I agree that the social commodification of marginality is problematic. But I'd argue that it's the commodification part that's objectionable, not the expression of marginality.
Hi Kier! Have you ever looked into how Social Conditioning/Cult Programming work? It's fascinating stuff. One of the classic recruitment methods for cults is to break down the sense of self. Next you provide a means for the person to re-find their worth inside the group. "You used to be scum, but now you're one of the good ones!" (These first steps are also the basis of "Negging" btw.) This step can also include controlling their outward appearance, making them adopt the physical look, clothing, body modifications, etc of the group. The final step is to turn the person against outsiders by maintaining control of their access to information, "othering" and discrediting rival organizations, and constantly amping them up through emotionally charged language.
It's crazy how well this model fits so much of the online social justice community. And not just them. Right wing media has been doing the same for decades.
It is quite fascinating! Coercive control is such a complex concept, and it really undermines simple understandings of agency and consent between adults. On the other hand, the idea of brainwashing as something that can be successfully done to people has been largely discredited. I'm curious to see what new theories and ways of understanding such environments emerge in the future.
Thanks for writing this Keir. Not contributing to the guilt & grievance economy is something I've been trying hard to put into practice irl, to walk the walk so to speak, but to be honest I feel like it can be really hard sometimes to not take advantage of it when you believe it would be for a net good. Like I think my volunteer work and voice in the community would be more valued by the non-profit orgs I deal with if I spoke more about my 'marginalized identity'. It would certainly give my concerns more legitimacy among the progressives who make all the decisions in my town, but I also don't want to contribute to the culture of using personal trauma to get something, instead of developing and delivering a strong argument. Gahh life is hard. I appreciate hearing your take, thank you.
Hey Nell! I totally hear what you’re saying. It is so tempting to use identity to bolster an argument, especially when you really believe in the benefits of getting through to people. There are probably even circumstances where it is a reasonable choice. But I find, for me, the temptation is more likely to arise when I’m feeling frustrated or impatient, because that’s when I crave a shortcut the most ;)
Kier, I unfailingly learn something from your posts. Nobody else (among my personal collection of independent opinion writers) has your perspective. This makes it extremely valuable. Specifically, this time 'round, I've been pondering for some time why the Woke (progressive activist) angle on cultural events like Women's History Month is almost ruthless in its focus on past injustice. (As opposed to, say, celebrating women. Duh.) You've provided me an answer, which is that the unrelenting focus on "harms," whether past or present, protects the identity group's claim to marginalization, powerlessness, or harm *even when, arguably, there is no longer any such significant, wide spread cultural harm or marginalization.* The identity group cannot risk losing the power that it gains in the guilt economy. Thank you for helping me solve that longstanding puzzle!
Hi Jim! That’s exactly it: a group who admits that “things are pretty good now, actually” would risk being expelled from the righteous underdog category. You see it in the insistence that things have NOT gotten better—for example, slavery became Jim Crow became mass incarceration. And while that thread is certainly worthy of examination, are we really saying there is no difference between the trans-Atlantic slave trade and contemporary incarceration, as awful as the latter may be? That also requires us to accept that slavery abolition and the civil rights movement accomplished absolutely nothing, which is a strange stance for an activist movement to take. But I do believe understanding the guilt economy (maybe “grievance economy” would be even more apt) helps explain the internal logic of such a strategy.
I think even if harm is ongoing, it doesn’t mean we can’t make room for celebrating pride and strength and accomplishments and whatever makes us unique; in fact that is what can give us the strength to keeping going and gives us meaning! So I thank you for bringing up this point that I haven’t thought about much
While there are parts of your post I don’t agree with, I do resonate with parts of it. Working as a psychotherapist from a narrative therapist lens helped me to notice how often young Western social justice spaces “flatten” people’s narratives. So with the potato famine example you shared, I would prefer to view that as one among many stories and not THE one defining story of an ancestry or a person. I have seen in my therapy office how BOTH intergenerational trauma AND intergenerational values, skills, strengths, and resilience get passed down but so often as you said people center the intergenerational trauma as an identity which can have them justify projecting it onto others and miss on the fullness of their life story.
What I appreciate about older folk who have been part of social justice movements is how they hold their pain and anger in a very very different way from what I have seen in younger social justice spaces. I notice with the former, the pain and anger are not all consuming to the point that there is no room for joy, compassion, solidarity, dialogue, and community building whereas with the latter the anger and pain can often be ruminative and competitive like you said with little to not concrete action being taken.
