The Democrat’s Fatal Flaw, Was Trying to Control What People Think by Lecturing Them
I’ve been thinking a lot about what went wrong.
Many libs have the tendency to blame something that was already bugging them, and I am 100% about to do just that. However, I’m not completely sure I’m off base either.
People seem to be really, really mad about woke culture. In my non-expert opinion, I think it was the deciding factor. I think if it wasn’t for a simmering, silent rage toward “wokeness” that was finally allowed to be expressed under Trump’s candidacy, I don’t think he would have won. Maybe I’m wrong. But, Kamala is for they/them, President Trump if for you really seems to epitomize the vibe of the election for me.
So, why were people so angry about woke?
I’m the dreaded “San Francisco liberal” and even I kind of get why people were mad about woke. Actually, maybe I get it more than most people because I have been *awash* in the woke for the past decade.
I’ve been to a few “white privilege” trainings and, while I still respect the intention of the people teaching them… I don’t think any of the methods of confronting racism in these trainings were based in evidence. Certainly, the world seems more racist, sexist, homophobic and definitely transphobic than in recent memory, despite having more anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia and anti-transphobia activism than ever before.
A lot of people are framing it as “wow, people must be REALLY prejudiced to still be racist/sexist/etc. after all that activism” but like… what if activism made it worse? What if things like “sensitivity” training actually makes people more prejudiced?
I just started listening to the audiobook version of How Minds Change which… talks about the science behind how people change their minds. McRaney starts out the book detailing a highly effective gay rights activist group in LA, which had an unusually high success rate at getting people to change their mind on the issue of gay marriage. The short version of their technique boiled down to, when an activist goes to talk to an anti gay person, they should spend most of their time listening to the other person. The activist then asks prompting questions, like “are there any gay people in your life?” to get the person to think aloud about their thoughts on queer issues.
And, I think the sort of a-ha moment is, you have to get people to talk themselves out of their own beliefs. You can’t change their mind by talking at them. So, sometimes people will answer their questions, like, “well, actually my cousin is a lesbian. I haven’t seen her in years, but we always had fun growing up,” or something. Then, you kind of explore their memories and their beliefs around this, and often when people start thinking about people they actually know or have met, they start softening on some of these issues. But, it takes engagement with them in their reality, talking about their memories, and their feelings to get any movement. Anyway, I’m not trained in this and I’m sure there’s more nuance, but what struck me is, this is kind of the opposite of how most activism and diversity training works.
For comparison, consider this DiAngelo quote on white people’s opinions on race:
We must be willing to consider that unless we have devoted intentional and ongoing study, our opinions are necessarily uninformed, even ignorant. How can I say that if you are white, your opinions on racism are most likely ignorant, when I don’t even know you? I can say so because nothing in mainstream US culture gives us the information we need to have the nuanced understanding of arguably the most complex and enduring social dynamic of the last several hundred years.
White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
I have had to read her book multiple times, for multiple “confronting white privilege” groups I’ve been in, and it’s always a miserable read.
Note that she effectively starts a conversation with me by insulting me — telling me that I’m uninformed and ignorant. And, she’s also implicitly framing herself above me in this scenario by saying that only white people who have done intentional and ongoing study can possibly have informed opinions on race.
By which she presumably means, white people like her.
This seems to be the literal opposite technique to listening; rather, she lectures and talks down to you. It’s also worth pointing out, she made a bunch of money on her books, and shot to fame during the George Floyd protest period. So, she is literally a white woman profiting financially on racism against people of color, which is certainly a vibe. Actually, it’s more than a vibe; it’s a conflict of interest.
DiAngelo may be an expert on race, but I’d posit, she’s not an expert on communication techniques that are likely to help white people cange their implicit bias. And, it’s also important to point out, it’s actually not to her benefit that white people become less racist because she is making money on white people’s racism.
In fact, the best financial situation for her, is if the world gets more racist, because then there’s more need for her books and her trainings. She is not financially incentivized to provide techniques that actually work, and worst case, is she’s incentivized to actually do things to make people more racist. It reminds me of like all those popular crash diets that eventually cause people to put on the weight again, which means then need to go on another diet. Racial sensitivity training that causes an eventual “racism rebound” would be the financially most stable model for the industry, as they get repeat customers.
This actually leads to an interesting overall conflict of interest which can come up with activists; many activists get a lot of purpose and meaning out of their activism. If their cause gets fixed, they no longer have meaning, and sometimes activist groups lose their way because they become more interested in preserving the group than they become in fixing the problem they brought up. Not always, but sometimes — however, the groups it happens to will likely become the most long lived and most powerful groups.
I do think some of this happened with activism on the left. There was an unwillingness to compromise on unpopular issues, a desire among elite activists to gain social status and money by presenting themselves as “experts” while casting others as “ignorant bigots” which was obviously a highly ineffective strategy at actually changing opinions. And like, it kind of worked for a while to the activists benefit.
Until Trump came and blew the whole thing up by making it popular to give zero fucks about being an ignorant bigot.
And, a population of people that was sick of being condescended to ate it right up, and now we’re fucked.
Truth is, I’m not even mad at the activists. I actually see this as an inevitability of the capitalist system; only activists who make money can survive, and it seems that making money and fixing the problem you want to fix can literally be at odds. Because, if an activist group actually fixes a problem, they will no longer make money off that problem.
And, I know, I know — people think they’re good people, and this would never happen to them, but here’s the thing; I don’t think it’s conscious. I think it’s that, if you imagine a smorgasbord of activists all trying different techniques, the techniques that make the problem worse will rise to the top in our culture, because they will get the most money, and there’s usually no accountability loop around activist success.
I also think it’s why it’s damn hard to find an effective weight loss strategy in the US; if a company actually finds a way of helping you permanently lose weight, they will not be financially viable in the way a company that encourages yo-yo dieting, because yo-yo dieting companies get repeat customers. So, all the yo-yo dieting companies get bigger and more popular until insanely unhealthy attitudes about weight loss permeate the culture. It’s also worth noting, it looks like we’ve finally found a fix that may work for obesity — Ozempic — and it’s a drug you have to take for life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we have it, but it has a trapped consumer financial model, which is financially viable and able to compete with the yo-yo diet industry.
Anyway. So, that’s maybe a bit bleak, but understanding a problem is the first step to fixing it. However, the good news is, I don’t think we live in a country of people doomed to permanent bigotry. I think our techniques for trying to improve things like racial bias were flawed, and making the situation worse. Paradoxically, we may find things like racial bias, sexism, homophobia, etc. eventually decrease under a pro bigot agenda, though they also may not and runaway bigotry is definitely something I’m worried about.
The pro-bigot agenda doesn’t suffer from the same perverse financial issues that the anti-bigot agenda does, as in, it doesn’t secretly benefit if people get less racist because it doesn’t have the overt goal of increasing bigotry. Aka, people won’t pay to go lectures on “how to be more sexist” rather, sexist people just get glee out of listening to someone say a bunch of sexist stuff, so people willing to say sexist stuff get prestige and power. However, people are also sensitive to obvious power grabs, and when “DEI” everything gets shut down and there’s no woke boogeyman there anymore, it’s going to be more obvious that people are just stoking prejudice for personal profit, and people may turn from it. I think, trying to make that as clear as possible is the best interim step while the left re-thinks its tactics around how to fight all the various “isms” we don’t like.
Anyway; I know there’s more to why the dems lost, but I think the loss of the culture wars was huge, and I think we are currently existing in a system where financial incentives are suppressing effective activism. But, we can create new systems and new incentives. I just hope we can do it in time to prevent whatever the fuck is coming if we don’t.
