Race, Grammar, Bullying, and Belonging

Some years ago I began the David Foster Wallace essay "Authority and American Usage." As a writer, I'm interested in grammar, particularly the battle between prescriptive and descriptive advocates, and Wallace seemed a good authority on the issue.

I read the essay before bed and never finished it. I picked it up again a few weeks ago and finally finished. I'm glad I did because it took many turns I did not see coming.

Wallace begins with a mention of how he was a grammar Nazi (he prefers SNOOT, or Syntax Nudniks of Our Time ) as a child and how it held him back with his peers.

"... this reviewer regrets the bio-sketch's failure to mention the rather significant social costs of being an adolescent whose overriding passion is English usage..."

He then moves into how there are are myriad dialects other than Standard Written English, and we all (Black, White, Asian, Latinx, etc.) speak more than one of them.

"Fact: there are all sorts of cultural/geographical dialects of American Usage — Black English, Latino English, Rural Southern, Urban Southern, Standard-Upper Midwest, Maine Yankee, East-Texas Bayou, Boston Blue-collar, on and on... many of these non SWE (standard written english) type dialects have their own highly developed and internally consistent  grammars, and that some of these dialects' usage norms actually make more linguistic/aesthetic sense than do their Standard counterparts... nearly incomprehensible to anyone who isn't inside their very tight and specific Discourse Community (which of course is part of their function)."

Wallace then goes into the tribal nature of learning a local dialect: it has an ingroup/outgroup function.

"When I'm talking to RMers (Rural Midwestern) I tend to use constructions like "Where's it at?" for "Where is it?"and sometimes "He don't" for "He doesn't." Part of this is a naked desire to fit in and not get rejected ... but another part is that ... these RMisms are in certain ways superior to their standard equivalents."

"Whether we're conscious of it or not, most of us are fluent in more than one major English dialect and in several subdialects and are at least passable in countless others.... the dialect you use depends mostly on what sort of Group your listener is part of and on whether you wish to present yourself as a fellow member of that Group."

"A dialect of English is learned and used either because it's your native vernacular or because it's the dialect of a Group by which you wish (with some degree of plausibility) to be accepted. And although it is a major and vitally important one, SWE is only one dialect... There are situations ... in which faultlessly correct SWE is not the appropriate dialect."

Now it gets really interesting. Wallace does something that Chris Rock talks about in his latest Netflix special that kinda sounds like justifying bullying. But it also supports the importance of free play and socialization for children. They need to learn from one another as much as they learn from adults.

"Childhood is full of such situations. This is one reason SNOOTlets tend to have such a hard time of it in school... The elementary-school SNOOTlet ... is duly despised by his peers and praised by his teachers. These teachers usually don't see the incredible amounts of punishment the SNOOTlet is receiving from his classmates, or if they do see it they blame the classmates and shake their heads at the sadly and viscous and arbitrarily cruelty of which children are capable.

"Little kids in school are learning about Group-inclusion and -exclusion and about the respective rewards and penalties of same and about the use of dialect and syntax and slang as signals of affinity and inclusion. Kids learn this stuff not in Language Arts or Social Studies but on the playground and on the bus and at lunch... what the SNOOTlet is being punished for is precisely his failure to learn... the SNOOTlet is actually deficient in Language Arts. He has only one dialect. He cannot alter his vocabulary, usage, or grammar ... and these abilities are really required for "peer rapport" which is just a fancy academic term for being accepted by the second-most-important Group in a little kid's life."

"One is punished in class, the other on the playground, but both are deficient in the same linguistic skill—the ability to move between various dialects and levels of "correctness," the ability to communicate one way with peers and another way with teachers and another with family and another with T-ball coaches and so on. "

Finally, Wallace comments on race. This sounds like roundabout way of talking about "talking white," a contentious subject that many people think is made up. Others, like John McWhorter, think are all too real. It's also a good explanation of why learning Standard Black English, and dismissing SWE, is so important to many African Americans, it helps ensure ingroup distinction.

This is a lesson many white children do not have to learn. Their dialects seem to more closely transition into SWE and there isn't an aversion to distancing themselves from an outgroup, since SWE is mostly spoken by white people.

"Here is a condensed version of a spiel with certain black students who were bright and inquisitive as hell and deficient in what US higher education considers written English facility:
'...when you're in a college English class you're basically studying a foreign dialect... the SBE (Standard Black English) you're fluent in is different from SWE in all kinds of important ways...
It's not that you're a bad writer, it's that you haven't learned the special rules of the dialect they want you to write in." 

