{"id":17088,"date":"2013-04-11T14:14:32","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T21:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=17088"},"modified":"2013-04-11T17:40:03","modified_gmt":"2013-04-12T00:40:03","slug":"refusing-to-have-the-what-you-did-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=17088","title":{"rendered":"Refusing to have the &#8220;What You Did&#8221; conversation."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few years ago, the great Jay Smooth recorded a short video on how to avoid\u00a0running\u00a0endlessly on the &#8220;you said some racist shit\/but I&#8217;m a good person how dare you imply I&#8217;m not&#8221; treadmill. The video (due to being awesome) went way viral, so I sort of assume that everyone&#8217;s already seen it, but\u00a0if you&#8217;ve not:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/b0Ti-gkJiXc\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In it, Jay suggests that we avoid calling <em>people<\/em> racist, and to instead focus on their words and actions. Not, &#8220;you are a racist,&#8221; but, &#8220;that thing you just said was racist.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I love this idea (though I often fall short of realizing it), both for reasons of courtesy and reasons of utility. Plenty of folks who think of themselves as good people hold racist views &#8230; thus it has ever been and thus it will ever be. Let&#8217;s have the conversation about the views without getting into an indictment of <em>them as people.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Also, of course, almost everyone has\u00a0some\u00a0views that are sub-optimal in\u00a0some\u00a0way or another. That&#8217;s what Ampersand was talking about in his point #1 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/15\/just-because-i-believe-that-states-should-have-the-right-to-define-marriage-in-the-traditional-way-does-not-make-me-a-bigot\/\">here<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>1) It would be a miracle if any American of my own and Marco Rubio\u2019s generation (or earlier generations) was\u00a0<em>not\u00a0<\/em>a bigot, in the sense of harboring prejudices against lesbians and gay men. We were raised in an enormously homophobic culture, and it\u2019s unrealistic to think that had no effect on us. It would be like living your whole life in an ocean but claiming to have never once gotten wet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/ta-nehisi-coates\/\">Ta-Nehisi Coates<\/a> has written about this a fair amount lately, with several (increasingly egregious) examples of people saying <em>severely<\/em>\u00a0racist shit and following up with &#8220;&#8230;but of course I&#8217;m not a racist.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>My favorites(?) are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/03\/07\/opinion\/coates-the-good-racist-people.html\">here<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In modern America we believe racism to be the property of the uniquely villainous and morally deformed, the ideology of trolls, gorgons and orcs. We believe this even when we are actually being racist. In 1957, neighbors in Levittown, Pa., uniting under the flag of segregation, wrote: \u201cAs moral, religious and law-abiding citizens, we feel that we are unprejudiced and undiscriminating in our wish to keep our community a closed community.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/national\/archive\/2013\/03\/good-people-racist-people\/273843\/\">Here<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nA few years ago I wrote a modern history of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/hey_wait_a_minute\/2008\/03\/playing_the_racist_card.html\">people practicing racism<\/a>\u00a0all the while claiming they were not. You can include this example of a\u00a0Louisiana\u00a0judge who refused to marry an interracial couple and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newser.com\/story\/71825\/louisiana-judge-wont-marry-interracial-couple.html\">then told a newspaper<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not a racist. I just don&#8217;t believe in mixing the races that way.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>And, most recently, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2013\/04\/against-the-conversation-cont\/274887\/\">here<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Jim Gile, a country\u00a0commissioner\u00a0in Kansas, was caught on tape discussing the repair of building with a group. He told the group that the county should hire an\u00a0architect, instead of &#8220;nigger-rigging&#8221; the project.\u00a0This suggestion was greeted with laughter.\u00a0In case you were unclear about the meaning Gile went on to clarify &#8212; the project should not be &#8220;Afro-Americanized.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When the tape emerged, Gile claimed that he had actually meant to say &#8220;jury-rig&#8221; or &#8220;jerry-rig.&#8221; How you get from &#8220;nigger&#8221; to &#8220;jury&#8221; or &#8220;jerry&#8221; is beyond me. And &#8220;jerry-rig&#8221; and &#8220;Afro-Americanized&#8221; became synonyms, I&#8217;m not quite sure.<br \/>\nBut none of this really matters because Gile is a &#8220;good person&#8221;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.salina.com\/news\/Gile2013-04-06T04-27-33\">and isn&#8217;t racist<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I am not a prejudiced person,&#8221; Gile said Friday.\u00a0<strong>&#8220;I have built Habitat homes for colored people.&#8221;<\/strong>\u00a0Gile said he also has a close friend whom he regards as a sister who is black.\u00a0\u00a0&#8220;<strong>I don&#8217;t ever do anything bad and don&#8217;t know how to do anything bad.\u00a0<\/strong>People know I am not,&#8221; he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>So you see the dynamic. Person says or does <em>clearly-fucking-racist<\/em> thing. Person doing C-F-R thing wants to be super clear, though, that they&#8217;re not racist, because, as\u00a0Ta-Nehisi says, &#8220;In modern America we believe racism to be the property of the uniquely villainous and morally deformed, the ideology of trolls, gorgons and orcs.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Over on Metafilter, user &#8216;jhc&#8217; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metafilter.com\/125768\/The-Good-Racist-People#4861736\">explored the problem with this view<\/a>, using an\u00a0analogy\u00a0I&#8217;ll steal forever forever forever:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I think Coates is saying that in most cases he doesn&#8217;t divide the world into &#8220;a racist&#8221; and &#8220;not a racist.