Review of "White Fragility", part 2

I sent part 1 of this review to the FUUSN list, but I did not send this second part. It appears here for the first time.

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In an earlier post I gave my initial reactions to Dr. Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” focusing on my strong objections to that two-word phrase if the goal is to actually improve the position of people of color in society in large.

This leaves another question. How should people run a racial sensitivity workshop?

DiAngelo puts at the center of her workshops a strong version of how whites are part of a profoundly unfair racist system and have an obligation to change that system. I think this is unwise. There will be a few people who are ready to join the vanguard, and all they need to tip them over the edge is the understanding of their place in an unfair system and how much is at stake. The vanguard might think this is a good strategy, since quite possibly it’s exactly that strategy that made them join the cause. But the vast majority of people will not easily accept that they have unearned advantages. Compare, “It is very hard to get someone to understanding something when their salary depends on their not understanding it.” Roughly half of white people think it is they who are discriminated against today, not minorities. It’s an erroneous belief, but if DiAngelo insists on challenging it directly, they will likely not listen to anything else she has to say – this is what Jonathan Haidt would predict. Even those who don’t think they are discriminated against are likely to resist the idea that they have unearned advantages.

How would I run a racial sensitivity workshop in a work setting? Here’s an initial idea: make a video of a number of workplace interactions, followed by a smiling person of color for each gently explaining why that wasn’t so great from their point of view. Or show whites taking polite feedback gracefully, perhaps describing some minor shame and embarrassment but how they worked through it. Specific problems, specific solutions. No need to dump “You are a racist” on people like a ton of bricks. Don’t goad the elephant (the one Haidt argues is inside each of us). Whites are more likely to be receptive to seeing how a specific sort of behavior is problematic without confronting their beliefs about overall racism in society.

The subtitle of DiAngelo’s book is “Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism”. She never answers that question – I feel like I’ve made a better start than she does just by referring to Haidt’s work. But she does have a vision for how anti-racism work might proceed in general. I might summarize the overall vision as, “I as a white person have the original sin of racism, and only with the help of the wisdom of people of color will I be able to learn of the full extent of my sin and begin, ever so slowly, if my devotion is constant and my heart is pure, to start reducing that sin.” Those religious overtones are not stated explicitly, but the gist is clear. This may work well for the anti-racist vanguard, but it is a very poor fit for average whites.

On pages 139-140, DiAngelo relays her own experience of anti-racism work, with the understanding that she has already worked on this quite a bit and we are seeing an advanced perspective. If we agree that the goal is to try to get ordinary white people to work to reduce racism, I find it alarming. Here is a lengthy verbatim quote:

“The equity team has been invited to a meeting with the company's new web developer. The team consists of two women, both of whom are black, and me. The new web developer, who is also black, wants to interview us so that she can build our page. She starts the meeting by giving us a survey to fill out. Many questions on the survey inquire about our intended audience, methods, goals, and objectives. I find the questions tedious and feel irritated by them. Pushing the survey aside, I try to explain verbally. I tell the web developer that we go out into the satellite offices to facilitate antiracism training. I add that the training is not always well received; in fact, one member of our team was told not to come back. I make a joke: "The white people were scared by Deborah's hair" (Deborah is black and has long locked braids). The meeting ends and we move on.

A few days later, one of my team members lets me know that the web developer -- who I will call Angela -- was offended by my hair comment. While I wasn't paying attention at the time, once I was informed, I quickly realize why that comment was off. I seek out a friend who is white and has a solid understanding of cross-racial dynamics. We discuss my feelings (embarrassment, shame, guilt) and then she helps me identify the various ways my racism was revealed in that interaction. After this processing, I feel ready to repair the relationship. I ask Angela to meet with me, and she accepts.

I open by asking Angela, "Would you be willing to grant me the opportunity to repair the racism I perpetrated towards you in that meeting?" When she agrees, I continue. "I realize that my comment about Deborah's hair was inappropriate."

