In his column of August 12, which is an important contribution to today’s debates, Frank Bruni introduces Professor Mark Lilla, of Columbia University. Lilla comments that “classroom conversations that once might have begun, I think A, and here is my argument, now take the form, Speaking as an X, I am offended that you claim B.
It was that phrasing, I think, that caught my imagination. I felt like I had just seen a horror movie.
Lilla has liberals in mind, because liberals are the ones that have been boxing his ears lately and Bruni cites him because these same liberals have been boxing Bruni’s ears, too. Today, I would like to reflect on the reasons that arguments can be set aside because they aren’t being made by the right people.
Status distortion
Like so many other “truths” of our time, this one is true as far as it goes, but it has gone too far. Later in his column, Bruni says that “race, gender, sexual orientation [and] class” inform…how we see the world. That is true, of course. It is true of every person; it is true all the time. It is true of the person making the argument and the person refusing to hear it. It is true.
Bruni also agrees that the “check your privilege” exhortation rightly asks us to recognize that. I know that when I make an argument, the argument is affected by who I am and the experiences I have had and the same is true for you. That is as far, I think, as that truth should go.
But it doesn’t stop there and in this column, Bruni looks at some of the places it should have stopped, but did not. [1] He tells about a scuffle just up the road from me at the Evergreen State College, where “a white biology professor, Bret Weinstein, disparaged the particular tack of a day of racial healing. He raised valid points, only to be branded a bigot and threatened with violence.”
Bruni wrote about that incident and then he, in turn, got this: “I don’t need one more white male criticizing young people of color.” But I think maybe she does. If Weinstein was treated unfairly, then this reader—I am imagining her as a young woman of color—urgently needs people like and unlike herself to call attention to the unfairness. The idea that Bruni has no right to his views because he is of the wrong sex
and color don’t sound right to me. Didn’t we write some things in the Civil Rights Act of 1965 about disparaging people because of their sex or color? Is that why it sounds familiar? Clearly the dueling tee shirts point the direction of our future.
And I think this small, but important truth, should also have stopped before it came to this event, too.
Mark Lilla…got a big, bitter taste of this last year, too. He was scheduled to give a talk at Wellesley College on “Identity Is Not Politics” and someone scrawled on a poster advertising the talk: “White men: stop telling me about my experiences!”
But what if Lilla did not want to talk about her experiences? What if he wanted to talk about whether the commitment to identity politics has been good of bad for the Democratic party? There would need to be at least two positions, with at least one proponent for each. And who should these proponents be? They should be people with no sexual orientation, no country of origin, no race, no partisan affiliation, etc. Does that leave anyone? Because using this identity politics filter, who you are—that’s the race and sex and all that—makes what you have to say worthless. “Oh, you’re just a..[fill in the blank]. Or for upperclassmen, “just another [fill in the blank.] Upperclassmen have heard it all before, you see.
Later in the article, Bruni cites with approval the work of Phoebe Malz
Bovy, author of The Perils of Privilege. You need to be careful to “check your privilege at the door,” says Bovy and Bruni agrees. I agree too, but privilege is not uniquely distorting. It is just especially obnoxious. Ignorance and hatred and apathy are all distorting, too, and I would dearly love to see them checked at the door.
I think these instances are ugly and that is why I have cited them. But even more ugly to me, and I say this as a former professor [2], are the “classroom conversations” Lilla points to that take the form of “Speaking as an X, I am offended that you claim B.” Lilla says that the form of assertion precludes much more useful forms, such as “I think A and here is my argument.”
That second form, which was once taken for granted in universities, leads to a comparison of assertions and the facts and logic that sustain them. There is, of course, room to do all that badly and I have seen it done badly, but even when I see it being done badly, I know that it could have been done well. Of the first form (Speaking as an X…), I have nothing good to say. Not only is “what I say” set aside without any consideration of its merits, but even “the way I know things”—therefore potentially anything I could know—is set aside as well. Here again, it is the parallels in this set of pictures that attracted me.
