"Others have attempted to argue that Davidson must be racist for this term to have come into his head at all or he would have shouted something random ..."
I was have been inclined to think that, but after reading your explanation of what coprololia involves I now know better. Thank-you for that.
As someone who hopes to write about mental illness it worries me that we seem to be turning a corner from the days when Asperger's, OCD, and trauma were everywhere and we were really trying to de-stigmatize mental illness. We seek to be embracing an ethos that says you can be mentally ill, but only within certain parameters that are constantly changing.
The actors have been conditioned for immediate involuntary reaction to the word. What comes next - being offended - is a choice. It is wrong to indulge irrational choices.
Reading your list of list of different nuanced contexts for forms of speech that cause offense, my immediate reaction is ... dead god this is exhausting.
I think perhaps many left-liberals simply vastly overestimate the amount of cognitive bandwidth other people have for processing emotional nuance and sensitivity.
There are therefore some missing bullet points:
- a person says something racially insensitive simply because they lack the cognitive ability or processing capacity (time and energy), to fully grasp the potential emotional impact of their speech or actions on others. Or because many people just do not have the emotional energy to go through their day thinking through the possible emotional repercussions of every word they say in excruciating neurotically obsessed detail.
- the person says something intentionally offensive with full racial intent, but the listener simply does not care about that persons thoughts and options and chooses not to feel offended purely because they really don't have the emotional energy to waste on being offended.
I want to through those in the bucket of possible contexts and outcomes of these situations.
Subscribing to your overflowing liberal thinking is such a delight. It’s taken me a while - trying to find a hashtag style name for promoting what is so brilliant here. I realise the USP is in how, maybe several times a week, you can take a headline event that contains an everyday predicament and so quickly dissect the complexity using your humanity, intelligence and liberalism tool kit. Latest metaphor is that you’re like a frontline investigative journalist of unexpected popular cultural situations with the faster-than-AI ability to compose a report that normal people would take weeks or months to think through. Grabbing the live puzzle and sorting it so immediately is hugely engaging and entertaining even, turning otherwise boring textbook stuff about mundane events into gold dust promotion of the power of deep liberal principles. This week’s silly hashtag is PluckRoseSense - poetically punning the notion of plucking a scented rose out of a thorny bush! It’s only in the likes of a live long-form Substack that these rare delights can be published.
"Others have attempted to argue that Davidson must be racist for this term to have come into his head at all or he would have shouted something random ..."
I would have been inclined to think that, but after your clear explanation pointing out what coprolalia is I now know better. Thank-you for that.
An interesting discussion would address the responsibility of a person who very likely, and involuntarily, utters offensive phrases when encountering certain people (offensive to the hearer, while we accept that the harm is not intentional on the speaker's part) , planning to have such an encounter with an onlooking crowd. Nuance yes. And, while as such a person with involuntary reactions, I might feel little guilt about a chance encounter and what looks like bad behavior, I might also accept the (unfair--granted) limitation of not appearing so offensive in predictable, avoidable circumstances.
I know someone with Tourette's. Coprolalia is not one of her manifestations (it's not across the board) but I do know that its manifestations ARE unintentional.
Proposition: Deliberately segregating or dividing people by race is morally wrong. Proposition: deliberately separating or diving pole by race or other grouping creates tribalism, resentment, and racism. Conclusion: Kendi, DiAngelo and their acolytes are horrible racists. Cause intention … matters…?
Re apologies. I don't think an apology necessarily implies that one's actions/words were intentional. If I step on someone's foot while standing on a lurching bus or accidentally knock a cup of coffee of a table and it spills on someone's floor, I will apologize, even if it is understood by both parties that it was an accident. What would be unacceptable would be for me to just walk away as if nothing happened, or for the other person to yell, "You stupid, clumsy idiot!" There are ways to word an apology that do not involve an admission of intentional harm or guilt.
I appreciate your well-reasoned take on how knowable intentions are and how accountable can hold people without knowing them. I respect that you are willing to take on topics that have been so historically fraught. Just glancing through the comments to your post I think shows what is getting sincerely missed or intentionally ignored. I wrote this on my own page but think it is relevant here.
