We need to talk

Freddie DeBoer complains that he doesn’t know what to do.^[1] Ironically, in the argument over Jonathan Chait’s January article on ‘political correctness,’ I think DeBoer comes closest to getting it right.

As I’m looking at all this, it seems to me that everyone has a point. Far be it from me to deny the litany of evidence that Chait cites in support of his contention that ‘liberals,’ whom he defines as “believ[ing]” among other things, “that social progress can continue while we maintain our traditional ideal of a free political marketplace where we can reason together as individuals,” are being evicted from the conversation on social justice.^[2] But I think he makes a mistake in labeling this ‘political correctness.’ This label has, since the 1980s at least, been used as a childish taunt by conservatives who object to needing to communicate with any sensitivity whatsoever.

We might say, in fact, that talk radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern are part of a backlash to ‘political correctness.’ Which is to say that conservatives, especially authoritarian populists and paleoconservatives, resent being told they shouldn’t be racist or sexist. In this backlash, offensive speech has come to be valorized. Rightly or wrongly, conservatives have appropriated the term political correctness; it’s theirs now, and we only introduce confusion when we on the left use it ourselves.

But I think Amanda Taub errs in reducing Chait’s argument to a dismissal of the concerns^[3] that lie behind a kind of bullying that, as DeBoer has witnessed, is chasing would-be allies out of the social justice movement.^[4] As Chait writes, “Since race and gender biases are embedded in our social and familial habits, our economic patterns, and even our subconscious minds, they need to be fought with some level of consciousness. The mere absence of overt discrimination will not do.”^[5] That’s not the dismissal that Taub claims it is.

What’s happening, and I have to agree with both Chait and DeBoer that it’s terribly destructive,^[6] is that in the social justice movement, some of us seem to be looking for excuses not to listen to each other, to exclude each other, to silence each other. And here is where Taub has a point and Chait’s argument is weak. Chait, she writes,

doesn’t spend much time considering why the people who demand them might think they do matter. The open communication offered by platforms like Twitter has brought Chait into contact with ideas that he clearly finds weird and silly. But rather than considering their merits, or why they matter to the people who put them forward, he dismisses them as political correctness, and concludes that their very existence constitutes “ideological repression.”^[7]

The truth here is that Chait didn’t spend nearly enough column space addressing the concerns about microaggressions, ‘trigger warnings,’ and ‘tone policing.’^[8] Which, as Taub explains, means he isn’t listening as well as he should be. But then she leaps to the conclusion that inadequately listening is absolute dismissal.^[9]

There’s no middle ground here. It’s Manichean thinking. DeBoer complains he is left without “the slightest fucking idea what to say to the many brilliant, passionate young people whose only crime is not already being perfect.”^[10] And that’s because in the thinking that Taub defends, there is nothing to be said. DeBoer responds, “I want a left that can win, and there’s no way I can have that when the actually-existing left sheds potential allies at an impossible rate.”^[11]

Well, yeah. My problem is that when I am subject to ad hominem attacks simply for being white and male,^[12] I am effectively being lumped in with the likes of Limbaugh and Stern. As Taub notes correctly, “that kind of criticism hurts most if you are someone who cares about social justice, or do think that discrimination is harmful when it’s implicit as well as when it’s explicit.”^[13] And here’s DeBoer’s point: I’m being chased away too. I’m certainly going to think very hard before involving myself with another social justice group.

But folks like me can’t fall back on the excuse that DeBoer points to. I can’t say I’ve been developing an awareness of critical theory for twelve years,^[14] and then plead that I’m among those “get[ting] burned terribly for just being typical clumsy kids?”^[15] (And at the age of 56, I don’t really consider myself a ‘kid’ anyway.) Instead, the recognition, as I pointed to yesterday, has to be that none of us will ever be perfect, that none of us can ever have an omniscient view that enables us to see and understand all perspectives equally well.^[16] That’s why we have to keep talking. And listening.

That needs to happen on both sides. It isn’t really communication when one side talks and the other side is expected to only listen. There needs to be real dialog.