Angela nods and explains that she did not know me and did not want to be joking about black women's hair (a sensitive issue for many black women) with a white woman whom she did not have a trusting relationship with, much less in a professional work meeting.

I apologize and ask her if I have missed anything else problematic in the meeting.

"Yes," she replies. "That survey? I wrote that survey. And I have spent my life justifying my intelligence to white people."

My chest constricts as I immediately realize the impact of my glib dismissal of the survey. I acknowledge this impact and apologize.

She accepts my apology. I ask Angela if there is anything else that needs to be said or heard so that we may move forward.

She replies that yes, there is. "The next time you do something like this, would you like feedback publicly or privately?" she asks.

I answer that given my role as an educator, I would appreciate receiving the feedback publicly as it is important for white people to see that I am also engaged in a lifelong process of learning and growth. And I could model for other white people how to receive feedback openly and without defensiveness.

She tells me that although these dynamics occur daily between white people and people of color, my willingness to repair doesn't, and that she appreciates this. We move on.”

That ends the long quote from DiAngelo.

One extraordinary aspect of this exposition is that she accepts Angela’s accusation of racism regarding the survey without question – and even with ample time to select her example for her book, she doesn’t question it or see that what she presents as racism is, as best I can tell, not. I’m open to hearing arguments as to why I’m wrong about this.

DiAngelo is presented with a survey that she assumes was written by some white person. She reacts dismissively to it. That is not ideal collegial behavior, but it is not racism. When Angela later tells her that she wrote that survey and has spent her career justifying her intelligence to white people, DiAngelo’s chest constricts -- and her critical thinking stops. It is fine to sympathize with Angela’s past history of people doubting her intelligence – but how does this connect to present-day racism by DiAngelo? What we have is DiAngelo’s race-blind negative reaction to a survey which as it turns out was written by Angela. Angela’s job as a professional is to find out why DiAngelo had a negative reaction to the survey and see if it can be improved. She’s under no obligation to take her suggestions, but Angela doesn’t even want to hear about it -- she wants implicit permission to be a second-rate web developer. She wants explicit permission to publicly criticize DiAngelo for allegedly racist behavior, with the assumption she must naturally be right, and in a spirit of religious contrition, DiAngelo agrees.

I am happy to accept Angela’s original complaint about DiAngelo’s making a joke about some black woman’s hair. But here’s my idea for how the conversation might go, without the religious overtones:

"Hey, Angela, you know I try to do better on racism stuff, and I think maybe I screwed up the other day. You got time to talk about it? Up to you..."

"Oh, yeah... OK, I got time."

"When I talked about Deborah's hair... my team member said you weren't so happy about that, and I can kind of see why. Did I get that right from her?"

"Yeah, I didn't like it because I don't know you, and we didn’t have a relationship of trust."

"OK. You do realize I was most definitely disapproving of that white woman's reaction to Deborah's hair?"

"Yeah... yeah, I do. But even so..."

"OK, I understand that didn’t make it OK... I'll try to do better. I apologize."

That involves checking assumptions that DiAngelo’s version does not. It doesn’t assume Angela is right about everything just because she’s black. While it’s reasonable to assume the person of color is more likely to be right when racism is being discussed, why not approach it as two people of good will finding what works for them? Does it really serve a useful purpose for DiAngelo and her similarly advanced-in-antiracism colleague to decide what is (reverent hush here...) Racism and then set out to “repair” it? Crucially, I doubt very much the average white person is willing to take that approach.

One lesson a white person in DiAngelo’s position might learn from the Deborah’s hair issue is to never make jokes in the presence of people of color. Don’t say anything spontaneous... monitor your every word. That’s not ultimately good either. Maybe people of color differ in how sensitive they are on various issues, and what trade-off they would like to make between a more spontaneous atmosphere with some slights as background noise and a more tense and militant atmosphere where everything is held up to scrutiny. Maybe in different work groups the people of color would converge on different preferences.

