Steve Brust opened last weekend’s Fourth Street Fantasy convention in Minneapolis with a short speech that used the term “safe space” to make an impact – and succeeded, for better or worse. He upset a number of hearers and ignited a controversy that has played out on Facebook and several blogs in the past two days.
Steven Brust posted his text: “My opening remarks at Fourth Street Fantasy Convention”
Fourth Street Fantasy Convention is not a safe space. On the contrary, it is a very unsafe space. Of course, it ought to be safe in the sense of everyone feeling physically safe, and in the sense that there should be no unwanted harassment, and it should be free of personal attacks of any kind. But other than that, it is not safe.
Your beliefs about writing, and my beliefs about writing, and what is good, and how to make it good, should be sufficiently challenged to make us uncomfortable.
The interaction of art and politics is getting more and more in our faces. Whether this is good or bad is beside the point (although I think it’s good); it reflects changing social conditions, intensification of conflicts. Anyone who thinks art is independent of social conditions is as hopelessly muddled as someone who thinks there is a direct, simplistic 1:1 correspondence between them.
The result of this is that political understanding, unexamined assumptions, agendas, are very much present in the art we create and thus in the discussions of that art.
If no one feels unsafe, or unthreatened during these discussions, we’re doing them wrong. The same is true in discussing technique, because technique, content, form, attitude toward the creation and role of art, and understanding of society, are all interconnected, and in challenging one, we are liable to find ourselves challenging another….
Scott Lynch delivered the Fourth Street Fantasy board’s closing statement, which was perceived to be, in part, a response to Brust:
We, the board of the 4th Street Fantasy Convention exist to facilitate energetic and even challenging conversation. We want to provide spaces to do so, in both a moderated and unmoderated fashion. At 4th Street, the conversation is intended to spread from our shared spaces to more private spaces where attendees may consent to discuss, discourse, blather or argue about anything on any terms they desire.
We do not prescribe a mindset or an approach for attending 4th Street. We do not demand that anyone be made to endure anything against their will. We want to provide a space in which everyone feels welcome, and everyone respects the welcome we desire to extend. What we do here can be hard, it can be frightening, it can be exhausting. We want to support you in doing it. We want you to know that we take your needs, your comfort, and your sense of safety very seriously. As a friend of the convention said this weekend, “It is difficult to be bold in front of strangers when you don’t feel fundamentally welcome.” We are here to listen to you, we are here to have your backs, and we are doing our damnedest to kindle that fundamental sense of welcome, to sustain it, and to make it grow, in this year and every year to come.
Lydy Nickerson articulated her negative response to Brust’s opening speech in “The Rules: A Memo for Every Man in My Life”. (Click to see the complete post. There are substantial comments there, too.)
At Fourth Street Fantasy Convention, this year, Steven Brust, from the dais, delivered a speech about safety and free speech that made me so angry I had to leave the room. Since then, various people have talked about the issues of safety, harassment, and free speech, often as a response to that situation, but sometimes as a continuation of other conversations. I have some very specific issues with the things Steven said, but I don’t want to write about them at this moment. Instead, I want to address something that comes up over and over in these conversations, and always from men. “What are the rules?” “How can I know how to behave if you won’t clarify what you want?”
Dear men, please do not ask me to provide to you something that I have never had. I cannot provide you the rules. I do not know what they are, and I never have. I have spent my entire life, my personal, professional, educational, social, and romantic life, navigating the complexities of human interaction without rules. There has never been a point at which my exact decibel level was approved, the exact number of square inches of skin I can expose has been acceptable, a precise hairstyle I could wear that would clearly communicate who and what I was. I have spent my entire life being judged by a set of shifting rules.
I have spent my entire life being lied to about what those rules were. If I talk too softly, no one listens, but if I speak more loudly, I am bitchy and dismissed. If I am clear and logical, I am mocked for inadequately mimicking maleness, but if I am emotional, I am mocked for being too feminine and not worth paying attention to. There is no level of dress that does not open me up to either being a prude or a slut.
The penalties for transgressing these ever-shifting “rules” vary. Sometimes, it’s just being unpersoned. Sometimes it is getting a bad job-performance review. Sometimes, it’s unwanted and uncomfortable conversations. Always, at the back of my mind, has been the knowledge that if I girl wrong at the wrong guy, I might be physically assaulted. And if that were to happen, my entire girl-ness would then be on trial. What was I wearing? What did I say? How did I say it? Was it my fault? Oh, yes, some percentage of the population will assert, it was totally my fault. Because I didn’t follow a rule that, you know, doesn’t actually apply all the time, isn’t written down, is entirely contextual, and nobody every told me in the first place.
