Blimix

Some months ago, Karen was in a public restroom where a cis woman looked like she was about to say something harsh to a trans woman. Karen spoke up first: "I like your skirt!" They exchanged pleasantries, and the other woman stifled herself.

I assist someone who had previously been told by store staff that they had to use the other changing room. When I learned this, I explained the meaning of my "#IllGoWithYou" pin. Recently, I had the opportunity to stand outside the women's changing room in that store, telling them things like, "Wow, the red really goes well with your skin tone! On the hangers, I liked the black dress more, but the red one really works well on you!" Staff and customers were right there, and nobody so much as looked askance at us.

#IllGoWithYou doesn't just mean, "I'll back you up if someone harasses you," but also, "I'll set an example, and make sure everyone else knows that you belong here." (Also, "I will use my cis privilege to keep other people from abusing theirs.")

(Aside: Karen doesn't remember her part of this. If I've misremembered, and given her credit for your story, please let me know.)

[Note: "Liberals" and "conservatives" refer here to the American left and right wings respectively. Other countries use these terms differently.]

The distinction between liberals and conservatives is at once simpler and more complex than people like to acknowledge. This is hugely important, because if liberals are to make long-lasting, significant gains, we have to understand why conservatives act the way they do. I don't just mean, "Stop vilifying them and try to reach across the divide," because that won't work: They're not offering handshakes to reach for, and they are happily supporting widespread oppression and murder while we hand-wring about getting them to like us. (However, I will make a point or two about reaching out, near the end.) We need to understand them so that we are better equipped to talk to them, to oppose them, and to more efficiently save the human lives that they threaten. (Thanks to their confirmation bias, I am not worried about similarly enabling conservatives to understand liberals, even though all the information they would need is right here.)

I promised simple and complex. The simple part is: Conservatives want to be on the side of the biggest bully. ( The rest is behind this cut. )

I would like to post more of a particular conversation that happened in comments. This is not to complain about anyone, nor to gain recognition. Some of the things I said there will certainly have to be said again, to others, and I would like you to have the option to save yourself some trouble by copying and pasting those things from this post if you want. Good wishes to you all. (And yes, I moved my first response here from my earlier post, to put it in better context and to provide context for what followed.)

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Originally, my friend had posted to observe that people saying things like "Calm down," "It'll be okay," and "You're overreacting" were overwhelmingly white males, and then postulated that the willingness to say such things correlated with white men still failing to understand experiences other than their own (i.e., privilege).

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Another person, M., commented that, while he intended to just give these emotions some space for a few days, those white males in question simply honestly feel that "You'll be fine" is correct, and that platitudes are appropriate for a medium that uses "like" to show support. He referred to the invokation of privilege as insulting and trolling, with an "I understand you were distressed, but..." (and cue the admonitions to better tend to the precious feelings of the poor, innocent, well-meaning, put-upon white males).

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Thus, my first response:

M., I understand that you're trying to be respectful and understanding, and I thank you for that. But you're missing something. It's something that often happens in conversations between people with different experiences. Person A has had something really bad happen to them, and is quite upset. Person B doesn't share person A's lived experience with systemic oppression, and so isn't nearly as bothered by the event. Person B thinks that person A is overreacting. Person B then feels like they're the calm, rational one, while person A is the emotional, irrational one who needs to calm down. But in actuality, the difference is that person A understands the full gravity of the situation (and would thus have to be evil or emotionally numb to NOT be upset), while person B has had the privilege to be able to ignore how bad the situation is. No matter how clearly person A articulates the problem, person B's mind is already made up and closed through a combination of consistency pressure, confirmation bias, identity politics, and an unwillingness to believe that the world could possibly be as horrifyingly unjust as it really is (because believing in a just world makes person B feel safe as long as they don't do anything out of line). This ability, to willingly stay ignorant of how bad the situation is, is only possible because of privilege. Person A lacks that privilege, and so doesn't have the option of burying their head in the sand: The unjustness of the world kicks them in the head every day.

