12 Comments

Thank you for your writing. I came upon your Substack by chance a few months ago, and I consistently find your posts insighful, inspiring, genuine, and... how do I put this? Sane. Which is really a big deal in today's world.

Expand full comment

I look forward to anything you choose to publish. Something that pinged for me: when you said “white-splainey.” I 100% understand the impulse to acknowledge your privilege of distance, as it were, but I’ve become weary of the necessity for that caveat. I DON’T think it’s necessary though others do.

The idea of examining and acknowledging privilege can be an important and even essential thought exercise. But, as with the closely related intersectionality, I find the moral calculus implicit and explicit in having to “acknowledge your whiteness” to be at the core of the problems with woke ideology.

I’m never going to forget that I’m white. You’re never going to forget that I’m white. And if public apology or regretful caveat for “whiteness” being part of my identity is necessary as a new form of politeness, how will we ever get beyond the moralization of race?

Expand full comment
author

On the one hand, I definitely agree that being apologetic over just being white is silly, and there are certainly corners where it’s verboten for white people to hold contrary opinions about race and racism. On the other hand, I do think it’s a mistake for a white person to lose sight of the near certainty that their experiences with racism are fundamentally different than many non-white people’s. One friend who I discussed these issues with early on, who is Latina, told me, “OK, I get what you’re saying, but you’re being so cold and analytical about it. I’m legitimately scared for my son’s life over here.” I would equate it to a pro-life man lecturing women about how they wouldn’t need an abortion if they just kept their legs closed; lose sight of the human being on the other side, and the wide range of possible life experiences, and you run the risk of becoming both ineffective and cruel. So, not using my whiteness as a reason to stay quiet, but always trying to keep in mind that my experience and perspective is not universal.

Expand full comment

It's certainly not cool to be cold toward a friend. But how can you help friends of other races put their fears in perspective? I don't mean "condescendingly make sure your friends know they're wrong."

Here's what I mean: my best friend and his wife (he's a teacher, she's a pediatrician) just had their first baby. They're doing everything cautiously because she knows all the risks correlated with SIDS: they run a fan in the room, they don't leave loose blankets with the baby, she sleeps on her back, she has a firm mattress. I would never say "oh that's not necessary, it's not likely she'll die of SIDS!" But if my friends worried daily--it took up inordinate time in their thoughts--that their baby was going to die of SIDS, I would talk to them about it. I'd try to help assuage their fears. Their risk factors are so low.

That being said: more than 14,000 babies have died of SIDS since 2015.

On the other hand: 111 teens or children have been killed by police since 2015.

Of course we should teach our kids to be careful if they have interactions with police. Of course we need to teach them what kinds of behaviors are risky and should be avoided. I have three sons, the oldest 13. Of course I worry that boys take more risks than girls. But the worry doesn't have *significant* impact on my daily life, because my kids don't show a propensity to engage in risky behaviors. They don't have an affinity for hanging out with kids who do.

Does your friend's son live in a high-crime neighborhood? Does he attend a school where there's a lot of violence? Is he in a gang? Does he have a supportive family or a struggling one? These are all risk factors.

Your analogy of the pro-life man lecturing a woman doesn't equate. A man doesn't have a uterus, a man could never give birth. But if you're a mother of a son, you have far more in common with a Latina mother of a son than a father of a girl, for instance.

Expand full comment
author

Totally fair and I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. Flattening people to an avatar of a racial label is always a recipe for trouble. I just think it's fair to keep in mind that things are more personal for people who experience them, even if what they're experiencing is not borne out by statistical data. If you told your friends they didn't need to worry about SIDS but did not have a child yourself, it just lands differently than if you did have a child and could relate to their sense of fear. BUT to your point, we shouldn't let respect for someone else's feelings lead us to not want to challenge painful cognitive distortions. Your friend who says "everyone hates me!" and sinks into a pit of despair needs help, and getting an outside view to remind them of all the people who love them could be an effective part of that effort. I certainly think "white privilege" is way overused and leads to a mental block about listening to the perspectives of white people (or white people letting themselves think for themselves) but the "stop for a beat and think about this from another perspective" step is still good advice, in my opinion. On this, I think you agree! But you are right that I didn't need to necessarily label it a "white" thing. Anyway I think I'll get into these concepts in the chapter about RFT. Sneak peek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvnEn1Y-gcQ

Expand full comment

One of my general theories is that it is very rarely useful to try to convince a large group of people to take something _less_ seriously. It's a form persuasion which is very difficult.

It can work one-on-one (as with talking to a friend above), but in larger groups it is better to frame things as, "here's something you should add to your list of concerns" rather than." Over time that can lead to dropping other concerns from the list (if they add a new thing that can lead them to seek out new information, gradually shift their sense of political self-identity, etc. . . ), but the starting point should be, "broaden your attention to include . . . X"

I don't have any studies to support that (and I'd be curious if research supported my intuition); that's an observation of watching (primarily online) political arguments.

Expand full comment

Perhaps a pithy analogy would be, "building new habits is easier than breaking old ones." and that applies to habits of mind as well as habits of action.

Expand full comment

Of the various ways I've heard DEI trainers, and people who have listened to DEI trainers, explain "privilege", the main but rare variant that makes good sense to me was about the concept that you reference: "trying to keep in mind that my experience and perspective is not universal". I find that concept very valuable (though I avoid that word for it, since most people will not connect the word with that concept).

(My issues with the more common usages of the word is another topic)

And most folks in the DEI industry or movement don't tend to gravitate to that concept because, in my opinion, it doesn't provide the moral high ground advantage which the oppression narrative thrives upon. We can ALL benefit from realizing that other people's experiences may legitimately differ from ours, and thus bring more understanding to the sources of our differing associations or interpretations. Poor people can misunderstand middle class folks, middle class folks can misunderstand poor folks, races can misunderstand each other, as can sexes. Listening more openly, rather than constantly projecting, is very valuable to resolving conflicts.

