![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Performative Wokeness
I don’t like when the performance of adherence to ideologies related to social justice is used as a mask to disguise and justify discrimination.
To give an example: The Karen in my neighborhood has a very prominent BLM sign in the front yard of her $3.5M townhouse, but she threatened to call the cops on me for parking my car on a public street in a totally legal, nonthreatening, and noninvasive way. By performing solidarity with the Black community, she becomes justified in committing an act that is clearly in opposition to diversity. Basically, she’s saying that she doesn’t want people who aren’t exactly like her in her neighborhood, but no one can accuse her of having a bigoted attitude and worldview because she has a sign in her yard. Her behavior therefore becomes “not the behavior of a bigoted person.”
For a long stretch of 2017 and 2018, large segments of Tumblr were like this as well, in that people with rainbow filters on their icons spent a lot of time and energy telling gay kids to get raped and die of AIDS, to get a lobotomy to fix their damage, to kill themselves so that there would be fewer people like them in the world, and so on. Because of the virtue signaling, sending anonymous death threats to gay teenagers who found a community on Tumblr became “not the behavior of a homophobic person,” meaning that the problem must be with gay people, not the people telling them to die.
Honestly, I still have people who know me try to explain to me that anyone who gets told to get cancer and die alone in a ditch deserves this, and this is coming from extremely “progressive” people.
I never have any idea how to respond to this sort of argument, because I’m just not sure how to explain that the more corrective and offense-focused aspects of social justice are meant to be used against institutions, not individual people in marginalized positions. Like, suggesting that you shouldn’t send death threats to queer teenagers (or grown-ass queer adults, for that matter) because they like a fictional character in a queer way isn’t “tone policing” in any meaningful sense of the expression.
Here’s yet another example:
In Fall 2019, the English department at my former university launched an initiative ostensibly meant to support diversity in education. Basically, the department was attempting to combat falling enrollments by accepting applications for “world literary heritage” classes that would be required for all the department’s majors, minors, and grad students. I was having trouble getting courses approved by my own department for various reasons (don’t get me started), so I put together a prospectus, a sample syllabus, and a few related materials for a class called “Premodern Japanese Literature in an Asian Context.”
The idea was that, in addition to teaching Japanese literature, I would invite five or six guest speakers specializing in the literatures of different countries on the Silk Road, not all of whom were from my home (Modern Languages) department. Instead of focusing on the cultural purity of Japan, then, I’d get people to talk about the pre-twentieth-century literatures of China, Korea, Vietnam, India, and Iran, as well as the literature of the Japanese diaspora in places like Berlin, Shanghai, San Francisco, and Honolulu. I’d end the class not with Japanese literature and art becoming more “Western” in the nineteenth century, but rather with European literature and art becoming more “Japanese.”
I submitted all of this material well in advance of the deadline, but I never heard back. When I finally started to get nervous and followed up by email, the cishet white Anglo male chair of the department replied with a short message asking me to meet him in his office to discuss the syllabus. I was excited about making a new professional connection, so I came in all smiles and rainbows and sunshine, but then he proceeded to say he “had some concerns.”
He said that there was no indication that my syllabus promotes “racial diversity” and “decolonization.” I was like, Dude, this is a class about premodern Asian literature, there are no white people on the syllabus until the very last week.
He then said that there was no indication that there was any gender diversity on the syllabus. I was like, Dude, it’s about half and half, and some of these literary figures – like the author of the world’s first novel – are famously female. He said that he couldn’t tell because the only Japanese names he recognized (like Matsuo Bashō) were male. I was like, Dude, that’s a you problem.
He then said that that there was no indication that there was any LGBTQ+ representation on the syllabus. I was like, Dude, “homosexuality” is a construct of nineteenth-century German medicine, and not even Ihara Saikaku, who famously wrote a book literally titled “The Great Mirror of Male Love,” would have identified as “homosexual” (or, to be accurate, “a brilliant and gorgeous genderfluid panromantic disaster bisexual”).
He told me that my argument made sense, but that I would need to include a ten-page minimum formal “Statement of Diversity” along with my materials for a class called, again, “Premodern Japanese Literature in an Asian Context.”
This was on a Tuesday, and the deadline was that Friday.
I asked two professors in my department who had also submitted courses if they could share their diversity statements, thinking that I would be able to work from a basic template, and they both told me that their classes had already been approved without a diversity statement. I therefore emailed the Dean to ask him to intervene, and he said that nothing could be proved because the department chair hadn’t actually put anything in writing.