Review of "White Fragility", part 1

I sent this to the FUUSN list on March 16, 2019

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I was told that “White Fragility” was FUUSN’s book of the season. I read it. These are some of my reactions.

My conclusion is that the program suggested by this book, while well-intentioned, will serve if anything to worsen the situation of people of color in US society at large. Average white people will not take on the original sin of racism as their own and work hard to reduce it. It goes against everything we know about human psychology.

 And yet lots of people have thought “White Fragility” was a good book. Why? My best guess is that they are already convinced of the deep injustice of racism and the need for white people to humbly repent, learn, and atone. They can take pleasure in condemning the whites who have not instantly accepted this message and conclusion. “White Fragility” – both the concept and the book – may fuel an exhilarating righteous indignation in those who are already convinced, but progress depends not on how zealous the minority is, but on convincing more people. The fact that so many people accept the book uncritically is due to taking too narrow a view – staying within a liberal/left bubble. But to be clear, my assumption is that everyone at FUUSN approaches this with the very best of intentions.

I know I have some subtle racism, and suspect there is more I am not aware of. I do believe that our society has many ingrained patterns that serve to make the lives of people of color more difficult. Dismantling those patterns would be a good thing. Give me a proposal on reducing police brutality, mandatory minimums, differential sentencing, voter suppression, or affirmative action, and I’m instantly on the anti-racist side. But I don’t choose to put much more effort into it than that.

Many liberal whites, notably UU whites, are deeply concerned about racism. They feel personally complicit in racial injustice, and seek to reduce their own racism as much as possible. This is noble. Perhaps it has inherent value regardless of how it fits into the bigger picture. And the idea makes sense – start with what you can control, set an example for others, and be in the front row of a vanguard against racism. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. But in this case it is a misleading analogy. This model does not scale up.

The strategy of the book (and the anti-racism activism movement of which it is a part) is to point out how painful racial injustice is for people of color, to show how very unfair the system is, and to trust that will motivate white people to dig deep and do some rather painful things – after all, it’s nothing compared to the pain of the people of color. It won’t work, because only a minority of any group will readily admit to self-interest and unearned privilege and set out to get less for themselves, and whites are no exception.

Jonathan Haidt, starting with “The Righteous Mind”, observed that the US is full of people of good will who disagree fundamentally on politics but rarely change their beliefs. He began looking at what it actually takes to get people to change. He describes two ways of thinking – the automatic, instant, judgmental kind he calls the elephant, and the slow, halting, tiring kind that tries to use facts and logic the way a scientist would – the rider. But the rider is not actually in charge – the elephant is. The elephant has no inherent use for facts, figures and logical arguments – in fact it will often instruct the rider to select whatever facts support pre-existing beliefs. (Daniel Kahneman’s lifetime of work is the firm scientific foundation for Haidt’s views on the rider and elephant.)

Dr. DiAngelo has a career that includes running anti-racism workshops, often sponsored by corporations that want to hire and retain more people of color. It sounds like she starts these workshops by presenting the facts of racism, arguing that all of us whites are complicit in a racist system, and if we have any moral decency we must do hard and painful work to dismantle that system.

She observes that quite often in her workshops, a few white people will object, arguing that they are not personally racist. She corrects them -- they are part of a racist system. They will sometimes get emotional or storm out of the meeting. DiAngelo derisively refers to their reaction as White Fragility. The term itself is an insult. If you doubt this, imagine comparable titles that someone who disagrees might use for their book.

This participant reaction is an instance of exactly what Haidt and others would predict any time you challenge someone’s central beliefs. Imagine that your boss has his own issue he is passionate about and mandates that you attend a workshop. Global warming? You must never fly, use air conditioning, or eat meat, or else you are an earth-destroyer. Wealth inequality? You must give 3/4 of your (ultimately) ill-gotten assets to those in the Third World who need it so much more, or you are unspeakably selfish. Would anyone be surprised if some employees reacted with tears or hostility? Even advocates on those issues would understand it was unwise to call the reaction “fragility” if they actually want to change minds.