When person A points out person B's privilege, that's not an insult or an attack. It's an attempt to communicate that yes, the world can be different from the way that person B thinks it is, even if person B is intelligent and well-adjusted, because person B's privilege allows them to keep the blinders on.

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M. then politely challenged me to show as much empathy for upset conservatives in 2008 as I do for upset liberals in 2016. He described McCain as a "change candidate" and Obama as a "big government candidate". He referred to popular disapproval of public disappointment in the result as oppression, on a level with North Korea and 1984. He questioned how measuring privilege could have worked when deciding between Clinton and Obama in the primaries. He attacked the use of the word "privilege" as "otherism," and objected to its implication of racism and sexism as applied to himself.

(Those who have seen the thread in question: If I have in any way misrepresented M.'s comments, please call me out on it. I also want to stress, since I am summarizing here, that he kept his tone indignant but not abusive.)

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My comment:

M., your response does not give me much hope that we will get through to each other, so I'm going to limit the energy I spend in replying, as I really don't have enough to go around for things like this. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I also won't have the energy to phrase blunt things as tactfully as would likely be useful when trying to communicate across this divide, and for that I apologize.

Those two elections are comparable in that the people backing the losing side were upset. They are not comparable in that those who are upset by Trump's victory have their fears grounded in the real experiences of being oppressed in their everyday lives, and by the numerous, dire threats that Trump himself has made toward them/us. Those who were upset by Obama's election had their fears (and their perceptions of who represented change) based on easily debunked misinformation spread by Fox News. While the 2008 conservative fears were deeply upsetting -- and I empathize with that -- the 2016 liberal fears are viscerally terrifying, because they mesh perfectly with real life experiences; because pattern recognition said that minorities were about to suffer a large increase in violence, and that is exactly what has already happened; and because those of us who have absorbed the lessons of history know that those of you who haven't are in the midst of repeating it, and that road ends in an ocean of blood. (Not just ours; nobody is in every "in" group, and the violent fascists that Trump has incited may eventually set their sights on you. History says that too: Look up the Brown Shirts.)

So yes, I feel sorry for people who were upset about Obama, but the comparison you make is insultingly dismissive toward current fears of widespread violence and human rights violations.

"Opponents had the same intellectual freedom that people have in North Korea." This is so absurd that it makes me suspect you're being deliberately disingenuous. Political oppression is when saying politically unpopular things gets you arrested and executed, not when it gets you dirty looks from your neighbor.

Nobody used a measurement of privilege to choose Obama over Clinton. Obama's policies and positions were more progressive than Clinton's. (Admittedly, that wasn't enough for Bernie, which as you may have noticed, is a bit of a sore point among progressives. But that's a different discussion.) You're still not getting that privilege is not an insult, and to say that someone has privilege is not to call them evil. I have privilege, and nobody is giving me flak for it. It's really not the loaded word you think it is, and you don't have to get defensive about it. But privilege, like other powers, comes with responsibility to use it only for good and to never lord it over others. Responsibility is scary -- I get that -- and it's easier for you to pretend that scary things don't exist, but it's also awfully childish. Frankly, as difficult as it is to live with the responsibility of one's own privilege, it is thousands of times more difficult to live with the obstacles and risk of NOT having privilege. And if all of our loved ones with less privilege can live their lives on Hard Mode, what sort of whiny crybabies would we have to be to complain that we don't want to deal with the responsibilities of playing in Normal Mode? It's time for you to step up and take care of your friends who are hurting, not belittle them.

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A couple of other friends have also pointed out that nobody should ever say "Calm down," regardless of the circumstances, because it never works: It only comes across as dismissive, showing an utter lack of empathy.

[I wrote this just before the Dallas shootings hit the news. With what little we know, I cannot comment on that beyond the obvious: The shooters opened fire on police in the middle of a Black Lives Matter protest, jeopardizing everybody present and causing a potential setback to the movement. They could not possibly have been affiliated with the movement or the protest, which was described by the Dallas police as peaceful. I expect racists to use this tragedy, no matter how illogically, as ammunition in their continuing support of the oppressive and murderous status quo. Please don't let them get away with it. Now, back to your irregularly scheduled dose of perspective.]