Rules are a luxury that I have never had. The only way rules have ever applied to me is as a stick to beat me with. They are a shifting landscape of horror. I don’t know if all-male spaces have clear, comfortable rules that everybody knows and the penalties are clear. I rather doubt it, but I don’t know. What I do know is that to be a woman in this culture is to be constantly moving through a space where expectations are variable, and are rigidly enforced on a whim, and can dramatically affect my life.
When we talk about harassment, safety, and safe spaces, stop asking me for rules. You never gave me any, and so I have none to give you. All I can offer you is this shifting, difficult, dangerous, ambiguous space that I live in. If you want to be an ally, if, indeed, you want to be my friend, you must learn to inhabit this uncomfortable space with me. You must accept that there aren’t clear rules where you can know that you are right….
Will Shetterly defended Brust’s use of language: “Ideology makes you confuse the literal and the metaphorical–a bit about the 4th Street Kerfuffle”.
The people who’re upset by Steve’s talk are unable to see that his opening lines are metaphorical:
Fourth Street Fantasy Convention is not a safe space. On the contrary, it is a very unsafe space.
And they’re unable to see that his third line is literal:
Of course, it ought to be safe in the sense of everyone feeling physically safe, and in the sense that there should be no unwanted harassment, and it should be free of personal attacks of any kind.
If you think about his statement logically, there’s no reason to interpret the first two lines as saying he wants 4th Street to be a place that’s physically unsafe, and there’s every reason to think his third line means exactly what it says. But humans aren’t logical. To people who think of safe spaces as sacred spaces, any questioning of the idea is taboo. At least one of Steve’s critics insists they do understand metaphor. But if that’s true, why are they upset?
Steve Brust wrote a follow-up on his blog, the end of which reads:
Evidently I was wrong. And, while one can always blame the reader for failing to understand, when enough readers get it wrong, one begins to side-eye the writer.
So let me state clearly and for the record I do not support that kind of atmosphere, I do not want that kind of convention, and I deeply apologize for any pain or fear that was caused by anyone thinking I did mean that. My fault, not yours.
ETA: It’s worth pointing out that it isn’t just a matter of reading, but that this was a speech, not presented as text, and a speech that, moreover, I deliberately opened with a shocker. This makes more reasonable the number of people who went past the “physically safe” and “no harassment” parts. Again, my bad.
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
Nigel, have you read either of the Dangerous Visions anthologies? I discussed them in a blog post that may be relevant to the current discussion, “Safe Spaces For Ideas or From Ideas? About Conventions and That 4th Street Panel” http://shetterly.blogspot.com/2017/05/safe-spaces-for-ideas-or-from-ideas.html
David W., I’m guessing Wiscon has an Art Czar who says she knows unsafe art when she sees it. I’d love to know if there have been any issues, or if Wiscon artists are so self-censoring that the problem never arises.
Nope, no Art Czar, just a department head. But the Wiscon CoC could be invoked by a convention member regarding something displayed in the art show. The reason I brought up OtCD was that it was in many ways a sex-positive proto-feminist body of work. But the imagery itself might well be problematic for some. It’s a controversial work to be sure.
Controversial! 😀 Well, cultures differ…
Dangerous Vision’s dangerous ideas are (generally) a bit long in the tooth at this point. This whole ‘our ideas are dangerous and we need license to be sexist or racist if we so choose’ strikes me as being a bit self-congratulatory and even complacent, riding on the coat-tails of Ellison’s anthologies. What are the dangerous ideas of the now? Why is it that those ideas seem to be so entrenched in sexism and racism that codes of conduct that forbid racism and sexism are a threat to them? Why is that the most concrete form these ideas ever take is in their evocation as dependent on the right to be potentially racist or sexist? Said evocation generating controversy while the ideas themselves either fail to materialise or are apparently somehow thriving perfectly well in the code-of-conduct culture and co-existing with the growing idea of cons being free from harassment and abuse.
“What are the dangerous ideas of the now?” We will never know if a Safety Coordinator shuts down the discussion.
