I'm shocked but doubling down
As I lose subscribers for highlighting racism in Floridian politics I have decided to outline a theory of how and why people end up engaging in silence and denial instead of contending with reality
Yesterday I wrote an article arguing that the US Presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis is instituting legislative racism in the Floridian schools system as he claims black people benefited from slavery by learning skills like 'being a blacksmith'. Furthermore, I attempted to prove that this is part of a long running pseudo-intellectual academic tradition of attempting to minimise the legacy of US slavery instead of confronting the racism in the society. It is then a huge surprise to me that I have received opprobrium from a handful of (my now former) readers.
But I make no apology, in fact I double down. But perhaps it’s important to explore how and why people end up insisting on denying the elephants lurking the room alongside us? To this end I offer up this follow-up piece.
One reason for my intransigence on this is just how widespread this intellectual rot has spread. Just the other day on Fox News I spotted the flabbergasting moment where Greg Gutfeld decided to tell his (Jewish) colleague live on air that sure the Holocaust was bad, but it taught Jews perseverance. Don’t believe me? Watch it for yourself
The point here isn’t to single out lone individuals for a social media pile-on, or to peddle some sort of anti-GOP media narrative. My point is, there is an ingrained tradition in US intellectual, political and cultural life which has long sought to minimise the racial baggage the United States has suffered. And I should know, I taught Anglo-American Society and Culture as a humanities course in Shandong Agricultural University. Part of that programme was to teach Chinese first years at the university the political structures, history and cultural (art and literature) movements that came together to make the America that we know today. In short: I am no stranger to the subject matter of American slavery and racial apologism and can identify it when I see it in contemporary US society.
I am not going to name the subscribers who decided to cancel their subscriptions to my Substack over my recent article condemning the Floridian social studies curriculum. That would be inappropriate, and serve as an irrelevant distraction. But what I will do is attempt to explore why I have lost three subscriptions within 24 hours of publishing my previous article.
Today I decided to explore where this reaction came from from my former readers. I always try to see the best, not worst, in people and insist on assuming honest intent. So, it is with this in mind I decided to outline my theory of how honest and generally decent folk can become so determined to deny the reality before their eyes. What drives people in English speaking societies (for the theory I’m outlining today applies as much to Britain as America) to - like the three monkeys - See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil? (note I’m referencing the three wise monkeys in the English expression sense, of turning a blind eye to wrong and not the original Confucian meaning which is something rather different)
When I read some of the reasons these now former (US based) readers listed, my mind flicked to the book ‘The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life’ by Eviatar Zerubavel.
Zerubavel deployed in the book his full understanding as a Rutgers University Sociology Professor to examine “the denial of social realities - whether incest, alchoholism, corruption or even genocide”. He contends that conspiracies of silence are widespread in all human societies, and the refusal to acknowledge an obvious truth is multifaceted, growing out of social and political underpinnings.
From small family groups, whole communities to politicians and corporations “open secrets” exists and are routinely perpetuated. It comes in part from childhood, where we grow up learning ‘etiquette’ (Zerubavel contends etiquette produces ‘tact’ which can often function as a soft form of taboo making). From childhood we are inculcated with a need to practice rehearsed indifference, and learn to ignore. This extends to the rules of irrelevance
“There is a considerable difference between merely seeing or hearing something (that is, perceiving) and actually noticing (that is, paying attention to) it, as not everything we experience through our senses always captures attention.”1
Yet Zerubavel expands on the point to emphasise that all too often we aren’t simply failing to notice something, “indeed, it is, quite often the result of some pressure to actively disregard it”. This is where a cultural norm, reinforced by etiquette’s product ‘tact’ as a soft form of taboo making enters to reinforce the “open secrets” all around us. Institutions such as religious hierarches can serve as enforcers of the unspoken rules, as we all grow up inculcated on where the red lines are and where the eggshells we need to gingerly walk silently over lurk.
But Zerubavel is equally correct in arguing that religions aren’t the only way the silence is enforced. Intellectual traditions intermingle with cultural narratives all to ensure that nobody dares to become a “silence breaker”.
Robert E. Pittenger said “It only takes one person to produce speech, but it requires the cooperation of all to produce silence”2 If we consider what drives people to insist on denying an obvious reality we need to move away from the mere psychological and instead take a sociological perspective. Once we do so, we can see that it takes more than one person to maintain the silence in a society or family. Co-denial is essential and measures must be practiced to ensure few dare to be a “silence breaker”. In this sense there is a double wall of silence in our societies. The psychologist Dan Bar-On theorised in relation to the nazi perpetrators and their children in the aftermath of WW2. As Zerubavel puts it, "by collectively seeing and showing, or hearing and speaking no evil we thus construct a “double wall” of silence”.
What this means, to attempt to put it simply is that there is a symbiotic relationship between the twin acts of not speaking and not hearing. A relation perfectly captured by the subtle yet profound relationship between secrecy and tact.