&#8221; It&#8217;s more like, oh, everyone farts, right? You&#8217;re not either &#8220;a Farter&#8221; or &#8220;a Non-Farter.&#8221; When Michael Richards does something hella racist and says &#8220;I&#8217;m not a racist,&#8221; that makes sense to him because he&#8217;s saying &#8220;well, sure, I farted, but that doesn&#8217;t mean I&#8217;m a\u00a0<em>Farter<\/em>. I&#8217;m emphatically a\u00a0<em>Non-Farter<\/em>\u00a0who just happened to fart one time.&#8221; Coates doesn&#8217;t buy into those categories as being useful most of the time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So.<\/p>\n<p>That was all setup and background.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, Ampersand posted, both <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/04\/kind-smart-lovely-people-sometimes-support-bigoted-public-policy\/\">here<\/a> and at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/familyscholars.org\/2013\/04\/04\/kind-smart-lovely-people-sometimes-support-bigoted-public-policy\/\">Family\u00a0Scholars<\/a>, a post entitled &#8220;Kind, smart, lovely people sometimes support bigoted public policy.&#8221; In it, he was about as nice as you could possibly be while trying to gently explain that a particular view is bigoted in some way. He said things like:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But let me rush to say that\u2019s not to say that you\u2019re a bigot, a hateful person, or acting out of spite or out of \u201cyuk.\u201d From the little I\u2019ve seen of you online, you seem like a lovely person, not at all hateful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In other words, Ampersand was actually\u00a0going\u00a0one step farther than Jay Smooth suggests. He was doing his damnedest to not just have the &#8220;what you did&#8221; conversation, but to <em>explicitly\u00a0disclaim<\/em>\u00a0the &#8220;what you are&#8221; conversation, and any implication that the person holding the bigoted view might themselves <em>be<\/em>\u00a0a bigot.<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless (and maybe predictably), Family Scholars exploded in offense at how uncivil it was to suggest that an anti-same sex marriage position might be bigoted. Fannie <a href=\"http:\/\/familyscholars.org\/2013\/04\/08\/on-bigotry-again\/\">posted a follow-up<\/a> to Ampersand&#8217;s post, and\u00a0unbelievably, <em>it got worse<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Teresa (who&#8217;d initiated the series of posts by asking whether opposition to same-sex-marriage ought to be considered bigoted):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00a0Whatever \u2018bigot\u2019 meant decades ago, one can hardly believe that is hasn\u2019t morphed into a sly way of calling another person worthy of contempt, in my opinion. Instead of arguing the merits\/demerits of a position, I\u2019ll send someone packing by calling them a \u2018bigot\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>and<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The word \u2018bigot\u2019 is a handy label to \u2018other\u2019 another. It immediately boxes the \u2018other\u2019 as the enemy. It most certainly, in my opinion, is an \u2018ad hominem\u2019 attack meant to belittle the person, and move away from arguing the premises.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>and<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Do you, Fannie, understand when I\u2019m speaking to pro-ssm persons, that the word \u2018bigot\u2019 is understood as more than what you\u2019re saying. By inference, using the word \u2018bigoted\u2019 as descriptive of the anti-ssm position, what you\u2019re saying, albeit, subtly and unintentionally, that those that subscribe to the anti-ssm position are themselves, bigots. Can you see this?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Susan,\u00a0coming\u00a0to Teresa&#8217;s defense:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Fannie, I think your honestly held beliefs when translated into words\/actions ARE, by their very nature, silencing. You don\u2019t intend for them to be so, but they are. Whether Teresa solicited your opinion or not is immaterial. Either you and Barry have a problematic pattern of behavior in using the b-word, or you don\u2019t.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So did anyone else see what happened there? It&#8217;s ingenious. Even when the &#8220;what you did&#8221; is <em>explicitly <\/em>discussed, and the &#8220;what you are&#8221; is <em>explicitly <\/em>taken off the table, the claim is that:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>The &#8216;what you did&#8217; conversation implies the &#8216;what you are&#8217; conversation.<\/li>\n<li>The\u00a0&#8216;what you are&#8217; conversation is uncivil and silencing.<\/li>\n<li>Therefore, it&#8217;s uncivil and silencing to discuss &#8216;what you did.&#8217;<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>As Jay Smooth would say, &#8220;I don&#8217;t care whether you&#8217;re a thief in your heart, I just want my wallet back.&#8221; By employing this tactic, those opposed to same sex marriage get to have it both ways. They get to pick your pocket and rule it out of bounds for you to bring it up. After all, that&#8217;s just calling names, right?<\/p>\n<p>They just refuse to have the &#8216;what you did&#8217; conversation. Flat-out refuse. The &#8216;what you are&#8217; conversation is all there is, and <em>how dare you imply I&#8217;m a bigot!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/rs\/2013\/04\/11\/missouri-man-arrested-at-hospital-for-refusing-to-leave-gay-partner\/\">Roger Gorley, a gay man in Missouri, was dragged away from his partner&#8217;s hospital bed in handcuffs after refusing to leave<\/a>. He had a power of attorney, but the hospital wouldn&#8217;t look it up. And now there&#8217;s a restraining order, so he can&#8217;t visit his hospitalized partner at all. <\/p>\n<p>But let&#8217;s keep in mind the real danger here. I don&#8217;t think anyone called Roger a bigot, so thank goodness for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few years ago, the great Jay Smooth recorded a short video on how to avoid\u00a0running\u00a0endlessly on the &#8220;you said some racist shit\/but I&#8217;m a good person how dare you imply I&#8217;m not&#8221; treadmill. The video (due to being awesome) &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=17088\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17088"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17114,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17088\/revisions\/17114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}