We do know one: the idea that a safe space might not allow for exploring dangerous visions. Another writer who was there—not Emma—said this was the first Fourth Street that she came away from with no new ideas about writing. It was certainly a pleasant convention, and that has value.
But 4th Street originally had not been a relaxicon for writers. It had been a place to challenge them.
But things evolve. If 4th Street was rock and roll, then rock, its now disco. Which is great for the disco fans.
Well, I liked disco myself… ::disco ducks::
https://youtu.be/cAxztFnIRkE
‘We will never know if a Safety Coordinator shuts down the discussion.’
There’s no Safety Coordinator in your notebook and pen or your keyboard and screen or on your blog or your Twitter or your Facebook or your photo-copying machine. A dangerous idea that can be shut down by a single Safety Coordinator is not a very vigorous or potent idea, let alone dangerous. These ideas continue as barely even ideas of ideas, abstract constructs used to attack more modern Dangerous ideas, such as the Dangerous Idea that cons should be free of harassment and abuse.
Edited to add – I should note that as a result of your faux-naive apologism for the Phenomenon That Dare Not Speak Its Name Out Or Respect For OGH, I no longer take anything you say in good faith, so your account of 4th Street means less than nothing to me. I neither believe or disbelieve it. It is Schrodinger’s Anecdote, and can remain that way as far as I’m concerned.
Why is it that those ideas seem to be so entrenched in sexism and racism that codes of conduct that forbid racism and sexism are a threat to them?
Also, why is it that people who think “dangerous ideas” need to be debated so often seem to be flogging the most tired and worn out ideas? Seriously, is racism or sexism really a “dangerous idea”? Is being a homophobic jerk a “dangerous idea”? I would submit that most of the so-called “dangerous ideas” that people are complaining they can’t air are actually the most boring and conventional ideas that it is possible to hold.
Nigel, yes, even when censorship is greatest, people have found safe spaces for dangerous ideas. Fourth Street used to be one, and is no more.
In a space that is safe from ideas, we can never know what was prevented or who might be wrongly censored. Henry Louis Gates noted about a Canadian censorship law based on the work of radical feminist Catherine MacKinnon that was supposed to protect women, “What you don’t hear from the hate speech theorists is that the first casualty of the MacKinnonite anti-obscenity ruling was a gay and lesbian bookshop in Toronto, which was raided by the police because of a lesbian magazine it carried.”
Because people who are fond of private censorship often insist wrongly that only governments can censor: https://www.aclu.org/other/what-censorship
Why is it you can’t acknowledge that some ideas accused of being racist or sexist might not fit that characterization?
Obviously, some speech is so racist or sexist we’d all agree it should be punished under a convention’s code of conduct.
But there’s also speech that falls into a gray area or is unfairly accused of being racist or sexist. These are complex subjects and the way we think about them shifts. Being able to discuss them can help people understand better than if no discussion was allowed at all.
Here’s what the white liberal Evergreen professor said in an email that sparked anti-racist protests and threats, forcing his class to be taught off campus: “There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and under-appreciated roles, and a group or coalition encouraging another group to go away. The first is a call to consciousness which is, of course, crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force and an act of oppression in and of itself.”
If that was said at a convention, should the Safety Coordinator shut it down?
That’s not the point. Brust knows that any idea he has could be voiced on his blog or many other places. He was arguing for the freedom to voice ideas at Fourth Street Fantasy and was shut down there by the Safety Coordinator. As one of the convention founders, I think he has a natural interest in seeing it uphold the values he believes it was begun to foster.
rcade, “Why is it you can’t acknowledge that some ideas accused of being racist or sexist might not fit that characterization?” Because they put subjectivity over objectivity. If they think something is racist or sexist, it must be racist or sexist.
Nigel, regarding the notion that someone censored in one place can speak in another, when Zionists got Clark College to rescind Norman Finkelstein’s opportunity to speak, the ACLU’s lawyer wrote,
“…the cancellation of his speech violates the basic principles of freedom of speech and academic freedom which are so fundamental to an institute of higher learning. The existence of an opportunity to speak at another time or in another location does not remedy the wrong of censorship. … Nor may complaints from those disturbed by Finkelstein’s writings about the post-Holocaust “industry” justify a decision to prevent the lecture from taking place. Indeed, even if demonstrators came to protest against Finkelstein’s views, the obligation of a university is to protect the speaker’s right to be heard and prevent disruption of the speech by others. By censoring speech because of complaints about offensiveness or the controversial nature of the speaker, the university has essentially allowed what the courts call a “heckler’s veto” over what speech can be heard.”
