Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com
Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity - Erving Goffman
Last September, Amy Webb wrote about the danger of posting pictures of one's child on the internet (friends had posted many pictures of their daughter "Kate" on Facebook):
It’s inevitable that our daughter will become a public figure, because we’re all public figures in this new digital age. I adore Kate’s parents, and they’re raising her to be an amazing young woman. But they’re essentially robbing her of a digital adulthood that’s free of bias and presupposition.
What's striking about this is the situation where normal ordinary people assume being made public in the social realm constitutes exposure to "bias and presupposition." Four centuries ago the imprisoned protagonist of "King Lear" characterized the social realm in terms of "Who's in, who's out." The social is not a friendly circle where everybody is included; instead, it is characterized by inclusion and exclusion.
The great sociologist Erving Goffman, above, said that stigma—such as the various disabilities discussed in this blog—spoils the stigmatized's identity. This is not one's identity as a citizen, where equality is betokened by the lowliest and poorest having the same number of votes as the richest and most prominent. This is social identity, where a transition from able to disabled, as Ms. Ivins suggests above, would involve a profound loss of status.
There is reason to be skeptical, then, of the implied valorization in such terms as "social safety net," "social concern," even "Social Security." (The SSA is not a social agency like, for example, the Boy Scouts. It is a public or Federal agency and as such, subject to non-discrimination expectations which the social Boy Scouts do not have to meet).
One might even say "social considered harmful" (echoing program design theorist Edsger Dijkstra's letter Go To ... Considered Harmful, published in the March 1968 Communications of the ACM). To be disabled is, in many ways, to be outside of society. This ought not to be so.
Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com
Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity - Erving Goffman
Take
off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of
men, ... re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any
book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul - Walt Whitman, Preface to first edition of Leaves of Grass
A human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being by definition only. - James Agee
Those
who leverage stigma against those who are different from themselves
benefit from the advantage created: It denies others access to goods or
status or dignity or respect or civil liberties they themselves covet. - The Stigmatized Disabled and the Silent Privilege of the Normal
Here’s
the problem if you are a non-African American parent: how do you voice
your concern with these issues without being viewed as a racist by some
(though not all) black parents at the school? Is there an underlying
cultural issue that makes it more likely that kids who are non-Catholic
and who come to the school from outside the neighborhood will end up
having discipline problems? ... How do I demand safety for my kids without being
tarred with the ugly “racist” label? It really is a tight rope walk. - A Nation Defined by White Supremacy? Ctd
Because discriminatory conduct is usually uncivil conduct, Molly Ivins' "Governor," above, or any other disabled person, has a strong interest in civility. The recent controversy over Ta-Nehisi Coates' "A Nation Defined by White Supremacy?" series of articles is thus of special interest to the disabled because in these articles TNC seems to have discarded functional evaluation of culture—particularly middle class culture—for an ad hominem validation of uncivil subcultures.
In "Other People's Pathologies", TNC writes,
It’s very nice to talk about “middle-class values” when that describes your small, limited world. But when your grandmother lives in one hood and your coworkers live another, you generally need something more than “middle-class values.” You need to be bilingual.
TNC's cite of Yoni Applebaum in "Black Pathology Crowdsourced" clarifies what he means:
Culture of Poverty is a label attached to a wide array of behaviors.
There are behaviors—physical assertiveness—well-suited to that
environment that may tend to inhibit success elsewhere.
This misleading critique of the civil culture of Western civilization—characterized by notably successful and peaceful societies—is familiar from the turbulent years of the counterculture. As David Lehman noted in Signs of the Times, “In a Marxist model
of knowledge, the superstructure—the tangible products of
culture—camouflages and reinforces the hidden reality of class warfare.”
"Physical assertiveness," contrary to TNC's subtle misdirection, is to be deprecated not because it is thought to pertain to an underclass, but because it is dysfunctional. Valuable sectors of any society—women, children, for example—can scarcely compete where the criterion is physical advantage. That is why bullying is in disrepute.
As part of this general theme Coates has been critiquing President Obama for calling for black parents to teach responsibility to their children. In Andrew Sullivan's blog The Dish, a bi-racial parent looks at both sides of the "assertiveness" and responsibility issues:
It seems like the Dish posts on school suspensions and the argument between Coates and Chait regarding [it] are linked. Let me share an example.
