We tend to get it here mostly on threads which criticise racist aspects of mainstream feminism, but it’s all over the social justice map – people derailing criticism of ongoing perpetutations of oppressions with their defensive insistence that while yes of course that incident was very wrong however critics need to acknowledge that They/We are not all like That/Them.
John Scalzi lays out the 101 on why that argument functions as just another silencing tactic whether one means it that way or not, and notes how falling back on it blocks one’s ethical self-examination of how one benefits from the status quo: The Four Levels of Discrimination (and You) (and Me, Too).
But where does the line get drawn between being [x]ist and being an [x]ist, as it were? Let me posit what I think are four (very) general states of discrimination, as a way to suss out my own thoughts on the matter.
(And here is where I add the following disclaimers: One, these are my own thoughts, not rigorous research. Two, people who routinely and rigorously study discrimination may find this delightfully naive. Three, I acknowledge that the following framework is both very general, simplified and “chunky,” as in, reality is a great deal more subtle than four easy-to-conceptualize levels. Four, this is a work in progress. Got it? Okay, then:)
I’ll let you read the details of the levels Scalzi posits for yourselves, but I’ll just list them for easy reference:
- Ambient Discrimination
- Advantageous Discrimination
- Argumentative Discrimination
- Antagonistic Discrimination
We don’t really do or say anything useful if we only acknowledge the most extreme examples of discrimination as evidence that someone is a bigot in one way or another. This is part and parcel of the “not all…” assertion — one, that the ambient discrimination in the world doesn’t count when considering someone’s discriminatory assumptions and behavior, and two, that somewhere along the way, there’s a big, bright line at which one can say “hey, now you’re being a sexist/racist/homophobe/whatever.”
I’ve not yet read the several hundred comments on that thread, but they should be interesting, not least for the inevitable Malleting of inevitable trolls. It’s also likely to be widely discussed and referenced for quite some time, as tends to happen with Scalzi’s social framework posts, naive or not. I’d like to see some thoughts from this commentariat – it strikes me that recognising not just the typical but also one’s own particular combination of ambient prejudices is one of the crucial steps in social justice based media literacy as well as one of the most common stumbling blocks in anti-oppression activism.
ADDENDUM: Soraya Chemaly’s post at Role/Reboot on 10 major everyday sexisms that many people don’t even notice is a great introduction to ambient sexism.
2ND ADDENDUM: Both are discussing some of the issues I raised back in 2009 with On unexamined privileges and unconscious behaviours, where I reference Peggy McIntosh: White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack and Andrea Rubenstein (tekanji): “Check my what?” On privilege and what we can do about it. So these posts are not a new set of thoughts by any means, but it’s a good discussion to keep on having, because if we don’t, those lurking ambient/unconscious/unexamined/everyday attitudes keep festering away unchecked.