Righteous Anger, Civility, and Silencing: Responses to Being Criticized for Racism, Ableism, or Homophobia

ALISON REIHELDDEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHYSIUE

DISCUSSIONStep 1: with 2-3 of your neighborsStep 2: altogether, now

Have you ever criticized someone passionately, someone who perhaps doesn't listen when you speak calmly, only to be told they "can't hear you when you're angry"? 

Do you think there is something to this? Should people not show anger?

Pile on Dr. ReiheldThere are lots of systems of privilege in the United States. Look at me, listen to me, think about my social role and profession.

As a woman, I suffer from sexism.

But there are loads of “axes of oppression” on which I benefit from social privilege. What are some things about me that give me privilege? Think of it another way. What are some traits I DON’T have that would make my life harder? DISCUSS WITH YOUR NEIGHBOR

THE POINT: someone could certainly criticize me, personally, for my discriminatory or unjust behavior BUT they could also criticize the system that benefits me, and I might mistake that for a

criticism of meEither way, I might get defensive or want to dismiss their criticism.

Angry when they made their critique? All the easier

What I am NOT talking about Why it’s a bad idea to get angry about racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, or any other

form of systemic discrimination or cruelty and deprivation based on group membership How to not get angry about that stuff How, as a member of a group that is discriminated against, to effectively make change

What I AM talking about How responses to anger about that stuff—responses made by those who are being

criticized—work… …especially with respect to the response that righteous anger is “uncivil” …especially with respect to responses that attempt to “silence” the angry speaker

Criticism from members of these groups to: the mainstream from progressive movements (EX: civil rights ovement) AND from within progressive movements to group leadership (EX: black women angry that the civil

rights movement didn’t address their women’s issues; that the feminist movement didn’t address their women’s issues)

SO, 3 key concepts: civility, silencing, and anger

First, some examplesAudre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger”: “I speak out of direct and particular anger [at racism] at an academic conference, and a white woman says, ‘Tell me how you feel but don’t say it too harshly or I cannot hear you.’ …A white academic welcomes the appearance of a collection by non-Black women of Color. ‘It allows me to deal with racism without dealing with the harshness of Black women,’ she says…”

A trans woman has been discriminated against at her place of work, including harassment followed by dismissal, first during and then after her transition despite decades of success in this profession and with this company. She is suing her former employer under federal and state non-discrimination laws. Her family has told her to calm down, that she has no right to “act like a victim”, that she should have known suing would be hard, and she should stop complaining and “shut up.”

Protestors in Ferguson, MO, in the days after the Michael Brown shooting, raised issues of systemic police and criminal justice injustice against black and poor Americans. They were greeted with responses by many in the mainstream along the lines of “why are you so angry?” and “no one will respect you if you are angry” and told to settle down, go home, and let justice work. What we have here, said one commentator, is “a failure of civility.” Be responsible, they are told, be civil. Why can’t you be calm like those Hong Kong protesters with their black umbrellas?

Several nations in Europe (Russia, etc.) have, in the last decade, enacted laws that treat advocacy of LGBT issues as a criminal offense, whether or not one is LGBT.

A young man with dwarfism has chained himself to a railing as part of a protest against government policies that put people like him in institutions instead of providing care at home. He is wearing a t-shirt that says “Feisty Crip.” “Don’t treat us like broken bodies to be warehoused out of sight! Let us live in our own

…homes, our hometowns! I am not ashamed!” A man passing by tells him to shut up and stop yelling at him. Another man says “write a letter to the editor, man.” A woman yells at the whole group of disabled protestors “hey, how the hell am I supposed to get to work?”

Civility

Take from the paper

TWO FORMS I IDENTIFY: Civility qua social stability Civility qua respect for persons

If we’re thinking well and critically as you listen, what questions do you have about what I just said? (there should be several!)

qua: fancy Latin for “in the capacity of; as being”; used to distinguish more than one sense of the same word.