“The aftermath of what happened at the BAFTAs is a perfect example of uneven empathy. I don’t think there is anything wrong with trying to protect and understand the plight of the man with Tourette’s. But that shouldn’t come at the expense of the black actors who not only don’t get the same protection and understanding, they are judged by how well they suppressed their shock as if it is understood that racism is their job to endure. As it often the case, the burden shifts toward those most harmed, people pick a side and dig in their heels, and institutions like BAFTA aren’t asked why safety, dignity, and awareness weren’t built into the event in the first place. In this regard it is a magnificent microcosm of society’s larger sickness. Both disability and race require care, but our cultural reflex still privileges one kind of empathy while demanding stoicism from the other. When we normalize that imbalance, we’re saying that black people’s pain is acceptable collateral for everyone else’s comfort.”
I am very familiar with the excesses of woke culture and the places where they have been counterproductive to the very cause they claim to care about. But even through the hyperbole and misguided tactics, they are pointing to something real. Some people will read your essay and learn something they didn’t know. Others will read it and take from it those places that might justify why they shouldn’t care.
Are you saying that the aftermath you’ve seen is more people being sympathetic to Davidson than to the actors? That that is the direction you think public sympathy lies? People are more sympathetic to the difficulties sufferers of Tourette’s face than they are to victims of racism? If so, I really don’t think that’s the case. I’ve only seen people insist he could help it, he should apologise more specifically to black people, that he should have been excluded from the BAFTAs, should be excluded from public spaces more generally. I’ve not seen anyone suggest that black people should just be sanguine at having the N-word thrown at them and suck it up. If I had, I’d have written a piece about why they should not have to do that and that a lack of intention doesn’t remove impact instead.
I don’t know what the last paragraph means. Some people will read my piece and understand more about Tourette’s and others won’t care? I’m sure that’s true, but I also sense that you meant that critically but I can’t discern what the criticism is.
Then I think what we have discovered is that our respective algorithms are directing different information to each of us. Because I absolutely believe you are accurately reporting your experience, mine has been the opposite. By the last paragraph, I meant that I think you talk about this with depth and nuance. People that are interested in doing better, whether they are obligated to or not, are given something to think about. But if someone wants an excuse to dismiss the concerns of the so-called “other side” they can cherry pick points to do that as well. I am also wondering if there aren’t some additional layers given that you are in the UK and I am in the States. As with all things in our algorithmically driven digital world we are living in opposite and often equally compelling realities.
We might move in different circles, yes. I don’t tend to come across people who know about and are sympathetic to Tourette’s and think black people should shut up about racism. I am on the left, but my circle is much wider. You might be moving in circles that contains much more of the illiberal right.
And I am not remotely sympathetic to claims that people could cherrypick my critiques of the illiberal left to support the illiberal right. I never have been. I’ve argued against this specifically and repeatedly. That’s just tribalism and encouraging polarisation rather than being consistently principled.
For many years I was the press secretary for a Democratic US Senator from Colorado. I always resonated with Barney Frank’s admonition that, “you owe it to your idealism to be as pragmatic as possible.” The left/right binary makes less and less sense to me. I think liberal and illiberal is much more workable. But I spend most of my time reading about and seeking out conversations with people who see things differently than I do. It is a good support for my Buddhist practice of seeing things as empty of inherent existence absent the meaning we give to them and it is a carryover from my days in Congress where I needed to understand the “opposing” argument at least as well as my own. I find that the fringes of the, as you say, illiberal left and illiberal right, are often tonally identical and that there are a great number of people who are capable of holding more than one idea, or caring about more than one thing, at a time. I find the way you talk about things interesting and not easily categorised which I appreciate. If I am moving in circles with more of the illiberal right I assure you it is only for anthropological reason and with plans to get the hell out there as soon as possible :)
"Others have attempted to argue that Davidson must be racist for this term to have come into his head at all or he would have shouted something random ..."
I was have been inclined to think that, but after reading your explanation of what coprololia involves I now know better. Thank-you for that.
What? It’s not simply black & white, but reality lives in the nuance?!
Thanks as always for dissecting a challenging topic with your usual clear thinking & writing, Helen!