And that concept is not quite as readily weaponized to differentially support just the oppressed in the oppressed/oppressor perspective at the heart of neo-progressivism. That is, it's more about enhancing understanding and empathy and humility (potentially and ideally bidirectionally) than about asymmetrically gaining more "power over" others.

I am usually open to hearing personal experiences, tho somewhat wary of endorsing over-generalization to assuming those individual experiences are automatically universal to a whole population group. Unless somebody is lying, their personal experience is real; but the generalization or interpretation in a larger context is more questionable - sometimes accurate, sometimes not.

Expand full comment

I just came across your substack (via your comment on SteveQ's), but what I like about it is what I perceive to be a genuine ongoing good faith attempt to make sense of complex subjects, rather than preaching from a smug certainty of having the moral high ground. So far, I *feel* invited to participate in that essential project as a collaborator, rather than lectured at - whether I currently agree or disagree.

I have become so dismayed (disgusted) at the direction that neo-progressivism in the US is taking (or "wokeness" if you prefer), that I feel a need to engage with thoughtful and nuanced other takes on the matter. I do not want to fall into a different version of the dogma which I am finding so problematic. (And I don't just mean that I don't want to become a conservative Republican - not much risk, I also don't want to become an unpersuasive scold from the center, which is a risk). Your reflections are helpful in that regard.

One of my largest issues with neo-progressivism is that I agree (to some degree) about the problems, but I have come to feel that the strategies are often counter-productive. But trying to open a discussion of the possibility that the strategy will not work, is treated as a moral failing, as wanting evil to prevail. (and that reaction is indeed part of why I think the strategy is problematic - it substitutes ad hominem emotionality for reason).

One of my tenets is "a dysfunctional and counterproductive strategy doesn't become functional and constructive just because one devises an emotionally evocative morality-based rationale for it". The important of dealing with things like racial bias is not a justification for sloppy thinking, but for more attention to getting it right. Ideological blinders and dogmatic attachment to strategies are not an asset; it's far too easy to become a soldier defending the narrative at all costs, rather than getting traction for changes effectively addressing the actual problem.

I am VERY interested in the topics you list. Please do continue!

In regards to your challenge about creating better alternatives, let's back up a bit. I believe that the pre-woke strategies of de-emphasizing race, finding common ground and unforced empathy, promoting constructive interaction and engagement in mutually beneficial efforts which can reduce prejudice, and evoking win/win interactions whenever possible have produced historic changes over my lifetime and were largely on the right track to produce more. The neo-progressive divergence from that path emphasizes tribalistic conflict and constant emphasis on differences as the paths to liberation from oppression, accompanied by encouraging ungenerous interpretations of intentions and motives, reliance on resentment and guilt as primary motivators, and other elements which I do not believe will produce the nominal objectives. I do not see a positive track record of constructive change deriving from neo-progressivism ("wokeness") to date, and I think its net effect is actually regressive. And that regression is recycled into justification for further radicalization.

So while I am very open to consider better new alternatives, I think that just returning to the pre-woke path would be a substantial improvement over the current direction, so I do not think we need some newly proposed vision before we can critique the current path. Let's get back to make (sometimes slow) forward progress, then talk about ways to speed it up. The first command for a physician is to do no harm.

Also, I do not think your "distance" from things is something to apologize for. Currently, I believe our culture is suffering from an excess of emotionally driven engagement and desparately needs humane but partially detached perspectives, which are in short supply. That is, our immediate problems are more in the area of wise steering and navigation rather than needing yet more noisy horsepower and torque. Your perspectives from a bit above the fray are what most interest me in your writing - not because they are always the best way, but because they are what's most critically needed now, if we care more about fixing problems in the real world than about positioning ourselves on the social-moral playing field.

Another piece of my perspective. I do not see any short term crisis in regards to racial prejudice or discrimination in our society - other than as created by reaction to the current strategies themselves. The society is not getting more and more racist every decade, by objective measures (perceptions and framing are a different matter). What I do see as an existential and rapidly growing threat is polarization and socio-political dysfunction, which are changing rapidly for the worse, and already reaching historic levels. For example, the number of people who would have qualms about their kids marrying across racial lines has shrunk dramatically, while the number who would be so concerned about marrying the other party has grown dramatically. I believe this factor has follow-on effects on race which can be misdiagnosed as primary rather than secondary. In particular, affective polarization is a big problem - as more people not just disagree, but despite anybody who has a different take on things, freely projecting bogeymen of ill intent to any differences (not that there isn't ill intent, but the perception of it exaggerates it even further, and thus creates more reciprocal ill intent). It looks like a potential death spiral to me because of the self-reinforcing dynamics. In that light, I think that while reducing racial bias is important, it may not be the *most* important challenge for our society in the coming decades. We will not have time to deal with racial disparities if the society collapses for all of us.

Sometimes we can chew gum and walk at the same time, and sometimes not. So I'm not suggesting that opposing racial bias has to be entirely shelved, but I am questioning the triage judgements that center it in our concerns (all the more so if we are adopting counter-productive strategies - sometimes spending attention desperately needed elsewhere in order to regress on race).

Now to read more of what you have already written. Thanks!

Expand full comment

Hi Marie. I've been a fan of your writing, wise words and insight since first reading your comments on Slow Boring. Always enjoy your posts and have recommended this substack to others. I don't want to keep you from your family and I know this is a part-time gig for you, but I would really, really miss it if you stopped writing. Look forward to whatever you bring us going forward. --Elana

Expand full comment