Category: White Guys Guide to DEI

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-our-way/201504/how-tell-if-you-re-pro-diversity-or-just-want-more-power

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-our-way/201501/living-thin-ice

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-our-way/201412/torture-psychology-and-nuremberg-might-makes-right

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-our-way/201408/shooting-the-marginalized-and-marginalizing-the-shot

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-our-way/201408/is-culture-explanation

In a famous experiment you probably studied in school, Stanley Milgram demonstrated the average person’s obedience to authority by inducing two-thirds of his subjects to administer what they believed were extremely painful shocks to other subjects in what they believed was a memory training exercise. None of the subjects checked on the welfare of the screaming and moaning “subject” in the next room; none demanded that the experiment end. Milgram wondered if the Nazi horrors were partly explained by widespread obedience to authority, in this case a scientist in a white lab coat, even when instructed to do something that conflicted with the person’s value system. Generally, the experiment stands for the proposition that either New Haven adults at the time are too obedient to authority or, for the less squeamish, for the proposition that we all are too obedient to authority. “Obedience to authority” might be translated as a belief that the authority knows better than the individual how to behave.

Here’s another interpretation of the results: When someone who is clearly a bona fide scientist assures you that no harm will come from a procedure, you can trust science over your own lying eyes. The great, often overlooked fact about Milgram’s experiment is that, indeed, no harm came to the apparently suffering person in the next room—the scientist could be trusted after all. In other words, the belief that scientists know better than the individual remains true after the experiment in which, as advertised, no one was hurt.

Science is always telling us things about the world that conflict with our own perceptions—the molecular composition of ordinary objects, the movement of the earth that feels stationary, the finite speed of light, the irrelevance of the previous outcomes in games of chance, for examples. In this respect (and in darn few others), science is like any other belief system; it asks members of its community to defer to community standards. Of course, in the culture of science, the community standards are supposed to be based on evidence and logic, whereas all other cultures hold some tenets (based on tradition, revelation, faith, and so on) more dear than those based on evidence and logic. The culture of science—not always all scientists, who are all-too-human, but science itself—is concerned only, in Skinner’s phrasing, with generating statements that lead to effective action. This limited purpose assures that, in science’s name, intentional harm to other people is rare (but it does happen, as in the Tuskegee experiments). When it does happen, it’s only in the name of science if the intent of the harm was to increase knowledge; otherwise, it’s in the name of power.

So I draw two inferences from the fact that Milgram’s subjects were right, after all, to trust the scientist. One, evidence and reason often produce truths that make us uncomfortable, but evidence and reason teach us to trust the process (think of all the good that has come from science including, probably, your very existence if medicine ever saved or agricultural science ever fed one of your ancestors). Two, if you are going to trust someone in authority, first inquire into the overt, stated, openly endorsed values the person espouses. You should subsequently find out about the authority’s covert values, but many, many authority figures can be disqualified on the overt ones, especially on the issue of how they suggest treating outsiders. If outsiders (people who don’t obey the same authorities you obey) are to be treated badly, now or in the hereafter, you know you are dealing with a tribal system, medieval at best, designed to empower one group of people over others. This is what Dostoyevsky meant by saying that you can tell how civilized a society is by looking at its prisons, criminals being people who are restricted for not obeying the state’s authority but who otherwise need not be treated badly.

A new study claims that cultural humility leads to better therapy outcomes. It’s defined “as having an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented rather than self-focused, characterized by respect and lack of superiority toward an individual’s cultural background and experience.” I’m all for other-oriented therapists, and I don’t know what the word “respect” means, so I have no quibble with it. [I think it usually means “obedience,” as in, “my boyfriend disrespected me,” but it also means “avoidance,” as in, “I respect your opinion.” But I don’t know what it means in the context of a background or experience as opposed to a belief or a right. I respect your rights by not infringing on them; I respect your belief by adopting it as my own or by citing evidence against it. But what does it mean to respect an experience? I suspect it means something like, if it’s important to you, then let’s talk about it, in which case I’m for it, but if it means something like, if it’s important to you then we shouldn’t change your orientation to it, then I’m against it, especially in therapy, which is supposed to change people’s narratives about their experiences.]

The heart of the matter is in the word “superiority.” Of course my cultural values are superior to those of other cultures! If they weren’t I would switch my cultural values.

Before going on, let’s dispense with the study. What these researchers measured was not cultural humility but the ability to disguise your cultural superiority from the client. Just as a physician doesn’t tell the Latina that her cultural belief in rubbing onions on a burn is stupid, and instead teaches her how to treat a burn without making her defend her culture, we do the same thing with all the distorted ideas that clients have that cause them pain or impede their happiness. My other criticism of the study is that the authors seem not to recognize that cultural humility is a cultural value, and it’s one that they think is superior to other cultural values.

Before getting all humble about other people’s cultures, I need to ask a few questions about that culture’s treatment of people with less power than the rule-makers. Parenthetically, there is no such thing as American or Irish or Muslim culture, because no rule of conduct is preferred in groups by all Americans, Irish people, or Muslims; so I’m talking about what are often called subcultures. (Subcultures are cultures that don’t have enough publicity to make it to the A-list.) Also because cultural values are implemented by humans, no culture lives up to its values, so I’m talking about whether repressive behavior is celebrated or questioned.

Back to my questions about a culture before adopting a stance of humility before it: How are women treated? Are pleasure centers cut off their bodies? Can they testify in court and own property? Can they pursue love and work and hobbies? Is rape condoned or criminalized? Can their families murder them with impunity if they are suspected of having sex? How are people treated who look different from the normative person, especially with respect to skin color? Are they derogated? Enslaved? Deprived? Scared? How are gay people treated? How are atheists, apostates, and infidels treated? If you can tell me your culture—your implicit and explicit rules of conduct—treats these people well, then I will express humility towards it (or adopt it as my own—and if it’s a culture that an outsider is not welcome to adopt, then my own culture remains superior, because in science, everyone’s welcome). Otherwise, I am merely hiding my contempt, which it is important to do sometimes, especially if you have to work with the person.

