With a movie like The Birth of a Nation, which presents black men as sub-human rape-monkeys, and which is of direct relevance to reality as a representation of — as the title suggests — American history… do you accept that this can function as agitprop?

… if you want to dispute the basic thesis of the column and/or the notion of abjection-as-selective-empathy, by all means do so. That’s what I’m defending, and I’m quite ready to do so on the basis of semiotics, statistics and sociology. Seriously, feel free to argue that a) 300 does not lionise homophobic heroes and vilify villains as depraved queers, or does so but with no negative effect, b) Falling for Grace is not hard evidence of segregation, c) kinship selection does not have its inverse, in which “non-kin” are refused recognition as legitimate recipients of empathy.

So you don’t have to accept the assumptions. I’m explicitly inviting you to argue with them, in fact. What you quote is simply a statement of my position, offered for you to dispute should you wish to do so. As an attempt to have that discussion I’m asking you directly — via those six questions — whether you accept each stage in my argument, from the most basic premises (question #1) to the end position (question #6); if not, at what stage do you cease to agree?

Feel free to articulate where and why you disagree with my argument. Answering those questions would be a good start.

:rolleyes: So I have to agree to accept your basic assumptions before we can have a discussion, and your primary basic assumption is I can’t contest anything you say? What’s next–you’re going to ask me whether I’ve stopped beating my wife?

Incidentally, I don’t really know why you keep harping on “300”. That film and graphic-novel property has about as much relevance to reality as “The Lord Of The Rings”. Hell, the bad guys are literal faceless minions! I look forward to your lengthy essay on why the Sith Lords from Star Wars are symbols of racist ideology. After all, they wear black!

Some people, back in the day, would have denied that The Birth of a Nation could possibly be harmful, that segregation was unjust, and that lynching a black guy for having sex with a white woman was, like, the opposite of human decency. Those people would, in many areas, have been in the majority. Their viewpoint would have been the consensus. They were wrong, I say. See direct question #1 and direct question #2 again. Are you with me that those people were wrong?

Direct question #4: Do you agree that, in that sort of situation, the fact that such views are considered reasonable is pretty much the root of the problem?

Similarly, many today would deny that 300 could possibly be harmful, that segregation in the media is unjust, and that scorning some faggot/nigger/whatever when they get “uppity” is, like, the opposite of human decency. Similarly, those people are, in many areas, in the majority. Similarly, their viewpoints are the consensus. Similarly, they are wrong, I say. See direct question #3 again. Are you with me that these people are wrong?

Direct question #5: Do you get why, in this sort of situation, the fact that such views are considered reasonable is seen as a problem by uppity faggots like me, and if not, what exactly doesn’t make sense?

I mean, maybe you’re not with me on that last stretch — again, I make no assumptions — but whatever your position, the point is, we’re dealing with claims of hard realities. Who’s more likely or less likely to notice those hard realities doesn’t matter a jot. All that matters is, if you choose to deny them, whether you’re open to sound arguments based on semiotics, statistics and sociology. Again, I’m happy to debate the soundness of specific arguments vis-a-vis 300, Falling for Grace and kin selection. I’m happy to debate the actuality of blood libel, segregation in the media, and selective empathy. But after challenging N for not engaging, your own responses to me have made no attempt to engage whatsoever. Both simply put a gloss on my position that misreads it completely.

So again, I can make it crystal clear, so there’s no need for you guess at a proper paraphrase: 300 is blood libel; Falling for Grace is segregation; the majority of people exercise selective empathy; these are actualities, demonstrably so; to deny them is to deny the historical facts as they’re playing out in front of us.

Direct question #6: When you represent this claim that we’re dealing with genuine inequities — demonstrable by the simple application of basic semiotics, statistics and sociology to reality — as an “I know it when I see it” philosophy, does this constitute a dismissal for you? Where you attempt to characterise my position as based wholly on perception, are we to infer that you see these problems as simply artifacts of misperception?

Again, that’s a simple yes/no question. I’m not assuming either way, but if that is your basic stance… as I say, I’m happy to expand on the actual arguments.

(And, yes, that’s three more walls o’ text. I tend to think that in discussions like this, superficial comments of a flippant sentence or two only lead to the sort of shitstorms your earlier post was bemoaning. And isn’t that what LiveJournal is for?)

Direct question #3 then: Do you disagree with those specific assertions? You reject the assumption that you’re cool with the casting of A:TLA, so would it be wrong to assume that you a) don’t accept the criticism of 300, b) don’t accept that Falling for Grace fell foul of unjust segregation, c) don’t accept that the majority are resistant to criticisms of blood libel and segregation in this way?

Again, it’s a simple yes/no question — albeit in three parts. If you’re inclined to answer, “no,” to any or all of the above, I’m quite happy to argue my case on how agitprop works, how the Hollywood studio system works, and how human social interaction works. I’m making no assumptions about your answer(s) — given you made a point of rejecting N’s assumption that you were offay with the A:TLA casting, that seems only fair — but if you want to dispute the basic thesis of the column and/or the notion of abjection-as-selective-empathy, by all means do so. That’s what I’m defending, and I’m quite ready to do so on the basis of semiotics, statistics and sociology. Seriously, feel free to argue that a) 300 does not lionise homophobic heroes and vilify villains as depraved queers, or does so but with no negative effect, b) Falling for Grace is not hard evidence of segregation, c) kinship selection does not have its inverse, in which “non-kin” are refused recognition as legitimate recipients of empathy.

I say there are hard realities here, and it doesn’t matter if I notice them or not. If I chose to deny them, I’d be objectively wrong. If someone told me I was wrong, I like to think I’d be open to them presenting me with sound arguments based on semiotics, statistics and sociology. I might disagree, but I hope I’d be ready to debate it.

