IGNORANCE ≠ EVIL
Sep. 21st, 2015 12:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrog[You can leave if you want to, we're just jamming, that's all.]
We hear the term “political correctness” a lot these days.
Technically we’ve been hearing the term on and off for at least the last 25 years. I first came across it in 1991, when the debate was largely focused on university curriculums, where some professors were being told what they could or could not teach in order to avoid offending minorities or other disenfranchised groups – and in fact professors were criticized for stepping over the line and even losing their jobs over it. (We’re not talking about professors delivering Michael-Savage like diatribes in class – we’re talking about assigning books that contained the n-word or reflected the sexist, racist, anti-Semitic attitudes of the time.)
Anyway, it’s become a lazy, devalued, catch-all term for conservatives who complain about “SJWs” trying to tell them what they can or cannot say about minorities, or what opinions they are allowed to have, or what govt policies they should support.
Often this is just an all-purpose excuse to defend people who think jokes about dumb blondes, wetbacks and cripples are funny. But sometimes it’s a legit complaint about censorship. There’s a fine line between criticizing what someone says and penalizing them to ensure they never say it again (and make examples of them to anyone else who might agree with them).
This stifles discussion and debate, and that’s a bad thing, because genuine debate allows you to see where the other person is coming from. I see this played out on Facebook all the time – well-meaning people who will shout down and shame anyone who says anything negative about (for example) gays/lesbians, transgenders, the #BlackLivesMatter movement, immigrants, rape victims, etc, until it spirals into an Internet lynch mob.
Even the arts are held to zero-tolerance ideological standards. Every time a Hollywood movie, TV show, TV ad or book comes out, you can bet that the more successful and popular it is, the more likely you’re going to find prominent blog posts harshly criticizing it because at least one scene didn’t pass a given sociopolitical litmus test.
What’s worse, this discourages dissent within the ranks. If you call people out when they go too far – even if you otherwise agree with the basic sentiment – you risk being denounced as an enemy of the cause. And any colleagues who might actually see yr point are not likely to step up to defend you, if only because they believe any criticism of the cause from within hurts the overall cause, and that a show of unity is more important. Maybe, but the tradeoff is, again, a chilling effect that stifles genuine debate.
Don’t get me wrong – I understand the motivations for “political correctness”, and I’m generally sympathetic with them. But it can be (and has been) taken to extremes that are at best counterproductive.
So with all that in mind, here are a couple of useful links:
1. This article, in which Anne Rice warns of the dangers of political correctness as a censorship tool.
2. This article from Sara Benincasa about how she used to be transphobic, and how she learned not to be. It highlights a very key point that many activists tend not to understand: a lot of society’s prejudices are culturally ingrained, which means – like it or not – it takes time and effort to change them. You won’t necessarily accomplish that by screaming at wrongdoers until they conform:
I really think this gets to the heart of the matter – the assumption that anyone who expresses some kind of prejudicial statement is branded the literal equivalent of Dylan Roof or Fred Phelps. Some are – most are not. They may be ignorant, but that doesn't make them evil. Treating them as such just reduces them to a KKK Nazi hatemonger stereotype. Which to me is what we should be NOT doing.
To be clear: none of this means that we should avoid criticizing prejudice when we encounter it, or take a “go slow” approach to give people time to get over their prejudices. It just means understanding the difference between hate and ignorance, and tailoring our responses accordingly.
It also means understanding that there’s no quick fix here. I get that there’s a lot of anger and impatience about social injusticees these days, especially from the victims therein, and that anger is growing, and people are being encouraged online to embrace it because fuck it, why not? Righteous anger and hatred is more satisfying, and it may produce quicker results. The thing about quick fixes is that they’re often superficial, ineffective in the long term, and they come with a price.
I guess what it comes down to is what ultimately you want to accomplish. Do you want to help ignorant people see the error of their ways, help them to change their views and build a society that’s ultimately more inclusive? Or do you want the bigots to immediately shut up and hide so you can pretend the world is a nice and just place because it appears to be conforming to yr sociopolitical attitudes?
Take the long way home,
This is dF
We hear the term “political correctness” a lot these days.