Two forms of civility

Civility qua social stability

Civility qua respect for persons

Cris Mayo: Civility can be used to repress everything from raising uncomfortable topics to “heinously nonconformist behavior” accompanied by the command “don’t rock the boat.”What are some examples of “heinously nonconformist behavior” that might be seen as rocking the boat, e.g. a deliberate challenge to the status quot?Can you think of any examples of uncomfortable topics that might be squashed in the name of civility?

The demand for civility qua social stability is generally what is made when people say “be civil.”Civility qua respect for persons would allow anger and protest in order to obtain respect for persons.

SILENCINGTo refuse to recognize another’s speech either at all or, if at all, as it is meant to be taken.

(Kristie Dotson)

“Silencing signifies a terror of words, a fear of talk….In the odd study of what’s not said in school, it is crucial to analyze(1) Whom silencing protects(2) The practices by which silencing is institutionalized

in asymmetric power relations…Silencing removes any documentation that all is not well…”

(Michelle Fine and Lois Weis)

SilencingIris Marion Young:, Justice and the Politics of Difference:

Marginalization, 1of Young’s 5 Faces of Oppression“…people the system… cannot or will not use” by virtue of their membership in a particular social group“A whole category of people is expelled from useful participation in social life and thus potentially subjected to severe material deprivation…”“Most of our society’s productive and recognized activities take place in contexts of organized social cooperation, and social structures and processes that close persons out of participation in such social cooperation are unjust… deprivation of cultural, practical, and institutionalized conditions for exercising capacities in a context of recognition and interaction.” (my emphasis)In the US: “…old people, and increasingly people who are not very old but get laid off from their jobs and cannot find new work; young people, especially Black or Latino, who cannot find first or second jobs; many single mothers and their children; other people involuntarily unemployed; many mentally and physically disabled people; American Indians, especially those on reservations.”

Silencing is a TECHNIQUE of marginalization.

ANGER

For our purposes, not all anger is righteous anger.EX: road rageEX: MSU students rioting when the Spartans winEX: MSU students rioting when the Spartans lose

Righteous anger: anger felt, and expressed, at injustice

Whereas silencing is a tool of injustice, righteous anger is a response to injustice.

AngerAudre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger”:

“My response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight. My fear of anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also.Women responding to racism means women responding to anger; Anger of exclusion, of unquestioned privilege, of racial distortions, of silence, ill-use, stereotyping, defensiveness, misnaming, betrayal, and co-optation.My anger is a response to racist attitudes and to the actions and presumptions that arise out of those attitudes. If your dealings with other women reflect those attitudes, then my anger and your attendant fears are spotlights that can be used for growth in the same way I have used learning to express anger for my growth. But for corrective surgery, not guilt. Guilt and defensiveness are bricks in a wall against which we all flounder; they serve none of our futures.”

Can anyone rephrase this? What does Lorde think the “uses of anger” are?

Anger, cont.Lorde, speaking to the white women whose concerns dominate the feminist movement:

“What women here is so enamoured of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman’s face?”

What do you think she means?“No woman is responsible for altering the psyche of her oppressor, even when that psyche is embodied in another woman… We use whatever strengths we have fought for, including anger, to help define and fashion a world where all our sisters can grow, where our children can love…”

Don’t let a misplaced focus on the fact that I am angry distract you! Hear the message behind my anger, the injustice that makes me rightly angry.

“For it is not the anger of Black women which is dripping down over this globe like a diseased liquid. It is not my anger that launches rockets, spends over sixty thousand dollars a second on missiles and other agents of war and death, slaughters children in cities, stockpiles nerve gas and chemical bombs… It is not the anger of Black women which corrodes into blind, dehumanizing power, bent upon the annihilation of us all unless we meet it with… our power to envision and to reconstruct, anger by painful anger, stone upon heavy stone, a future of pollinating difference and the earth to support our choices. We welcome all woman who can meet us, face to face, beyond objectification and beyond guilt.”

