Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand
Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand
you don't get to insist that no one talks about your political project and it's weak and pathetic that you think you do
Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand
You know personally I’ve been achingly specific about my critiques of social justice politics, but fine - no woke, it’s a “dogwhistle” for racism. (The term “dogwhistle” is a way for people to simply impute attitudes you don’t hold onto you, to make it easier to dismiss criticism, for the record.) But the same people say there’s no such thing as political correctness, and they also say identity politics is a bigoted term. So I’m kind of at a loss. Also, they propose sweeping changes to K-12 curricula, but you can’t call it CRT, even though the curricular documents specifically reference CRT, and if you do you’re an idiot and also you’re a racist cryptofascist. Also nobody (nobody!) ever advocated for defunding the police, and if they did it didn’t actually mean defunding the police. Seems to be a real resistance to simple, comprehensible terms around here. Serwer is a guy who constantly demands that he and his allies be allowed to do politics on easy mode, but he’s just part of a broader communal rejection of basic self-definition and comprehensible terms for this political tendency. Also if you say things they don’t like they might try to beat you up. Emphasis on try.
If you ask these people, are you part of a social revolution?, they’ll loudly tell you yes! Yes they are! They’re going to shake society at its very foundations. Well, OK then -what do I call your movement? You reject every name that organically develops! I’ll use the name you pick, but you have to actually pick one. You can’t just bitch on Twitter every time someone tries to describe your political cohort, which again you yourself say intends to change the world. Name yourself or you will be named.
The basic stance of the social justice set, for a long time now, has been that they are 100% exempt from ordinary politics. BlackLivesMatter proponents have spent a year and a half acting as though their demand for justice is so transcendently, obviously correct that they don’t have to care about politics. When someone like David Shor gently says that they in fact do have to care about politics, and points out that they’ve accomplished nothing, they attack him rather than do the work of making their positions popular. Well, sooner or later, guys, you have to actually give a shit about what people who aren’t a part of your movement think. Sorry. That’s life. The universe is indifferent to your demand for justice, and will remain so until you bother to try to change minds. Nobody gives you what you want. That’s not how it works. Do politics. Think and speak strategically. Be disciplined. Work harder. And for fuck’s sake, give me a simple term to use to address you. Please? Because right now it sure looks like you don’t want to be named because you don’t want to be criticized.
Edit: I might not have underlined this point enough - I sincerely am asking for a better term and would happily use one if offered. If woke, political correctness, identity politics, etc, are inflammatory terms, I'd be happy to substitute something that's not. But surely something is happening in our politics, and we have to be able to talk about it. So I'm asking for a name.
There are a handful of these people I engage with semi regularly (mostly women, many former/questioning evangelicals who don’t yet recognize they’re filling the Church Need with a new social based dogma) and any time I make a reasonable comment or ask a reasonable question, I literally get ignored. Total silence.
Here’s an example. One woman casually dropped in an otherwise loosely related Instagram post “what are you doing to keep from raising little white assholes?”
I replied: “I imagine the best way to not raise little white assholes is similar to the way Asian parents don’t raise little Asian assholes, or Iranian parents don’t raise little Persian assholes, or Latino parents don’t raise little Latino assholes: By teaching them that every person is an individual with unique life experiences, interests, and cultural traditions, and to not assign moral value or deficit to any person based on their immutable phenotypical characteristics. To approach every person with curiosity and good intentions. To realize that so many of life’s “blessings” can be chalked up to good luck, but they should always live as if their actions and words matter.”
Zero responses to that.
This was glorious, thank you.
On “dog whistles”: Last week, Tom Cotton was on Fox news complaining about the teachers’ union president and he said: “Randi Weingarten is a joke. Randi Weingarten does not even have children of her own. What in the hell does she know about raising and teaching kids? In fact that’s probably why she was perfectly fine to shut down schools for two years and force kids to wear masks, because she didn’t have to deal with it at home.”
They called this a “homophobic dog whistle” and also an affront to every teacher who doesn’t have children. Tom Cotton does seem to be homophobic in general, but it’s ridiculous to read this as an effort to stoke anti-lesbian prejudice. Why would he even need to do that, when parents are extremely pissed about the school closures? But they call it a “dog whistle” because they know that Cotton’s actual message resonates with voters.
This tactic might work on some people, but when it stops working it really stops working. Parents are fed up with being told they’re prejudiced when they know they’re not.
Randi calling it a dog whistle: https://twitter.com/rweingarten/status/1456085062584311817