I think that change is a long process. It’s probably not yet possible to see whether the more overt conflict in other venues pays off better than the more polite style at LW, or vice versa.
It’s certainly perilous to make too much of an analogy, but when I look at the broader history of social justice movements (at least in the US), it’s not obvious to me at all that keeping to a majority idea of polite gets much done. It’s fashionable for white people who didn’t live through, say, the black Civil Rights movement to talk about MLK vs Malcolm X, as polite vs confrontational (hell, that conception of them has become a mass media archetype—see Professor X vs Magneto in the X-Men franchise, or virtually anything else that deals in discrimination against fantastics), forgetting how much confrontation King and his followers actually engaged in.
it’s not obvious to me at all that keeping to a majority idea of polite gets much done.
The idea of observing norms of behaviour isn’t to “get things done”, it’s to reduce the damage when what you want is the wrong thing. I’d much prefer both my communists and my liberals be peaceful than both be violent. Yes, maybe it might be better if the good guys were confrontational and the bad guys meek; but for the good of the tribe, we should avoid killing for the sake of the tribe. You cannot run an algorithm “violate social norms when I’m right”—you can only run “violate social norms when I think I’m right”.
Personal advances should constrained by social mores and individual rights so as to reduce damage when the subject doesn’t appreciate them. Even if you’re sure you’re right you should still ask for premission; even if it were the case that not obeying social rules (e.g. being creepy) got more done.
Yeah, see, part of the problem here is that you appear to consider making noise a really good indicator of being willing to kill for the sake of the tribe.
No (though it obveously constitutes at least weak bayesian evidence), that wasn’t my point at all. My point was that the reason you should obey social norms in controversial situations applies in both cases.
Equally, “making noise” is to minimise that which I am objecting too. Talking politely, quietly, slowly, with a smile makes noise, but is normally fine. I do object to Malcolm X, though.
Equally, “making noise” is to minimise that which I am objecting too. Talking politely, quietly, slowly, with a smile makes noise, but is normally fine. I do object to Malcolm X, though.
Yeah, see, the discussion you were replying to was about whether it would be useful to have confrontational or non-calm comments in discussions, one reason being that listening only to calm people might mean hearing only one side of the story, because it’s easier to be calm if you have little to lose (because you’re on the more powerful side), and another reason being that the truth may be confrontational, so hearing only non-confrontational comments may lead you to miss it.
In the comment you were originally replying to, Jandila was arguing that MLK tends to be cast as non-confrontational, vs. Malcolm X as confrontational, in young white people’s discourse today, but that in fact MLK and his followers were quite confrontational. Thus, looking at history, non-calm confrontational speech seems like a reasonable tool if you want things to change something for the better, even if the people who would be the target of that confrontational speech misremember the actually-society-changing civil rights movement as being less confrontational than it was.
Both of your comments seem to consider only the extremes of “talk politely with a smile” and something in the space between black nationalism and actually killing people who disagree with you (I’m not sure what exactly you’re objecting to in saying you “object to Malcolm X”). This seems unhelpful in a discussion about whether or not it would be useful to also have people participate in discussions who talk confrontationally with angry raised voices.
Both of your comments seem to consider only the extremes of “talk politely with a smile” and something in the space between black nationalism and actually killing people who disagree with you
No, I was just pointing out that the same argument applies to both violence and impoliteness. Making an analogy between X and Y does not mean that one thinks that X and Y are the same in other respects.
(also how can the truth be confrontational? maybe we’re using the word ‘confrontational’ in different senses (or, god forbid, using the word ‘truth’ in different senses) but it seems like only agents or utterances can be confrontational.)
One thing I seem to notice is that the more confrontational people are used by the less confrontatioanl ones to intimidate their opponents while they offer acceptable terms.
There’s confrontation, and then there’s confrontation. I see a difference between “We will make it emotionally and/or financially expensive for you to not change” and describing people as white devils. One sort of confrontation is based on the premise that people can change, and the other is based on the premise that they won’t and/or can’t.
The problem I’m seeing, broadly, is that white people can’t necessarily always tell the difference between the two. Even when it’s couched in positively obsequious language there’s a decent chance of that. I’m not exaggerating here; some white people now think it’s racist to even mention racism. Most white people (certainly a lot of them here in this site) are highly resistant to the idea that racism even exists in this day and age, or that it’s anything other than a strictly defined “paying attention to racial differences.”
You can’t meet everyone halfway here, because they’re either unable or unwilling to reciprocate. It’s not about reaching out to people and persuading and convincing them, at that point—it’s about not letting the fact that you can’t stop you from addressing your actual situation.
I don’t think people can reliably tell the difference between the two, probably especially when they feel they have higher status than the person being addressed. At the moment, we’re getting a variant of the problem in regards to gender.
Who decides the emotional significance of a statement? What tool can you use? Emotions are a rubber ruler, but what else could be available?