I have also noticed that as a non-American who used to live in northeast US for a decade before moving back to my country, that I haven’t seen any other culture link everything with an “identity” as tightly as Americans do. Perhaps there is a historical context to this but it’s something I have thought about more than once.
You leave such thoughtful comments. Yes: it’s that flattening and oversimplifying that I wanted to draw attention to with this post. Denying or ignoring pain clearly isn’t a good idea, but nor is ruminating on it and feeling like it is all one is.
I couldn’t agree more about taking cues from older activists! The only people who don’t burn out (or who successfully recover from it) are as you describe: they celebrate victories, they make time for their loved ones, and live a full life, not one consumed by misery or scrupulosity. I remember as a young activist thinking that some of these people were less serious or dedicated than I was, but they’re still going!
I would also like to add, if I may, whether we can invite young adults to learn about/enjoy their ancestry without having to declare being in a dire or painful state first? Like they have to have an excuse to be proud of their heritage or something… I don’t understand it.
Thank you for leaving thoughtful posts! They do challenge me to rethink biases I have internalized while living the States and help me put words into some thoughts I couldn’t quite fully verbalize before.
A small point of disagreement I have with you on this post is that as someone who lives in Dubai, I have seen many classic examples of brown people oppress others through “proximity to whiteness.” I have seen many Middle Eastern people like myself assume automatically that anything Western must be better (and automatically assume Western = White) than what we have to offer and so they would rather hire a Western consultant who knows nothing about the culture or a Western educated person like myself than to put in effort to train our locally-based youth and help them grow in their careers and make meaningful contributions. It would probably take me a book to name even more examples and I think it would take living here and understanding the history for a person to fully understand it.
Every time Trump is charged with something, he appeals to his voters as someone being persecuted and the money pours in. Victimhood can definitely be lucrative.
So very true. It’s important to develop some internal radar for this stuff so we don’t fall for these things and make the problem worse. After all, if you enable a behaviour, you are reinforcing it.
I got so heavy into the idpol/sjw world back in the feminist blogosphere heydey of the 2008 - 2010 era that I pretty much forgot how to talk to people who weren't also white for years. I was absolutely terrified of saying the wrong thing or offending anyone or being "that" white girl. I got better, lol, but damn it's crazy to look back, because it was just so ingrained.
It’s so tragic too because people are getting much worse at inter-racial communication while attempting to get better! So wild. What shifts have you noticed since that time?
Exactly. I was becoming so "enlightened" that I couldn't even manage to speak to a black person without panicking.
What changed was honestly moving. Minneapolis, where I lived back then, is already a very racially tense place and also pretty racially segregated, and where I live now in Virginia is night-and-day different: much more racially integrated, less "woke," and tons of multi-racial friend and family groups. I ended up just re-learning how to see black people as *normal people* again rather than as only oppressed, or alternately uniquely enlightened, minorities. It sounds so insane to type out loud, lol.
Honestly, I think typing it out loud is part of what helps people who are still in it realize what they've signed up for! Virginia sounds like an excellent move.
This part of Virginia has some very openly racist people, too, but the difference is that here, they are more honest about it. You can avoid them, and they're a dying breed. In Minnesota, the racism is much more of the guilty-liberal variety, mostly because unless you live in a more diverse part of Minneapolis or Saint Paul, you probably rarely or even never even see a black person in your daily life. It's just such a white state. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, it's just how the migration patterns worked themselves out, but it does mean that a lot of white people there are a lot more racially clueless and *weird* about it than they are in more organically diverse places, like the South.
There's a lot I definitely prefer and miss about Minnesota, but certain things here really are just easier.
I could talk about the differences between the racial dynamics of these two places all day. I'll leave it at that for now, lol.
“When it becomes the sole metric by which to decide who is right and who is wrong in any given situation, things are bound to get a little weird”—I once was told, apropos of nothing, by my best friend at the time-a white person-that if any conflict ever arose between me and their new friend-a Black person-then they would take the new friend’s side, because they were Black. No matter what. We don’t talk anymore lol
I totally agree except in my case because I’m doing it properly.
I agree that the social commodification of marginality is problematic. But I'd argue that it's the commodification part that's objectionable, not the expression of marginality.
Can you say more? I'd be curious to better understand your perspective.