You could argue that I could just do the same thing in return. I could just set aside
whatever you say both on the grounds of “how you know things” and also “what you know.” Those are just aspects of “who you are.” And I could. Now the two of us, completely heedless of the worth of anything the other might say, stand there and waste each other’s time. [3]
And then there is the flaw—the really hideous flaw—contained in the first part of the formula: “Speaking as an X…” The racism or classism or sexism (take your pick) embedded in that formula is truly awful. It begins with “we are all alike.” All of us white Ivy League professors are alike and all of us Hispanic agricultural workers are alike and all of us stay-at-home Moms are alike. That’s just how it begins. Everyone in any of those categories would reject that, to be sure, but it is firmly implicit in “Speaking as an X…”
Of course, you are not just an X. You are also a Y and a Z. Will you claim the right to speak for all the members of all those categories, or just for the people who, like you, are X and Y and Z? And then, of course, you are not all the X’s, you are just one particular X and you are unique. So maybe speaking for yourself would be a good idea.
And as bad as it is to claim that your personal identity is dissolved without residue into the category X, it is even worse that you have invited me to claim that I am a Y, just a Y and nothing more. And that is a separate and additional offense.
So…clearly, I need to bail out of this argument before it achieves escape velocity. The short and simple point is that identity politics presupposes identity rhetoric–not personal identity, which would be bad enough, but group identity–and destroys the basis for any dialogue we might have had.
[1] It is striking that in writing this article, Bruni feels compelled to stop and identify himself as gay. I understand why he would do that, as a rhetorical matter. He is going to be lecturing “victims” and he wants to establish his own credentials as a victim before he dos that. Still, his need to make that claim for himself seems odd in the setting of this particular column.
[2] So…you know…my experience is distorting my judgment.
[3] Unless, of course, I am the teacher in this setting. In that case, it would be my job to teach about the erosive character of that whole orientation toward dialogue.
belligerency about North Korea, including both “fire and fury like the world has never seen” and “not tough enough.” And now, since I wrote those, to “locked and loaded.” But let’s start with President Bartlet and work back.
to support the kind of response the President is talking about. Bartlet just wants to hit back. There has been no engagement with Congress, not even the famous “Gang of Eight.” [1]. Nothing with Great Britain or Japan. There has been no foreign policy preparation at all and only a rookie President would act militarily in such circumstances and this rookie President if very fortunate t have someone who will tell him that. The caption is from a Fitzwallace fan. He didn’t have a nameplate that said that.
For example, it is not a difference of public and private person. Bartlet was as angry in this narrative as Trump is today about the threat of North Korea. It is not that Bartlet successfully muffles his anger, determined to act like a president, rather than like an avenger. Taking this scene as a fair instance of his early presidency, he “muffles his anger” no better than President Trump is reported to.
purpose of dealing with other heads of state, some friendly, some hostile, then he needs a strong staff in the very worst way. And he shows very little inclination—General Kelly is a possible exception—to appoint any. The recent televised cabinet meeting at which each secretary was given a chance to say what an honor it was to serve in the Trump administration, does not bode well for anyone giving the President good advice.
I ask you to imagine that sitting down at a table with friends to eat a meal is really just a palette; it is an occasion that you will use to paint a picture of yourself. In this scenario, the meal itself is just a color, just a tool. In such a setting, it makes no more sense to say “Enjoy your meal” than it would to say to an artist, “Enjoy your yellow.”
the meal at all, so very probably he is not enjoying it. Each kind of food is an occasion for recounting where else he has eaten this kind of food and how much better it was then than now. It is a self-aggrandizing performance and while it doesn’t, strictly speaking, preclude his enjoying the food, it is hard to think that he does.