So the reason none of these Dangerous ideas are forthcoming is that they have all been effectively silenced and censored by Safety Coordinators at genre conventions? Personally, I don’t detect much to impede the flourishing of racism and sexism and homophobia in their own self-selected venues. I’m beginning to suspect that the rejection of ideas is being equated with censorship here! Even though I’m not sure how you could argue against the rejection of racism and sexism.
‘Why is it you can’t acknowledge that some ideas accused of being racist or sexist might not fit that characterization?’
Well I can’t account for mistakes, miscommunications or, because, y’know, fandom, actual malice. Ask the other participant in this discussion about grey areas. He’s a fierce advocate for ’em.
‘He was arguing for the freedom to voice ideas at Fourth Street Fantasy and was shut down there by the Safety Coordinator.’
He fumbled the argument badly. Chalk that one up to miscommunication and misjudging his audience. Personally, I think that it takes chutzpah to announce that you’re brimful of Dangerous Ideas and then somehow fail to outline anything more risky than pique when taken to task over poor word-choice.
‘Nigel, regarding the notion that someone censored in one place can speak in another’
Gee, do you think the ACLU will take this one on? Could be bigger than that one with the KKK.
Nigel, the ACLU focuses on government censorship because the most harm is done there, and it can be opposed in court. As they note, private censorship is legal.
You mention that a lot. Is it because you think the incidents inoculate you for life against any charge of racism?
To return to Brust, he has said in defense of his foot-mouth insertion that he made the speech because he had, in the past, been ‘shut down’ when he said things that other people felt were racist and/or sexist. He felt that this was a dangerous trend, so dangerous that he felt the pressing need to make a speech against safe space policy in such a way that he ended up making it seem like he was speaking as part of con leadership repudiating and denigrating the con’s own safe space….which he had to apologize for subsequently.
But he doesn’t actually tell us anything about the terrible, traumatizing incidents in which he was (most unfairly, it goes without saying) accused of saying things that were racist/sexist, and ‘shut down’. What happened? What was said? How was the horrifying ‘shut down’ process executed? Was some hypocritical official cynically using a code of conduct to drum Brust out of some organization for remarks that were patently not racist/sexist, for his own sly ulterior motives? Or was he just interrupted in some casual conversation by someone who took offense at what was said, thought quite sincerely that it WAS racist/sexist, and said so? Were the ideas Brust was expressing really magnificent buds of genius that were tragically nipped before flowering by a horrid SJW? Or were they just a brain fart of the sort I’m familiar with from my racist/sexist/whatever relatives, and even I myself am not completely immune to, in which one says something carelessly that on closer examination, yes, CAN be considered racist/sexist/whatever by current standards, however unintentionally. We don’t know.
Will, you’ve called my concerns that I’ve expressed here, “imaginary,” all completely made-up shit, despite the fact that I mentioned anti-Semitism spoken to my face under the “nothing personal, it’s just a fact” loophole, and the fact that both Vox Day and his minions and similars DO exist in the real world, and the fact that SFWA had a hell of a time legally throwing Vox Day out despite egregious behavior because they simply had no rules in place to deal with such behavior. You indiscriminately call all these concerns ‘imaginary’ and overlook them, because I haven’t provided a concrete case that satisfies your (unspoken) expectations.
I’d say that by your own stated standards, Will, Brust’s concerns are entirely “imaginary.” He states he’s been the victim of someone unfairly persecuting him for racism/sexism, he wants us to take his word for it that it WAS persecution AND that it was entirely without basis in reality, and he wants rules that have been enacted by the con as necessary to be rescinded because of those concerns which you would call (if you were being honest and evenhanded) ‘imaginary.’
You told me I had an unwarranted mistrust of moderators (by which I suppose you mean con officials without rules against racism/sexism/etc), while at the same time, without irony, you express a dreadful mistrust of ‘censors’ by which I suppose you the exact same con officials who DO have recourse to rules against racism/sexism. You seem to miss the fact that they’d be the same people. Brust presumably knows and has worked with the people who are going to be enacting the ‘safe space’ at the con. By flouncing out based on his ‘imaginary’ concerns, he’s basically saying he doesn’t trust those people he’s known and worked with for years not to egregiously abuse the rules they’ve enacted – even though they HAVEN’T yet done any such thing, and may not ever.