As someone who hopes to write about mental illness it worries me that we seem to be turning a corner from the days when Asperger's, OCD, and trauma were everywhere and we were really trying to de-stigmatize mental illness. We seek to be embracing an ethos that says you can be mentally ill, but only within certain parameters that are constantly changing.
The actors have been conditioned for immediate involuntary reaction to the word. What comes next - being offended - is a choice. It is wrong to indulge irrational choices.
Reading your list of list of different nuanced contexts for forms of speech that cause offense, my immediate reaction is ... dead god this is exhausting.
I think perhaps many left-liberals simply vastly overestimate the amount of cognitive bandwidth other people have for processing emotional nuance and sensitivity.
There are therefore some missing bullet points:
- a person says something racially insensitive simply because they lack the cognitive ability or processing capacity (time and energy), to fully grasp the potential emotional impact of their speech or actions on others. Or because many people just do not have the emotional energy to go through their day thinking through the possible emotional repercussions of every word they say in excruciating neurotically obsessed detail.
- the person says something intentionally offensive with full racial intent, but the listener simply does not care about that persons thoughts and options and chooses not to feel offended purely because they really don't have the emotional energy to waste on being offended.
I want to through those in the bucket of possible contexts and outcomes of these situations.
Great post, as usual, but aren't you supposed to be in bed?
Subscribing to your overflowing liberal thinking is such a delight. It’s taken me a while - trying to find a hashtag style name for promoting what is so brilliant here. I realise the USP is in how, maybe several times a week, you can take a headline event that contains an everyday predicament and so quickly dissect the complexity using your humanity, intelligence and liberalism tool kit. Latest metaphor is that you’re like a frontline investigative journalist of unexpected popular cultural situations with the faster-than-AI ability to compose a report that normal people would take weeks or months to think through. Grabbing the live puzzle and sorting it so immediately is hugely engaging and entertaining even, turning otherwise boring textbook stuff about mundane events into gold dust promotion of the power of deep liberal principles. This week’s silly hashtag is PluckRoseSense - poetically punning the notion of plucking a scented rose out of a thorny bush! It’s only in the likes of a live long-form Substack that these rare delights can be published.
Marvellous of Helen to have the patience, undeserved, to deal with this.
"Others have attempted to argue that Davidson must be racist for this term to have come into his head at all or he would have shouted something random ..."
I would have been inclined to think that, but after your clear explanation pointing out what coprolalia is I now know better. Thank-you for that.
An interesting discussion would address the responsibility of a person who very likely, and involuntarily, utters offensive phrases when encountering certain people (offensive to the hearer, while we accept that the harm is not intentional on the speaker's part) , planning to have such an encounter with an onlooking crowd. Nuance yes. And, while as such a person with involuntary reactions, I might feel little guilt about a chance encounter and what looks like bad behavior, I might also accept the (unfair--granted) limitation of not appearing so offensive in predictable, avoidable circumstances.
I know someone with Tourette's. Coprolalia is not one of her manifestations (it's not across the board) but I do know that its manifestations ARE unintentional.
Here’s Darren McGarvey on the same case. Quite different views, but for connoisseurs of serious working class commentators he’s well worth a read too https://darrenmcgarvey.substack.com/p/the-art-of-the-apology-and-why-john?r=8t5tx&utm_medium=ios
Proposition: Deliberately segregating or dividing people by race is morally wrong. Proposition: deliberately separating or diving pole by race or other grouping creates tribalism, resentment, and racism. Conclusion: Kendi, DiAngelo and their acolytes are horrible racists. Cause intention … matters…?
Re apologies. I don't think an apology necessarily implies that one's actions/words were intentional. If I step on someone's foot while standing on a lurching bus or accidentally knock a cup of coffee of a table and it spills on someone's floor, I will apologize, even if it is understood by both parties that it was an accident. What would be unacceptable would be for me to just walk away as if nothing happened, or for the other person to yell, "You stupid, clumsy idiot!" There are ways to word an apology that do not involve an admission of intentional harm or guilt.
Yes, but he’s done that. See the link I gave. People want him to take responsibility for it and he can’t.
