Entrenching Tools
An example, of the kind of thing I was talking about yesterday and a few days before that – of this matter of the complexity and arbitrariness of political categories, and of the idea that sometimes it’s just not particularly helpful or interesting to attach labels of liberal or conservative, left or right, to any and every idea that comes along. The example is from an interview with Barack Obama in the October Progressive – unfortunately not online. The interviewer, Barbara Ransby, said, ‘You also said something to the effect that you are open to ideas from both the right and the left. Now, you know this kind of talk makes progressives a little nervous. Can you elaborate on what you meant by that?’ and Obama answered,
Yes, certain factions of the left have bought into an either/or argument about how we solve our problems, and I contend that all our solutions do not have to do with money. They have to do with attitudes, values, and morals. As I said in my speech at the convention, for example, we have to recognize academic achievement as parents. Now some may label that a ‘rightwing’ or ‘conservative’ position, but you go into any place in the community, you will hear the same thing.
Obama’s not kidding when he says that some may label that a ‘rightwing’ position – in fact he’s understating it drastically (no doubt being polite to the interviewer and The Progressive). There’s very little ‘may’ about it – some do emphatically label that a ‘rightwing’ position before the sentence is even finished. I noticed such a bit of labeling just the other day in an article in the New York Review of Books –
Along with other black conservatives —John McWhorter, Shelby Steele, and Thomas Sowell—Ogbu places the blame for ongoing inequality on black communities. He recommends a variety of self-help strategies to raise black students’ achievement, such as publicizing black students’ academic successes, reinforcing parents’ commitment to monitoring their children, and so on.
I think it’s very debatable to call McWhorter a conservative, and I think it’s even more debatable to assume (as that quotation does assume) that the idea that some factors internal to ‘black communities’ play a part in educational inequality (which is not the same thing as ‘blaming’ those communities, which is a silly, loaded, and manipulative way of stating the idea) is necessarily a ‘conservative’ idea. It can be, and it can be useful to conservative agendas, but it doesn’t have to be. But it is (in some circles, or factions, as Obama puts it) assumed to be. It is in fact a kind of litmus test – it’s one of those things that people avoid saying for fear of being put into a box they don’t want to be put into. The good old hegemonic discourse is full of minefields like that – things it’s risky to say unless you want friends to think you’ve suddenly become Krusty the Konservative.
And it’s understandable in a way. Understandable and not malevolent. We have heard enough about ‘blaming the victim’ to be very wary of seeming to do that ourselves, especially when we are not in the same victim box ourselves. It is a very queasy position to be, say, a white person worrying about anti-intellectualism among black people; we worry that we don’t know enough, that it’s easy for us to say, that we have unpleasant motives we’re not entirely aware of, that we are indeed shifting the problem from institutionalized injustices to the naughty behavior of the victims themselves. Understandable. But the trouble is – what if it’s true? What if it really is true that, for instance, black students shame each other for doing well in school or liking to read, label that ‘acting white,’ apply peer pressure to make their friends stop it? Then that sqeamishness and reluctance to talk about it doesn’t look like such a good idea, does it. Because if it really is true, then it’s a bad thing, and everyone ought to make every effort to change it, and that’s a good deal harder to do if the subject is taboo.
And that’s just one example. Which is not to say that nothing should be labeled left or right; I’m not a fan of ‘bipartisanship’; but it is to say that not everything should be labeled that way. That some issues are factual rather than ideological, is rather than ought; that an empirical, inquiring, analytic approach works a good deal better for many problems than a political or even moral one. The issue Obama is talking about isn’t one about blame, it’s one about what to do. But entrenched positions make people unwilling to think about some avenues of inquiry. That doesn’t seem particularly useful.
Maybe the issues are factual but that does not mean there is no politics in solutions as, after all, an issue of unemployment is plausibly resolvable by 1. cutting minimum wage, 2. protectionism, 3. global growth & 4. higher investment in care & education + whatever mix of the above & others.
If there were no people to suffer interim consequences of the various solutions, as are conceivable, nobody´d need politics.