This being said, I don’t think the problem is completely unsolvable. Social justice as currently practiced is probably not going to be the last experiment in working on it.
I don’t think people can reliably tell the difference between the two, probably especially when they feel they have higher status than the person being addressed. At the moment, we’re getting a variant of the problem in regards to gender.
I’m looking at what you said here, and the paragraph I wrote whose format it echoes, and I can’t help but think we’re talking about two very different things.
Who decides the emotional significance of a statement?
The person whose emotions were touched off by it. Easy, right?
The question I’d be tempted to derive from your connotation here is more like: “Who gets to decide which interpretations of those reports-of-emotional-significance are being proposed as the priority for the purposes of conflict resolution and communication?”
(My answer to that is “the question is slightly broken”, but I’m about to head out so can’t give you the preferred reframing right this moment).
Social justice as currently practiced is probably not going to be the last experiment in working on it.
Oh, definitely not. It has plenty of its discontents, even within the movement, who aren’t satisfied with the tools and methodologies available, its failure modes, and so on. That’s being actively discussed in many spaces, I’ve observed.
Depends who you’re speaking to, and why. To a significant extent, the “confrontational” approach wasn’t about asking for change, it was about “consciousness raising”—debiasing the self concepts of black people, fixing learned helplessness, constructing the conceptual framework to experience white supremacy as racism rather than having internalized it as legitimate.
And, to my mind, the assumption white people “won’t and/or can’t” change was well calibrated. Political anti-racism succeeded somewhat in shoving the Overton window off avowed racism and completely off avowed segregationism. Every variety of disavowed racism remains politically viable (examples: border fences, “illegals”, voter suppression laws) or even politically unassailable (examples: the drug war and its disproportionate criminalization of black people, police casual violence against black people, felon disenfranchisement coupled with the above, lack of reparations). “Color blindness” has been shown to be a cause of / form of racism, but it remains the default “liberal” position in white dominated culture.
The war on drugs is a tricky one—I’m against it myself, but I’ve seen black people be in favor of it, and in favor of closed borders. too.
Neither the war on drugs nor severe border restrictions (which I’m also against) are overtly racist the way Jim Crow was, and that makes them harder to fight. It’s much easier to frame the war on drugs and border restrictions as the sorts of thing a normal government ought to do—some combination of help and punishment and keeping people who don’t use drugs safe for the war on drugs, and safety and control for border restrictions.
Something got accomplished to lower the racism level in the US, even though much less was accomplished than either of us want. I’m inclined to think that the real problem is that we have no idea how to reliably get people to be less prejudiced, and institutional problems will get re-established as long as a lot of people want them to persist.
This isn’t a counsel of despair—it’s a recommendation to keep trying to figure out what might work.
It’s certainly perilous to make too much of an analogy, but when I look at the broader history of social justice movements (at least in the US), it’s not obvious to me at all that keeping to a majority idea of polite gets much done. It’s fashionable for white people who didn’t live through, say, the black Civil Rights movement to talk about MLK vs Malcolm X, as polite vs confrontational (hell, that conception of them has become a mass media archetype—see Professor X vs Magneto in the X-Men franchise, or virtually anything else that deals in discrimination against fantastics), forgetting how much confrontation King and his followers actually engaged in.
The idea of observing norms of behaviour isn’t to “get things done”, it’s to reduce the damage when what you want is the wrong thing. I’d much prefer both my communists and my liberals be peaceful than both be violent. Yes, maybe it might be better if the good guys were confrontational and the bad guys meek; but for the good of the tribe, we should avoid killing for the sake of the tribe. You cannot run an algorithm “violate social norms when I’m right”—you can only run “violate social norms when I think I’m right”.
Personal advances should constrained by social mores and individual rights so as to reduce damage when the subject doesn’t appreciate them. Even if you’re sure you’re right you should still ask for premission; even if it were the case that not obeying social rules (e.g. being creepy) got more done.
Yeah, see, part of the problem here is that you appear to consider making noise a really good indicator of being willing to kill for the sake of the tribe.
No (though it obveously constitutes at least weak bayesian evidence), that wasn’t my point at all. My point was that the reason you should obey social norms in controversial situations applies in both cases.
Equally, “making noise” is to minimise that which I am objecting too. Talking politely, quietly, slowly, with a smile makes noise, but is normally fine. I do object to Malcolm X, though.
Yeah, see, the discussion you were replying to was about whether it would be useful to have confrontational or non-calm comments in discussions, one reason being that listening only to calm people might mean hearing only one side of the story, because it’s easier to be calm if you have little to lose (because you’re on the more powerful side), and another reason being that the truth may be confrontational, so hearing only non-confrontational comments may lead you to miss it.
