The trivial rhetoric of "deference politics"
The Court Bow, or Preperation for the Kings Visit to Ireland, 1778
For years, the Bay's progressive advocates have loudly and magnanimously replaced the word "homeless" with "unhoused"—while ignoring (until now?) the community's actual material needs. And, yep, they're not the only ones. Self-avowed leftist Freddie DeBoer analyzes this phenomenon on his blog.
What do I mean by “deference politics”?
... I’m referring to the tendency of left-leaning people to substitute interpersonal obsequiousness towards “marginalized groups” for the actual material change those groups demand.
If you’ve lived in any left-aligned spaces in the past decade, you’ve encountered deference politics many times. A white person in a humanities seminar, an organizing meeting, an industry convention, a workplace gathering, etc., who makes the conscious decision to avoid engaging or to engage from a position of proactive apology towards various identity groups is engaged in deference politics. Someone who insists that members of “dominant groups” should censor themselves or speak softly or avoid speaking too much or defer to or otherwise “make space” for members of minority identities is advocating for deference politics; someone from a dominant group who tells others in that group that they should defer is practicing (self-aggrandizing) deference politics. ... Avoiding sharing a challenging opinion on an issue of controversy for fear of running afoul of the wrong kind of identity accusation is deference politics. ...
[T]he people who practice deference politics never seem to recognize that all of the deferring never makes positive action more likely. Like many great political crimes, deference politics privileges the communicative and the emotional over the material and the actual. ...
Is “deference politics” just a way to say “woke”?
No. Deference politics could conceivably be practice or demanded in any given political context and by members of any given political tendency. Conservatives do occasionally advocate for deference politics, such as when they insist that only veterans should comment on issues of war and peace. Nor do woke people assertively practice deference politics all the time ... [T]hey have a tendency to assert their own superior right to speak rather than to defer to others. ...
What are the origins of deference politics?
Certainly deference politics developed in part because of the perceived self-interest of members of majority groups in spaces where identity politics predominate; when accusations of racism or sexism or similar become ubiquitous, and the social and professional costs of being so accused are severe, many people will instinctively adopt a position of reflexive submissiveness. The intellectual foundations, though, are best expressed in standpoint theory, a branch of feminist discourse which insists that those who suffer under particular identity-based oppressions are the only ones equipped to discuss them intelligently or with credibility. ... The problems with standpoint theory should be obvious. It simply is not true that the best people to understand or deliberate about a given issue are those most personally affected by said issue. We don’t, for example, generally fill juries for those accused of criminal offenses only with victims of those specific offenses ... The same is true in politics. Those who are most intimately and personally connected to a given issue are often the very least well-equipped to engage effectively on that issue because they have too much baggage regarding that issue, are too close to the issue to think clearly about it.
Also, in democracy, everyone has a right (and an obligation) to speak out on issues of controversy regardless of their particular expertise or perspective. That’s the basic egalitarian principle of politics at work. ...
Is deference politics all bad?
No. Of course we should all take care to listen more and talk less, to consider the interests and feelings of others, and to ponder how our point of view influences our opinion. ... It’s just that none of this wisdom is predicated on acting like we have some sort of inherent moral obligation to “shut up and listen,” a commandment which is always directed at other people even when it’s ostensibly a matter of self-implication.
What should I do, then?
Stop worrying so much about whether you conform to someone else’s vision of being opposed to racism, sexism, homophobia, or similar; concentrate on whether you actually are acting in opposition to racism, sexism, and homophobia. Worry less about whether you appear racist and more about whether you actually are racist. Do the work of politics, which is to say, evaluate what your moral values tell you is the right thing to do or say and then do or say them. ...
If someone challenges you in a disagreement about politics and does so specifically by questioning your right to speak given your identity relative to theirs, listen to what they have to say, authentically consider their point of view, and if you still reject it, look them in the eye and say “That does not work on me.”
Read the whole thing here.
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