Some apparently are not.

So to encapsulate again: contemporary blood libel is evidenced in 300; segregation in the media is evidenced in Falling for Grace; selective empathy is basic sociology; to deny these is to deny the historical facts as they’re playing out in front of us.

Direct question #1, DD: Do you accept that a) a movie presenting black men as sub-human rape-monkeys can function as agitprop, b) denying people of colour the right to ride at the front of the bus is unjust, c) hate-crime-level prejudice is a reality that can be legitimately established in a court of law?

If you don’t accept those… well, enough said. If you do…

Direct question #2: Do you accept that those who deny these are objectively wrong, or do you think that their opinion is equally valid, in an “it’s all a matter of interpretation” way, that maybe a) a movie presenting black men as sub-human rape-monkeys can’t function as agitprop, b) denying people of colour the right to ride at the front of the bus isn’t unjust, c) hate-crime-level prejudice isn’t a reality that can be legitimately established in a court of law?

That’s a simple yes/no. And note that I’m not asking if you actively believe the denials, but rather whether you accept the dubiety. The point is, these are all, as far as I’m concerned, established facts: that blood libel both works and exists; that 1960s segregation was unjust; that the law can and has successfully and legitimately prosecuted hate-crimes. If you want to disagree, go for it. That would probably make you look like a complete wingnut, I have to say, but I don’t doubt some would argue such a position. Many did, back in the day. Some still do.

Let me just encapsulate that so you don’t have to paraphrase me into a position that’s not mine: blood libel, segregation and hate-crimes are unconscionable realities; to deny them is to deny historical fact.

“I’m wary of that “eye of the beholder” notion, because it underpins the argument that if the majority of readers don’t see the blood libel, that’s the consensus interpretation, the reasonable interpretation of the average joe.”

In point of fact, “reasonable person” is an established principle in common law.

Extending the metaphor, aren’t those who don’t own a dog more likely to notice the presence of dogs in a pub than the absence of them? Might this skew their perception? You can sit in one pub with some folks, with your dog by your side, and tell them the dogs-allowed policy here is the exception to the rule. You’re exaggerating, they say; I see dogs in most pubs these days. No, really, you tell them; the majority of pubs don’t let dogs in. Look, they say; you’re in a pub with your dog right now. And you can try and persuade them, but ultimately they remain convinced that your experience has made you over-sensitive to knockbacks, that your vague sense, your rough estimation, your subjective opinion on the prevalence of dog-verboten pubs is over-stating the reality due to bias. And it’s not like you have a survey to hand, a report on the dog-friendliness of pubs across the country, which seems to be the only thing they’ll accept. And that way they’re treating you? That blithe dismissal of your solid data, gleaned from real experience, as subjective opinion? In favour of their perception of how it is, based on noticing the presence of dogs in pubs but generally not noticing the absence? That’s exactly the sort of unempathic obliviousness I’m talking about as not letting dogs into the pub.

Of course, to say that such denials of the problem are manifestatiosn of the problem is only to going to spark moral panic. Because then it becomes personal accusation, and this person sitting beside you in the pub, patting your dog, is mortally horrified at the suggestion that they’re dogist. Outright offended, actually. And then we end up in the bullshit blame game yet again. Fuck that shit. I’m not interested in moralistic mumbo jumbo. I’m interested in abjection. We’re talking yes/no questions here, and the numbers that answer either way, whether this or that pub lets dogs in or not. Whether this or that person lets the abject in, empathically speaking, when they try to make the sort of objectively verifiable claims I’m making as regards blood libel and segregation. A widespread selective empathy, as I say, meshes with my experience, and this is a matter of actual reality, so it’s not about who’s judging who and the correct way to navigate a minefield of clashing subjective opinions. It’s about the actual reality, or at least the claim of such.

Blood libel and segregation, and you can add selective empathy to the list. These are not, I’m more than happy to argue, fuzzy matters of interpretation, of subjective opinion. I’m no more likely to accept that a consensus reading of 300 as not blood libel is reasonable than I’m going to accept that judgement for The Birth of a Nation. I’m not likely to accept that abjection is in the eye of the beholder, because segregation is abjection and segregation is a hard fact. And I reckon I’ve pretty much nailed my colours to the mast as regards the relationship of selective empathy and abjection — as psychological mechanisms scaling up through interpersonal relationships to social structures. This, as far as I’m concerned, is what the thread is about, and if people want to engage on this topic, there’s some fair questions in among the rhetoric and accusations of accusations. So focusing on them…

“Why can’t Aang be Asian and still save the world?” Already answered — segregation. Next!

“Why do you think I’m okay with a non-Asian actor playing Aang in the movie?” Mutual hostility and suspicion. Escalating prickliness. Next!

“How do minorities get their messages across and change a system (heck, even a discussion of a change would be nice) that is not working for them? If kicking and screaming isn’t the answer (which I agree is not efficient, but the problem is that it seems to be the most efficient method I can think of!), what is? Praying that the people that doesn’t ‘get it’ (which led to the flawed system in the first place) suddenly just miraculously ‘gets it’?”

Assuming one admits of the selective empathy problem, that does seem like the key question.

With blood libel I’m talking about semiotic associations that are right there in the text, to be pointed to. Dark skin = villain. Hook nose = greed. It’s the stuff of agitprop — and of advertising, actually — so I don’t see that as a matter of “I know it when I see it.” If a text is abjecting in this way, it’s using the mechanisms of language to do so, demonstrably so. It’s as objective as saying that when you photograph a hot chick with a semi-automatic draped over a T-Bird, and turn that into an advert for the weapon in Guns & Ammo, you’re exploiting the way we think in symbols — using semiotics — to sell the gun by coding a message that guns are sexy. Similarly, if you used a photograph of a white guy heroically using that weapon to defend that hot chick from a horde of marauding black guys, again you’d be exploiting semiotics, with a message that guns are empowering — and rightly so, because you need that power to defend hot chicks from the unbridled lust of marauding black guys. This isn’t “I know it when I see it.” You can detail the exact semiotic processes at play here.