This symbiotic relationship is best seen in Bill Clinton being able to keep his affair with Monica Lewinsky a secret, this was only possible in the hustle and bustle of the Presidency on the proviso that people around the former President knew - at least publicly - not to be too curious. I’m reminded of Bettie Currie (his personal secretary) explained once that she tried studiously hard to “avoid learning the details”, something Zerubavel also picks up on in his book3
When some of my American subscribers cancelled their subscriptions following my article, it was undoubtly because I had violated a fundamental rule if their denial of the open secret of US intellectual slavery apologism was to continue. After all, I put it you all of you that it is obviously much easier to continue to hear no evil, when others speak no evil, and also it’s far easier to see no evil when the others around you “show no evil”. In this way the double wall of silence is maintained.
The cancellation message I received perfectly captures this bizarre determination to never see the elephant in the room with us. First the denying the denial takes place; his silence about the crux of the issue is covered up with inane chatter. He beats around the bush as it where. Just as in ‘And The Band Played On’ (Randy Shilts chronicle of the silence-ridden AIDs epidemic of the 1980s), we see his determination to focus on a subject other than the one we’re actually talking about.
Secondly, he displays what I like to call the phenomenon of ‘bystanders and enablers’. His comment suggests that we aren’t ones to be ‘in the know’, that the truth is tightly held by a small guarded circle of folk who really understand the truth. In brief, denial is easier when you can imagine distance between yourself and the elephant. To quote Zerubavel once more, “silent bystanders act as enablers because watching others ignore something encourages one to deny its presence”. I broke this vital rule for my former reader, I refused to ignore this US elephant called institutional racism in parts of their cultural and political life; and in so doing I prevented him from having the ‘distance’ by declining to join him in ignoring it. Remember, silence and denial only functions when it’s a collaborative effort and my article violated this necessity.
The thing with these metaphorical elephants (such as institutional cultural and political racism in the US), is that they grow larger the longer we pretend not to notice them. Zerubavel noted that “As a child of Holocaust survivors describes to the silence surrounding his parents traumatic past, “every year [it] grew taller [and] I came to be more and more aware of its presence, and of how odd it was that we never spoke of it, since it dominated the landscape”4
In contemporary US political and cultural life the elephant dominating the landscape is the continuing refusal to acknowledge the ingrained racism in parts of the society. My article which triggered this backlash from some of my American readers sprang from my highlighting a long-running academic tradition which seeks to minimise the vicious criminality of slavery in US history. When I drew the link from the academic Ulrich Phillips 1929 slavery apologism to DeSantis antics today in the Floridian social studies curriculum, I also drew attention to the reality of a continuing racism in the society. DeSantis is guilty of what Voegeli condemned the mid 19th century US emancipationists and policy-makers for - that is compromising with the ingrained racialism of the society in the Midwest. DeSantis is a history major, he is smart enough to fully comprehend the dangerous swamp he is enabling, but does so as it benefits him politically. This example of a long-running Republican legislative-political racism being exposed proved intolerable for my former reader. After all, if he acknowledges any of this then he’d also need to contend with the racism of Nixon’s ‘southern strategy’ on which modern GOP dominance rests.
In Han Christian Andersen’s book ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, there is a very good reason the author had the role of silence-breaker be a small child.
“But he doesn’t have anything on!” cried a little child. “Listen to the innocent one,” said the proud father. And the people whispered among each other and repeated what the child had said. “He doesn’t have anything on. There’s a little child who says that he has nothing on.” “He has nothing on!” shouted all the people at last.”
As the elephant grows as the conspiracy to silence gets larger, so equally does the opportunities to end them too. But the pressures on these would-be whistle-blowers is intense, as Andersen’s story demonstrates, a silence-breaker requires a seconder. These vicious cultural conspiracies to silence and deny truths and realities can only end if there is no longer anyone engaging in the conspiracy to silence.
Andersen’s story has the initial role be a small child as this “innocent one” is still too young to have learnt to ignore, to be practicing rehearsed indifference or to even understand the confines of social etiquette as taboo making. In this sense the innocence of a child corresponds to an unrestrained spontaneous sincerity determinedly grappling with the obvious reality before his young eyes. He has not become captured by the intellectual cynicism that comes with age, nor is he yet subject to fears of social opprobrium.
In our case here, the elephant lurking in this room is the reality of an ingrained racism in the USA. Some folk cannot bare to even witness the obvious truth that the USA has an academic pseudo-intellectual tradition which seeks to minimise racism due to its own historical experiences with it. Fox News talking heads on prime time can actually get away with claiming that, sure the Holocaust was bad, but hey, those Jews learned the value of having utility…is disgusting. In Florida 80% of Floridian kids will now be inculcated with the “benefits” of enslaving black people (hey, they learnt transferable skills in their bondage)…is vile. But it’s all part of a conspiracy to silence and deny institutional racism.
I for one intend to defy the eggshells, stomp loudly on them and make one hell of a noise about all of this. I can honestly say I have absolutely no intention of humouring any of this silence and denial in American (or for that matter British) cultural life. When I spot racism I shall call it out, and if some of my readers can’t abide this, take a long run off of a vanishingly short pier, as I shan’t ever relent.
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Zerubavel, Eviatar, 2006, Oxford University Press, ‘The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life’, page 23
Pittenger, Robert E et al, The First Five Minutes
Zeruvavel, Eviatar, 2006, Oxford University Press, ‘The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life’, page 48
ibid, page 59