It seemed fairly clear to Jan (and I think she's right) that of diversity here means something like "belonging to one of the formerly excluded groups associated with references to diversity such as women, Hispanics, African Americans, etc." — it's analogous to the common meaning of the phrase of color in phrases like person of color.
I'm leaving aside the issue of whether "practitioner" here means a practitioner of law or a human resources -type person who is supposed to run diversity-enhancing programs, because, well, I leave that sort of stuff to Language Log. And regardless of whether "of diversity" indicates the individual's demographics or not, it's quite clear that "equality and diversity" programs concern themselves primarily with institutional practices that disproportionately affect women, certain racial groups, disabled people, queer/LGBT people, and other groups who are traditionally underprivileged or underrepresented in certain spheres. That is, there's something about "diversity" that does mean "not White dudes", more or less as GKP suggested in his post.
At this point, I must affix my linguistics hat firmly to my head. There. Now we can proceed.
Very roughly, linguists say that something is linguistically marked when it is atypical for a particular speaker or context. Linguists also sometimes talk about marked identities. Roughly, these means identities that are atypical relative to a given (usually, ideologically-laden) context.
For example, compare:
- That person is an scientist.
- That Black woman is an scientist
One might reasonably ask why one might chose to say (2) rather than (1) in a context where both are relevant. Moreover, is less likely to say "That White man is a scientist". So we say that, in many contexts, being a Black woman is a marked identity.
Still with me? Good.
There's certainly very good arguments for saying that "people of diversity" suggests that diversity is a characteristic only of marked identities. This is the sort of attitude that is in place when people remark on the "weirdness" of intersectionality in marked identities -- for example being, a queer disabled Hispanic woman -- but they think it's totally "normal" to be a straight White non-disabled man. Having an attitude towards Black people, women, and other underprivileged groups such that one considers them to be Other (and therefore marked) makes them more oppressed, not less.
GKP writes:
I'm not even saying there is no role or motivation for a phrase like person of diversity. It is apparently intended to pick out people who are not white European or Jewish males.
Indeed (she says, leaving aside the mention of Jewish men at this point, because although I can see what is intended, there actually are some interesting issues there). And this too is problematic, because it defines people in relation to White (straight, non-disabled, etc) men. It's White-centric and andro-centric.
But to say that white European or Jewish males will be barred from some job or actively dispreferred for it sounds raw and ugly in its exclusionariness: one could hardly defend it against a charge of racial and gender discrimination. A positive word or phrase is needed for the class of people who are thought to merit help from diversity-enhancement programs. Hence the coining of a phrase to denote such people. It makes perfect sense. Especially to someone like me who has never been an opponent of affirmative action or diversity enhancement programs.
Trying to unpack what GKP is saying here: it sounds to me like he is saying that an affirmative action program for "people of diversity" sounds too close to "a program to increase the recruitment of people who are not White men", and that this comes too close to gender/racial discrimination.
It seems to me that this is a simplistic account. For one thing, this argument has always been made against affirmative action by countless people, whatever the terminology. I really doesn't matter if the wording is "a program to increase the recruitment of women", because the objection to that will be be "but that's discrimination against men!" (Note, I don't propose to go into a thorough discussion of affirmative action here. That's a whole 'nother post.)
But secondly, GKP's comments miss out the markedness issue entirely. The claim is "'people of diversity' doesn't include White men, and it is therefore difficult to defend the term against a charge of racism". But it seems to me that the people harmed by the exclusion of White men are not White men at all — it's everyone who isn't a White man, precisely because they are all being considered Other, and White men are being considered Normal. This is what markedness means. If we were to say "we are starting a new program to recruit more people" we'd have no reason to think that "people" means "White men", except for the fact that whenever we mean anyone other than White men, we call it "diversity" or "affirmative action" or "discrimination against White men". White men don't seem to need a special label — it's everyone else who needs the special "diversity" label.
So yes, the markedness here is deeply harmful. But not to White men, who seem to be doing pretty well out of it.