In other words, all the politics nagging (certainly when combined with disbeliefs that people actually voted against one´s own opinion) boils down to “let’s bloody well get rid of these inconsistents”, so we can have the fine intellectually pure peace we need.
Yeah, true. Fair point. I may have been oversimplifying a tad.
But the issues are factual as well as political, at least. The basic point that queasy feelings may get in the way of even acknowledging the existence of facts, remains. I think moves like offhandedly labeling e.g. McWhorter a conservative tend to operate to prevent people from noticing facts. They’re a kind of roadblock, or detour-mechanism; they head people off before they can even get a look at the accident up ahead.
On this topic I would recommend Tim Wise’s piece “Not-So-Little White Lies: Education and the Myth of Black Anti-Intellectualism“.
One thing that annoys me about the “liberal media” people is that in the interests of supposedly remanining “objective”, they’re sometimes reluctant to outright call bullshit out as bullshit – and that therefore fact-based disagreement occassionally gets misinterpreted as irrational, tribal disagreement.
That’s not to say, obviously, that there’s nothing in the notion of personal responsibility – pulling yourselves up by your own bootstraps. Of course there is – it’s what many black families are already doing!
I’m not a bootstrapper, nor am I one to drone about personal responsibility. Just for one thing, those are both tedious cliches, and cliches give me a rash. For another, I don’t see why those terms are particularly relevant. Saying there could be cultural forces at work is (surely) pretty much the opposite of saying things are purely each person’s personal responsibility. People aren’t responsible for the culture they find themselves in. That’s one reason I repudiated the silly and irrelevant word ‘blame’ in the comment. (The cliche thing is another, and the red herring thing is another again.) It’s not about blame, or urging people to yank on their bootstraps, nor is it about saying there are no other factors at work; it’s simply about saying cultural factors might be part of the story.
I don’t think much of that Tim Wise piece, I must say. The penultimate paragraph, for instance, is crap, and exactly the kind of crap I’m talking about in the comment –
“It is this context that must be considered when evaluating the tendency for some blacks to claim that getting good grades is “acting white.” If one’s schools have repeatedly given the impression that indeed education is a white thing; that the white kids are the bright kids; that everything worth knowing about sprang out of the forehead of white Europe, and that one’s own aspirations are unrealistic, it ought not be surprising that some children exposed to such racist mentalities—and teachers who assume from the outset that not all groups are equally capable of learning—might develop a bad attitude about school. But as with most things, blaming the victims of this process will neither improve their opportunities nor alter the mechanisms by which their disempowerment is perpetuated.”
No, it’s not surprising! Who said it was? That comment is so point-missing. The point is not that the problem is either surprising or blameworthy, the point is that it’s a problem!
And this paragraph –
“Denying that racial discrimination might be implicated in different educational outcomes between African Americans and others, such commentators insist that different cultural attachments to education explain why whites and Asians score higher on achievement tests, tend to get higher grades, and are more likely to go on to college than their black counterparts. Some claim that blacks have adopted the attitude that doing well in school is “acting white,” and have sabotaged their own futures by way of downgrading intellectual pursuits.”
But saying that the ‘acting white’ thing could be a problem and an obstacle does not entail “Denying that racial discrimination might be implicated in different educational outcomes”. Both could be implicated, and so could other factors. One doesn’t exclude the other.
In fact, it could be argued that precisely that kind of jumping to conclusions and flinging about of irrelevant pejoratives is exactly why nice people do feel queasy about mentioning this kind of thing (to the extent that they do – not all do, to be sure, and plenty of people who do no doubt have impure motives) – because they know there are thousands of Tim Whites ready to jump out of the woodwork to accuse them of saying all kinds of drivel that they didn’t say – to translate what they did say into bullshit about blame and bootstraps and personal responsibility.
Ophelia,
Oversimplification happens to all of us.
Nevertheless, against oversimplification, the use of oversimplification may weaken your case.
But you’re right: labeling adversaries is increasingly taking the place of argument & unfortunately on both sides.
But, but, isn’t saying “You need to take more responsibility”, at least partially placing the blame with those kids who are doing badly, and their parents?
I have never really understood this distinction between responsibility and blame.