Hi Kier! Have you ever looked into how Social Conditioning/Cult Programming work? It's fascinating stuff. One of the classic recruitment methods for cults is to break down the sense of self. Next you provide a means for the person to re-find their worth inside the group. "You used to be scum, but now you're one of the good ones!" (These first steps are also the basis of "Negging" btw.) This step can also include controlling their outward appearance, making them adopt the physical look, clothing, body modifications, etc of the group. The final step is to turn the person against outsiders by maintaining control of their access to information, "othering" and discrediting rival organizations, and constantly amping them up through emotionally charged language.
It's crazy how well this model fits so much of the online social justice community. And not just them. Right wing media has been doing the same for decades.
It is quite fascinating! Coercive control is such a complex concept, and it really undermines simple understandings of agency and consent between adults. On the other hand, the idea of brainwashing as something that can be successfully done to people has been largely discredited. I'm curious to see what new theories and ways of understanding such environments emerge in the future.
Thanks for writing this Keir. Not contributing to the guilt & grievance economy is something I've been trying hard to put into practice irl, to walk the walk so to speak, but to be honest I feel like it can be really hard sometimes to not take advantage of it when you believe it would be for a net good. Like I think my volunteer work and voice in the community would be more valued by the non-profit orgs I deal with if I spoke more about my 'marginalized identity'. It would certainly give my concerns more legitimacy among the progressives who make all the decisions in my town, but I also don't want to contribute to the culture of using personal trauma to get something, instead of developing and delivering a strong argument. Gahh life is hard. I appreciate hearing your take, thank you.
Hey Nell! I totally hear what you’re saying. It is so tempting to use identity to bolster an argument, especially when you really believe in the benefits of getting through to people. There are probably even circumstances where it is a reasonable choice. But I find, for me, the temptation is more likely to arise when I’m feeling frustrated or impatient, because that’s when I crave a shortcut the most ;)
Kier, I unfailingly learn something from your posts. Nobody else (among my personal collection of independent opinion writers) has your perspective. This makes it extremely valuable. Specifically, this time 'round, I've been pondering for some time why the Woke (progressive activist) angle on cultural events like Women's History Month is almost ruthless in its focus on past injustice. (As opposed to, say, celebrating women. Duh.) You've provided me an answer, which is that the unrelenting focus on "harms," whether past or present, protects the identity group's claim to marginalization, powerlessness, or harm *even when, arguably, there is no longer any such significant, wide spread cultural harm or marginalization.* The identity group cannot risk losing the power that it gains in the guilt economy. Thank you for helping me solve that longstanding puzzle!
Hi Jim! That’s exactly it: a group who admits that “things are pretty good now, actually” would risk being expelled from the righteous underdog category. You see it in the insistence that things have NOT gotten better—for example, slavery became Jim Crow became mass incarceration. And while that thread is certainly worthy of examination, are we really saying there is no difference between the trans-Atlantic slave trade and contemporary incarceration, as awful as the latter may be? That also requires us to accept that slavery abolition and the civil rights movement accomplished absolutely nothing, which is a strange stance for an activist movement to take. But I do believe understanding the guilt economy (maybe “grievance economy” would be even more apt) helps explain the internal logic of such a strategy.
I think even if harm is ongoing, it doesn’t mean we can’t make room for celebrating pride and strength and accomplishments and whatever makes us unique; in fact that is what can give us the strength to keeping going and gives us meaning! So I thank you for bringing up this point that I haven’t thought about much
While there are parts of your post I don’t agree with, I do resonate with parts of it. Working as a psychotherapist from a narrative therapist lens helped me to notice how often young Western social justice spaces “flatten” people’s narratives. So with the potato famine example you shared, I would prefer to view that as one among many stories and not THE one defining story of an ancestry or a person. I have seen in my therapy office how BOTH intergenerational trauma AND intergenerational values, skills, strengths, and resilience get passed down but so often as you said people center the intergenerational trauma as an identity which can have them justify projecting it onto others and miss on the fullness of their life story.
What I appreciate about older folk who have been part of social justice movements is how they hold their pain and anger in a very very different way from what I have seen in younger social justice spaces. I notice with the former, the pain and anger are not all consuming to the point that there is no room for joy, compassion, solidarity, dialogue, and community building whereas with the latter the anger and pain can often be ruminative and competitive like you said with little to not concrete action being taken.