Then again, not six months earlier I had to explain to this same Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences that my syllabus on Japanese science fiction and fantasy did not include work by Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler because Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler are not, in fact, Japanese. That syllabus was approved, but only just barely, and only because I had the time and energy to be super aggressive about it.
In any case, the Dean reasserted that my application wouldn’t be accepted if I didn’t submit all of the requested materials by the deadline. I didn’t make the deadline – of course I didn’t – and, as a result, the university now has “world literary heritage” classes about British literature, Irish literature, Welsh literature, Canadian literature, French literature, medieval German poetry, classical Greek and Roman mythology, and Shakespeare.
This not the fault of weird institutional racism, of course. Rather, it’s my fault because I wasn’t able to submit an extra ten-page “Statement of Diversity” explaining that people from East and Central Asia aren’t white.
And who I am to complain? Am I trying to suggest that requiring a formal statement of diversity is a bad thing? What sort of asshole would say something like that? Requiring a diversity statement is “not the behavior of a bigoted person.” Obviously.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s been my experience that, more often than not, the aggressive performance of social justice is used as a mask to disguise behavior that only benefits entrenched and deeply unjust systems of power and privilege, and I hate it.
I wish I had a better way to refer to this than “performative wokeness,” though, because it makes me sound like someone’s gross Republican grandpa.
To give an example: The Karen in my neighborhood has a very prominent BLM sign in the front yard of her $3.5M townhouse, but she threatened to call the cops on me for parking my car on a public street in a totally legal, nonthreatening, and noninvasive way. By performing solidarity with the Black community, she becomes justified in committing an act that is clearly in opposition to diversity. Basically, she’s saying that she doesn’t want people who aren’t exactly like her in her neighborhood, but no one can accuse her of having a bigoted attitude and worldview because she has a sign in her yard. Her behavior therefore becomes “not the behavior of a bigoted person.”
For a long stretch of 2017 and 2018, large segments of Tumblr were like this as well, in that people with rainbow filters on their icons spent a lot of time and energy telling gay kids to get raped and die of AIDS, to get a lobotomy to fix their damage, to kill themselves so that there would be fewer people like them in the world, and so on. Because of the virtue signaling, sending anonymous death threats to gay teenagers who found a community on Tumblr became “not the behavior of a homophobic person,” meaning that the problem must be with gay people, not the people telling them to die.
Honestly, I still have people who know me try to explain to me that anyone who gets told to get cancer and die alone in a ditch deserves this, and this is coming from extremely “progressive” people.
I never have any idea how to respond to this sort of argument, because I’m just not sure how to explain that the more corrective and offense-focused aspects of social justice are meant to be used against institutions, not individual people in marginalized positions. Like, suggesting that you shouldn’t send death threats to queer teenagers (or grown-ass queer adults, for that matter) because they like a fictional character in a queer way isn’t “tone policing” in any meaningful sense of the expression.
Here’s yet another example:
In Fall 2019, the English department at my former university launched an initiative ostensibly meant to support diversity in education. Basically, the department was attempting to combat falling enrollments by accepting applications for “world literary heritage” classes that would be required for all the department’s majors, minors, and grad students. I was having trouble getting courses approved by my own department for various reasons (don’t get me started), so I put together a prospectus, a sample syllabus, and a few related materials for a class called “Premodern Japanese Literature in an Asian Context.”
The idea was that, in addition to teaching Japanese literature, I would invite five or six guest speakers specializing in the literatures of different countries on the Silk Road, not all of whom were from my home (Modern Languages) department. Instead of focusing on the cultural purity of Japan, then, I’d get people to talk about the pre-twentieth-century literatures of China, Korea, Vietnam, India, and Iran, as well as the literature of the Japanese diaspora in places like Berlin, Shanghai, San Francisco, and Honolulu. I’d end the class not with Japanese literature and art becoming more “Western” in the nineteenth century, but rather with European literature and art becoming more “Japanese.”
I submitted all of this material well in advance of the deadline, but I never heard back. When I finally started to get nervous and followed up by email, the cishet white Anglo male chair of the department replied with a short message asking me to meet him in his office to discuss the syllabus. I was excited about making a new professional connection, so I came in all smiles and rainbows and sunshine, but then he proceeded to say he “had some concerns.”
He said that there was no indication that my syllabus promotes “racial diversity” and “decolonization.” I was like, Dude, this is a class about premodern Asian literature, there are no white people on the syllabus until the very last week.