Responses to Righteous Anger about Injustice maintain the status quoLyman

When it works well: Reciprocity

Of the demand for civility The powerful can demand that the weaker parties be civil With reciprocity, the weaker parties can also demand that the powerful be

civil Of being an audience for one’s concerns (not silencing, but

“uptake”: taking up someone’s remarks as they are intended) “Speakers require audiences to ‘meet’ their effort ‘halfway’ in a

linguistic exchange… to communicate we all need an audience willing and capable of hearing us.” (Dotson)

But when silencing and demands for civility are the reactions to righteous anger, there is not reciprocity.Indeed, there is righteous anger in part because there is not reciprocity.

CONCLUSION

Without genuine reciprocity, demands for civility maintain the status quo.Without genuine reciprocity, responses to righteous anger maintain the status quo.Without genuine reciprocity, responses to righteous anger often involve silencing.

It is the lack of genuine reciprocity which signals oppression or injustice in the first place.

Is it a trap? Are we stuck in a cycle of injustice where no one can hear the cries of the angry and misused?

NO!

Conclusion, cont.: NOT A TRAP

REMEMBER LORDE: Fear of anger will teach you nothing. Anger is a scalpel for healing, not a tool for guilt; guilt and defensiveness (“But I am not personally oppressing anyone!”) get us nowhere.

THE WAY OUT: Anger as a call to justice, to be heard. Not an excuse to dismiss the angry with silencing/civility

Check yourself before you wreck yourself: when YOU are criticized, or a system from which you benefit is criticized, DON’T

Get defensive (make it about protecting yourself), or feel guilty (woe is me; lament without action)

Silence the speaker (shut up; you brought it on yourself; I can’t hear you when you yell) Tell them to be more civil (go home; be calm; restore order, then we’ll talk)

We are all of us works in progress. We all need a little bit of calling out. And when someone bothers to tell us what is wrong, they are calling us in, as well. Let yourself get called out, and in.

WORKS CITED, abbreviated

Kristie Dotson. “Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing.” Hypatia 26(2).

Michelle Fine and Lois Weis. Silenced Voices and Extraordinary Conversations: Re-imagining Schools

Audre Lorde. “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism.” Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches by Audre Lorde..

Lyman Reiheld. “Asking Too Much? Civility vs. Pluralism.” Forthcoming in Philosophical Topics. 2015.

Iris Marion Young. Justice and the Politics of Difference.

PRACTICE: what are you tempted to say in response to this person’s anger?BASED ON A REAL CASE: A person using arm brace crutches is struggling to open the door. You rush to help and grab it to pull it open. The person nearly falls, wobbling to fall against the opposite door. She looks at you angrily and says, “Dude, think before you act! What did you think was going to happen? Instead of rescuing me, you nearly hurt me way worse than a little struggle opening a door!”

BASED ON A REAL CASE: You are planning an on-campus activity. One of the people invited to the activity is a paraplegic powerchair user. You scheduled the activity in an available room of the right size, and pick the fanciest one to impress the attendees. On the day of the activity, you get a call from the invited speaker who is outside the building. It turns out that the only way for a chair user to enter the building is through the service entrance past the trash bins. You help this person navigate up to the floor on which the activity will take place, but there is a step up from the main level to the wing in which the room is located. You suggest the speaker can get out of the chair, manually move his body At this point, the invited speaker says “This is the last straw. You invited me. You knew I was coming. And you couldn’t even bother to see if I could get into the building? Then you expect me to crawl around on the floor in my dress clothes like a baby? No way!” He leaves.

PRACTICE: protesters on the quadBASED ON A REAL CASE THAT OCCURRED RECENTLY AT MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY: It is a beautiful early fall day. You are walking across your campus near the main quad when you see that your path is obstructed by a student group making a whole lot of noise. As you get closer, you see that the group consists of a mix of African-American and other students holding signs that say “hands up, don’t shoot” and “no peace without justice.” These are the slogans used at the Ferguson protests over the shooting of Michael Brown. You say to a friend “good lord, why do they have to put on such a production?” Somebody near you says “This is so stupid.” Your friend mutters, under her breath, “I wish they would just go home.” “Home to where?” you ask. “Wherever. Ferguson… Hey! Go back to Ferguson!”

What happened, here? Use the ideas we’ve been discussing.