--IP
[Cross-posted]
I agree. There's a lot of this 'White's are the victims of racism' thing going around. It reminds me of a few years back, when a couple neds were shouting something at me and a friend, so I hit one of them, then they ran and told the police: a group that's used to dominating a certain medium always appeals to authority when their dominance is under threat. The winners are the whiners. Like America after 9/11: 'We're so hard done by!' Yeah right. The rich: 'Why do we have to pay taxes? Waaaah.'
ReplyDeleteOn the plus side, the reaction is usually an indication that whatever you're doing is working.
Robert Loughney:
ReplyDeleteIf someone is hit, going to the police is perfectly legitimate, because people shouldn't be hitting other people. (Please note also that this post is not an invitation to post violence-condoning stories of any kind.)
The "White people are victims of racism" ideology comes into play when people query why a Black person being hit is a hate crime, but a White person being hit isn't. And that's because when a Black person is hit, it's part of a pattern of structural racist oppression -- not so with a White person is being hit. But that doesn't mean it's totally fine to hit White people.
I note your use of "neds" -- this is a class-marked term in the UK. And violence or harassment towards people of low socioeconomic class *is* part of of a pattern of structural privilege/oppression too. So I'm somewhat puzzled by your comment.
"the reaction is usually an indication that whatever you're doing is working"
I hear this argument a lot, and I don't like it. The fact that something provokes a reaction does not necessarily mean that one is achieving a constructive aim. I hope I am, of course, and I'm prepared to face a bit of annoyance or anger in order to work towards my constructive aims. But I'm not sure that anger/annoyance are a good measure of progress. If someone walked up to me in the street and said "I hate your shoes", I might well think "well screw you", but my reaction doesn't mean that they have achieved anything in their Campaign Against The Wearing Of Fashionless Shoes.
But for sure, I have no sympathy for wealthy people complaining about progressive taxation.
--IP
Righto,
ReplyDeleteViolence thing, yeah, that was my High School environment. I don't think calling someone's bluff is necessarily wrong, even if it involves a bit of a fight. I guess I don't draw an absolute moral line at violence, in and of itself. I'm a martial artist after all; hitting isn't wrong; the wrongfulness of hitting is defined by context. The point was, in my high school, there were a group of people that would quite frequently do the beating up, and expected never to suffer retaliation, but when retaliation happened (as in the above scenario), they looked to the keepers of the rules that they themselves always broke. That's why I felt it was relevant to the post: regulatory hypocrisy by a dominant player.
'Ned'; being of a working class background, with a Trade Unionist father, and so on, I didn't mean it that way (I do not disagree that in common usage it's often class marked, and that the term has a classist history: I will be more guarded vis a vis terms when commenting on your posts in the future :P); it was a term we used when I was young to describe people who looked for trouble. Obviously offensive terms percolate down from above, and can reinforce unhelpful tensions within the working class itself (an old Ideological Apparatuses argument; thank you Althusser) when people should be cooperating. I realise this; I wasn't in 'careful mode', I guess heh.
As for annoyance being a sign of progress, yes, progress against one's ideals is not a *necessary* ingredient for annoyance, but I do feel it is a sufficient one. I think that it's proportional to the level of annoyance, heh. For example, here in America, the Right got severely pissed off as the health care bill neared passage. This to me was a good measure that it was actually going to change something.
Good times.
Robert Loughney:
ReplyDeleteRe the hitting thing: I lean towards pacifism, so we're not going to agree on this. But I would say that some people systematically have violence directed towards them. In the context of queer feminist theory/practice, this strikes me as particularly out of place, given the extent to which women and queer people are systematically targeted for violence. Some will disagree with me on that -- it's not a consensus. But I can't see the advocacy or justification of violence that is not for self-defense as compatible with feminism.
"'Ned'; being of a working class background, with a Trade Unionist father, and so on, I didn't mean it that way (I do not disagree that in common usage it's often class marked, and that the term has a classist history: I will be more guarded vis a vis terms when commenting on your posts in the future :P);"
Common usage is a major component of meaning. In certain contexts, the use of traditionally-derogatory words can be reclamatory, but the context has to make that clear. In the situation you described, it sounded like you were using "ned" in a derogatory way, rather than a reclamatory one. So that fact that you disagree with class-marked violence doesn't mean that you can opt out of the default associations that are made with particular terms.
