A couple weeks ago I talked about the justifications for being confrontational when discussing racism, sexism, and other bigotry. Most of that discussion (including a bunch in the comments) was surrounding the efficacy of calling people racist instead of simply having polite conversation where you describe the issues with people's actions without actually calling them out explicitly.
It remains unclear to me how well explicit call outs of bigotry work in terms of changing minds. It gets people's attention for sure, and sometimes that has value. On the other hand it makes people angry and defensive and that often leaves them completely unwilling to listen. On the other other hand though, it means that people who see bigoted behaviour and the backlash against it may change their behaviour even if they don't change their minds, and that is a victory, albeit an incomplete one.
But the thing I most missed was the effect conversations have on the people being discriminated against. If you are a trans person, for example, and you see an online conversation about bathroom bills that try to force trans people to use the bathroom associated with their assigned gender at birth, it is going to be a shitty experience. There are two ways that conversation can go though, and one is better for them than the other.
One way is that their 'allies' talk nicely to the bigots and don't use confrontational language and pretend like bathroom bills are a thing we can have a pleasant debate about. This is going to be a miserable experience for the trans reader, as that conversation will make it clear that those 'allies' are people who will happily pretend in public that bathroom bills are morally neutral, just a thing to discuss.
The other way is the allies can tell the bigots that they are bigots, that bathroom bills are oppressive bullshit, and that they can take their evil and shove it up their asses.
The second way is the best way. Neither way is likely to convince the bigot to change, but one accurately portrays the evil as evil, and shows support for those who are actually being affected by this. It allows the trans person in the example to see that there are people who are on their side, people who are willing to go to bat for them, people who are willing to call the bigotry what it is and not hide behind polite talk.
Calling a bigot a bigot may not work well in convincing them, but honestly very little will. Usually it takes the experience of someone close to them being in the affected group, or simply waiting for them to die.
The best and biggest reason to call this stuff out is to send a message. That message will be heard by oppressors and oppressed alike, and it matters.
If you want to change someone's mind, "you're a racist" never works, while "you might not realize that that thing you said is sort of racist; since I know you're not a racist, you'd probably want to understand why, so you can stop saying things like that" sometimes does. A friend of mine refers to this as "calling them in", in contrast to "calling them out".
ReplyDeleteAnd in a conversation on the internet, sometimes the person you are communicating with is the person whose comment you are replying to, and sometimes it's the other people who are reading this discussion. I find that understanding this distinction, and figuring out which is the current situation, is useful in escaping the "someone is wrong on the internet" trap (https://www.xkcd.com/386/)
Andy makes the point very well.
DeleteI agree. "I know you don't want to act in a racist way" gives the kind of reassurance and benefit of the doubt that I was looking for when I said "I know you're not a racist", but can also be accurate. Really I think that statements like "You're [not] a racist should be avoided both because they polarize and shut of discussion, and because different people attach very different meanings to them, so they do not cause useful discrimination.
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