I will make some guesses at the range of reactions of other people in DiAngelo’s workshops. Surely a few people will have the desired reaction, accepting the facts and getting with the program. A great many others will realize they are sitting with their co-workers and will do what they think the boss expects them to do. Perhaps some people in those groups will learn to be more sensitive in their day-to-day interactions with people of color they work with. And yet – DiAngelo has told them they are racists because they are part of a racist system, getting good things they do not deserve, and their elephants will silently resent that. You can guess it might fortify underlying conscious racist tendencies, or erode sympathy for policy issues like reducing sentencing disparities. Those who display visible fragility might well just be the relatively harmless, somewhat naïve tip of the iceberg that DiAngelo’s approach reinforces.

Dr. DiAngelo is also in a quagmire of her own making by overloading the term “racism”. She concedes that this term can be used to refer to conscious and explicit acts and beliefs of racial superiority -- this is the most obvious and natural interpretation. However, she wants to use the term to refer to the whole set of unconscious relationships and attitudes that serve to make life difficult for people of color. She then looks on with disgust at the poor, fragile whites who resist being called racists. She could use a different term -- on a few moments’ thought I’ll coin “deck-stacking”. But overloading “racist” isn’t an accident. That same emotionally charged word “racism” is used intentionally, to emphasize how unjust it is. She doesn’t want to let whites off the hook by using another term – she wants them to feel an obligation to change. There is to be no wiggle room here. She tells us that whiteness can’t be innocent, that its existence is intricately tied up with opposition to blackness. Race is THE biggest issue. She tells us that if we don’t reach out and seek to have black friends, we are racist. There really is no escaping the conclusion that in her view, once you have been informed about racial oppression, if you do not actively work to combat it, then you are a bad person. You have been given not just facts, but values and priorities as well. It’s a bit as if she wants to climb right into your brain. Most people don’t like that. They like to choose their own values and priorities.

I know I do, and DiAngelo’s formulation angers me. How could she present her case in a way I would receive more calmly? People of color suffer from oppression, and much of what keeps it in place is deck-stacking against them. We whites are all part of this deck-stacking, through no fault of our own. If you have some energy to go beyond your own life to make the world a better place, you might consider looking at some of your assumptions, listening to some people of color, finding out how the world seems to them, maybe finding ways to object when racist assumptions are voiced. That’s better. But Dr. DiAngelo also has to be prepared to react gracefully if I say, “No, thanks.” Maybe other causes move me more. Maybe I’m just struggling to get by in life from one day to the next.

There is a whole spectrum of white attitudes towards people of color. In one survey I read about, white liberals felt race was more of an obstacle to having a successful life than black people did. Some will engage earnestly in personal anti-racism work. They are enthusiastic about DiAngelo’s book. On the same end of the spectrum but somewhat towards the center are people like me who think of it as one cause among many but are in favor of all of the progressive legislative priorities. In the middle are those with a mix of feelings but featuring elephants that do not accept the idea that they live life with undeserved advantages.

But then there is the other end of the spectrum. Along with all the micro-aggressions against people of color are some macro-aggressions, such as police brutality and harsher sentences in the criminal justice system. Somehow when I imagine the policemen, judges, and legislators who are behind those injustices finding out what slight offenses their fellow whites committed to earn the diagnosis “White Fragility”, I don’t imagine them behaving better.

I have no objection to DiAngelo and her co-facilitators meeting alone after a session and letting off steam -- how damned fragile those whites were! People let off steam privately all the time. But to write a book about it – to put it in the title of the book no less, is very different. Maybe it sells books. Maybe it energizes a small band of anti-racist zealots. But it doesn’t help the cause.

To me the more interesting frame of reference is ... What does it take to make progress on this issue? Since I don’t believe the anti-racist zealots hope to seize power and impose their views on the majority through force, I assume they share my assumption that it involves winning the hearts and minds of a lot of people in the center.