Segregation is even more objectively verifiable. It’s mostly physical, a matter of who is allowed to do what, and when and where they’re not allowed to. You could measure segregation back during the 50s and 60s just by counting the water-fountains, the schools, etc. Now, when it comes to segregation in the media, you can point at the movies. And the segregation there is not simply a disparity that can be rationalised as happenstance. You can point at whitewashing in things like The Last Airbender, and some will still argue happenstance. But you can point at movies like Falling For Grace, where studios have explicitly articulated their segregationist policy as a segregationist policy. The public, they say, will not accept an Asian-American lead in a mainstream Romantic Comedy; we must abide by their wishes and exclude this movie from mainstream RomCom status, put it where it “belongs.” The absence of the abject I’m talking about above — straightironing in 300 or Troy or Alexander — is just one particular facet of segregation. Again, there’s no “I know it when I see it” here. It’s as objective as saying that a night-club has a no-jeans door policy on the basis that its bouncers turn away people in jeans… and freely admit that they do so because they’re wearing jeans.

Whether people tend to see blood libel and segregation as legitimate problems is also objectively verifiable. It’s just a matter of raising the subject with people, explaining what you mean if their first response is “what the fuck?” and listening to how they respond. Repeat until you have enough data to discern the proportion of those who see these as real issues versus the proportion who don’t. Compare with the findings of others. Make your case in a public space, where you have a decent cross-section of people, and if you can get a sizeable sample, that’s more grist for the mill. We asked a hundred people, “Do you think blood libel and segregation in the media are legitimate problems?” You said, “No.” Our survey said — ding — sixty seven! Sixty seven people said, “No.”

Yes, experience attunes me to seeing abjection in something like 300, where others might not. But my argument is that this is no more a matter of subjective opinion than if someone allergic to nuts is more attuned to the presence of nuts in processed foods than the majority who are not. The actuality of whether or not nuts are present is still objectively verifiable. They’re there or they’re not, in high quantities or low quantities, this type of nut or that type of nut. It’s not a matter of “I know it when I taste it” — or rather, “when my tongue swells up and chokes me to death.” It’s not a situation where someone else can taste the food, not discern a nutty flavour and declare that their “no nuts here” judgement is equally valid as any other subjective opinion. I have an allergy to the abjection of queers in fiction, and not because it hurts my sensitive feelings, but because it’s agitprop, blood libel, and blood libel shapes opinions which drive people to kick the shit out of faggots. Its an actual health risk.

And the experience of unempathic obliviousness on the part of someone you’re trying to explain it to? That’s just a gnarlier judgement to verify given that the process here is basically asking that hundred people, “Do you think blood libel and segregation in the media are legitimate problems?” then explaining to the sixty-seven who say “No,” why you think it is, how it affects the abject. And you ask them again, and if they still don’t see it, you keep trying to get through to them, keep trying to make them care, keep trying to spark up an empathic response. That makes it a gnarlier question, because you might just not be explaining it well enough. But ultimately, you can boil it down to another question. We asked a hundred people, “If you don’t think blood libel and segregation are legitimate problems, and someone else does, is that their fuckin problem?” You said, “Yes.” Our survey said — ding — fifty three! Fifty three people said, “Yes.”

That’s selective empathy, I’d say, and it’s objectively verifiable as far as I’m concerned.

I’m not sure what “it” you’re saying is just like porn, judged on an “I know it when I see it” basis. Abjection itself? Or an unempathic obliviousness on the part of someone you’re trying to explain it to? And I’m not sure if you’re meaning, by that, that to base a judgement on experience like this is to render it basically subjective opinion. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and all that. Or abjection is in the eye of the beholder, in this case. Yes? No? That’s kind how “we’re done” comes across: it’s just a matter of individual interpretation, so yeah, end of story. Which means I’m definitely not done, I’m afraid.

I’m wary of that “eye of the beholder” notion, because it underpins the argument that if the majority of readers don’t see the blood libel, that’s the consensus interpretation, the reasonable interpretation of the average joe. Like, looking at the text, taking it on its own terms without filtering it via one’s own personal agenda, on the basis of pure aesthetics, this is the natural, logical interpretation. I’m not saying that this is your implication, not at all, but I think that implication is often at play where people talk about abjection as a matter of interpretation, so I think it needs to be brought to the surface for dissection.

Like, would it be fair to say that if the majority of viewers at the time didn’t see the blood libel in The Birth of a Nation, that’s fair enough? If the consensus interpretation was that it was just a rollicking good movie with some noble patriotic sentiments… well, fine. That was the reasonable interpretation, and the average joe was perfectly justified in seeing the movie as essentially harmless. I mean if people of colour had a different interpretation that was… as valid as anyone’s subjective opinion, but it was still just a subjective opinion. Cause I see that as ethically unsustainable. And I’d apply the same question to 300. If the majority of viewers now don’t see the blood libel there, is that consensus interpretation the reasonable interpretation? Is the average Joe perfectly justified in saying, “well, OK, your subjective opinion is valid, but mine is equally so. And it’s reasonable, so we’ll just have to agree to disagree.”