How is my cultural absolutism different from absolutist cultures that kill, enslave, condemn, or despise people like me under the banner of their absolute sense of superiority? The difference is that my culture (call it enlightenment values or science, with an emphasis on civil liberties, critical thinking, pleasure, humor, and social justice) condones force only in response to force or the threat of force, and otherwise promotes free speech in the marketplace of ideas for resolving differences between cultures. A culture advocates hurting me (now or in the hereafter) or controlling my wife, and I’m supposed to honor it?

One of my first cases in the child welfare system involved a Puerto Rican mother whose 6-year-old son was removed from her care after the son alleged sexual abuse by the mother. Well, that’s not what happened at all. What happened was that the son was undergoing a confusing and pointless lesson, imposed in those days by schools, on disclosing sexual abuse by encouraging young children to tell the authorities whether they had ever experienced “bad touch.” This, you may be startled to learn, was a vast improvement over the previous—and sometimes still employed—practice of simply asking children, “Has anyone touched you?” The questioner assumes that the child understands what is meant by “touched” or “bad touch.” This particular Puerto Rican boy told his teacher, “Yes.” She asked who had given him a bad touch and the boy said, “You and my mom.” The teacher knew she herself was innocent, so she decided that the boy just meant his mom.

When the case worker went out to the home, the other son was found to be naked as the day he was born and lying on top of the mother. This other son was only six weeks old at the time. The nudity seemed to the caseworker and a consulting psychologist to confirm the allegation of sexual abuse, so the six-year-old was removed, just to be safe.

This was my first week in the system, and when I attended a Friday meeting on where to go from here, I said that the child should be returned home and that the case should be closed with an apology. I added that if the boy was not back home by Monday, I would not be returning to DSS. “You can have him or me,” I said, “but not both.”

The administrator who had convened the meeting announced that the boy would be returned home right away. Afterwards, he took me aside and thanked me for my participation. “But,” he said, trying to be helpful, “you get too angry.”

Eleven thousand cases and three decades later, I am still angry. I am angry whenever people with power exploit others, whenever the hegemony without justification beyond maintenance of the hegemony marginalizes other parts of the system by refusing to question itself. If I weren’t angry, I would find something else to do besides advocating for abused children, silenced voices, and psychotherapy patients. (It’s true that if I found something else to do, I might not be so angry.) What I have learned in 30 years is not to be less angry; what I have learned is that to be effective, I have to strategize which battles to fight and how to fight them. There is no glory in defeat.

The means do not justify the ends. Calm, nicey-nice therapies do not justify bad outcomes and neither do noble, intrepid speaking styles that make other people stop listening.

When asked whether I am a gay ally (or any other sort of ally), I have to say, it depends. If it’s a situation where gays or women or blacks are being marginalized by a self-serving hegemony, then the answer is yes. But if it’s a situation where gays or women or blacks are marginalizing me or someone else because of race, sex, or sexual orientation, then the answer is no. Inclusion, not turnabout, is fair play.

I’m not writing about my main reactions to the verdict because I have nothing new to say about them. If it’s too soon for an intellectual reaction, don’t read this.

Zooming in and out can change a narrative by highlighting certain facts and putting others in the background or off the screen entirely. What George Zimmerman’s lawyer did, like Rodney King’s assailants’ lawyer, was change the zoom level. The focus was on the moment when teenaged Trayvon Martin was on top of George Zimmerman, a tight closeup on Zimmerman’s banged-up head and face. In that frame, it looked like shooting Martin was justified. How Martin and Zimmerman got to that point was left offscreen. Similarly, slow-motion replays of Rodney King trying to get up and thereby justifying the police’s use of force tightly framed the narrative as an interplay between a suspect’s refusal to lie still and the police response. This led to their acquittal.

Zoom out a little and it looks like an armed man followed an unarmed teenager and killed him. Zoom out a little further, and it looks like a race-motivated armed property owner followed and killed a black male. Who knows what he said to get Trayvon Martin so angry or frightened?

Many people, especially black people and others who identify with them, simply don’t believe that the jury weighed the relevant evidence and not the races of the parties. Or, if they did, and it’s the shooter’s subjective experience of fear that justifies an escalation to deadly force, then the case stands for a license to shoot people that make you nervous. Since many black people make many white people nervous, the verdict seems to be a license to shoot black people in Florida.

Suppose that Trayvon really did sit on Zimmerman’s chest, provoked somehow into banging Zimmerman’s head on the pavement. Suppose the cries for help really did come from Zimmerman. How is this different from the cops beating Rodney King? The white jury in that case was told, and believed, that King controlled the cops by refusing to lie still. Every movement of King’s justified the cops’ continued beating of him. Why doesn’t Trayvon get a free pass for beating a man who wouldn’t shut up and lie still?

Well, the answer of course is that Zimmerman is white (looks white, which is the exact same thing), while Trayvon looks black. But keeping the zoom at a level that includes only Zimmerman’s thoughts and feelings at the moment he drew his weapon ignores all that.

So if you zoom in to the same level used in the Rodney King defense, Zimmerman is responsible for whatever beating he received, as Rodney King was found to be. And if you zoom out to the level of common sense (armed white guy provokes a confrontation with an unarmed black teenager and kills him), Zimmerman is guilty. The prosecutors didn’t do as good a job as Zimmerman’s lawyer of controlling the zoom level.