Let’s take it for granted that people like President Trump do whatever they feel is in their best interest. [2] And I take it for granted that people listen to what they think is in their best interest and believe what they think it is in their best interest to believe. And I think it has always been like that. I think that characterizes the presidencies of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Bill Clinton. [3]
remind me of the “pep rallies” of my high school days. Speaker after speaker praises the home team and vilifies the next team on the schedule. Coaches will say things like, “And we are going to win because we are winners” with complete impunity. It doesn’t imply anything about the actual prospects of the home team in the coming game. We may have lost every game so far and be confidently expected to lose this one as well. No one takes what appears to be a prediction as a statement with any factual content at all. It is just a way of praising ourselves and fortifying ourselves against whatever reality will bring.
There is no down side, in the current environment, to being shown to be a liar. In fact, now that I think of it, I don’t see that word used. We see stories that some percent of a politician’s statements (I saw a 70% ranking for Trump during the campaign) are lies, but not that the candidate was “a liar.” In the current environment, lies are honored equally with truths as “courageous,” or as “standing up for the downtrodden” (or the downtreaders) or “saying how he really feels.”
public officials by treating some things as acceptable and others as not acceptable. Politicians who thought their campaigns would be seriously damaged if they could be shown to be lying about public matters would stop lying about public matters. Mrs. Motter trained my friend Bruce to understand that he was not really being called for dinner when she called his name. Bruce responded exactly as you would expect, and as any politician would, who was doing something rewarding and illicit and was not punished for it.
2003 and I had the kinds of grieving difficulties men have when their wives die. One of the difficulties was confusion. A lot of the things that were being recommended to me didn’t seem to help. Some of them made everything seem worse. That’s why I was confused.
But there is the matter if whether that is the best question to pose. In posing this one, he bypassed the other two question we are keeping in mind. The first is whether “broad allowances for emotional expression” are good for people. In focusing on the possibility that these limits are bad for boys, Reiner bypassed the question of whether people in general are benefitted from rich and unconstrained emotional expression. If that were true, we would expect to find that cultures that presuppose free and unfettered emotional expression would be healthier than cultures that do not. I am not aware of any research that holds that to be true, but I will keep my eyes open.
Furthermore, some girls would benefit from a more limited emotional vocabulary and others would not. This is the most important kind of question for parents, but I agree with Reiner that it isn’t very good for outsiders. The research Reiner reports has to do with mothers and fathers with young infants. No one is asking what kind of treatment is going to benefit this particular infant. That is not a question that can be asked yet.
Looking at this from my standpoint, I see the precursors of the intuitive style of grieving and the instrumental style of grieving. The lesson I took from that setting is that there is a perfectly good style of grieving that doesn’t require an expanded emotional vocabulary (as well as one that does) and I am inclined to look at Reiner’s piece from that standpoint.
which we confess our sins together—have not been able to find a form for that confession. The old style (a very attractive example follows) was bold and without any amelioration at all. “We have sinned in thought, word and deed.” Not much wiggle room there. “We have done that which we ought not to have done and we have left undone those things that we ought to have done.” So again, nowhere to hide.
unity—as if I were watching the Rockettes in New York and marveling that they kick exactly the same kick at the same time—and being a part of the unity. If it’s visual, you have to do one or the other. The saying/hearing the Lord’s Prayer is aural. Not only can you say it and hear it—hear yourself as one of many—at the same time, but you can try to approximate the way you say it to match the way you are hearing it. [6]
About his execution, More is reported to have said, “I die the King’s good servant, and God’s first.” It is More’s claim to the ultimate sovereignty of God and the valid, but subordinate, claim King Henry has on his loyalty. More took his stand and paid the price as many honorable men and women have done through the ages. But what he said to the king, cannot be said to a “a truth.” Nor can it be said to be a fact. It is a witness. [2]
temperatures have been increasing at rates unprecedented in the modern era. The elites have nothing but contempt for “people like us” and will say whatever they want with no concern at all for our welfare. One of those is not “truer,” as we like to say, than another. Each “truth” determines the subsequent actions of one community or another—the scientists by the first truth, the “climate deniers” by the second.
