Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[Malthus]

Criticism about the perfect being the enemy of the good would similarly apply to people who would rather have the perfectly comfortable word than the actual fight.

I mean at this point, the Conservative propaganda machine is going to twist and villify any word being used and they are not motivated by a desire for appropriate semantics. They would find discrimination, disadvantage, etc. objectionable too. It was not tool long ago that a major conservative talking point was precisely that civil rights were achieved, and it was time to move on. A talking point backed by the actual dismantling of  anti-discriminatory legal architecture.

A lot of my activist friends, especially within Black communities, are just fed up at this point with demands that different words be used, because it is neither clear that those making those demands are willing to fight for the cause in meaningful ways, or would be if the words used were different; nor is it clear that changing words would actually achieve what it would. You and I have the great privilege - and I am sure you'd not object of labelling it this way - of finding work, enjoyment, and time in discussing the meaning of words in great detail. But their point to me was: spend at a minimum as much time talking about racial justice as you would arguing about the proper label to use.

Point is that people can disagree on what is, at base, a public relations strategy.

No-one is "demanding" anyone use or not use specific words. The argument here is that this particular slogan makes for a bad strategy, in that it doesn't produce the results that are wanted, and that seems an endemic problem for Progressives - see "defund the police" for another example.

Why must progressives insist on shooting themselves in the foot like this? Perhaps because they make everything a battle over authenticity - not about effectiveness. An authentic gesture is better, more emotionally satisfying, and will garner more respect than questioning its effectiveness, which will be seen as weak and pandering to the enemy.

Problem is a tendency to define an ever-greater percentage of the public as "the enemy" who ought not to be pandered to. Hence the tendency to make the perfect the enemy of the good.

[Razgovory]

I would focus on the systemic racism.  Make the argument that racist systems cause non-racist people to racist things without fulling understanding it.  While simplistic and not entirely true it is true enough to be helpful.  The point is to improve the lives of black people, if that means you need to off load guilt to an impersonal system to accomplish that, then that is the road you should take.

"Systemic racism" gets just as bad a "this is not the right term, choose your words more carefully treatment" as "white privilige" does. It gets the whole "I'm not a racist" response, followed by "you say the system is racist, but I know someone in the system and they're not racist," followed by "the system is messed up for everyone" and/ or "how do you know the system was picking on you, if Black people only followed police instructions/ didn't act Black/ didn't sell drugs/ whatever there wouldn't be a problem" line.

The issue is not the term. The issue is that people who prefer living in a world where white privilege is entrenched use every rhetorical trick in the book to dissemble, and other people fall for it. But no matter what terms are employed, the regressive right will mount a massive assault on it to make it anathema.

It is not helped by some lefty diehards obnoxiously wielding the term as a bludgeon, but the core problem is that people don't want to consider the content of the term.

Then what is the point?  If all those people who disagree with you are simply bad racist people what is the point of protests and writings etc?  Why bother saying anything?

[grumbler]

I'm totally down for switching terms to try to reach and persuade a wider audience. I do, however, make the prediction that if we make "systemic racism" the main term used to discuss the issue then "systemic racism" will be declared a poor term unfit for purpose by the usual suspects in short order.

Systemic racism has the virtue (or the vice, if you are a fanatic) of not ascribing guilt to any person or group.  It's like an earthquake - it happened because of things outside anyone's direct control.  But its effects can be ameliorated if we decide to be concerned about that (and for most of human history nothing was done about earthquakes).  Systemic racism is a "disease" that can be "treated" without making anyone feel guilty. 

"White privilege" is effectively an accusation, and doesn't even contain in it any indication that it can be ameliorated. 

The problem is racism, not "white something something."

[Berkut]

o address the actual issues.
After all we are addressing a meme, propaganda really meant to convince others that the right wing views are correct, not an actual issue. If we are going to have a political fight though, a battle of propaganda, having the best words would help. Just saying.