He then said that there was no indication that there was any gender diversity on the syllabus. I was like, Dude, it’s about half and half, and some of these literary figures – like the author of the world’s first novel – are famously female. He said that he couldn’t tell because the only Japanese names he recognized (like Matsuo Bashō) were male. I was like, Dude, that’s a you problem.
He then said that that there was no indication that there was any LGBTQ+ representation on the syllabus. I was like, Dude, “homosexuality” is a construct of nineteenth-century German medicine, and not even Ihara Saikaku, who famously wrote a book literally titled “The Great Mirror of Male Love,” would have identified as “homosexual” (or, to be accurate, “a brilliant and gorgeous genderfluid panromantic disaster bisexual”).
He told me that my argument made sense, but that I would need to include a ten-page minimum formal “Statement of Diversity” along with my materials for a class called, again, “Premodern Japanese Literature in an Asian Context.”
This was on a Tuesday, and the deadline was that Friday.
I asked two professors in my department who had also submitted courses if they could share their diversity statements, thinking that I would be able to work from a basic template, and they both told me that their classes had already been approved without a diversity statement. I therefore emailed the Dean to ask him to intervene, and he said that nothing could be proved because the department chair hadn’t actually put anything in writing.
Then again, not six months earlier I had to explain to this same Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences that my syllabus on Japanese science fiction and fantasy did not include work by Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler because Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler are not, in fact, Japanese. That syllabus was approved, but only just barely, and only because I had the time and energy to be super aggressive about it.
In any case, the Dean reasserted that my application wouldn’t be accepted if I didn’t submit all of the requested materials by the deadline. I didn’t make the deadline – of course I didn’t – and, as a result, the university now has “world literary heritage” classes about British literature, Irish literature, Welsh literature, Canadian literature, French literature, medieval German poetry, classical Greek and Roman mythology, and Shakespeare.
This not the fault of weird institutional racism, of course. Rather, it’s my fault because I wasn’t able to submit an extra ten-page “Statement of Diversity” explaining that people from East and Central Asia aren’t white.
And who I am to complain? Am I trying to suggest that requiring a formal statement of diversity is a bad thing? What sort of asshole would say something like that? Requiring a diversity statement is “not the behavior of a bigoted person.” Obviously.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s been my experience that, more often than not, the aggressive performance of social justice is used as a mask to disguise behavior that only benefits entrenched and deeply unjust systems of power and privilege, and I hate it.
I wish I had a better way to refer to this than “performative wokeness,” though, because it makes me sound like someone’s gross Republican grandpa.
no subject
no subject
"Japanese Science Fiction and Fantasy" was eventually approved at George Mason, and I was able to teach it for the first time there this past spring. I'm currently teaching it at University of Pennsylvania, and it's going about as well as it could reasonably go as an online class during a pandemic.
It was the "Premodern Japanese Literature in an Asian Context" class that got shot down. That's a shame, but it doesn't matter. I'm no longer teaching at that awful school, thankfully.
Maybe this is a generalization that doesn't hold up to specific cases, but it's been my experience that private universities don't have the same seven circles of bureaucracy hell as public schools. At UPenn, I basically emailed the syllabus to the department chair and the department's specific admin assistant in charge of such things, and a course rubric was created within the week.
I would say something like "you get what you pay for," but the students at public schools actually pay a lot of money and don't get as much financial assistance smh.
no subject
* Sunshine laws are incredibly important and valuable, but in my own experience of eleven years of producing documents in response to sunshine-law requests, for every one genuinely public-interest request an institution receives** there are between two and six shitty ones that are clearly the product of someone's antithetical political agenda.
** Not to paint everyone of a specific political persuasion with a specific brush, but certain institutions (oh, let's say, those affiliated with education in any way, or social safety net) really do seem to get the lion's share of harassing requests. If I had a dollar for every time I have had to deal with a clearly libertarian or tea party type request, I could buy a new iMac.
no subject
To give one example of the concrete effect what you're describing tends to have on the curriculum, there are a genuinely shocking number of courses about the American Civil War at GMU even despite the strong institutional focus on STEM training and the overwhelmingly diverse student body.
To keep myself sane, I do my best to keep in mind the possibility that my class about Japanese literature might have been a potential stress point that could have brought the initiative under unwelcome scrutiny. As for the particular English professor I spoke with, however, I think he was just an asshole.
no subject
I agree about the English professor. if he'd wanted a truly diverse curriculum and was afraid of backlash against the initiative, he could have mentioned the diversity statement earlier. That he didn't does not speak well of him.