Technically we’ve been hearing the term on and off for at least the last 25 years. I first came across it in 1991, when the debate was largely focused on university curriculums, where some professors were being told what they could or could not teach in order to avoid offending minorities or other disenfranchised groups – and in fact professors were criticized for stepping over the line and even losing their jobs over it. (We’re not talking about professors delivering Michael-Savage like diatribes in class – we’re talking about assigning books that contained the n-word or reflected the sexist, racist, anti-Semitic attitudes of the time.)
Anyway, it’s become a lazy, devalued, catch-all term for conservatives who complain about “SJWs” trying to tell them what they can or cannot say about minorities, or what opinions they are allowed to have, or what govt policies they should support.
Often this is just an all-purpose excuse to defend people who think jokes about dumb blondes, wetbacks and cripples are funny. But sometimes it’s a legit complaint about censorship. There’s a fine line between criticizing what someone says and penalizing them to ensure they never say it again (and make examples of them to anyone else who might agree with them).
This stifles discussion and debate, and that’s a bad thing, because genuine debate allows you to see where the other person is coming from. I see this played out on Facebook all the time – well-meaning people who will shout down and shame anyone who says anything negative about (for example) gays/lesbians, transgenders, the #BlackLivesMatter movement, immigrants, rape victims, etc, until it spirals into an Internet lynch mob.
Even the arts are held to zero-tolerance ideological standards. Every time a Hollywood movie, TV show, TV ad or book comes out, you can bet that the more successful and popular it is, the more likely you’re going to find prominent blog posts harshly criticizing it because at least one scene didn’t pass a given sociopolitical litmus test.
What’s worse, this discourages dissent within the ranks. If you call people out when they go too far – even if you otherwise agree with the basic sentiment – you risk being denounced as an enemy of the cause. And any colleagues who might actually see yr point are not likely to step up to defend you, if only because they believe any criticism of the cause from within hurts the overall cause, and that a show of unity is more important. Maybe, but the tradeoff is, again, a chilling effect that stifles genuine debate.
Don’t get me wrong – I understand the motivations for “political correctness”, and I’m generally sympathetic with them. But it can be (and has been) taken to extremes that are at best counterproductive.
So with all that in mind, here are a couple of useful links:
1. This article, in which Anne Rice warns of the dangers of political correctness as a censorship tool.
2. This article from Sara Benincasa about how she used to be transphobic, and how she learned not to be. It highlights a very key point that many activists tend not to understand: a lot of society’s prejudices are culturally ingrained, which means – like it or not – it takes time and effort to change them. You won’t necessarily accomplish that by screaming at wrongdoers until they conform:
Some of my friends will just yell at prejudiced people. Because of my own experience, I’m more inclined to try to sit them down and have a good talk. You can’t reason with everybody, and some folks are just walking shitbags. But a lot of people are like I was – comfortable with what they were taught, reluctant to change, and, when you get down to it, afraid of something different.
I really think this gets to the heart of the matter – the assumption that anyone who expresses some kind of prejudicial statement is branded the literal equivalent of Dylan Roof or Fred Phelps. Some are – most are not. They may be ignorant, but that doesn't make them evil. Treating them as such just reduces them to a KKK Nazi hatemonger stereotype. Which to me is what we should be NOT doing.
To be clear: none of this means that we should avoid criticizing prejudice when we encounter it, or take a “go slow” approach to give people time to get over their prejudices. It just means understanding the difference between hate and ignorance, and tailoring our responses accordingly.
It also means understanding that there’s no quick fix here. I get that there’s a lot of anger and impatience about social injusticees these days, especially from the victims therein, and that anger is growing, and people are being encouraged online to embrace it because fuck it, why not? Righteous anger and hatred is more satisfying, and it may produce quicker results. The thing about quick fixes is that they’re often superficial, ineffective in the long term, and they come with a price.
I guess what it comes down to is what ultimately you want to accomplish. Do you want to help ignorant people see the error of their ways, help them to change their views and build a society that’s ultimately more inclusive? Or do you want the bigots to immediately shut up and hide so you can pretend the world is a nice and just place because it appears to be conforming to yr sociopolitical attitudes?
Take the long way home,
This is dF
