Hello
(-ello -llo -lo), echo chamber?
Sometimes
a post reaches my feed from outside my choir—I have friends and family who are
conservative (and of course many who aren’t political at all).
I
like this for several reasons. The most important is that I would feel wrong
and discriminatory if my conversation included only carbon copies. (I love you,
my like-minded friends! but you know what I mean)
Another
benefit is that I get insight into the thoughts of people dissimilar to me.
(This is also why I love to read books.) This insight improves my experience of
the world, and it (usually) makes me feel better about the basic humanity of
people, because when I engage in conversation, we can reach a point of
agreement—among many points of disagreement, true, but one is better than zero.
Seeing
posts from those who disagree with me causes two reactions: interest or
anxiety.
I
love when the posts cause interest, because I can read further and try to
understand.
Unfortunately,
much of the time, they trigger anxiety instead (and sadness and anger and
disbelief). (Yes, the same anxiety whenever I read the news in 2017.) There is
a now-familiar physical reaction I have when I see these posts.
START of knot in my chest, a little
tightening and dismay
QUICKLY, I skip over the post and try
not to think about it (ie, flight)
INEVITABLY, I do keep thinking about it and
whether I should respond (fight); the anxiety-knot grows and intensifies
In
most cases, it is best not to comment on the post. If people comment on my own posts—which
is excellent and I hope continues to happen—that’s one thing. But wading into
someone else’s feed, alone and scared, is asking to be overwhelmed and saddened
further about the discourse that passes for argument.
The
latest cause of this anxiety is a meme that features a photo of a monument with the
caption, “This is a monument dedicated to Buffalo Soldiers, the black regiment formed
in 1866 that slaughtered Native Americans. What the hell do we do with this
one?”
Later
in this post, I’ll self-medicate by taking this meme apart. But first, I have
to look at those who share it and comment favorably on it. (My feed did not
include any comments against it.)
It’s
a safe assumption that those who posted and commented in agreement were white.
Were
they unaware of their own racism? Impossible to tell. So let’s pursue the two
possibilities, 1, yes, they know they’re racist; and 2, no, they don’t know. (The third possibility is that they are not racist. Ha ha! No,
it’s not a possibility. To share or comment favorably on this meme, is racist.)
1.
If yes, they know they are racist, then their views align with many across this
country and I just have to bear it. They certainly won’t listen to me, and
reasoned argument is futile.
anxious knot in my chest: large and
intractible
remedy: anti-anxiety meds and take
a walk/read a book/listen to music/call a friend
outcome: knot persists for a few hours
and dissipates until the next one hits
2.
If they don’t realize they are racist, then do I have a responsibility to point
it out to them or otherwise argue? The more so if one of them is a friend or family member?
anxious knot in my chest is joined by
guilt and indecision, leeching into every part of my day and inoculating me
from distraction
no remedies have been found; I
try writing a blog post
My
companion, the anxiety knot, spurs action; and I write and I mentally argue and I read
posts from like minds. Eventually—after a day or two—I can find equilibrium, mostly because time has gone by, not because anything has changed. So
here we are.
==============
Back
to the Buffalo Soldiers meme.
There
are three reasons the meme is racist: it is racist for cherry picking the
characterization of the Buffalo Soldiers (in two ways), it is racist for reducing to absurdity
the Confederate monument debate, and it is racist for assuming
that its audience will be repulsed by honor given to black men.
Cherry picking (a k a suppressed evidence)
Cherry
picking is a logical fallacy that betrays a lack of reason. Basically, it’s
cheating and lying—picking just those elements that support the argument and ignoring the many that don’t.
The
meme ignores the true nature of the Buffalo Soldiers and reduces their actions
to “slaughtering Native Americans.” As members of the US military after the
Civil War, the contributions of the Buffalo Soldiers were, by all accounts (well,
except those of racists), honorable and varied. Any “slaughtering” they did was
part of America’s so-called wars against the Indians, which I agree were wrong
in intent and action, but certainly should not be laid at the feet of a small
set of regiments among the US Army of the 1800s.
(Interesting side note: General John Pershing—yes, the same Pershing recently slandered by Trump—was a vocal supporter of the Buffalo Soldiers.)
In
this way, the meme also cherry-picks one set of regiments (those who are
black) to bear the responsibility of killing Native Americans, when overwhelmingly it was white regiments who did so.
Reducing to absurdity
Another
logical fallacy is reductio ad absurdum,
Latin for “reduce to absurdity.”
We
do it all the time. Someone says, “I like that sandwich.” Friend replies, “Why
don’t you marry it?” <guffaw>
It
derails actual progress in debate—it stops the discussion cold because it
brings us to a place that is untenable, the absurd.
In
the debate about Confederate monuments, we have to wade through a lot of stuff
that is simple crap. One is, as a commenter on this meme said, next we’ll
be “erasing history books.” (The history books relate how the Confederacy actually
lost the war, as you’d know if you’d ever read one.)
The
other is that if we start removing monuments, any that have even the slightest
tinge of controversy must go. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are robust
and obvious symbols of slavery and oppression of blacks (not to mention treason). The president
(using the additional logical fallacy “slippery slope”) then likens two Founding
Fathers, Washington and Jefferson, to Confederate traitors because they were
slaveowners. (I’m not excusing the slaveowning; I’m pointing out the difference
between a hero who has important flaws and a traitor, full stop.)
And
then someone has to search the country to find a monument of a black person
(which can’t have been easy). And then he (pretty sure it was a “he”) has to fabricate some reason that it
is tainted so that he can show that black people
are terrible.
Assuming the audience will be repulsed by a statue honoring a black man
Could
he have pulled back the reins a little, and maybe have chosen some otherwise
unimpeachable white soldier? By doing so, he would have lessened my charge of
racism. But no, he had to make sure he co-opted a black hero, the subject of
songs. He had to tap into his audience’s predictable reaction to the elevation
of a black man.
No wonder we are all
anxious. We have to witness lies and racism every day from the White House, of
all places. And then from our own facebook feed.=========
At the risk of bribery: I think knowing people have read this will help lessen my anxiety-knot, and a comment—in support or argument!—here or on my facebook feed would be very healing. thanks, friends of all persuasions
