual violence in his community, can be off-putting. The news isn’t shocking to the people who’d been struggling all along. Someone who has long been aware of the contours of the problem may look on in bemused frustration as the newly shocked manage to secure attention—from peers, the press, perhaps policymakers—that had somehow been in short supply before....