I appreciate your well-reasoned take on how knowable intentions are and how accountable can hold people without knowing them. I respect that you are willing to take on topics that have been so historically fraught. Just glancing through the comments to your post I think shows what is getting sincerely missed or intentionally ignored. I wrote this on my own page but think it is relevant here.
“The aftermath of what happened at the BAFTAs is a perfect example of uneven empathy. I don’t think there is anything wrong with trying to protect and understand the plight of the man with Tourette’s. But that shouldn’t come at the expense of the black actors who not only don’t get the same protection and understanding, they are judged by how well they suppressed their shock as if it is understood that racism is their job to endure. As it often the case, the burden shifts toward those most harmed, people pick a side and dig in their heels, and institutions like BAFTA aren’t asked why safety, dignity, and awareness weren’t built into the event in the first place. In this regard it is a magnificent microcosm of society’s larger sickness. Both disability and race require care, but our cultural reflex still privileges one kind of empathy while demanding stoicism from the other. When we normalize that imbalance, we’re saying that black people’s pain is acceptable collateral for everyone else’s comfort.”
I am very familiar with the excesses of woke culture and the places where they have been counterproductive to the very cause they claim to care about. But even through the hyperbole and misguided tactics, they are pointing to something real. Some people will read your essay and learn something they didn’t know. Others will read it and take from it those places that might justify why they shouldn’t care.
I don’t know what you mean?
Are you saying that the aftermath you’ve seen is more people being sympathetic to Davidson than to the actors? That that is the direction you think public sympathy lies? People are more sympathetic to the difficulties sufferers of Tourette’s face than they are to victims of racism? If so, I really don’t think that’s the case. I’ve only seen people insist he could help it, he should apologise more specifically to black people, that he should have been excluded from the BAFTAs, should be excluded from public spaces more generally. I’ve not seen anyone suggest that black people should just be sanguine at having the N-word thrown at them and suck it up. If I had, I’d have written a piece about why they should not have to do that and that a lack of intention doesn’t remove impact instead.
I don’t know what the last paragraph means. Some people will read my piece and understand more about Tourette’s and others won’t care? I’m sure that’s true, but I also sense that you meant that critically but I can’t discern what the criticism is.
They’re actors. It’s what they do.
Then I think what we have discovered is that our respective algorithms are directing different information to each of us. Because I absolutely believe you are accurately reporting your experience, mine has been the opposite. By the last paragraph, I meant that I think you talk about this with depth and nuance. People that are interested in doing better, whether they are obligated to or not, are given something to think about. But if someone wants an excuse to dismiss the concerns of the so-called “other side” they can cherry pick points to do that as well. I am also wondering if there aren’t some additional layers given that you are in the UK and I am in the States. As with all things in our algorithmically driven digital world we are living in opposite and often equally compelling realities.
We might move in different circles, yes. I don’t tend to come across people who know about and are sympathetic to Tourette’s and think black people should shut up about racism. I am on the left, but my circle is much wider. You might be moving in circles that contains much more of the illiberal right.
And I am not remotely sympathetic to claims that people could cherrypick my critiques of the illiberal left to support the illiberal right. I never have been. I’ve argued against this specifically and repeatedly. That’s just tribalism and encouraging polarisation rather than being consistently principled.
For many years I was the press secretary for a Democratic US Senator from Colorado. I always resonated with Barney Frank’s admonition that, “you owe it to your idealism to be as pragmatic as possible.” The left/right binary makes less and less sense to me. I think liberal and illiberal is much more workable. But I spend most of my time reading about and seeking out conversations with people who see things differently than I do. It is a good support for my Buddhist practice of seeing things as empty of inherent existence absent the meaning we give to them and it is a carryover from my days in Congress where I needed to understand the “opposing” argument at least as well as my own. I find that the fringes of the, as you say, illiberal left and illiberal right, are often tonally identical and that there are a great number of people who are capable of holding more than one idea, or caring about more than one thing, at a time. I find the way you talk about things interesting and not easily categorised which I appreciate. If I am moving in circles with more of the illiberal right I assure you it is only for anthropological reason and with plans to get the hell out there as soon as possible :)