"For example, here in America, the Right got severely pissed off as the health care bill neared passage. This to me was a good measure that it was actually going to change something."
Wouldn't it indicate a much bigger change if instead of the right getting annoyed about the passage of the healthcare bill, the right wing had supported it? Sometimes annoyance indicates that you're not making as much headway as you'd like.
Also, your theory doesn't explain anger at the lack of social change. When someone gets annoyed and says something like "we've been campaigning for this for [time] and we still don't have [access to abortion on demand, or whatever. Just picked this example because it was relevant to the healthcare example]." That annoyance doesn't indicate progress at all -- it's lack of progress.
Also, it justifies gratuitously trying to piss people off and then saying "well if I pissed you off, I must be getting somewhere". I guess I just don't see the point. I'd rather measure progress in terms of increase in autonomy, say, than increase in anger. I don't want to see anger increase -- I don't think that's productive. In the very long term, I'd hope to see anger decrease.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting what you're saying, and if so I apologise.
--IP
First of all, I'll restate that I completely agree, philosophically, with everything you said in the original post, heh.
ReplyDeleteI agree about the world ned. It's a conditioned thing from more youthful years, and like I said, when I'm not being careful, it comes out. Your criticism of its use was valid.
I can only say that the prejudice I feel is more predicated on someone being a 'bully' (which can appear under any conceivable demographic denomination, obviously), rather than on other factors. I say 'ned' because I'm used to friends back in Edinburgh know exactly what kind of attitude I'm describing. Political correctness sacrificed for communicative efficiency, heh.
I'll repeat, about the anger thing, anger is not necessarily caused by losing 'top of the pyramid' status. You're right; it's caused by a lot of things. But I think losing that status is sufficient to cause anger (as in, anger happens for many reasons, but that's one of them). In my mind, it's a question of power. To relate it to the original post, 'White Men' resist attempts to level the playing field, and attempts to change the 'white' and 'andro' centric bias, by claiming discrimination against themselves because they, as you quite rightly put, 'are doing pretty well out of it', and they like being in a privileged position. And they get wary – and hence defensive, and angry – if it seems like a threat to that position is real.
As for Republicans supporting healthcare, well, yes, a lot of them did. But the folks at the top of the food chain (mostly white men :P) didn't. They, being in the pockets of the insurance industry, and being the biggest beneficiaries of a private system, didn't want to give up the privileges. And the degree to which they became aggravated by the bill was, again, in my eyes, far better than if they had been complacent, or even positive: that would have made me suspicious that they were confident that the status quo (the one that benefits them, but not many others) would be largely maintained.
I think this is applicable to the issues raised in your post.
As for reducing or increasing the aggregate amount of anger that humanity feels, I think that's getting a bit ahead of the game. This is more about judging the efficacy of social change. I think that white men are indignantly crying out 'discrimination!' is a good indication that things might actually be going in a good direction.
Do I desire anger? Well yes, I suppose. About a lot of things. Including equality issues. I think it would be great if more people were angry about it the status quo. Better than hopeless and demoralized. And like I say, I like seeing the powerful angry at social movements, because it indicates the movement has power. But then, I'm a bit of a revolutionary :P
Right, finally, onto the violence thing. I feel like I've inadvertently painted a bad picture of myself as a total thug, or something :S. Yeah, I got into a lot of fights in school, because I was a total geek but also fairly big etc, hence the bullying types would try it on, whether violently or verbally, and there would be a scuffle. But a lot of people have been through stuff like that. When I started doing martial arts, it was great, in the sense that it teaches good self control and is an outlet for that kind of energy. Haven't been in a fight since (outside of martial arts).
So, I'm not advocating systemic violence or a soft stance on rape or anything bizarre like that. I swear, I'm your political ally, really! I just have a bit of a rough past. I honestly think I have something to contribute to feminist/queer theory. Hell, I'm Judith Butler's biggest fan. Well, not really. She's alright XD
Apologies if I caused any offense with my somewhat uncouth manner. I'm not the best at being PC. And I tend to write whatever comes into my head XD
As a final comment, again, good post, and again, I agree.