So exactly who is DiAngelo taking aim at with “White Fragility”? Not White Supremacists. Not those with more moderate but still consciously held racist views. Not even those who keep their feelings to themselves while they try to figure out what their employer wants them to do. She’s taking aim at those who sincerely believe that they are not personally racists, and some who deny that systemic racism exists. They are engaging seriously with the arguments they have been given – far more than most people. Given time to reflect, some of these people could be won over to at least favor the legislative priorities. DiAngelo slams them.

Haidt’s work suggests it would be quite extraordinary if significant numbers of such people changed their views at all, no matter what facts you present them with. But DiAngelo thinks her facts are so obviously true, the associated value judgments so indisputable, that anything short of immediately accepting those facts is to be scorned and labeled “White Fragility”. The generous view is that she is simply ignorant of the relevant psychological findings of Haidt, Kahneman and others.

DiAngelo is attacking moderates – some of the very first people along the spectrum of opinion she needs to convince. Is there a countervailing advantage here to the use of “White Fragility”? Do we have testimonials of converts that go, “I was struggling to take in the facts on racism I was being presented with, but then when I heard that I had “White Fragility” it all made sense – I was being racist to even question it -- of course the facts were true and I needed to just believe them and accept that race was the most important issue society faces.” It doesn’t seem likely.

Some people further along the continuum of race relations will notice this use of White Fragility. It will harden their beliefs that the anti-racist elite liberals are out of touch and view them as not just opponents but people worthy of contempt. To the elephant, Donald Trump will continue to sound pretty good, whatever his other drawbacks.

It would be great if people responded without ego or narrow self-interest to new facts, evaluated them, and changed their ways based on a commitment to equal justice for all. But very few people do. If you want to actually change people’s beliefs, you have to meet them where they are, establish shared values, and take it one step at a time. It’s a long, slow road. One shared value might be a better deal for working people regardless of race. Cooperate on an improved social safety net, a modest guaranteed income, a greatly expanded earned income credit, infrastructure spending, and tax the wealthy to pay for it. Working side-by-side to improve each other’s economic position in absolute terms would build trust. It might be the start of a lasting coalition modeled on the New Deal consensus that started in the 1930s.

“Unstacking the deck” against people of color is very hard work. I have sympathy for the activists feeling exasperation and lashing out with “White Fragility”, but it is terrible politics.

Considering activist requests carefully

I posted this to the FUSN list on March 14th of this year.

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It is on the whole a good thing that the liberal sections of our society are paying more attention than ever before to historically oppressed groups. Yet my sense is that in a hurry to redress past wrongs we listen to what some activists request and sometimes do what they ask without thinking it through adequately.

I believe that when members of some group tell their story with “I” statements, we should listen with total acceptance to their experience of the world. If they go on to describe things such as what situations are objectively speaking oppressive, we should listen very carefully to an issue they have likely thought about more than we have. However, there is always room for debate. The majority might accept all of their recommendations, but they have a right and in fact an obligation to consider all sides of each issue. Hostile parties could of course use this debate process as a way to halt any progress, but that has to be dealt with directly, not by eliminating debate.

My issue of the day has to do with gender-neutral bathrooms. Here are my starting assumptions:

There should be no legal liability for anyone’s use of a bathroom regardless of sex or gender. We have laws against harassment and assault that do not need to refer to sex or gender or bathrooms.

Some bathrooms are occupied by only one person at a time, and making these gender-neutral increases flexibility for everyone. Also, when there are (say) six multi-person restrooms in a large building, three each for men and women, it would be reasonable to make two of them gender-neutral. But a lot of the time history has left us with just two multi-person restrooms. What then?

We humans are dramatically bimodal as a species regarding gender and biological sex. We have a custom of segregating bathrooms by sex/gender, and 99% of us know which room feels like “ours”. So custom suggests that cis-gendered people should use “your” room – unless you have a reason not to. There are many reasons not to. One common one is when there is a long line in the women’s room at a concert and men’s room stalls are unused. Another pertains to parents with opposite-gender small children, who should use whatever room best suits their needs. The gay boy “Ricky” from “My So-Called Life” had an excellent reason for using the girls’ room – to avoid harassment from boys in the boys’ room. Perhaps someone you dislike just preceded you into “your” room.
Some people might choose the other room now and then to just to reinforce that it is a valid choice.

