Backfire at Harvard

It isn't enough that the argument is correct.   It needs to be useful.  

Sometimes being right backfires, because people aren't reacting to the argument.  They are reacting to the symbolism of it, its real meaning.

The science of diversity training

My posts from Harvard have created a backlog of material.  I kept notes and will be reporting.   I also more than usual feedback by email.  Several inquiries have revolved around the meaning of symbolic speech.   Preview:  Tomorrow the blog will present some findings by Ashley Martin, who makes the argument that it advances the interests of social justice when the differences between races should be acknowledged and celebrated.  She has data from interviews done scientifically.  She computed things into regression analysis and tables and drew graphs.  

I have different observations and conclusions, drawn from the experience of watching and listening to the political spirit of the past two years.  My sense is that there is an essential dilemma for talk of racial injustice in America.  It backfires, at least in the short run.  White people don't want to hear it.  They resent it.  They push back.

Discussion of race in America, in particular, because it is a sensitive subject, is understood through symbols.  People stereotype.  They profile.  They are alert for cues and clues.  It is perilous to talk frankly about it.  There are forbidden words.  Indeed, there are forbidden thoughts, even though people think them.

This blog, in its attempt to understand Trump's very effective communication style, has asserted that people respond primarily through the tone and body language of political speech, not the denoted text.  Text is not irrelevant, but it is secondary.    The actual meaning of words or objects is understood as symbol.  A reader commenting on my Facebook page commentary on events at Harvard referred to Chelsea Manning as "it", said he wanted "to puke" and condemned "smug Leftists" and "prancing scum."  What is going on here?  He wasn't making an argument.  He was expressing contempt.  That is the message.  It was a gesture, not an argument.  So was "Lyin' Ted" or "Lock Her Up".  Gesture.

In the decade after Reconstruction, and again after the Brown vs. Board of Eduction desegregation decision southern communities put up statues to Confederate generals.  It was a sign of defiance.  The majority political power in those areas recognized they had lost the battle but not the principles for which they fought, which principles shifted from maintaining slavery to maintaining some softer notion of southern tradition and social order, one element of which was the inferiority of blacks.   Had there been a majority of Germans living in the Bronx in 1950, and had they erected a statue of Herman Goebbles in response to agitation to end quotas on Jews admitted to City College, the meaning of the political terrorism would be obvious.   But in fact a majority of people living in the Bronx were Jewish and in the aftermath of WW2 people of German extraction in the US did not romanticize German heritage and anti-Semitism, so such a statue is unthinkable.  But resentful whites were in the majority in the south, and the statues went up.  Defiance.

Fox News:  the story is black violence

It makes sense that many people want them removed. They were a gesture of defiance to the north and maintenance of a traditional racial hierarchy.   But it backfires, because whites see it as a sign of innocuous heritage or perhaps as a sign of ancient guilt.  Either way, it is a loser.  White voters did not welcome being shamed.  Their defenses went up.  Don't blame me for slavery.  They feel falsely accused.

Meanwhile, they de-legitimize the accuser and to identify their critics with the least creditable behavior, black disorder.

Rioting.  Rock throwing.  Confrontations with police.  

Is there a way out of the dilemma?   Can Americans talk about race and racial justice without it backfiring into gesture of resentments?

Tomorrow's blog will report on Ashley Martin's view on discussion of gender diversity.  It suggests a result which will be unwelcome in the camp of people who think in the symbolism of rainbows and celebration of diversity.   Her message is that people are more tolerant of diversity when they are primed to think of uniformity.  We are really all the same, really,