I actually disagree: I don't think the "best words" are always the more inocuous ones. As garbon has said, Republicans have not done a great deal of effort carefully curating their words to the delicate sensibility of centrists. Continuously rehashing how privilege is a terrible word (unsurprisingly, I don't think it is) is in fact yielding the ground to a conservative agenda. It may be that the Democratic coalition requires such degree of semantic artistry, carefully avoiding any word that would give a hint of a progressive agenda, whereas Republicans can rely in built-in institutional failures to remain in power, in which case, maybe the Democrats need a fucking clue and stay disciplined about messaging.   

I totally get what you are saying, and I agree with it. It does seem like the left has to dance around terms and go to ridiculous efforts to try to craft a message. While the right just talks about the most stupid shit, and are fine with "lock her up!" or "build the wall!" and nobody seems to care how stupid their labels are....

But here is the thing that drives me nuts. We are the good guys, and this should be a simple, trivially won debate. We have the science on our side, the facts, the sociology, the simple reason, even the basic common sense.

And yet.....almost half of the voters still say "Yeah, that Trump guy seems like the best bet".

The progressives are doing SOMETHING wrong. Their message is failing to get to a lot of people. I think there is a very real problem that the left crafts their messages for the left, and doesn't bother trying to reach anyone else. The right does this as well, of course, but they don't seem interested in reaching anyone else and hence don't care that their message is just obvious bullshit.

I don't know what the answer is overall. I do know that I can see that the progressive left absolutely sucks at messaging though. They have all the things that ought to mean they should be crusing the right in the court of public debate, and by and large they are winning. But by margins that are distressingly narrow considering the import of the discussion.

I want to figure out how they can do better. And a term like "white privilege" or "defund the police"...well, we can sit here and argue amongst ourselves all day long about how they really are accurate terms, but the fact is that there is no question that in both cases the terms are not helping convince anyone not already convinced.

[Jacob]

"Systemic racism" gets just as bad a "this is not the right term, choose your words more carefully treatment" as "white privilige" does. It gets the whole "I'm not a racist" response, followed by "you say the system is racist, but I know someone in the system and they're not racist," followed by "the system is messed up for everyone" and/ or "how do you know the system was picking on you, if Black people only followed police instructions/ didn't act Black/ didn't sell drugs/ whatever there wouldn't be a problem" line.

The issue is not the term. The issue is that people who prefer living in a world where white privilege is entrenched use every rhetorical trick in the book to dissemble, and other people fall for it. But no matter what terms are employed, the regressive right will mount a massive assault on it to make it anathema.

It is not helped by some lefty diehards obnoxiously wielding the term as a bludgeon, but the core problem is that people don't want to consider the content of the term.

Then what is the point?  If all those people who disagree with you are simply bad racist people what is the point of protests and writings etc?  Why bother saying anything?

Is this a rhetorical question? Because I certainly didn't say that "people who disagree with me are simply bad racist people."

I said: some people do in fact enjoy the benefits they accrue from white privilege and use every rhetorical technique they can to undermine critiques of white privilege, whatever term is used. Other people are persuaded by those rhetorical techniques, even if they may otherwise be amenable to listening to critiques of white privilege.

And suggested that if we start using "systemic racism" instead of "white privilege" we'll see the same rhetorical assault on that term, and the people who are put off by "white privilege" as a term now, without being particularly racist, will be put off by the term "systemic racism" once the people who do prefer white privilege get going with their rhetoric.

[garbon]

Search fox News and systemic racism into Google. You'll see the term is untenable as conservatives have already denied its existence or that it exists in the American body politic.

I would suggest there are those on the right uninterested about race as it does no affect them. As such there is no ideal term that will pique their interest.

And then to the extent that the Republicans can paint Democrats as a party who only cares about minorities, any terms used are free targets of mockery and denial.

[Razgovory]

"Systemic racism" gets just as bad a "this is not the right term, choose your words more carefully treatment" as "white privilige" does. It gets the whole "I'm not a racist" response, followed by "you say the system is racist, but I know someone in the system and they're not racist," followed by "the system is messed up for everyone" and/ or "how do you know the system was picking on you, if Black people only followed police instructions/ didn't act Black/ didn't sell drugs/ whatever there wouldn't be a problem" line.