I mean, of course, they have the perfect right to make that judgement and express it — this isn’t about policing thought or limiting freedom of speech — but is it ethically sustainable for the average joe to shrug off a criticism of a work with the idea that the critic’s judgement comes down to “I know it when I see it”? By twisting that, I mean, into “So do I, and I don’t see it here; and your subjective judgement has no more weight than mine. So whatever.” Again, I’m not projecting that onto you, just exploring the reasons I wouldn’t say “it’s just like porn and you know it when see it.” I mean, you can imagine if you were a person of colour back in the day, dealing with a white friend who didn’t see a problem with The Birth of a Nation, right? Someone who could cheer during that scene where the KKK ride in to save the town from the uppity niggers, and not see anything wrong with that because it’s just a movie; and at the end of all your arguments as to why that scene is dodgy, they just say, well, it’s a matter of interpretation. So you argue that they probably don’t get the abjection in there because they don’t live with it; your experience is such that obviously you’re more likely to pick up on it. Experience, they say. So it’s just like porn and you know it when you see it.

In and of itself, it’s hard to know how to take that. It could be taken as, “OK, so your problem with The Birth of a Nation is that it does something which is hard to define but easy to identify, and I accept your criticism on that basis.” But it could equally be taken as, “Well, you’re not giving me an objective critique of The Birth of a Nation, simply applying a derogatory label on the basis of your over-sensitive reading, and I reject your criticism on that basis.” I’m not assuming either implication on your part here, but the import of these possible readings is worth laying bare.

Although all of this is something of a tangent, because the actual answer to that question — “So it’s just like porn and you know it when you see it, eh?” — is “No. You’re misconstruing the role of experience. I’m talking about objective judgement.” See the next post for details.

Why do you think I’m okay with a non-Asian actor playing Aang in the movie?

I mean, I know that you’ve got this idea built up in your head of The Person Who Doesn’t Agree, and you’re arguing with *that* person instead of *me*, but seriously–you’re really reaching at this point.

And, again, you’re doing exactly what you say is bad. Instead of engaging with the person you’re talking to–instead of taking them at face value, without any preconceived notions–you’re letting emotional responses short-circuit intellect and substituting stereotype for introspection.

“… if you aren’t superior, then how can you judge well enough claim that someone else is in error?”
“Experience.”

So it’s just like porn and you know it when you see it, eh? I guess we’re done, then.

Who said you have to be intelligent to have the ability to have a capacity of empathy? (I certainly haven’t) In fact, most of the people I’ve meet that holds supremist views (which generally is the most extreme in terms of a lack of capacity of empathy) are Ivy-league trained or had gone to very privileged colleges and would generally be considered as very intelligent.

Another candidate for this Mr. Murdoch and the direction he has given to his wonderfully objective media outlets. Michelle Malkin has a college degree (I think, I never studied her life in detail) and judging from the books that she’ve published, I really doubt empathy is a large component of her pyschological make-up.

And Hal, I’m guessing I’m less optimistic in relation to human being’s ability to empathize. I like the term you brought up though, it was something I haven’t heard before – Selective Empathy – and that’s the word that matches the intent of my post much more accurately (Thanks Hal, guess I learn something new everyday).

SO I’m happy to take my words back on that regard, that it’s not that humans does not have the capacity for empathy, it’s just that most are extremely selective about it.

(Happy now, DensityDuck?)

But DensityDuck, while you were happy to make accusations at me, you never answered my core question. How do minorities get their messages across and change a system (heck, even a discussion of a change would be nice) that is not working for them? If kicking and screaming isn’t the answer (which I agree is not efficient, but the problem is that it seems to be the most efficient method I can think of!), what is? Praying that the people that doesn’t ‘get it’ (which led to the flawed system in the first place) suddenly just miraculously ‘gets it’?

I don’t think letting things be will work. Obviously I don’t and I can’t speak for everyone but my generalisation comes from reading the arguments and reactions of the more recent events such as the Arizona immigration laws, Same-sex marriage in the US and The CNN “Dolls” test (Which I used as a bridge to discuss Hollywood). And I recall very heated arguments at a family gathering not long ago about these three issues.

An uncle supports the Arizona laws. So I asked, “So if there was an influx of illegal Chinese workers in California and Calfornia introduces the same laws. And every second day at lunch you are questioned and have your ID checked, while the rest of your work mates enjoyed their lunch peacefully because of their non-illegal skin colour. Or one day you just happen to forgot your wallet and phone while you’re out and you got locked up with drunks and criminals for a night just because of your skin color. How do you feel?”

To an Auntie (who is deeply religious, to be fair) who opposes gay-marriages, “Imagine if you’re told that it’s illegal for you and uncle are not allowed to get married because of your skin color?”

And for the ‘Dolls test’ (Which I tried to tied to the Hollywood whitewashing phenomomen), we have a discussion at the table and I said, “Imagine there was a toy shop that specialises in making very realistic Baby dolls and one that sells them in different shades of skin colors. For promotions, they invited 200 little girls and they could choose whatever dolls they want and can have have it for free. And at the end of day, all the white baby dolls are gone, all the black baby dolls remain and you have a segment of little girls who said they only chose the slighty skin tone dolls because they white dolls have run out. You’re the shop owner and you just picked up an asian-looking baby dolls that had been stepped on as the little girls rushed for the white one. So how do you feel about it.” Then I explain to them that’s the exact situation it has been happened in Hollywood.

By the end of the day the result of discussion was that for the ones that didn’t care, they still don’t care and these are people that I know well, educated and I tried to used examples where it becomes relevant to them and still it doesn’t work.

For the record, I don’t pretend to be particularly skilled at being empathetic. I will be honest to say being a straight male, I have no idea what kind of abjection Hal encounters and feels. In order to emphasize, all I could do is substitude the abjections that I have faced and try to get an understanding of it and that’s probably not even 1% of what Hal actually feels. But at least it is easier for me but I know that abjection exists, it’s not the same abjection, but at least I can recognise that the system isn’t perfect.

Now the trouble is how do we get these people – that had not faced abjection nor know the existence of these abjections – to be aware of the issue? How do we expand their expansion of thinking?