Overall it was a really interesting read about how people use language to both fit in and to exclude.

Nora Durst is full of sh*t

This is a post about the finale of The Leftovers, my favorite TV drama.

I've read some people assume that Nora's story about traveling to the "other side" was God's honest truth. I disagree.

This is not a show about science fiction. The Leftovers is a show about how people respond to tragedy, so it's important to understand what I mean by tragedy.

Tragedy is something that does not make rational sense. It is absurd. It is what talking heads on TV talk about when they describe something as a "senseless act of violence" because it makes no sense to us. 

The best example is the Sandy Hook shooting. A young man took his gun and killed 20-something children whom he did not know. That sentence makes no goddamn sense. He gained no utility from that act.

Not only was this act terrifying because we can empathize with those parents, it was terrifying because it brought down the illusion of order in our world. It showed us that things that make no sense can happen to anyone.

The way people respond to this type of tragedy is by creating a story. Some choose the story of easy access to guns. For some it's a lack of mental health support. For others it's violent video games or drugs or social isolation. But none of these stories really make the tragedy make sense, but they are a better story then senselessness. 

My favorite example was a Facebook post from my old boss. A strong-faith Christian man, he wrote about how God was with those children when they died. It didn't make sense, but I could tell he put a lot of thought into it and it helped him process the tragedy and retain his faith.

In The Leftovers, it makes sense that church attendance would see a decline. The departure was so senseless, that people stopped being able to believe in something that helped their lives make sense. The Matt Jamison character works so hard to find dirt on the departed because he has to believe that they were taken for a reason.

But for most people it wasn't enough, so they began to create their own stories: the Guilty Remnant, Holy Wayne, the Eddie Winslow character, and Miracle, Texas. Even holdouts like Kevin Garvey eventually began to believe he was the second coming of Christ. Nora was the only character who refused to write her own fiction. She even made it her mission to expose frauds.

It also makes sense that the protagonist was a cop, someone who's role was to maintain order in the face is increasing disorder as people clung to crazier ideas to try and make sense of what happened.

The finale wasn't a story about Nora finding out what happened to her family. It was a story about her finally creating her own story. If you pay attention, her tale concludes that her family is actually better off wherever they are. Self-delusion is the path to comfort and happiness in the face of tragedy. The awareness of senselessness will drown you. She had to find the perfect story to be able to move on and start her new life with Kevin.

The Limits of Empathy

I.
In the quantitative section of the GRE, there is a set of questions called Quantitative Comparison. It features four multiple choice answers that are always the same:
A: quantity A is greater
B: quantity B is greater
C: they are the same
D: it cannot be determined.

The best strategy is to try to prove D. The question involves a variable so you want to plug in different numbers (1, -1, 0) to show that sometimes A is greater and sometimes B is greater, so that you can prove D, which allows you to rule out A, B, and C.

This is the same strategy people use to disprove ideas they don't like. Is free speech a good idea? No, because Nazis shouldn't be able to say hateful things about minorities. Is abortion a good idea? No, because what if someone had aborted Ghandi, Einstein, or Oprah. The idea is that if you can find one example that isn't to your liking, you can rule out the whole spectrum of a topic and disprove its merit.

II.
I'm thinking about Ellen DeGeneres and how she defended sitting next to George W. Bush, saying she can be friends with someone she disagrees with. I know I'm Mr. Bipartisan. Mr. Depolarize America. Mr. Find Common Ground With Our Enemies. But I kind of think her critics have a point.

I'm going to stay away from the Iraq War (both because Obama was responsible for many civilian casualties when he was in office and because I don't know what Ellen's stance is) and focus on gay rights. W used his power in office to try to stop Ellen from marrying the person she loved. His actions directly harmed Ellen. For each individual, at a certain point a disagreement becomes an affront you are forced to take action on.

Chloe Valdary talks a lot about the importance of showing our enemies that we believe in their ability to change themselves, and how this is a more effective way of dealing with our outgroup than public shaming. If Ellen's conclusion is that she wants to keep W close in order to change his mind on issues or better understand his point of view, I would have found it to be a more convincing argument. But waving off his anti-gay rights stance as a "disagreement" makes it sound as if the issue is not important to her. And maybe it's not; that's up to her.

III.
I believe in empathy but I understand that it has limits. I also understand that the limits are different for each individual.

Conor Friedersdorf wrote about how it is more important to focus on our personal limits of a given topic, as opposed to being pro or against something. Likewise, I think it is important for everyone to be open about the limits of what they believe in.

