Okay, so in my little corner of the internet we’ve been
talking a lot about how to deal with white supremacists/racists/misogynists who
refuse to respond when called out. The Liberal view, the view that I have
always had, is that these are Good People who just don’t understand the
implications of what they’re saying and that we need to meet them where they
are and do the emotional work for them so they will see how harmful their views are.
This is coming up again while I listen to Immigants (We Get
the Job Done) from the Hamilton Mixtape (by far my favorite song on this album
besides Dessa’s). How is it possible that people hate immigrants? That “immigrant”
has become a bad word in this country? I mean, if you want to talk about white and
nationalistic privilege I am about as high on the scale as you can get. I had
an ancestor on the Mayflower, I had one who signed the Declaration of
Independence, I had ancestors on both sides of the Civil War, everyone in my
entire family – both sides – was in this “country” before 1700 – before it was
one. If I can see that our country is built on the murder of millions of Native
Americans, forced immigration/slavery/oppression of African Americans and oppressed
and vilified immigrants from all over the world – that we wouldn’t exist
without them and that they make our country and our lives measurably better and
that it is ridiculous to deny immigrants, especially refugees, entrance to our
country and equal rights and every possibility that is supposed to be the
cornerstone of being an American…if I can see all that other people must just
not be looking. If I could just open their eyes. If I could just trigger their
empathy. They have to be able to feel it. They HAVE to. It’s just ignorance,
and ignorance has to be fought with information. Right?
But through a conversation with Gordon I realized that for
anyone spouting these views who is unwilling to engage when they are called out
it isn’t really about ignorance. They don’t really think that nonwhite
people/people of other faiths/women/immigrants aren’t people…they just don’t actually care
whether they are or not. This argument is physically painful to me, that someone could not be blind to what they're doing but actually just not care, but I think that it's true of most of the kind of bigots we're talking about. You can’t
get them to engage their empathy because they are purposely shutting it off.
They want things to be better for them
and they don’t give a flying fuck about anyone else in the world and they’re
using bigoted rhetoric to advance that position. Engaging their cover
argument legitimizes it.
Here is the paraphrased conversation I just had with Gordon
that finally has me feeling like giving up on arguing sense and empathy into
humans who refuse to employ them and instead focusing my energy elsewhere.
There are two ways this conversation goes:
Bigot: Group X aren’t people and don’t deserve the same
rights as me and I’m going to crush them for my own benefit.
You: You can’t say that! Group X are real people and you
should care about them and imagine them complexly and think about it from their
perspective here let me explain why…
You will lose. You have already lost by engaging because
they don’t care whether they should care or not. They don’t. You can’t convince
them. You will expend a huge amount of emotional energy and they will MAYBE
come away with something to think about that MIGHT EVENTUALLY blossom into understanding but they WILL NOT immediately change
their mind except in EXTREMELY rare circumstances.
Bigot: Group X aren’t people and don’t deserve the same
rights as me and I’m going to crush them for my own benefit.
You: You cannot say that.
Them: Stop me.
You: I will.
That is the only way you win. Don't convince them. Stop them.