The issue is not the term. The issue is that people who prefer living in a world where white privilege is entrenched use every rhetorical trick in the book to dissemble, and other people fall for it. But no matter what terms are employed, the regressive right will mount a massive assault on it to make it anathema.

It is not helped by some lefty diehards obnoxiously wielding the term as a bludgeon, but the core problem is that people don't want to consider the content of the term.

Then what is the point?  If all those people who disagree with you are simply bad racist people what is the point of protests and writings etc?  Why bother saying anything?

Is this a rhetorical question? Because I certainly didn't say that "people who disagree with me are simply bad racist people."

I said: some people do in fact enjoy the benefits they accrue from white privilege and use every rhetorical technique they can to undermine critiques of white privilege, whatever term is used. Other people are persuaded by those rhetorical techniques, even if they may otherwise be amenable to listening to critiques of white privilege.

And suggested that if we start using "systemic racism" instead of "white privilege" we'll see the same rhetorical assault on that term, and the people who are put off by "white privilege" as a term now, without being particularly racist, will be put off by the term "systemic racism" once the people who do prefer white privilege get going with their rhetoric.

Okay, I misread your post.  Sorry about that.

[Berkut]

Search fox News and systemic racism into Google. You'll see the term is untenable as conservatives have already denied its existence or that it exists in the American body politic.

Wait - so your metric for being untenable is that conservatives deny that it exists? Really? They deny that white privilege exists as well, they deny that climate change exists. Are you arguing that we should stop using the term climate change as well?

This is a public debate. Those who want to protect the status quo and their own privilege are going to attack and term used to label the issue at hand. You can call climate change global warming, things getting hotter, whatever - those who want to keep burning carbon are going to attack all of them. That doesn't make any particular term untenable.

It does mean it makes sense to find terms that are not going to just emotionally piss off the very people you are trying to sway to your side.

I would suggest there are those on the right uninterested about race as it does no affect them. As such there is no ideal term that will pique their interest.

Of course - there are those on the other side of the debate who do not care whether white privilege exists or systemic racism exists or not - they don't want things to change, and will fight against it no matter what label you put on it. That doesn't mean the label doesn't matter, so we might as well pick something that makes US feel deliciously woke rather then a label (like systemic racism) that describes the problem well, but doesn't tend to get the very people we are trying to convince defensive because it sounds a lot like a direct attack on them.

The term is so clearly counter productive. What we need to be convincing people of is that *even though THEY may not be racist assholes, and even though THEIR actions may not be directly harming others, others are in fact being harmed anyway, and fixing that harm requires that even people like themselves who are not directly responsible for that harm have to understand, think about, and DO something about it*. Using a term that for many of them immediately sounds a hell of a lot like "this is YOUR fault! YOU are enjooying "privileges" you don't deserve!" YOU ARE THE PROBLEM is nuts.

This is such a classic examples of the adage that conservatives care about winning elections, and liberal care about winning debates.

And then to the extent that the Republicans can paint Democrats as a party who only cares about minorities, any terms used are free targets of mockery and denial.

Of course. No reason to make it easier for them though.

[garbon]

But they are part of the problem.

[garbon]

Anyway if you want to fiddle with terminology have at it. I don't think there's much more to say on the topic.

[Berkut]

But they are part of the problem.

Of course they are.

Remember, I absolutely agree that "white privilege" is actually an excellent term for describing the basic problem, once you understand what it is means (or more importantly perhaps, once you understand what it DOES NOT mean).

They are absolutely part of the problem. So how do we convince them to do, act, and vote differently? Given that we know how reluctant humans are to ever admit they are part of any problem, and how willing those who actively do not want to fix the problem will exploit that human tendency?

"White privilege" is basically saying the best way to handle this is to grab them by the back of the head and shove their face into it and demand they admit it's their fault. It's the demand that we win the debate, and who cares if we win the next vote.

