Since this is my first entry of 2016, I want to begin by noting that this year marks the 10th anniversary of blogging for me here at RMWMTMBM. There have been some prolific years (2008-2010) and some lean years (2012), but I’m proud to have kept this site more or less active and, with a few minor stylistic/aesthetic alterations, pretty much constant in terms of content for the last decade. The original tagline I chose for this blog– “where philosophy, music, politics and pop culture get equal deconstruction”– is as descriptively accurate today as it was ten years ago, I’ve made a lot of friends through this site and engaged in countless invaluable conversations because of it.
It’s been a good run so far.
[SIDENOTE: I’ve been inspired by fellow philosophy professors and bloggers Jill Stauffer (Haverford) and Adriel Trott (Wabash) to try my hand at blogging every day for a month. Stauffer did it in December here and Trott is doing it throughout January here. I’ve resolved to do it in February because, well, fewer days. So stay tuned.]
I didn’t have a whole lot of company in the blogosphere during the early years, especially not among philosophers. That has changed a lot. There are a number of excellent philosophy bloggers now– you can check out a list of some of my favorites in the sidebar to the right– and we’re finally seeing real conversation about the merits and demerits of “public philosophy” within the profession. The American Philosophical Association’s Committee on Public Philosophy hosted a panel earlier this month on “Navigating the Perils of Public Cyberspace: Toward New Norms of Public Engagement.” (I wasn’t there, but there’s a great write-up about it on Adriel Trott’s blog.) And, just a few days ago, Daily Nous initiated a conversation about the “Internet Abuse of Philosophers,” prompted in part by Emory philosopher George Yancy’s report of threats he received following the publication of his essay “Dear White America” in NYT‘s The Stone. As a philosopher-blogger (and –Facebooker and –Tweeter) who’s been on the scene for a while now, I have a few thoughts.
I found it particularly interesting (but not in the least surprising) that the recent Daily Nous piece is titled “Internet Abuse OF Philosophers” instead of “Internet Abuse BY Philosophers.” To my mind, the latter is, by miles and miles, a far greater problem facing our discipline. Let me begin with a couple of caveats. First, although I will be critical of the way Daily Nous framed its discussion, I do not mean to direct those criticisms at Justin Weinberg personally. As I read it, he framed his post more or less as it was presented to him. Second, and more importantly, the abuse Professor Yancy suffered, which included not only racist epithets but also “implied and explicit threats” of harm, was as awful as it is (unfortunately) commonplace on the Internet. That abuse should be condemned, it should be reported to the appropriate university and civil authorities, and every effort should be made to track down the offenders.
And yet I wonder… is what happened to Yancy a matter for the APA? It’s worth asking ourselves: was Professor Yancy attacked and abused qua “philosopher,” as the Daily Nous piece (and the recent petition to the APA in support of Yancy) suggests?
Almost certainly not. Yancy was attacked qua black man. What he rightly describes as the “entire industry of threats and vitriol” galvanized against him was exercised, as it so often is, because he is a black man and he made plain the fundamentally white supremacist and antiblack structure of our shared world in a public forum.
Yancy is also a philosopher, of course, and a very good one at that, but it seems dangerously misleading to describe what he suffered as “Internet abuse of [a] philosopher.” He was no more attacked for being a philosopher than he was for being a Cubs fan, or a vegan, or left-handed, or any number of other things that he also may be (or not be, I don’t know him personally) but which do not carry with them the penalty of racist invectives or threats of violence. To frame his experience as “Internet abuse of a philosopher” obscures the very real phenomenon of widespread Internet abuse that regularly targets racial minorities with specifically racist vitriol. What is more, that characterization of Yancy’s case, along with the corresponding appeal for the APA to adopt some punitive or defensive measures to protect its constituency, makes it easier to ignore the regular and specifically racist abuse perpetrated by philosophers themselves.
Professional philosophy’s little corner of the web–which I sometimes disparagingly refer to as the “AdHomiNet”– hosts a large and loud and toxic population of trolls, bullies, gossip-mongers, and harassers among its ranks, most of whom operate anonymously but many of whom are perfectly happy to sign their names to their antisocial behavior (if not also make their names by doing so). The APA, if it is to be called upon to do anything, would be better off tending to its own house first. Any honest assessment of philosophers’ behaviors on the Internet will show that philosophers are abusive (especially of women and racial minorities) far more than philosophers are being abused.
Of course, women and racial minorities are also philosophers… but they/we are such a tiny, miniscule sliver of the total population of philosophers that dismissing them/us as such hardly even registers as an objectionable insult in the current climate. So, yeah, I’m totally comfortable saying that there are more philosophers abusing than being-abused in our profession.
I’m not entirely convinced the APA should be called upon to make everyone play nice, but I’ve seen enough over the last decade to make me much more sympathetic to those appeals. In 2014, there was an APA Task Force created and charged with investigating whether or not the APA should adopt an official “Code of Conduct.” (I’m not sure where that stands now. The only thing I could find about it was this report from last year.) Nevertheless, with or without an official “Code of Conduct,” it is entirely within the rights of a professional organization to censure its members, and I find it hard to imagine that there are any other disciplines in academe with more overwhelming evidence for censure of its members than ours.
Borrowing from Yancy’s “Dear White America” peice, it’s long past time for professional Philosophy to “refuse to remain a prisoner to the lies we tell ourselves.” It’s 2016, for goodness sake. Philosophy remains the Whitest, most male-dominated discipline in the humanities, and every bit of the manner in which we ask questions, seek answers, hire and fire, decide which matters are worthy of attention and which are not, decide who is to be heard and who is not, decide everything for that matter, is shot-through with racist and misogynist prejudice about which the discipline itself is intractably silent, with which it is indefensibly compliant, and for which it is inexcusably culpable.
There is a small part of me that wishes the APA would issue a statement in support of Yancy, but if it does, there is a much larger part of me that hopes some enterprising young journalist catches whiff of this and publishes a story entitled:
WHITEST DISCIPLINE IN THE HUMANITIES CONDEMNS RACISM!
or PHILOSOPHERS LIVE IN GLASS HOUSES, THROW STONES
or,whatever, just use the title this piece.