So DensityDuck, another question to you: “Why can’t Aang be Asian and still save the world?” (Ironically that M. Night Shyamalan changed the pronounciation of the names so they sound more Asian).

And hopefully one day Asian male characters gets to kiss a girl and a Gay male character gets to kiss a guy in a Hollywood blockbuster. Instead of asking ‘Why?’ hopefully people will be asking ‘Why not?’

P.S. I’ve typed a lot (for my standard), so I’m bound to have typos, grammar, spelling mistakes, so I apologize in advance for that.

I’m confused at what you’re saying. BTW, my ethicity is actually Chinese and yes, I have read about the Rape of Nanjing and stuff and my blood does boil when some asshole Japanese Professor tries to deny it happened or those overly nationalist/supremist idiots (though that applies to every nation/ethnic I suppose)…

But you actually think it’s okay for a person of chinese ethnicity to be hostile to a person of Japanese ethnicity JUST because he’s Japanese based on what happened then?
I’m very confused.

I really don’t see that power is a necessary component to create racism. I have had bums or drunks telling me to “Go back to Fucking China” (Eventhough I’ve never set foot in China myself), so they obviously have no ‘power’ to ‘deport’ me (Back to LA I suppose?). So that’s not racism?

But I agree that if power is apply to racism (or any form of discrimination, really), it can cause a lot more damage.

* Hey DensityDuck, see, I’m not very good at empathy myself.

& by the way:
N >And for the record, our (at least my family and friends) definition of the word ‘racist’ seems to a bit different to the main-stream media understanding of the word. For example we are happy to label a chinese person as a ‘racist’ or have committed ‘racism’ when he starts to make derogatory comments against a Japanese person purely because of the past attrocities the Japanese Military had committed in the WWII. For us, any act of unfairness committed due to the ethnicity of person will be considered racism.

Wow. All the derogatory words in the world cannot be weighted against the suffering and horror inflicted on us by your people. You’re right, it isn’t fair, but not in the way you think it is.
It is my understanding that racism is backed by power; the person without privilege in the situation isn’t racist against the one with privilege.

Thing is, yes, you could say that these are types of abjection occurring “even when someone’s motives are to exemplify and uphold an ideal,” but I don’t think that’s incompatible with my characterisation of basic abjection. Indeed, I’d say that vicious abjection is all about exemplifying and upholding an ideal — an ideal Self defined in the exclusion of the abject.

Experience. I mean, I see that quote as basically an empirical reckoning. As a member of one abject group, I don’t have to be any Gooder, smarter or more caring to have experienced the pointy end of selective empathy on the basis of where I stick my dick. So if I say that the majority of us withhold empathy from the abject, consciously or unconsciously, I’m not laying claim to a moral, intellectual or empathetic status by which I’m entitled to look down my nose at the hoi poloi with snootcocking snipewankery. I’m just saying that in my experience the majority of us withhold empathy, consciously or unconsciously, as part of a process of abjection. The relevant experience is that which comes with being a member of an abjected group, living with a general indifference to inequities like blood libel and segregation in the media. The experience is of struggling to make people actually put themselves in the position of the abject, emotionally speaking, and being met with, “You’re reading too much into it.” It’s of seeing people dismiss your bitter mumblings about the straightironing of Achilles in TROY because they don’t afford it any weight, because they’re not really understanding what it is to care. They’re not empathising.

Founding a judgement on that experience is not claiming an elevated moral, intellectual or empathetic status. Remember, in the column I explictly say that “we’re all normative in some respect and prone to do this.” Which is to say, I’m sure those sneaky mechanisms of abjection are at play in my own psyche. I’m not actually arguing that anyone has a better ability to express empathy. Having the experience of being in one abject group might make you more likely to recognise abjection in general and engage with it, but you might as easily just carry on being a queer white male as indifferent to inequities based on skin colour as the average straight white male. Having that experience might motivate you to aim for a more ethical, intelligent and empathetic approach to life in general — which would largely, I kinda think, require rejecting the unprincipled, foolish and disdainful mentality of self-righteousness — but it might just as well grind you down into a moralistic, sophistic and contemptuous churl. All of that is tangential. The key point: Not having that experience doesn’t mean that when someone makes a judgement on the basis of such experience, they’re saying you’re a lesser person, morally, ethically or empathetically.

One thing to bear in mind is that part of that experience is of trying to explain the experience, trying to talk about the systemic problems, the subtler inequities, the empathic barriers — and finding that where some dismiss it because they just don’t care, many who do care dismiss it with a protest against the challenge to their moral status. They care so deeply about not being active or complicit participants in such a shameful iniquity that any shadow of a finger pointed in their direction (ironically) raises an empathic barrier — even if the actual finger is pointed elsewhere, at the system. Like, if I say that the majority of us withhold empathy from the abject, consciously or unconsciously, you can almost guarantee that someone will hear it as, “You don’t care about the abject!” and respond with, “How dare you?!” An empirical reckoning is recast as moral judgement and rejected as illegitimate.

It doesn’t help, I think, that the moment someone does that other fingers will be turned to point at them in moral outrage. Nor does it help that because this functions as a dismissal of experience it becomes part of the experience of abjection, as frustrating as, “You’re reading too much into it.” Nor that the usual terms of the discourse are hard not to take as accusations of personal culpability for the most heinous of Bad Things. Nor that a response protesting a wrongful accusation is in itself an implicit accusation of moral, intellectual or empathic failure. I could go on, but it all comes down to moralistic thought, as far as I’m concerned. Shitstorms are inevitable when you’re dealing with moralists.

The point is, the empirical reckoning is either accurate or not, regardless of the shitstorm that rages around it. Me, I have no qualms about a statement like that, because it meshes with my own experience. I reckon a fair whack of people will share that experience, and those who do won’t see such a judgement as particularly shocking or presumptuous.