What we have here is a clash of narratives each supported by experimental data. The narrative supported by Brady’s findings is about the stress of decision making. The monkeys bore the burden of choosing and paid the price. The narrative supported by Weiss’s findings is about the stress brought on by powerlessness. The animals (rats in Weiss’s case) received shocks with no opportunity at all to avoid them and that is what produced the stress and the ulcers.
not a preacher of sermons, but Matthew is really struck by the insight that Jesus is the new Moses. In order to make the parallel clear, Jesus needs to be a lawgiver and that requires that he give sermons, not just that he drop memorable anecdotes. So Matthew collects the Jesus material he has [1] into longer bodies of text; into sermons. And because these sermons are composites built from the Jesus material, we can’t tell the setting of any one part of the sermon.
All of these are “don’t get discouraged” (DGD) stories. DGD, sometimes the soil is bad. It’s not your fault. Just keep sowing. DGD, some of the fish are unusable. Just throw the bad ones away and keep on fishing. DGD, it takes only a little yeast to raise a big lump of dough and only a little seed to make a tree so big birds can nest in it. DGD, no matter what this is costing you, the value of the reward is so great that it will be worth it. DGD.
Matthew understands the message, is concerned about conflict among the preachers of the Way. If we think of the “weeds” as other interpretations of Jesus’s teachings, it may be that Matthew was counting on the continuing context of the Torah to keep the church together. It is only Matthew (13:52) who imagines both the old treasures and the new being brought out of the storehouse.
I recently heard a sermon in which the preacher identified the “weeds” with “the shadow side” of the self, as Carl Jung calls it. Jung’s use of “the vast part of the self that the ego does not know about or will not accept” is broadly attractive in a lot of ways. It is hard to get a handle on, as you might expect, just as the Freudian unconscious is hard to get a handle on. But it would be deeply unorthodox (heretical) to identify the shadow in psychoanalytic theory with the weeds in Matthew’s story. The shadow side is an inevitable part of us and although it is “dark,” it is not evil.
I’ve been a fan of Federer’s for a long time now. It’s not just that he is a superb tennis player. I like the way he sees the game. I like the way he sees his life, with the game as part of it, rather than all of it. I like the way he admires and supports the other players, even while he is doing his best to defeat them.
e front desk at the time and I was checking out Holladay Park Plaza to see if maybe Bette and I wanted to move there. I remember thinking that the lobby looked like the lobby of a really good hotel and I remember thinking that the woman behind the desk looked like she belonged in a really good hotel. I had been touring senior centers at the time and I had never visited one that caused that thought to come to mind. I liked it.
personally, but educationally as well,” she is talking about the experience she has had. She is talking about the “journey” part of the competition, about the friendships with the other contestants, about all she learned about presenting herself, about, about taking a leadership role in making the contest what it was. These are things that she gets to keep no matter who wins. And when she won the Miss Portland crown, she crowned the journey with the destination.
All this is coming to a head now because Ms. DeVos (shown here) is bringing this balance up for reconsideration. The New York Times writers refer to the ongoing conflict as “a maelstrom.” [3] She wants to meet with groups who will be willing to represent the men, the disproportionately accused parties. Predictably, the women are not happy with the men who are being included, some of whom they call misogynists. I think it would be reasonable to assume that the men’s groups are going to call the women’s groups misandrists. English makes that pairing available and given the level of intensity this conflict has reached, it would seem almost odd if both were not used.
been accused have gone through an absolutely horrendous experience, They have had their entire world turned upside down.” He doesn’t say that he is promoting a Twitter campaign called #DearBarack, but if the Civil Rights Division is flooded with letters from women and men who have had their lives ruined by sexual encounters in college, that will be what I mean by an Astroturf campaign.