That might be true, but if the goal is to convince, it won't work. And it hasn't worked. Indeed, I would argue that among those who we are trying to convince, the use of rhetoric like "white privilege" and "defund the police" has badly backfired, and we are considerably further from making non-progressives understand this then we were say 10 years ago.

[frunk]

The progressives are doing SOMETHING wrong. Their message is failing to get to a lot of people. I think there is a very real problem that the left crafts their messages for the left, and doesn't bother trying to reach anyone else. The right does this as well, of course, but they don't seem interested in reaching anyone else and hence don't care that their message is just obvious bullshit.

I don't know what the answer is overall. I do know that I can see that the progressive left absolutely sucks at messaging though. They have all the things that ought to mean they should be crusing the right in the court of public debate, and by and large they are winning. But by margins that are distressingly narrow considering the import of the discussion.

I don't think it is entirely the progressive's fault, and they definitely don't have all the advantages.  We are at a point where large parts of the population are seeing their financial and social positions deteriorating, with a not at all certain future.  They are in a position that is ripe for demagoguery, and the right has the propaganda channels and simple language that taps into the base fear these people are experiencing.

We have a political party that is encouraged to drive more people into those desperate situations as it increases their audience.  They've convinced people that "socialism" or any other attempt to actually help them other than giving rich people/corporations more money will destroy the country.  How do you get through that?

[Jacob]

Okay, I misread your post.  Sorry about that.

All good

[Berkut]

The progressives are doing SOMETHING wrong. Their message is failing to get to a lot of people. I think there is a very real problem that the left crafts their messages for the left, and doesn't bother trying to reach anyone else. The right does this as well, of course, but they don't seem interested in reaching anyone else and hence don't care that their message is just obvious bullshit.

I don't know what the answer is overall. I do know that I can see that the progressive left absolutely sucks at messaging though. They have all the things that ought to mean they should be crusing the right in the court of public debate, and by and large they are winning. But by margins that are distressingly narrow considering the import of the discussion.

I don't think it is entirely the progressive's fault, and they definitely don't have all the advantages.  We are at a point where large parts of the population are seeing their financial and social positions deteriorating, with a not at all certain future.  They are in a position that is ripe for demagoguery, and the right has the propaganda channels and simple language that taps into the base fear these people are experiencing.

We have a political party that is encouraged to drive more people into those desperate situations as it increases their audience.  They've convinced people that "socialism" or any other attempt to actually help them other than giving rich people/corporations more money will destroy the country.  How do you get through that?

With some left wing populism of our own. Start crafting a message to appeal to those people, rather than a message that appeals to intellectuals who are already convinced.

I don't think it is entirely the lefts fault either - I don't even think it is mostly the lefts fault. Fighting against authoritarian neo-fascism dressed up as individualistic "patriotism" is not easy, as many have learned throughout history.

But when something is hard to do, that means we should work harder to do it, and do so with more care and thought, not less.

There is plenty that the left does that just totally own-goals ourselves though. There is rampant hyposcrisy, plenty of mob rule stupidity, and this kind of petulant embrace of symbols and labels that seem, to me, to be mostly about signalling how woke we all are, rather then actually wanting to accomplish anything, much less simply win political fights. The GOP controls a majority of the governors positions, a majority of state legislatures, and keeps somehow managing to convince nearly half the voters that their message is palatable. We are doing something wrong.

Again, I said this before - this debate is such a perfect example of the "Liberals want to win debates, and conservatives want to win elections" stereotype. Nobody defending the use of the term white privilege has done so on the basis that they actually think it will help win a single election - only on the basis that it is a valid term. Which it is, and which it won't.

[Tamas]

Actually since somebody mentioned climate change - it's a good example.

Last couple of years or so I have noticed a definitive move away from "global warming" into "climate change" as the name for it.

Which I think has had to help. "global warming" is easy to ridicule (and often was) when you are hit with unusually cold weather. But when you are facing chaotic weather, it is far easier to explain the concept it is because "climate change".

It is a meaningless difference if you paid attention to the issue to any degree, but a lot of people haven't.