Transgendered or non-binary individuals should use whichever room they wish, for whatever reason they wish. All people should be prepared to see users of “their” bathroom who are not typical, and to accept that they have a reason for it and no cause to inquire as to that reason.

My vision for labeling these rooms is a large woman figure (you know, the one with the dress) on one room with a much smaller male figure and trans (half-dress, half pants) figure, and of course the large male figure on the other room with the other two much smaller. This signals that no one is unwelcome in either room. But the vast majority of the time, almost all of the occupants of each room will be cis people corresponding to the gender of the large figure.

A more radical position is that gendered bathrooms should cease to exist. It seems even many trans activists don’t favor such a step at this time, but the proposal has been made.

The complaint is that a non-binary person is forced to choose a gendered bathroom. Even if they would be safe and accepted in either room, the choice is still not consistent with their non-binary identity. This can cause them psychological distress.

I would counter that many cis people could be uncomfortable and suffer psychological distress going into a multi-person restroom without an expectation that the occupants will with high likelihood be their gender. Trans people with a single gender identity might well feel the same.

I also think the custom of primarily single-gendered bathrooms is one that society can elect to keep for its own sake (if most people want it) – provided that trans people and others can be accommodated safely.

Others might have counterarguments to make. To me, the key point is that this whole discussion can be had without anxiety and fear of being labeled a bigot. People of good will can tell the non-binary person that as the situation stands, we cannot think of a way of accommodating their discomfort that is not worse for more people. Until someone has a better idea, it is the right decision. It’s unfortunate, but there is no need for guilt or anxiety.

We should be able to debate any request from activists of a historically oppressed group with the same calm frame of mind, considering costs and benefits.

(FUUSN recently updated its bathroom designations after much debate, and I am fine with a decision made after a lengthy process in complicated circumstances. I figure the considerations I raise above don’t even fully apply, as FUUSN’s multi-person bathrooms never comfortably accommodate more than two or three people at a time, if I recall correctly.)

Climate change is a done deal -- just how done? And what to do?

I posted this to the FUSN list on March 3rd of this year.

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I have been worried about climate change for quite some time. But it seemed that thirty years ago we were told that if we took decisive action now we could put off the worst of it, but the years pass and the message doesn’t change. I know that carbon emissions have not dropped very much if at all. What’s actually going on?

I found an essay by Jonathan Franzen that addressed this issue (from “The end of the end of the earth”, 2018, pp14-22). He argues that the insistence by the center and left that we can still stop it is understandable – but now a lie. I couldn’t immediately find anywhere where this discussion was happening online.

Franzen: “Three years ago, I was in a state of rage about climate change. The Republican Party was continuing to lie about the absence of a scientific consensus on climate... but I wasn’t much less angry at the left. I’d read a new book by Naomi Klein, “This Changes Everything”, in which she assured the reader that, although “time is tight,” we still have ten years to radically remake the global economy and prevent global temperatures from rising by more than two degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Klein’s optimism was touching, but it, too, was a kind of denialism. Even before the election of Donald Trump, there was no evidence to suggest that humanity is capable – politically, psychologically, ethically, economically – of slashing carbon emissions quickly and deeply enough to change everything. Even the European Union, which had taken the early lead on climate, and was fond of lecturing other regions on their irresponsibility, needed only a recession in 2009 to shift its focus to economic growth. Barring a worldwide revolt against free-market capitalism in the next ten years – the scenario that Klein contended could still save us – the most LIKELY rise in temperature this century is on the order of six degrees. We’ll be lucky to avoid a two-degree rise before the year 2030.