Even if his colleagues whom he has worked with for years ARE the sort of people who would immediately re-enact “1984” with those rules, wouldn’t it serve the con better for him to remain within it and speak out against it if such abuses ARE committed, and thus use his authority as a founder to spotlight the abuse and use it as CONCRETE evidence to modify or abolish the rules that so offend him, instead of washing his hands like Pontius Pilate and leaving you moaning around here like Cassandra about examples that have nothing to do with this con and these people?
Yeah. He’d probably be obliged to describe some of his cruelly censored Dangerous Ideas if it came to a court of law, anyway, and since they’re either super-secret or so cruelly and effectively repressed they cannot ever be uttered anywhere at any time less an internet mob mount his head on burning pitchforks that’s unlikely to happen.
I mention my childhood because it’s where I learned about bullies who try to force everyone to conform to their ideal.
I do not doubt you have some racist and sexist impulses. People tend to project their own feelings on others. I recommend taking the Project Implicit test. I used to think I must be racist because I grew up in a racist society. Turns out I’m in the large minority of white people who have an implicit preference for black folks, which makes sense—in my childhood, the people who harassed us were white. You may find you are less racist than you fear.
I can’t speak for Steve. I’m sure that if he’d said something sexist or racist, it would’ve been quoted and shared, or at least, misquoted and shared.
Please quote me using any of the terms you claim I’ve used to describe your position. That may be what you heard, but it’s not what I said.
Steve didn’t flounce. He was silenced. What happened to him was exactly what he was afraid would happen when the convention was turned into a safe space from dangerous ideas.
‘What happened to him was exactly what he was afraid would happen when the convention was turned into a safe space from dangerous ideas.’
Sounds like one of those ‘inadvertently brings about the fate he wanted to avoid’ stories. Bit formulaic but full of dramatic irony..
He provided an example in a comment on his blog that was quoted up-discussion.
He didn’t stop speaking over imaginary concerns. The Safety Coordinator told him in front of the crowd to stop speaking and he honored the demand. Her description of what she did: “I interrupted him and told him that if he didn’t stop, I’d tell him to get off the stage.”
Here’s some irony: According to a Facebook comment by David Dyer-Bennet, who was in attendance, the Safety Coordinator told Brust if he didn’t stop he’d be “thrown off the stage.”
I’ll call this a slight change in the cuisine. Usually, several hundred posts trying to pretend various kinds of misogyny don’t exist comes from the right-wingers, not the “I believe in left-wing ideals so much I let an email server determine my vote” brigade. A Candide-like proof that in this best of possible worlds, no true progressive could ever dislike a woman unless she’d been proved to be an evil she-devil harpy!
This reminds me of someone who’s been dumped trying to litigate with their ex about how rationally, they should just love them (but usually him) unconditionally. Everything is always so neatly logical that the person who just so happens to have a dick should get everything he wants. For feminism! A feminism that says one is the virtuous center of the universe.
(And if you’re going to talk about your Malcom X principles on your blog, perhaps a touch less pearl-clutching about insults and nasty language, eh?)
See, I have no trouble admitting that I do probably have unconscious racist/sexist/whatever attitudes. If you grow up with racist/sexist/whatever parents (which I did) and among a society that accepts racist/sexist/whatever concepts uncritically, that will become part of your memory and your prelogical concept of what the world is like, long before you develop the capacity to think critically and realize what pernicious nonsense it is. Unfortunately, it means one must guard oneself all one’s life against the possibility that those unconscious sexist/racist/etc may in fact be resurfacing in one’s thought or action. It is helpful in doing so to actually LISTEN when some tells you that something you said may have had elements of this. They may be overreacting. OR they may have had a point. You won’t know if you refuse to listen.
Where you may run into trouble is when you mistake having no conscious racist/sexist/whatever attitudes for being absolutely FREE of racism/sexism/whatever. Nope, nothing you say can EVER be construed as racist/sexist/whatever, you know your conscious and your unconscious thoroughly and they are both pure as the driven snow in that regard! In my experience, people who most firmly and sincerely believe they are NOT in the least racist/sexist/whatever are often prone to letting slip howlers of the kind – AND to be extremely difficult to convince they have done so. They’re good people! They couldn’t possibly! You may think yourself pure as the driven snow – hell, you may even BE one of the few people who truly are – but never take it for granted, and always be willing to re-examine what you’ve said. Because the ancients on down to Papa Freud and beyond agree that no one knows themself completely. So maybe a bit of humility about the idea that you’re the one guy who does, Will?