I have also noticed that as a non-American who used to live in northeast US for a decade before moving back to my country, that I haven’t seen any other culture link everything with an “identity” as tightly as Americans do. Perhaps there is a historical context to this but it’s something I have thought about more than once.
Hi Reema!
You leave such thoughtful comments. Yes: it’s that flattening and oversimplifying that I wanted to draw attention to with this post. Denying or ignoring pain clearly isn’t a good idea, but nor is ruminating on it and feeling like it is all one is.
I couldn’t agree more about taking cues from older activists! The only people who don’t burn out (or who successfully recover from it) are as you describe: they celebrate victories, they make time for their loved ones, and live a full life, not one consumed by misery or scrupulosity. I remember as a young activist thinking that some of these people were less serious or dedicated than I was, but they’re still going!
I would also like to add, if I may, whether we can invite young adults to learn about/enjoy their ancestry without having to declare being in a dire or painful state first? Like they have to have an excuse to be proud of their heritage or something… I don’t understand it.
Thank you for leaving thoughtful posts! They do challenge me to rethink biases I have internalized while living the States and help me put words into some thoughts I couldn’t quite fully verbalize before.
A small point of disagreement I have with you on this post is that as someone who lives in Dubai, I have seen many classic examples of brown people oppress others through “proximity to whiteness.” I have seen many Middle Eastern people like myself assume automatically that anything Western must be better (and automatically assume Western = White) than what we have to offer and so they would rather hire a Western consultant who knows nothing about the culture or a Western educated person like myself than to put in effort to train our locally-based youth and help them grow in their careers and make meaningful contributions. It would probably take me a book to name even more examples and I think it would take living here and understanding the history for a person to fully understand it.
Ah, yes: this provides meaningful context for that phrase. Thank you!
Every time Trump is charged with something, he appeals to his voters as someone being persecuted and the money pours in. Victimhood can definitely be lucrative.
And it can be done at any scale!
So very true. It’s important to develop some internal radar for this stuff so we don’t fall for these things and make the problem worse. After all, if you enable a behaviour, you are reinforcing it.
I got so heavy into the idpol/sjw world back in the feminist blogosphere heydey of the 2008 - 2010 era that I pretty much forgot how to talk to people who weren't also white for years. I was absolutely terrified of saying the wrong thing or offending anyone or being "that" white girl. I got better, lol, but damn it's crazy to look back, because it was just so ingrained.
It’s so tragic too because people are getting much worse at inter-racial communication while attempting to get better! So wild. What shifts have you noticed since that time?
Exactly. I was becoming so "enlightened" that I couldn't even manage to speak to a black person without panicking.
What changed was honestly moving. Minneapolis, where I lived back then, is already a very racially tense place and also pretty racially segregated, and where I live now in Virginia is night-and-day different: much more racially integrated, less "woke," and tons of multi-racial friend and family groups. I ended up just re-learning how to see black people as *normal people* again rather than as only oppressed, or alternately uniquely enlightened, minorities. It sounds so insane to type out loud, lol.
Honestly, I think typing it out loud is part of what helps people who are still in it realize what they've signed up for! Virginia sounds like an excellent move.
This part of Virginia has some very openly racist people, too, but the difference is that here, they are more honest about it. You can avoid them, and they're a dying breed. In Minnesota, the racism is much more of the guilty-liberal variety, mostly because unless you live in a more diverse part of Minneapolis or Saint Paul, you probably rarely or even never even see a black person in your daily life. It's just such a white state. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, it's just how the migration patterns worked themselves out, but it does mean that a lot of white people there are a lot more racially clueless and *weird* about it than they are in more organically diverse places, like the South.
There's a lot I definitely prefer and miss about Minnesota, but certain things here really are just easier.
I could talk about the differences between the racial dynamics of these two places all day. I'll leave it at that for now, lol.
“When it becomes the sole metric by which to decide who is right and who is wrong in any given situation, things are bound to get a little weird”—I once was told, apropos of nothing, by my best friend at the time-a white person-that if any conflict ever arose between me and their new friend-a Black person-then they would take the new friend’s side, because they were Black. No matter what. We don’t talk anymore lol
Oof—I am so glad you didn’t stick around for that! What if the new friend thought pineapple on pizza was ok???
Canadians, eh?
My deep dark secret is that I’m a Canadian who loves pineapple on pizza. Don’t tell anyone—I’ll be ruined!
Me too!
Double pineapple and ham by preference...