Counterproductive Activism

I'd like to quote from a Salon.com article I just saw a link to on Facebook.

To My White Male Facebook Friends

Hi! I need your help!

Some of you (not all of you, thank heavens) have been getting very defensive when issues of race and gender arise lately. Others have rolled your eyes and looked the other way. The best of you, of course, have been energized to join in the dialogue in a supportive, positive way. Whichever one of those groups you fit into, I'd like to make some heartfelt pleas about how we all look at these subjects, and how we look at ourselves when we're discussing them.

Well, I'd like to quote that, but I can't, because it's not what was written in the article. Here's how the author actually began her piece:

To My White Male Facebook Friends

This post is for my white male Facebook friends.

Some of the most disturbing, subtle, insidious, racist comments I’ve seen over the past few weeks have been from my white male Facebook friends. I know a lot of my friends are just mass defriending people, but I’m not quite there yet, because I’m (foolishly, naively) hoping I can reach some of you in a way that creates some kind of change. I know, I know, who ever had his mind changed from something he read on the Internet? But here I am, tilting at windmills.

First, let me say, I’m not addressing you to put you on the defensive. I don’t want to fight. But I really am hoping to reach your heart. So please start with holding what I’m going to say in love and openness, and see if you can let this reach your heart before you fight it with your brain meats.

Next, let me say, this doesn’t apply to all of you. There are some great allies, advocates and freedom fighters among my friends, and I ask you to join this discussion.

Notice how in paragraph four she implicitly acknowledges the blatant stereotyping that her headline and first three paragraphs have been indulging in. The absolute fact of the matter is that her piece is not aimed at all of her white male Facebook friends. The entire remainder of the article makes it clear that she's speaking only to those FBFs who are in denial about white privilege and gender discrimination.

Even if she didn't want to write the entire article in the style I used in my mock quote, how hard would it really have been to insert the words "some of" into her headline and first sentence?

You can't, can't, can't commit the crime of racial and gender stereotyping and then turn around and wag your finger at others for doing the same thing. You can't complain about racial and gender boxes and also complain that someone gets defensive when you put him in a race-and-gender box.

This isn't because you don't have the moral high ground with regard to the vast majority of the people you're addressing. It's because people have a legitimate right to feel defensive when you start stereotyping them. And even if the stereotype is 70% or 80% true in someone's case, that still means you're being 20-30% a jerk to them, and it's fully justifiable to get annoyed at someone who's being a jerk.

You also can't repeatedly tell people, "Stop being so defensive. Stop being so defensive. Stop being so defensive," and expect them to remain calm and objective in digesting your message.

These behaviors alienate people. They take people who are in the borderlands and push them away from our community of supposed inclusivity and egalitarianism. They make us sound like condescending know-it-alls who can't be bothered to wield our knowledge in a focused and responsible way.

I'm a white male feminist married to a black woman, and I'm fully aware that there are vestigal racist attitudes lurking in my psyche that I need to be on constant guard against. I completely understand and agree with the need to work against the phenomenon of white privilege, and that gender equality is woefully far from an achieved reality.

So if your article makes my blood boil and makes me think you're an arrogant, hypocritical, condescending twit, imagine how it must make a non-feminist, privilege-denying guy respond.

If you want to reach people, step one is to make them feel respected. If you want to demonstrate respect, step one is to treat your audience as individuals, not as a block of monolithic pathologies who need you to lecture to them.

And if you want to stop white male defensiveness, step one is to quit addressing your accusations and chastisements to all white males.