As for my views of what you said – you may re-read this thread and see where I referred to a concrete remark someone made to me about how Jews were all X, it was just a fact, nothing personal, in discussing how Brust’s rules leaves a loophole for such talk – a loophole you subsequently derided as ‘imaginary.’ It’s all there.
This is as good a time as any to refresh memories about how Wiscon decided that a poem that was read at the convention, while not actually found guilty of making the convention less safe, was still grounds to sanction someone. It doesn’t inspire confidence in such speech policing.
WisCon Issues Report on Lemberg Complaint
@rcade
In the link you provided, I don’t see who pulled Brust off the stage and when, or that quote you quoted from the person removing him….though I do think it’s hilarious that your link goes directly to Brust chiding Will for “oversimplifying the problem.” 😀
Was he removed for his opening remarks, that we are linked to and discussing? Well, Brust DID have to acknowledge and apologize for wrongly giving the impression in his speech that he was speaking for the Fourth Street Board, and in that case I don’t blame the Fourth Street Board representative for stopping him from giving the impression that the Board itself was officially pissing on the concept of ‘safe space’ that they’d enacted among their own rules.
Or was he removed from the stage for this?
…in which he might have had a case, though it would seem odd to make an issue of it years after the fact, instead of at the time. It would be useful to read more about it. Is there a link to that?
DavidW – that was a WEIRD one, for sure.
Nigel – yeah. The part where Bergmann was found to have a “caustic attitude” is a bit rich given how so many fans aren’t exactly paragons of mannerly behavior.
Typ, can you name one person who has claimed there’s no sexism or racism on the left?
That you think Malcolm X “clutched pearls”—a particularly misogynistic cliché that assumes women are weak people who gasp and grasp their necklaces—is croggling. The man clearly did not. If you think the first part of what he said implies he does, take a hard look at the second part.
Jayn, if you’re afraid of the Project Implicit test, no big. And no one has denied that you ran into an antisemite, or that there are antisemites in fandom.
David W, thanks for that reminder. Since we’re talking about Wiscon standards of behavior, here’s the link to the time many of their members doxxed and terrorized Zathlazip: http://sjwar.blogspot.com/2014/02/3-outing-of-zathlazip-and-hounding-of.html
Yes. He gave the speech and was engaged in question and answers with the crowd. The Safety Coordinator interrupted and said he’d be “thrown off the stage” (one attendee’s words) if he didn’t quit speaking. He honored that demand.
People who are interested in this should look up the Fourth Street Fantasy Facebook wall and read all the comments to the 3-5 posts about this. You’ll find a lot of thoughtful observations pro and con from people who were there.
After reading them, I came away with the belief that Fourth Street attendees have a strong, complex relationship with this convention and its standards, both in terms of speech and the desire to be safe and welcoming. I feel like the conflict is simpler to view in right-or-wrong terms from afar.
Today while googling for the poem harassment incident, due to my scattered brains I learned that Rose Bergman is a strain of rose.
Was this discussion shut down by a convention? If so, there might be an issue. Otherwise, it was just people not interesting in listening, which is quite ok. Listening is not mandatory. If you want to keep on talking to make everyone leave, that is always an option.
Will Shetterly: Jayn, if you’re afraid of the Project Implicit test, no big.
It’s so hilarious that you’re claiming that an online test proves you’re not racist because you prefer black people to white people. 🙄
JJ, how’d you do on the test?
You got what I’m saying wrong. I’m agreeing I’m racist. I’m not in the 10% or so that show no detectable preference. I’m in the 20% or so with an implicit preference for black folks. It makes sense: the white children of the KKK bullied me as a child and their parents threatened to burn down our home. I try hard to be fair in my dealings with white people, but I confess I have trouble when dealing with privileged white race reductionists.
For anyone interested in Project Implicit, a PBS article about it: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/implicit-test/
Which notes that their results may be conservative: “A cautionary note: The people who have taken the IAT at the Project Implicit website are not a random sample of Americans, either nationally or on a state-by-state basis. Rather, they’re people who, for some reason, chose to take an online test measuring their implicit biases — which may actually mean they are less biased than average. (After all, at least they wanted to know how biased they are.)”