So yeah, DeBoer errs, too, in dismissing Chait as “a jerk who somehow manages to be both condescending and wounded” and as an “asshole.”^[17] That isn’t the way to open communication. Nor  is it the way to open communication when, as Taub complains of those who object to ‘political correctness,’ people don’t actually respond to arguments,^[18] but rather, as I too often find, simply claim to be misrepresented or simply fall back on their original claims, as if repeating them makes them true. It also doesn’t mean dismissing evidence as Taub does in response to the pseudonymous Edward Schlosser’s article,^[19] which I discussed yesterday,^[20] as merely ‘anecdotal.’^[21] Because that’s dismissing concerns out of hand in the same way that she accuses Chait of doing.^[22]

But then, that’s my point: We are not only not listening to each other; we are refusing to listen to each other. There’s something funny going on there, where we each assume we are uniquely entitled to speak and to silence others, where the “power to” speak, becomes “power over” others, a presumption that others should only listen.

1. ^[1]Freddie DeBoer, “I don’t know what to do, you guys,” January 29, 2015, http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/01/29/i-dont-know-what-to-do-you-guys/↩
2. ^[2]Jonathan Chait, “Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say,” New York, January 27, 2015, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/not-a-very-pc-thing-to-say.html↩
3. ^[3]Amanda Taub, “The truth about ‘political correctness’ is that it doesn’t actually exist,” Vox, January 28, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2015/1/28/7930845/political-correctness-doesnt-exist↩
4. ^[4]Freddie DeBoer, “I don’t know what to do, you guys,” January 29, 2015, http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/01/29/i-dont-know-what-to-do-you-guys/↩
5. ^[5]Jonathan Chait, “Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say,” New York, January 27, 2015, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/not-a-very-pc-thing-to-say.html↩
6. ^[6]Jonathan Chait, “Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say,” New York, January 27, 2015, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/not-a-very-pc-thing-to-say.html; Freddie DeBoer, “I don’t know what to do, you guys,” January 29, 2015, http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/01/29/i-dont-know-what-to-do-you-guys/↩
7. ^[7]Amanda Taub, “The truth about ‘political correctness’ is that it doesn’t actually exist,” Vox, January 28, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2015/1/28/7930845/political-correctness-doesnt-exist↩
8. ^[8]Jonathan Chait, “Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say,” New York, January 27, 2015, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/not-a-very-pc-thing-to-say.html↩
9. ^[9]Amanda Taub, “The truth about ‘political correctness’ is that it doesn’t actually exist,” Vox, January 28, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2015/1/28/7930845/political-correctness-doesnt-exist↩
10. ^[10]Freddie DeBoer, “I don’t know what to do, you guys,” January 29, 2015, http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/01/29/i-dont-know-what-to-do-you-guys/↩
11. ^[11]Freddie DeBoer, “I don’t know what to do, you guys,” January 29, 2015, http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/01/29/i-dont-know-what-to-do-you-guys/↩
12. ^[12]David Benfell, “On pedagogy, controversy, and the unintentional road to revolution,” Not Housebroken, June 5, 2015, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=7622↩
13. ^[13]Amanda Taub, “The truth about ‘political correctness’ is that it doesn’t actually exist,” Vox, January 28, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2015/1/28/7930845/political-correctness-doesnt-exist↩
14. ^[14]David Benfell, “On pedagogy, controversy, and the unintentional road to revolution,” Not Housebroken, June 5, 2015, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=7622↩
15. ^[15]Freddie DeBoer, “I don’t know what to do, you guys,” January 29, 2015, http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/01/29/i-dont-know-what-to-do-you-guys/↩
16. ^[16]David Benfell, “On pedagogy, controversy, and the unintentional road to revolution,” Not Housebroken, June 5, 2015, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=7622↩
17. ^[17]Freddie DeBoer, “I don’t know what to do, you guys,” January 29, 2015, http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/01/29/i-dont-know-what-to-do-you-guys/↩
18. ^[18]Amanda Taub, “The truth about ‘political correctness’ is that it doesn’t actually exist,” Vox, January 28, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2015/1/28/7930845/political-correctness-doesnt-exist↩
19. ^[19]Edward Schlosser [pseud.], “I’m a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me,” Vox, June 3, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid↩
20. ^[20]David Benfell, “On pedagogy, controversy, and the unintentional road to revolution,” Not Housebroken, June 5, 2015, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=7622↩
21. ^[21]Amanda Taub, “I was a liberal adjunct professor. My liberal students didn’t scare me at all,” Vox, June 5, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2015/6/5/8736591/liberal-professor-identity↩
22. ^[22]Amanda Taub, “The truth about ‘political correctness’ is that it doesn’t actually exist,” Vox, January 28, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2015/1/28/7930845/political-correctness-doesnt-exist↩