“In a polity ever more starkly divided, the truth about global warming was even less convenient to the left than to the right. The right’s denials were odious lies, but at least they were consistent with a certain cold-eyed political realism. The left, having excoriated the right for its intellectual dishonesty and turned climate denialism into a political rallying cry, was now in an impossible position. It had to keep insisting on the truth of climate science while persisting in the fiction that collective world action could stave off the worst of it: that universal acceptance of the facts, which really might have changed everything in 1995, could still change everything. Otherwise, what difference did it make if the Republicans quibbled with the science?

“Because my sympathies were with the left – reducing carbon emissions is vastly better than doing nothing; every half degree helps – I also held it to a higher standard. Denying the dark reality, pretending that the Paris Accord could avert catastrophe, was understandable as a tactic to keep people motivated to reduce emissions; to keep hope alive. As a strategy, though, it did more harm than good. It ceded the ethical high ground, insulted the intelligence of unpersuaded voters (“Really? We still have ten years?”), and precluded frank discussion of how the global community should prepare for drastic changes...

[Franzen wrote an essay, his editor] “nudged me toward framing the essay not as a denunciation but as a question: How do we find meaning in our actions when the world seems to be coming to an end? Much of the final draft was devoted to a pair of well-conceived regional conservation projects, in Peru and Costa Rica...” [The essay was heavily criticized by the left.]

Critics “made it sound as if I’d proposed that we abandon the effort to reduce carbon emissions, which was the position of the Republican Party, which, by the polarizing logic of online discourse, made me a climate-change denier. In fact, I’m such a climate-science accepter that I don’t even bother having hope for the ice caps. All I’d denied was that a right-minded international elite, meeting in nice hotels around the world, could stop them from melting. This was my crime against orthodoxy. Climate now has such a lock on the liberal imagination that any attempt to change the conversation ... amounts to an offense against religion.”

“... drastic global warming is already a done deal, and ... it seems unlikely that humanity is going to leave any carbon in the ground, given that, even now, not one country in the world has pledged to do it.”

“global warming is THE issue of our time, perhaps the biggest issue in all of human history. Every one of us is now in the position of the indigenous Americans when the Europeans arrived with guns and smallpox: our world is poised to change vastly, unpredictably, and mostly for the worse. I don’t have any hope that we can stop the change from coming. My only hope is that we can accept the reality in time to prepare for it humanely, and my only faith is that facing it honestly, however painful this may be, is better than denying it.”

The analogy of being Native Americans just as the Europeans arrive moves me a great deal. It is a very unpleasant topic, and I cringe a bit raising it in this community – but seeking truth is part of what we are committed to. I welcome other thoughts and perspectives.

A critique of "privilege"

I posted this to the FUSN list on August 31, 2018

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Some at FUSN have expressed appreciation for some of my past posts as thought-provoking.

Looking at the latest UU World confirmed once again a sense I have had for some time – that Unitarian-Universalism is distorting its path by lifting one kind of issue above all others.

In brief, identifying oppressor/oppressed pairs and redressing the oppression has come to occupy a place that is so central that it seems to drive to the margins all the other ways that we might improve the world, and indeed all the things we might do to live a full life in our brief time in this world.

Oppression is very real and worth combatting. Activists (like fundraising letters) have always tried to convince us that theirs is the vital issue, the crucial time is right now and the stakes couldn’t be higher. But they have taken their turn at the podium and the rest of us have made our own judgments. We’ve made quite a bit of progress. There is plenty more to make.

“Privilege” (and its generalized form “intersectionality”) are concepts that have come to occupy a prominent place among social liberals. The framework of privilege goes one very worrisome step further. It tampers with the process of rational debate, in part by denigrating contributions from people who are not members of oppressed groups. It claims that such people are only perpetuating an oppressive status quo without the sort of careful evidence needed to support that conclusion. In some forms, it can approve of interrupting orderly debates – interrupting speech if it is deemed to contain oppressive elements. One instance is “no-platforming” of speakers on university campuses when activists decide the message too oppressive to be worthy of a hearing.