Their FAQ: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/faqs.html
And the race test: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/user/agg/blindspot/indexrk.htm
I took the test. I want my wasted time back.
How I did?
Here is your result:
Your data suggest no automatic preference between Black people and White people.
Thank you, Will, for generously providing yet another specimen of your insulting condescension and willfully inaccurate reading. No, I’m not afraid of what the test could show…as I clearly wrote, I’m already aware that because of my upbringing I likely DO harbor some unconscious prejudice that I already am determined to guard myself against acting on. Therefore I’m not deeply interested in doing such a test right now, not because I’m afraid of being shown to have unconscious racist attitudes – with my upbringing, I already know such a result is quite probable. Taking a test for what you know is likely true is waste motion.
Do you really think, though, that because you took that test and ‘passed’ with flying colors, you are proven free of conscious and unconscious racism against POCs, now and forevermore – especially when you yourself say you took that test because you consciously and strongly WANTED the result that you got – hence likely skewing your answers? If you think we understand the unconscious enough to prove your or anyone’s unconscious is absolutely 100% guaranteed free of prejudice, I must sadly inform you that we do not.
I mean really, don’t you read the disclaimers on the tests you take?
So if you think you’re absolved from ever needing to think over what you’ve said when someone tells you what you said sounds kind of racist against POCs, because you have taken a test that proves that anything you say can’t possibly ever be racist in that manner? Maybe think that over.
Edit: Okay, I see you did read the disclaimer – so why are you requesting people waste their time and call them craven if they don’t? You’re the only one proclaiming your purity.
Chad Saxelid, congratulations. If I could get the result I wanted, that would be it.
Jayn, I was afraid when I first took the test that it would conclude I was more racist toward black folks than I feared I was. The result was not what I wanted, but it was one I’m content with.
The point of an implicit association test is you can’t game it. If you have evidence that you can cheat it, please offer it.
For that matter, if you have any science to back up any of things you believe about racism, please offer them. I’m often struck by how little substance there is to the beliefs that come from Critical Race Theory.
@rcade
Okay, so he was not specifically targeted by the safety coordinator with an accusation of racist or sexist behavior? He admitted that in the speech for which he was removed, he did give the impression that he was speaking officially for the Board when he trashed the ‘safe space’ policy that the Board endorsed and that the paying customers already knew they were entitled to as an official policy of the con. He regretted that false impression and apologized for it. (It might also be interesting to see what the questions and his answers were before he got off the stage).
So I really don’t think this occasion of his being removed from the stage proves that his fear that the ‘safe space’ would unfairly silence people for sounding sexist or racist when they aren’t actually being so. This MAY have happened in the incident he describes as happening years ago in the discussion about cultural appropriation – but without any description of what the occasion was, what everyone said, and how he was ‘shut down,’ I can’t say he’s proven his case about the imminent peril of safe spaces.
Will Shetterly: JJ, how’d you do on the test?
I don’t owe you any response, nor does anyone else here.
However, I took it a couple of years ago, and according to the test, I’m mildly racist — which is exactly what I expected, given that I was born and raised in Whitey White-Bread Land in the Midwestern U.S. with a father who is massively racist, sexist, and homophobic.
Now, since you’ve been demanding that everyone here take the Project Implicit test and tell you their results, I demand that you take the Smug, Condescending, Sealioning, “The Plural of ‘Anecdote’ is ‘Data’ “, “Here, I’ll Studiously Avoid Actually Answering Any Of Your Questions Or Providing Substantive Evidence To Support My Claims, Change The Subject, and Move The Goalposts” test and tell us your results.
Oh, never mind, don’t bother. Everyone here already knows that you’ll score 100% on that.
This thread, despite your fervent, scrambling attempts to make it about everything else, is about the fact that Brust put his foot in it. And while he was capable of recognizing that and apologizing, you are not. 🙄
@JJ
Funny thing is, a few minute’s research about the test shows that its results do not actually seem to predict well whether a person scoring high in implicit prejudice will actually behave in a prejudiced fashion as far as I can tell. Apparently the creators of the test explain this away by theorizing that people who score high on IAT prejudice but somehow manage to treat out-group members better anyway are just overcompensating for their implicit bias, instead of questioning the validity of the test for predicting behavior. An interesting article here.