It seems to me that there is a complication in the issues (hitting the spotlight once again) of police accountability, brutality, and racism. To turn back the clock to a telling example of the confusion: I was initially astonished at the gall of New York City's biggest police union when they vilified Mayor Bill de Blasio for speaking against police brutality, claiming that he had thereby attacked the police. In so doing, the union appeared to have equated the police with police brutality: A much stronger and more damning statement than anything that de Blasio himself had said. Where were the good cops in this? Or, hell, even the neutral ones? What sort of officers could possibly condone the statement that decrying police brutality is an attack on the police?

The horrifying, systemic violence by police in the U.S. is already established fact, and we know that something needs to be done about it. That's not what this essay is about. The mystifying issue here is how strongly police in general defend a system that continues to allow and encourage this. Police departments shun body cameras, despite their proven effectiveness in sharply reducing violence both by and against police. The officer who reported the torture of a suspect at the hands of two other officers was harassed out of his job, and had to move from Baltimore to a small town in Florida just to find a department willing to hire him.

It seems to me that the majority of police, who do not commit but still accept police brutality, are protecting the brutalizers and murderers in every way they can not because they like brutality, nor from a sense of brotherhood, but because accountability both makes them personally uncomfortable and clashes with the dominance that they enjoy over the public (especially oppressed minorities).

On comfort: Accountability is a trade-off. Most people enjoy a certain right to privacy most of the time. Officers interacting with the public have no such right: Regular recording of these interactions results in good behavior, where privacy results in abuse, torture, and killing. But this argument only appeals to people who are concerned with what brings the greatest good. An officer who is unconcerned with the greatest good will only be swayed by their personal convenience and comfort. Doing your job with someone looking over your shoulder (or a camera monitoring your behavior) the whole time is annoying, even if you're not planning on doing anything wrong. There's an extra cognitive load in every decision you make, considering whether the observer would approve. In this case, that's a wildly good thing, equivalent to "using your brain to be a good person". But to the 85% of officers who are otherwise unmotivated to be a good person (see the first link above), it's a pointless way to make their job more annoying.

On dominance: In Siderea's essay on the two moral modes, she explains that many people (such as Trump's supporters) enjoy and defend the privilege of people in their in-group to do whatever they want to people not in their in-group, with no fear of repurcussions. Just having that privilege, that status, is important to them, even if they never wind up exercising it: Just like 99% of white southerners didn't own slaves, but were still willing to fight and die for the right of white people to own black people. (Don't try to tell me it was about states' rights. The leaders of the Confederacy were explicitly clear that defending slavery was their motivation.)

U.S. police have, and enjoy, that privilege, to a degree not found elsewhere in the civilized world. Even if you're an old, white male, asking them to tone down their abuse of a black person will get you clubbed in the head. (This was a recent incident, so similar to hoards of other blatant uses of excessive force that I can no longer find a link.) They are the dominant party in every interaction with the public. They can and will enforce that dominance in whatever way they wish, regardless of legalities, because they are the only ones with enforcement capacity: Their victims typically have no legal recourse. Herein lies the fundamental misunderstanding committed by anyone who thinks that knowing the law will do them any good. When an officer pulls you over illegally, to ask, "Am I being detained?" is to challenge their dominance. It asserts, "I know you have no legal right to hold me here, so you have to let me go." They will not let that challenge stand. Any dog, or socially aware junior high school student, knows that you don't challenge the dominance of someone who can break you.

Police officers' dominance is enforced by their guns and by their lack of accountability. This is why violating the "blue wall" of silence is such a crime: Even if a good cop only does it in order to protect someone from a bad cop, all of the other officers are keenly aware that a bastion of their dominance has just been weakened.

The saving grace here is that police resistance to reform is not an insurmountable obstacle. Some juristictions have succeeded in introducing body cameras, so obviously it can be done. Once accountability measures are implemented, officers will gradually get used to them. A few will resist and subvert these measures, but as soon as escaping scrutiny is not trivial, the vast majority will find it easier to just not wantonly abuse and kill people. A generation of enforced improved behavior will be a great start for changing police culture.