My kids go to a small Catholic school in the south suburbs of Chicago. I personally chose the school because it provided a solid Catholic education and it is diverse. Many of the schools in this area are all white or all black. I didn’t like either of those options for my kids. I grew up in a very diverse area and want my kids to experience the same thing.
Unfortunately, discipline problems had progressively been on the rise before the principal resigned last summer. Also unfortunately, many of the kids who have been involved in these discipline problems are African American. They range from calling a teacher a bitch to bringing a knife to school to assaulting a much younger (and white) child in a bathroom.
I’m bi-racial, so I have a kinda distinctive view of the dynamics within the community of the school, which unfortunately is often self segregating. I remember a school function where most white parents sat on one side of the gym while most black parents sat on the other. Since I hadn’t grown up around here and wasn’t used to such a thing, it was very jarring for me. I walk with comfort on both sides of the spectrum, but I would say most here don’t, for whatever reason. It has sometimes been very difficult to get black and white parents together for social events, such as fundraisers.
The parents of students who live in the neighborhood of the school – which is upper-middle class to downright rich and mostly white – have been very disturbed by the recent discipline issues. There has been a call to be much harsher with punishment, and some want to make the school exclusively Catholic. But that really isn’t workable, because the school has suffered through enrollment declines in recent years due to the economy, and shutting some kids out would probably mean shutting down the school. Catholic schools all over the nation are shutting down in alarming numbers.
Here’s the problem if you are a non-African American parent: how do you voice your concern with these issues without being viewed as a racist by some (though not all) black parents at the school? Is there an underlying cultural issue that makes it more likely that kids who are non-Catholic and who come to the school from outside the neighborhood will end up having discipline problems? I don’t know the answer, but it is worth thinking about. There are parents here who are racist, who revel in bringing up such issues behind closed doors at parties and such. But I’m not one of them. How do I demand safety for my kids without being tarred with the ugly “racist” label? It really is a tight rope walk.
This is why I welcome the president making these speeches. He has a credibility that people like me can’t possibly have, despite the fact that I’m very active at the school with both ends of the spectrum. At some point, people like me who are not racist should be able to point out issues like discipline problems at school or poor service at business establishments on the merits without having to worry about the race issue hanging over our heads. I don’t see that happening in the near future. Maybe Barack Obama can help. He’s surely trying, which I appreciate. I voted for the man twice on issues that have nothing to do with this one, but I do like his personal responsibility stance on this.
I’ve always been a fan of TNC and his writing, especially his historical perspectives. But it seems to me lately that he has fallen to the Jackson/Sharpton point of view, which I find disappointing. Racism is definitely everywhere. I’ve seen it personally, having a father who was DARK brown. I’ve seen it in my own neighborhood from people who I’m friendly with (and from BOTH races). Still, it would seem like blaming the plight of African Americans today solely on white supremacy would be like blaming WWI on one cause. There can be more than one cause.
Coates' position seems to be faux “realism.” The existence of brutish, criminal 'hoods or subcultures does not delegitimize civility or middle class ethics, it illustrates the need for them.
TNC once saw the founders as “reluctant slaveholders.” (In "Why We Fight" he wrote, "Jefferson's generation were, to some extent, reluctant slaveholders. (I shudder writing that.)") He now appears to claim, as one observer said, "that George Washington’s presidency means nothing more than his being a slaveholder."
In Very Hard Choices Spider Robinson wrote, “'The
Constitution and Bill of Rights are among the most enlightened
political documents the human race has produced so far, and its people
are, so help me, some of the kindest who have yet walked the earth. . . .
So far nobody's ever been as ashamed of their own racism as we are.'” Ta-Nehisi Coates pretends that one half of the picture does not exist. There are still white supremacists, but to assert over and over, as Coates is doing, that that defines our multiracial society, is to fail to give credit to the most important fact. What he characterizes as a supremacist nation listened to Martin Luther King, then passed the Omnibus Civil Rights Act. If this had not happened, it is unlikely that Coates would be, as his employer states, "a national correspondent at The Atlantic."
Because on balance this is not a white supremacist nation, Coates has the platform from which he claims, as he seems to, that we are always and only racists.