I’m not arguing against the notion that someone might have a better ability to express empathy (or I’m not _trying_ to argue against it, at least.) I do think that many of these discussions involve unconscious assumptions of superiority. Indeed, it might be that the biggest problem in a lot of cases is that both sides of the discussion have issues developing empathy with their subject.

Heck, I think that what’s happening here is exactly what’s been going on in these conversations–just about a different thing. “You look like you’re claiming that you’re superior.” “Well, I didn’t mean to.” “Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t!”

******

“Again, it is founded on a rejection of the abject as a legitimate part of us, Othering them in order to define identity, the group Self, by negation; the abject is the opposite of simpatico.”

I certainly agree with you here. I think it’s no mistake that abjection often involves portrayals of the Other as inferior (and there’s that assumption of superiority again.)

However…

“Abjection is powered, at its heart, by revulsion, by disgust, by an antipathy that defies sympathy. It’s moralistic, defining the abject as an essential transgression of the Natural Order, as something that must be expunged accordingly; to enforce, propagate and defend abjection is a Good Thing in that system of mores; to abjure compassion is a practical requirement of Goodness.”

I don’t know if I’d go that far. Rousseau and the other primitivists didn’t think that precivilized cultures were inferior wastes that deserved to be exterminated. Abjection can occur even when someone’s motives are to exemplify and uphold an ideal.

Thing is, this is patently not the case; N explicitly, albeit parenthetically, allows for the figurative ear plugs to be there unknowingly. That’s pretty much the opposite of your characterisation. Yes, N takes your reading of my response as an example of selective hearing, but there’s no condemnation of this as a Bad Thing done for malice; this is simply a springboard into a comment that posits a state of denial and asks how we combat it. There is no hint of blaming and shaming. Nothing N says functions as an accusation that the majority, in their obliviousness, are transgressing some moral dictum and thereby losing Goodness. There is not a word in their comment that justifies a reading of “I’m a morally superior and wiser person who is going to dictate terms to you.” N simply asserts that obliviousness is the norm, that this is how it is, that this is the problematic situation we need to figure out how to deal with.

I mean, your default assumption is that the people you’re talking to are stupid or evil or both!

No, the default assumption N articulates is that people cannot or will not empathise. This is not a judgement of intellect, just of capacity for empathy. I think the articulation is problematic, but not entirely irrational. Yes, if one takes it as an essentialist statement about human nature in all given contexts, that the majority of people either cannot or will not relate to their fellow human beings with empathy (ever!), it seems like a terribly misanthropic assertion that we’re all functionally psychopathic, either by nature or by choice. And that doesn’t seem terribly realistic. However, if you add a bit of context, in terms of how we tend to react to strangers versus families and tribes, how we apply empathy selectively, how abjecton affects our ability to empathise with the abject, it’s not neccesarily a wholesale dismissal of human benevolence that explains why obviously people aren’t going to pay attention to the crazy talk.

Abjection is, by its very nature, corrosive of empathy. Again, it is founded on a rejection of the abject as a legitimate part of us, Othering them in order to define identity, the group Self, by negation; the abject is the opposite of simpatico. Abjection is powered, at its heart, by revulsion, by disgust, by an antipathy that defies sympathy. It’s moralistic, defining the abject as an essential transgression of the Natural Order, as something that must be expunged accordingly; to enforce, propagate and defend abjection is a Good Thing in that system of mores; to abjure compassion is a practical requirement of Goodness. Predicated on a denial that the abject is of us, abjection functionally is a reversal of the recognition of similitude that is the very root of empathy. It might well be positioned conceptually as the polar opposite of empathy.

So, to say that where a state of abjection persists, the majority are incapable of or unwilling to empathise with the abject is reductive, but to say that their/our empathy is limited in very basic, pervasive and sometimes subtle ways, that they/we are consciously or unconsciously participating in a denial of empathy — this is simply to say what abjection is. It’s not a condemnation of people as stupid or evil or both. It’s an interpretation of psychological, interpersonal and societal patterns of behaviour, of mechanisms of intellectual and emotional conduct, of how they scale up to large-scale inequities in society. It’s an attempt to get to the root of these inequities with an analysis that comes to a conclusion: people abject.

N’s comment does focus on your response, read it as filtered by the mechanisms of abjection, but the point N is making seems to me entirely devoid of the moral judgementalism you’re criticising. The extent to which the law-and-order mentality is powered by self-righteous pride in one’s own Goodness is, as you say, another discussion, and I could easily argue both ways on the application of punitive disapprobation, but I’m not interested in simply replaying the scenario of moral outrage versus moral panic. I hope you can appreciate that, because you’re bristling at an attitude in N’s comment that I don’t see. I see no attempt to set the terms, mete out recriminations or demand apologies, so there’s no need to push back against that here. I see no claim of moral superiority, just a sad awareness that all too often people just don’t get it.

You’re ascribing a moralistic judgement to what N is saying that I don’t see at all. N isn’t talking in terms of Bad Things, far as I can see, people doing a “wrong thing on purpose for the wrong reasons.” N’s comment simply picks up on the point I made about certain styles of arguments being seen as necessary simply to get through to denialists. How does the abject make themself heard if abjection delegitimises their voice? How does the abject make the mechanisms of abjection apparent to the normative, if those mechanisms function partly by creating a state of disacknowledgement of abjection on the part of the normative? Those are the key questions N is asking, with no accusation of Badness.