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/01/psychologys-racism-measuring-tool-isnt-up-to-the-job.html
JJ, anyone who’s reading this obectively can see that I’ve provided many links to back up my claims.
I’m amused by your mention of sealioning. Someone said this today on Facebook: “I think people who are weak debaters throw these terms [sealioning and strawmanning] out at people like caltrops, hoping they will grind their opponent down by boring them to death.”
Jayn, yes, you can find criticisms of implicit association tests, not based on “gaming” the results but on interpreting the results. All of the criticisms I’ve read say implicit association tests suggest people are more racist than they actually are, so it may be that my preference for black folks is very, very slight. That would please me too—as a universalist, I really would prefer to have no preference at all.
Ah, the Project Implicit test. Like Chad, I’ll never get those minutes back, but here:
Here is your result:
Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for African Americans over European Americans.
Which I do have (and the test knows that because it asked me and I told it so), but since I’m white, I also harbor implicit, deeply rooted and societally based racism, so this don’t mean nothing. Also, in addition to all the flaws pointed out in the article @jayn linked, there is a significant flaw in the test (it times things, which may be meaningless if you’ve taught a test taker a system and then change it), plus all the photos were of men. In other words, this is the Myers-Briggs of racism testing, which is to say it’s meaningless drivel and proves precisely nothing except that people like taking stupid tests.
Clarification via definition:
Sealioning:
A subtle form of trolling involving “bad-faith” questions. You disingenuously frame your conversation as a sincere request to be enlightened, placing the burden of educating you entirely on the other party. If your bait is successful, the other party may engage, painstakingly laying out their logic and evidence in the false hope of helping someone learn. In fact you are attempting to harass or waste the time of the other party, and have no intention of truly entertaining their point of view. Instead, you react to each piece of information by misinterpreting it or requesting further clarification, ad nauseum. The name “sea-lioning” comes from a Wondermark comic strip.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Sealioning
Strawmanning:
A type of trolling where the Troller attempts to pwn someone by claiming something they said means something totally different to what that actually meant.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Strawmanning
Also (courtesy quick google search):
Strawman: an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent’s real argument.
And
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/what-is-a-straw-man-argument
http://simplikation.com/why-sealioning-is-bad/
Cheryl S. “I also harbor implicit, deeply rooted and societally based racism”
Based on what? Serious question. What can you point to for verification of this analysis? What tests support it? What do you have other than your faith in your belief?
Mind you, if you insist you are deeply racist, I will take your word for it, and we can stop this discussion now.
Chad, if you’ve got something to support your theory, cool. But if you believe it because you like memes, you are in the realm of secular cults, not science.
Will Shetterly: I will take your word for it, and we can stop this discussion now.
It’s so cute that you believe you are the arbiter of whether other people continue or cease discussion. 🙄
Heh. Well, yes, but his experience, so far as I’ve observed, is that eventually he is the only one left talking. That’s almost like ending the discussion. 😉
Mr. Shetterly,
You seem to have misunderstood my post. It was not directed toward you, but to all the others that might not know or understand what your anecdotal Facebook quote means.
As far as memes and such goes, I freely admit to not knowing much about the social sciences and meme theory, but I am sure someone of your knowledge and experience will have plenty of sources to recommend.
Please continue, I am finding this discussion enlightening and entertaining. Something that cannot be said of every learning experience.
Cheryl S, I was thinking about your racism problem. There’s only one thing I know of which reduces a person’s racism—exposure to other races. I’ve always lived in multi-racial environments, but not everyone has been as lucky as I have. I recommend you go outside of your comfort zone and hang out in places where black folks hang out. Be friendly. Don’t tell them you’re trying to overcome your racism, or you’ll probably creep them out. Just be friendly.
That friendliness to people of other races explains this: “Black man convinces 200 Ku Klux Klansmen to leave white supremacist group by befriending them” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/kkk-klu-klux-klan-members-leave-black-man-racism-friends-convince-persuade-chicago-daryl-davis-a7489596.html
Now, if you don’t want to become less racist, that’s on you. But berating people online about racism will not make you any less racist, and is likely to increase racism in others. This focuses on diversity programs, but the logic applies to individual efforts as well: “Why Diversity Programs Fail” https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail
Good luck.
Gish galloping we go!
Hampus, I agree that Monty Python helps a great deal, but I’m not sure how they would help Cheryl S overcome her racism.
However, they do explain ideologues who attack people for insufficient ideological purity: