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Thoughts on Reconciliation
Nov. 24th, 2016 03:26 pmI have some complicatedly connected but nevertheless disjointed thoughts on the various calls I have seen for people on the left to empathize and sympathize with Trump voters.
There's a weird pairing of false equivalencies which I want to talk about, and tease apart. The story seems to be that the so-called white working class feels resentful because East Coast liberal elites condescend to them. Before I get to how this is a weird set of false equivalencies, though, I want to challenge a couple of the terms and assumptions, here.
First, let's start with "condescension." In 1979, at the age of seventeen, I moved from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Washington, Iowa. It was my senior year of high school. I was frightened, and I was desperately lonely. I was in an alien environment. Many people complained that I was rude, condescending, and hoity-toity. They were incensed that I knew nothing of them or their ways, that I found small town life and farming to be an alien landscape. Their proof that I was condescending was primarily my accent. They were also insulted that I talked too fast, and wouldn't meet their eyes. My accent was, you know, a pretty standard Pittsburgher accent, with bits of Upstate New York and Boston. It was a product of where I had lived, and not the least bit artificial. I was also extremely deferential, and that was manifested by talking very quickly, so as to not presume upon other people's time, and not making as much eye contact as I would with an intimate. I was sending out every signal I knew to say, "I am a stranger here, and would like you to like me" and the Iowans were hearing "I am so much better than you." It was years before I understood what had happened. I think it also notable that Iowans were infuriated that I knew so little about their state, and yet could not be bothered to get my home town right, and constantly referred to me as being from Philadelphia. They were, to my ears, deeply condescending when I tried to correct them, as if there was no actual difference between the two cities. I was mockingly known as Pennsylvania Polly.
This experience makes me very dubious of the claims that East Coast Liberal Elites are condescending towards the white working class. I suspect that a lot of the things that are being interpreted as condescension fall into two categories. One is the thing I just described, a failure to correctly read the social signals of people from a different sub-culture. The other is a failure to understand the frustration and anger that the left feels with people who voted for the fucking fascist, and their attempt to not say "fucking fascist" but instead, something less incendiary. I honestly think that they vastly underestimate the amount of anger we feel towards them.
The second term I really want to challenge here is "white working class." I am not sure that "working class" actually means anything useful, anymore. It was originally coined for a very different economy than the one we have, now. However, even if you let that go, your average Trump voter isn't working class. Your average Trump voter is middle class, and rural. Lots and lots of them are retirees. White, though, yeah, mostly white. But the things that seem to bind this voting bloc together aren't economics. Otherwise, you'd have seen more city-dwellers voting for Trump, and more minorities. This was a tribal identity, not an economic one. I think that one of the reasons the "economic insecurity" thing gets traction is because that's something you can think about, and work on. It's a problem that the left is actually interested in dealing with, and thinks is soluble. On the other hand, tribal identity is all about the feels, and incredibly difficult to address. (Are there tribal identities on the left? Yes, yes there are. But that's for another essay, I think.)
Now let's get back to the accepted narrative that the white working class voted for Trump because they are resentful towards the East Coast Liberal Elite condescension. If one ignores my terminological quibbles, and accepts this narrative on its fact, it still creates a moral equivalency between condescension and resentment. Condescension is based, yes, on a feeling that one is better than someone else. But the corollary is not that the person being condescended to should be hurt or damaged. Usually, it is coupled with a desire to help or uplift the benighted. And while that can be problematic in so many different ways, it is very different than resentment, which assumes that the other guy has something they shouldn't or something that you are entitled to and don't have. Resentment is also usually coupled with a desire to hurt the other person, or at very least to take something away from them. By trying to create a moral equivalence between condescension and resentment, it suggests that contempt is actually an attempt to do harm. This, then, justifies the attempt to harm the so-called liberal elites. It also artfully sweeps under the rug the attempt to dominate and harm vulnerable populations.
Let me state this very clearly: condescension may not be the best behavior in the world, but it cannot possibly excuse the wreck-it-all resentment that the Trump voters have shown.
Another strand here is the anti-intellectual bent of swaths of white voters. It is common for people to experience an attempt to explain something as an act of condescension. I have had this problem at various jobs, where any attempt to explain why a thing needed to be done a certain way was greeted with a huge amount of hostility. The types of resentment alleged by rural whites have to do with the cities getting too many tax dollars, their own concerns not being properly addressed, etc. However, any attempt to actually discuss this, to parse out where tax dollars actually go, what things are and are not being done to address their concerns, what things are and aren't feasible, all these conversations are impossible, because as soon as you do anything other than validate their emotional responses, you are "condescending." It's not possible to constructively engage with someone who believes that the use of facts is an act of aggression.
I keep on wondering about a way forward. What do we do, next. I don't know. I don't want to hurt the average Trump voter. I am furious with them as a group, and with several individual that I know personally. I am uninterested in sparing their feelings; they sure don't care about mine. Looking back at the two huge changes in my lifetime, civil rights for black people and civil rights for LGBT, I think it is clear that worrying about the tender feelings of bigots doesn't get you anywhere. Trying to gentle them along is not the way forward. Those attitudes, those laws, those behaviors are anathema and have to be treated as such. Are Trump voters redeemable? Who knows. This is not my problem. If they are, they must redeem themselves. People change, and that can be a wonderful thing. But I reject the idea of catering to their gross prejudices. Just because your feelings are hurt doesn't mean you get to try and kill me and mine.
I do think we need to work harder to get people who do not currently have power into power. Just as poor people need money, and homeless need homes, the powerless need access to the levers of power. I really hope that the DNC chooses Keith Ellison. He will bring a different voice, and a different set of experiences. Look, I don't expect to agree with every minority on the issues just because they're a minority. But multiple view points in the halls of power will help create new perspectives and new solutions. Diversity brings with it both strife and resilience. We need that.
And for those of you who think that the Trump voter is not trying to kill me and mine...one of the people I love most in the world gets their health insurance through the ACA. And has diabetes. That's just one example.
There's a weird pairing of false equivalencies which I want to talk about, and tease apart. The story seems to be that the so-called white working class feels resentful because East Coast liberal elites condescend to them. Before I get to how this is a weird set of false equivalencies, though, I want to challenge a couple of the terms and assumptions, here.
First, let's start with "condescension." In 1979, at the age of seventeen, I moved from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Washington, Iowa. It was my senior year of high school. I was frightened, and I was desperately lonely. I was in an alien environment. Many people complained that I was rude, condescending, and hoity-toity. They were incensed that I knew nothing of them or their ways, that I found small town life and farming to be an alien landscape. Their proof that I was condescending was primarily my accent. They were also insulted that I talked too fast, and wouldn't meet their eyes. My accent was, you know, a pretty standard Pittsburgher accent, with bits of Upstate New York and Boston. It was a product of where I had lived, and not the least bit artificial. I was also extremely deferential, and that was manifested by talking very quickly, so as to not presume upon other people's time, and not making as much eye contact as I would with an intimate. I was sending out every signal I knew to say, "I am a stranger here, and would like you to like me" and the Iowans were hearing "I am so much better than you." It was years before I understood what had happened. I think it also notable that Iowans were infuriated that I knew so little about their state, and yet could not be bothered to get my home town right, and constantly referred to me as being from Philadelphia. They were, to my ears, deeply condescending when I tried to correct them, as if there was no actual difference between the two cities. I was mockingly known as Pennsylvania Polly.
This experience makes me very dubious of the claims that East Coast Liberal Elites are condescending towards the white working class. I suspect that a lot of the things that are being interpreted as condescension fall into two categories. One is the thing I just described, a failure to correctly read the social signals of people from a different sub-culture. The other is a failure to understand the frustration and anger that the left feels with people who voted for the fucking fascist, and their attempt to not say "fucking fascist" but instead, something less incendiary. I honestly think that they vastly underestimate the amount of anger we feel towards them.
The second term I really want to challenge here is "white working class." I am not sure that "working class" actually means anything useful, anymore. It was originally coined for a very different economy than the one we have, now. However, even if you let that go, your average Trump voter isn't working class. Your average Trump voter is middle class, and rural. Lots and lots of them are retirees. White, though, yeah, mostly white. But the things that seem to bind this voting bloc together aren't economics. Otherwise, you'd have seen more city-dwellers voting for Trump, and more minorities. This was a tribal identity, not an economic one. I think that one of the reasons the "economic insecurity" thing gets traction is because that's something you can think about, and work on. It's a problem that the left is actually interested in dealing with, and thinks is soluble. On the other hand, tribal identity is all about the feels, and incredibly difficult to address. (Are there tribal identities on the left? Yes, yes there are. But that's for another essay, I think.)
Now let's get back to the accepted narrative that the white working class voted for Trump because they are resentful towards the East Coast Liberal Elite condescension. If one ignores my terminological quibbles, and accepts this narrative on its fact, it still creates a moral equivalency between condescension and resentment. Condescension is based, yes, on a feeling that one is better than someone else. But the corollary is not that the person being condescended to should be hurt or damaged. Usually, it is coupled with a desire to help or uplift the benighted. And while that can be problematic in so many different ways, it is very different than resentment, which assumes that the other guy has something they shouldn't or something that you are entitled to and don't have. Resentment is also usually coupled with a desire to hurt the other person, or at very least to take something away from them. By trying to create a moral equivalence between condescension and resentment, it suggests that contempt is actually an attempt to do harm. This, then, justifies the attempt to harm the so-called liberal elites. It also artfully sweeps under the rug the attempt to dominate and harm vulnerable populations.
Let me state this very clearly: condescension may not be the best behavior in the world, but it cannot possibly excuse the wreck-it-all resentment that the Trump voters have shown.
Another strand here is the anti-intellectual bent of swaths of white voters. It is common for people to experience an attempt to explain something as an act of condescension. I have had this problem at various jobs, where any attempt to explain why a thing needed to be done a certain way was greeted with a huge amount of hostility. The types of resentment alleged by rural whites have to do with the cities getting too many tax dollars, their own concerns not being properly addressed, etc. However, any attempt to actually discuss this, to parse out where tax dollars actually go, what things are and are not being done to address their concerns, what things are and aren't feasible, all these conversations are impossible, because as soon as you do anything other than validate their emotional responses, you are "condescending." It's not possible to constructively engage with someone who believes that the use of facts is an act of aggression.
I keep on wondering about a way forward. What do we do, next. I don't know. I don't want to hurt the average Trump voter. I am furious with them as a group, and with several individual that I know personally. I am uninterested in sparing their feelings; they sure don't care about mine. Looking back at the two huge changes in my lifetime, civil rights for black people and civil rights for LGBT, I think it is clear that worrying about the tender feelings of bigots doesn't get you anywhere. Trying to gentle them along is not the way forward. Those attitudes, those laws, those behaviors are anathema and have to be treated as such. Are Trump voters redeemable? Who knows. This is not my problem. If they are, they must redeem themselves. People change, and that can be a wonderful thing. But I reject the idea of catering to their gross prejudices. Just because your feelings are hurt doesn't mean you get to try and kill me and mine.
I do think we need to work harder to get people who do not currently have power into power. Just as poor people need money, and homeless need homes, the powerless need access to the levers of power. I really hope that the DNC chooses Keith Ellison. He will bring a different voice, and a different set of experiences. Look, I don't expect to agree with every minority on the issues just because they're a minority. But multiple view points in the halls of power will help create new perspectives and new solutions. Diversity brings with it both strife and resilience. We need that.
And for those of you who think that the Trump voter is not trying to kill me and mine...one of the people I love most in the world gets their health insurance through the ACA. And has diabetes. That's just one example.