And the questions are fair. If you understand the notion of abjection, this process of absenting is part of it. That which was once part of us, and still in reality is, on some level, is segregated out by markers of deviance, excluded as other, absented. The abject is, as the abject, standing outside the town hall, at a sign which reads “No abject allowed,” and the only way to get that sign removed is to raise a motion at the council meeting the abject can’t attend because of that sign. So for many the only option seems to be to stand at the doorway and shout. Angrily and aggressively. As I say, I don’t see a sledgehammer moral outrage approach as the only strategy — I see it as pragmatically flawed, in fact — but the questions N asks of how we get our voices heard are questions that need to be asked.

See, N’s assumption that obliviousness is a baseline state of the majority isn’t, I think, that unfair. Where N says that for most, discrimination is only recognised when it’s a matter of concrete physical harm — blood seen, lives lost — this is, I think, an accurate representation. At very least, it is a wholly understandable perception on the part of the abject. As a writer, and a queer one to boot, I’m attuned to subtexts that are basically blood libel, absences from narrative positions that constitute segregation; but the sheer popularity of works that are open to critique in that manner speaks of an audience that is overwhelmingly oblivious of those issues. This whole column addresses mechanisms of abjection in mainstream media that the majority of the mainstream audience simply don’t recognise. This does not mean all the individual members of that audience are doing Bad Things. It simply means that a state of abjection persists, and one effect of that state is this obliviousness.

Put it this way: Where the abject can hardly help but be aware of every water fountain with a sign that says, “Normative Only,” the normative rarely notice those signs at all, because they’re not the ones who have to go to the ghetto to find a water fountain built for them. I watch 300, for example, and I see the boy-loving Spartans painted as red-blooded hetero heros who dismiss Athenians with a homophobic “nation of boy-lovers,” fighting nobly against Persians who are demonised and feminised in the crudest manner. Xerxes is pretty much a monstrous queer. Do the majority see the mechanisms of abjection in that movie? Do the majority taste the poison in the water of that water-fountain? Most of the criticism I’ve seen of that movie have been about the historical spuriousness and/or the puerile wankery of the power-fantasy.

So, I don’t think N is being unfair in positing obliviousness as the norm.

Wow. You go in with this assumption and you wonder you’ve got such trouble getting people to agree with you? I mean, your default assumption is that the people you’re talking to are stupid or evil or both!

“Unless we kick and scream, how do we get our messages across when the majority of people are covering their ears (or unknowingly have ear-plugs permanently placed in their ears)?”

Well, but there it is–you’re assuming that because this person did something that “looks wrong”, that they did a wrong thing on purpose for wrong reasons. You start the conversation with that attitude and it’s no wonder that you get so much pushback. Maybe what needs to happen is less of “I’m a morally superior and wiser person who is going to dictate terms to you” and more of “I need to understand why this hurts me and express it to this person and accept the fact that they might not agree with me”.

Because that last is another big thing about this kind of debate; there’s this attitude that “you hurt me and we aren’t done here until you say you’re sorry and MEAN IT (crosses arms)” Sometimes what happened wasn’t racist–it was just dumb. All those Golden Age SF stories that had rockets doing impossible things weren’t “culturally appropriative” of the concepts behind rocketry, and they weren’t biased against the concept of space travel.

In regards to DensityDuck’s interpretation of:
“…an outrage driven by entirely justified anger at abjection, but bound into a mechanism of social shaming that has all the sophistication of a sledgehammer.” which I think is a good example of quoting out of context and seeing things he/she only wanted to see.

From what I interpretated, Hal is questioning the methodology how a problem is solved, rather than questioning whether the problem exists or not.

The trouble is that being the minority, how do we get our voices heard in a more finesse way? How can we convince other people that the existing system is hurting us and will continue to hurt us in the near future unless something is done?

The sad truth is, for the majority of people anyway, ‘discrimination’ can only be seen when blood can be seen or when lives are lost. But ‘discrimination’ occurs at a much higher rate than that.

While there are many that are more sympathetic (such as Hal), they are sympathetic because they have the ability to empathize and wants to empathize in the first place. However, most people in the majority does not possess the ability to empathize or choose not to.

Unless we kick and scream, how do we get our messages across when the majority of people are covering their ears (or unknowingly have ear-plugs permanently placed in their ears)?

“…an outrage driven by entirely justified anger at abjection, but bound into a mechanism of social shaming that has all the sophistication of a sledgehammer. ”

Exactly. And it seems to me that a lot of the people doing that hammering are entirely too pleased to be swinging the hammer, but that’s a different discussion entirely.

“The third is the practice by which one employs and thereby improves one’s ethical judgement. If, in doing so, someone slams you for having done a Bad Thing, you should be looking to augment your understanding of how abjection works by making sense of their reaction. You should not be angsting over whether or not this means you’ve fallen from a state of Goodness.”

This is exactly what I think. Too many people on both sides of the discussion focus more on the words than on the reasons; they insist that the forms are the important thing. (Much the same as the moral dicta discussed earlier.)

Thing is, it’s not about acting in a non-racist way. This is to assume that the system of moral dicta is actually consistent and complete, such that by following all the rules we can stay within that system, subsist in a state of Goodness. It’s to assume that there’s a way of acting that is essentially non-racist, one that can be codified in simple moral dicta, a system by which one can live one’s life in the certainty that by doing this and not doing that one will remain Good.

Or rather, to unpack it properly, to ask this rhetorical question is to protest the inconsistencies that trap us in a double-bind where we’ll inevitably put a foot wrong, lose our Goodness, and end up subject to moral outrage — but to do so with an implicit acceptance that the system is the only choice. But if I try to do Good Things, it says, I can only end up doing Bad Things. Taken as a literal question, it’s a request for a strategy of behaviour by which one can avoid perpetrating the crime of racism, in this situation where following one rule — “Thou shalt not pay attention to race” — inevitably brings us into conflict with another — “Thou shalt not disregard the margins.” Given the “But isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?” you’re kind of asking why we can’t just stick with a simple “Thou shalt not pay attention to race,” as a familiar and established axiom.