In the comment you were originally replying to, Jandila was arguing that MLK tends to be cast as non-confrontational, vs. Malcolm X as confrontational, in young white people’s discourse today, but that in fact MLK and his followers were quite confrontational. Thus, looking at history, non-calm confrontational speech seems like a reasonable tool if you want things to change something for the better, even if the people who would be the target of that confrontational speech misremember the actually-society-changing civil rights movement as being less confrontational than it was.
Both of your comments seem to consider only the extremes of “talk politely with a smile” and something in the space between black nationalism and actually killing people who disagree with you (I’m not sure what exactly you’re objecting to in saying you “object to Malcolm X”). This seems unhelpful in a discussion about whether or not it would be useful to also have people participate in discussions who talk confrontationally with angry raised voices.
No, I was just pointing out that the same argument applies to both violence and impoliteness. Making an analogy between X and Y does not mean that one thinks that X and Y are the same in other respects.
(also how can the truth be confrontational? maybe we’re using the word ‘confrontational’ in different senses (or, god forbid, using the word ‘truth’ in different senses) but it seems like only agents or utterances can be confrontational.)
One thing I seem to notice is that the more confrontational people are used by the less confrontatioanl ones to intimidate their opponents while they offer acceptable terms.
There’s confrontation, and then there’s confrontation. I see a difference between “We will make it emotionally and/or financially expensive for you to not change” and describing people as white devils. One sort of confrontation is based on the premise that people can change, and the other is based on the premise that they won’t and/or can’t.
The problem I’m seeing, broadly, is that white people can’t necessarily always tell the difference between the two. Even when it’s couched in positively obsequious language there’s a decent chance of that. I’m not exaggerating here; some white people now think it’s racist to even mention racism. Most white people (certainly a lot of them here in this site) are highly resistant to the idea that racism even exists in this day and age, or that it’s anything other than a strictly defined “paying attention to racial differences.”
You can’t meet everyone halfway here, because they’re either unable or unwilling to reciprocate. It’s not about reaching out to people and persuading and convincing them, at that point—it’s about not letting the fact that you can’t stop you from addressing your actual situation.
I don’t think people can reliably tell the difference between the two, probably especially when they feel they have higher status than the person being addressed. At the moment, we’re getting a variant of the problem in regards to gender.
Who decides the emotional significance of a statement? What tool can you use? Emotions are a rubber ruler, but what else could be available?
This being said, I don’t think the problem is completely unsolvable. Social justice as currently practiced is probably not going to be the last experiment in working on it.
What do you mean by “actual situation”?
I’m looking at what you said here, and the paragraph I wrote whose format it echoes, and I can’t help but think we’re talking about two very different things.
The person whose emotions were touched off by it. Easy, right?
The question I’d be tempted to derive from your connotation here is more like: “Who gets to decide which interpretations of those reports-of-emotional-significance are being proposed as the priority for the purposes of conflict resolution and communication?”
(My answer to that is “the question is slightly broken”, but I’m about to head out so can’t give you the preferred reframing right this moment).
Oh, definitely not. It has plenty of its discontents, even within the movement, who aren’t satisfied with the tools and methodologies available, its failure modes, and so on. That’s being actively discussed in many spaces, I’ve observed.
Some of us even object to “white people”!
Depends who you’re speaking to, and why. To a significant extent, the “confrontational” approach wasn’t about asking for change, it was about “consciousness raising”—debiasing the self concepts of black people, fixing learned helplessness, constructing the conceptual framework to experience white supremacy as racism rather than having internalized it as legitimate.
And, to my mind, the assumption white people “won’t and/or can’t” change was well calibrated. Political anti-racism succeeded somewhat in shoving the Overton window off avowed racism and completely off avowed segregationism. Every variety of disavowed racism remains politically viable (examples: border fences, “illegals”, voter suppression laws) or even politically unassailable (examples: the drug war and its disproportionate criminalization of black people, police casual violence against black people, felon disenfranchisement coupled with the above, lack of reparations). “Color blindness” has been shown to be a cause of / form of racism, but it remains the default “liberal” position in white dominated culture.
The war on drugs is a tricky one—I’m against it myself, but I’ve seen black people be in favor of it, and in favor of closed borders. too.
Neither the war on drugs nor severe border restrictions (which I’m also against) are overtly racist the way Jim Crow was, and that makes them harder to fight. It’s much easier to frame the war on drugs and border restrictions as the sorts of thing a normal government ought to do—some combination of help and punishment and keeping people who don’t use drugs safe for the war on drugs, and safety and control for border restrictions.
Something got accomplished to lower the racism level in the US, even though much less was accomplished than either of us want. I’m inclined to think that the real problem is that we have no idea how to reliably get people to be less prejudiced, and institutional problems will get re-established as long as a lot of people want them to persist.
This isn’t a counsel of despair—it’s a recommendation to keep trying to figure out what might work.
I would’t really call “police casual violence against black people” “politically unassailable”.