I believe in free speech but I don't think powerful institutions, like the media or the president, should be able to lie to the public. I believe religious institutions should be able to ban homosexuality on their turf but the public realm should remain neutral. I believe guns should be legal but more heavily regulated so they are safer.

I also believe that a single example does not disprove the merit of a given stance, it only sets the limitation. Unlike the quantitative section of the GRE, ethics and social norms are fuzzy and debatable. That's why I think people are best served setting their own limitation before the person they are arguing with sets it for them.

I'd be curious to know what view on gay rights would be so extreme that it would cause Ellen to disassociate herself with Bush. Because that's the problem with the "be friends with people who disagree with me" mantra: it doesn't acknowledge extremism. Some people are not open to reason and not worth the time. And even the most tolerant human can think of a stance so horrid that they cannot be friends with a person who holds that stance.

So if I were Ellen's PR person, I'd have her clarify her limitations to the "I can be friends with people I disagree with" statement. Then I'd have her state that, in spite of Bush's war policies and gay rights views, here are the positive qualities about him that make him a valuable person. "I don't like his views on marriage equality but I've found that we can work together to do a lot to improve immigration reform." Or something like that.

Otherwise, it looks like her stance is "I disagree with war and anti marriage equality, but not as much as I like watching football with a former president."

The Great Activist Argument

There are several ways to deal with disagreement.

1. Compromise. I give up something I want, you give up something we want, so that we can both get something we both want.
2. Segregation. I do my thing, you do your thing, and we stay out of one another's way.
3. Domination. I force you into doing what I want.

At the macro political level, I think the third option is the most popular. People are are so certain they are right that they cannot image conceding anything to their enemies, who are clearly wrong.

Segregation would seem more like federalism, which surprisingly has gained no traction in these highly contentious times. People have not warmed to the idea of carving out a reservation for their enemies to do whatever they want as long as they stay in their area.

Domination is popular. People want a tough guy in the white house who will Executive Order the crap out of their enemies.

The Great Activist Argument

Progressive activists have a powerful rhetorical tool: BuT wHaT aBoUt SlAvErY? Here's why it works so well:

1. Domination worked
2. Federalism/segregation would not have worked. There would still be slavery.
3. Compromise would not have worked. Accepting anything less that "end slavery" would have been a weak compromise for the north.

So progressives have a great example for using domination to push their agenda. The fact that there is consensus bipartisan agreement that slavery is and was wrong reinforces their second rhetorical device: YoU wIlL bE oN tHe WrOnG sIdE oF hIsToRy.

The fact that progressive activists were right to use domination physically (Civil War) and politically/socially (Civil Rights Movement), even when unpopular, reinforces their belief that as long as they are on the side of the oppressed, they are always right and justified in using dominance, in spite of being unpopular.

I hate domination/coercion tactics. But I have trouble coming up with a good argument against this. It's difficult to create a theory that makes an exception for domination. I don't know how to tell when the next Obvious Wrong like slavery will appear. I can only say with confidence that 99 times out of 100 it will not be judged the way we judge slavery but will be more like siding with the transgender woman who demands immigrants wax her scrotum.

Climate Change

Climate Change is another good argument for domination. Segregation won't work. If the biggest polluters (China) don't cut back C02 emissions, it doesn't matter what everyone else does. And compromise doesn't seem like a great option; cutting back on greenhouse gases is the only option sans some type of geoengineering.

This is where persuasion is really necessary. The idea is that if the US can go green, the rest of the world will follow. But how can we convince our outgroup in America that reducing CO2 emissions is for their benefit as well?

First, you'd have to understand the outgroup. They are mostly conservative or very pro-business. So things like tax credits for solar energy is a good start. It's not coercive and puts money in their pocket. Promoting nuclear energy makes sense. It just replaces coal powered plants so the effect on the economy is zero sum but the effect on the environment is huge (of course I'm very worried about the tail risks of nuclear plants after watching HBO's Chernobyl.)

Next, you have to understand factionalism. The biggest thing stopping this brand of conservatives from getting on board is their proclivity for owning the libs. You need to make room for them to create their own platform. It has to feel like their own idea.

This is where groups like Better Angels can really help. They have a rule that they never meet without an equal number of reds and blues. Every major communication about climate change, whether a protest or a Green New Deal legislation, should be co-led by a liberal and conservative. Greta Thunberg and AOC are not going to convince conservatives that they are wrong. If the effort is led by AOC and, say, Lindsay Graham, it will be viewed as a partnership and become less tribal. It becomes about the platform and not about which tribe is right.