I do not know if this critique applies to how the issue has played out in UU congregations and within the denomination more broadly. I hope UUism has been an exception. The privilege framework violates UU principles, notably the First (inherent worth and dignity), Third (acceptance and spiritual grown) and Fourth (free and responsible search for truth and meaning), and in its full-blown form is not consistent with any of them.

The framework of privilege reduces individuals to their membership in a variety of categories where one is oppressor and the other oppressed. There is no end to such categories, and activists feel justified in calling out privilege on behalf of others. Its adherents devote quite a bit of their mental space and energy to thinking of how everything they say or do could be oppressive to some group. I fear people rarely stop and consider what other aspects of their lives and values have been crowded out to make this space. I thought this book review on the subject was thought-provoking: https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/honor-dignity-victim-cultures/

The seductive appeal of the privilege framework relies in part on losing track of history. We could remember that all but the very poorest in the US today live lives of material abundance never matched in any culture more than a couple generations back. Most oppressed groups have it better than they ever have in the past. If you see society on a path of moving always forward to greater equality and prosperity, a laser focus on driving for more improvements makes sense. But if you see history as an inevitable ebb and flow, a mix of good times followed by bad, then more focus might go to trying to preserve the gains. There are many white people of modest means and good will in the US who do not feel privileged and exert great influence at the ballot box. One of our tasks should be listening carefully to their concerns.

Here are a few resources that deal with these issues that I thought were very good:

https://quillette.com/2018/08/14/intersectionality-a-review/

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29939159-the-perils-of-privilege

Of course it’s not for me to tell people what’s important. Each of us decides that on our own, but I would like people who accept the privilege framework to do so with open eyes.

Here we go again, after 10 years

It's very close to 10 years since I made my last substantive post. My mind has been elsewhere. Now I am moved to post again.

Since 2009 my two daughters have both grown to independence as flourishing young women. At the end of 2012 I retired from my career as a software engineer, and fill my time with a lot of online activities, along with games, books, movies, and friends. I also ended a long-term relationship at the end of 2012 and do not expect to be romantically involved with anyone again.

As for FUSN, I was a Coming of Age mentor in 2009-2010. I've been in four separate Chalice Circles since then (each runs a year) but tired of them. In 2017 I argued passionately against FUSN changing its name to FUUSN (the one U for "Unitarian" becoming two Us for "Unitarian-Universalist"). The name change needed a two-thirds vote to pass and met that standard with a single vote to spare.

I feel alienated from FUUSN in part because of the rising emphasis, both within the congregation and the larger UU denomination, on identity politics, known in its general form as "intersectionality". Future posts will expand on this. On a more personal level, I was a spiritual seeker of sorts when I joined FUSN in 1993, and wanted a religious community for my family to belong to. I never really was anything but an atheist, but I did find the Protestant form of religious service comforting and satisfying. Starting in 2010 if not before, that was true less and less. Now I find it unsatisfying and even irritating instead. But FUUSN is still full of people who I shared the bonds of community with for many years, and I still value those bonds.

I reviewed all my old posts. I didn't find any where I said, "Wow, I would never write that now!" I guess it's not that surprising that my views haven't changed very much.. I did find five that I thought were especially worth rereading.

Human nature:

http://bartfusn.blogspot.com/2007/11/humans-neither-perfectible-nor-opposite.html

http://bartfusn.blogspot.com/2008/07/evolution-explains-why-happiness-is.html

Mortality issues:

http://bartfusn.blogspot.com/2009/05/thoughts-on-time-before-death.html

http://bartfusn.blogspot.com/2007/11/cosmic-subtraction-problem.html

Religion:

http://bartfusn.blogspot.com/2007/11/self-survey-about-god.html

six years later?

It looks like I've re-established the ability to use this blog. That's helpful! We'll see if I have anything to say under this identity. If I was starting a blog now I would not have put FUSN right into the name, as I feel that UU society (now renamed to FUUSN) is much less central to my identity than it was 10 years ago.

I wonder if anyone has maintained for all the years notification if I post anything new.