It’s a common response in the discourse, as you say. If you can’t/don’t question the system, seeing it as unworkable just leads to moral panic, a terror/horror of being shamed for the unintentional transgressions. Note that all the options you give in the “damned whatever we do” scenario — and “damned” is a significant term here — set up an action as automatically entailing a response of moral outrage, as infringements of this or that essential rule. Faced with the double-binds wired into the system, fearing (and often resenting) the inevitable condemnation for doing Bad Things, people throw their hands up in the air and walk away, saying, “everything I do is a Bad Thing, far as you’re concerned; nothing I can do will ever constitute a Good Thing for you.” If they stay in the debate, that response is usually reconfigured as an increasingly frustrated request for rules that aren’t inconsistent: “OK, so how do I need to act to not be racist? What Good Things do I need to do, and what Bad Things do I need to not do?”

Simple answer: exercise your ethical judgement; stop assuming that some set of reductive moral dicta will allow you to subsist in a state of Goodness.

Unfortunately, in the discourse, these sort of pleas for clarity in the rules are usually going on amid the very moral outrage the angst is focused on, an outrage driven by entirely justified anger at abjection, but bound into a mechanism of social shaming that has all the sophistication of a sledgehammer. (There are arguments that such verbal bludgeoning is necessary to force denialists to see the problems; I see that point, but my own judgement is that they’re counter-productive.) With the moral outrage already rolling, that law-and-order mentality already in action, those sort of questions may well be taken as rhetorical challenges to the system, challenges that need to be met with a vigorous defense. The sledgehammer may be turned on you for undermining the integrity of a moral dictum that’s considered crucial in the struggle for equality, and for doing this when your key concern is with your own Goodness. Some will see this as placing the responsibility on the abject to do your ethical thinking for you, and they’ll respond with… varying degrees of consideration for your situation, shall we say? Maybe they’ll offer some broad principles, strategies for dealing with the minefield, but the specificity of such may allow them to be taken as yet more moral dicta to add to the complexity.

Me, I say those moral dicta are for children. Forget about “acting in a non-racist way,” and aim to understand the mechanisms of abjection so that you can recognise the subtler inequities and iniquities born of them, in any given context. Then apply empathy and integrity in order to counteract those mechanisms where possible.

Ultimately, the choice is not between depicting the Other as “having identifiably Other traits” or depicting the Other as “being the same as the rest of our characters only with different skin color.” The choice is between depicting the Other in accordance with received wisdom, not depicting the Other at all because the received wisdom is too hard to follow, and depicting the Other with an understanding of how depictions of the Other work, how they can employ such traits in various ways — some that actively reinforce a state of abjection by playing into a demonising semiotics, some that passively acquiesce to a state of abjection by overlooking the distinct treatment meted out to some on the basis that they have this particular trait. Where abjection persists, the first option is complacency and the second is complicity. The third is the practice by which one employs and thereby improves one’s ethical judgement. If, in doing so, someone slams you for having done a Bad Thing, you should be looking to augment your understanding of how abjection works by making sense of their reaction. You should not be angsting over whether or not this means you’ve fallen from a state of Goodness.

Way I see it, sure, there’s an issue that racism is now a moral transgression. By which I mean, it’s perceived as a cut-and-dry Bad Thing in the way that murder or theft is. Sounds fair enough, right? But the reason I see that as an issue? Because previous Bad Things have included homosexuality and miscegenation. The issue is with mores in general, how they work.

Seems to me, the conventional ethics that works in terms of moral dicta, defining acts as Bad Things like that, as transgressions of the Natural/Social/Divine Order, is ethically retarded — and I mean “retarded” in its literal sense. It’s what Kohlberg calls the law-and-order mentality, a worldview in which acts can be essentially positioned on a spectrum from forbidden (must not) through permissable (may but should not) via discretional (should but may not) to mandatory (must). In that worldview, Goodness is a matter of not transgressing the moral order — i.e. the system of moral dicta. And of enforcing the moral order indeed; there’s a lynchpin moral dictum that to punish a crime by shaming the perpetrator, by heaping moral outrage upon them, is a Good Thing, a discretional/mandatory act which increases one’s Goodness.

But here’s the rub. Propagating the system is also, in that system, a Good Thing. So teaching your child not to be racist or homophobic is a Good Thing. Unless, of course, the system has defined miscegenation and homosexuality as Bad Things, in which case teaching your child to react with knee-jerk moral outrage in the face of such pernicious “threats to the fabric of society” is an absolute and unquestionable moral imperative. Shit, half the time that system defines questioning the moral dicta as a Bad Thing.

This is why I don’t trust that worldview, why I have an issue with “Thou shalt not be racist” as a moral dictum. Sure, the actual dicta often function pretty well as rules-of-thumb. And our current conventional moral order is informed by countless generations of individuals exercising ethical judgement rather than moral dicta, fighting tooth-and-nail to reform the system (translation: getting ethical retards to understand that miscegenation and homosexuality, etc., are not Bad Things.) We’ve scrapped a lot of unjust moral dicta and replaced them with better ones, born of egalitarian principles rather than insane prejudices. But it’s still an infantile mode of ethical thought based on subscribing to, enforcing, propagating and defending moral dicta as essential truths.

My worry: the moral outrage that erupts to enforce a dictum like “Thou shalt not be racist” may actually, I’d argue, strengthen that system as a whole, reinforcing the idea that Goodness resides in playing by the rules — whatever they are — rather than exercising one’s ethical judgement. And the various mechanisms and results of ethnicity-oriented abjection — psychological, interpersonal and societal — are too complex to all be collapsed into a single crime of racism, I’d say, placed deep into the zone of “must not.” The only way to navigate here is to exercise one’s ethical judgement.