Being Marked For Speaking Truth to Power: There’s a Physical and Emotional Cost To This
self-editor note: Lest anyone think this is inspired by any particular incident this week, it’s not. I had been planning it for a while — because there’s always an incident that is relatively recent, really.
Call me paranoid, but I think I’ve probably developed a bit of a reputation in some quarters for being difficult, too direct and too truthful. I mean, thanks to vicious conservatives that try to purge university campuses of people who hold progressive values, I’m now listed on various (white power/white supremacist) websites as someone who hates America because I justifiably said on twitter that Thomas Jefferson was a rapist. (Let’s just settle that: he started having sex with his sister-in-law, who happened to be a slave he owned, when she was ~14–16 years old, and really, slaves and children can’t consent to sex with their masters and she was both. That’s rape, sorry Jefferson fans.)
It’s fascinating what people will label the truth when they don’t want to hear it. This was actually not a new lesson to me though because I feel like I learn it almost every time I engage in dialogue with members of the physics and astronomy communities about racism. If I tell someone directly how harmful their words are, I’m difficult. If I don’t sugar coat it so that they come out of it feeling good, I have a bad tone and need to be less angry. That’s been the overarching lesson of these discussions: the most important thing isn’t doing right, it’s saying polite things with the right tone in the right way.
Because how someone’s anger sounds is way more important than whether they are being treated like shit.
I wonder if the people who enforce these rules even think for a second that there’s a cost to this, emotionally and physically, to the people who are constantly being asked to remain calm, cool, collected and more concerned about the feelings of others than their experience of victimization.
(And yes I’ve already written about this in WHAT’S THE HARM IN TONE POLICING? But I decided to say more here.)
I actually hate confrontation. I immensely dislike feeling angry. I don’t enjoy the effort required to stay calm, constantly, in the face of daily microaggressions. I don’t enjoy knowing at every single moment that if I can’t keep my hurt feelings under control, my career could be severely damaged (or even more damaged than it already is).
Of course, on some level, everyone has to be able to manage their emotional responses. We all get angry or annoyed about things at work. The difference between a white guy and me is that I have to deal with whatever he deals with, plus racialization and gender bias. I have to deal with extra and then perform just like he does.
That means, in some sense, I have to be better at everything than he does and then have that differential go unrecognized, because on paper we look the same. If I don’t do better? If I only handle things as well as he does? I’m assessed as inferior, either in attitude or performance or both.
It’s a losing game, professionally. And there’s a health cost to this. Studies show that microaggressions shave years off the lives of victims. Studies show that internalizing your feelings is unhealthy for you and the people you are closest to:
More recently, Cobbs reiterated the point that rage against discrimination is commonplace among African Americans, but for many, continues to be turned inward. Silent, all-consuming rage can lead to inner turmoil, emotional or social withdrawal, and physical health problems.
It can be psychologically devastating, leading to more time and money spent in therapy — if you can find a therapist who understands your demographic needs/experiences. Indeed, a study shows that Black women who are victims of racism in the workplace experience significant impact to their well-being due to the racism alone, not even including sexism and the usual stressors.
As I’ve gotten older and been subjected to more of this losing game, I’ve become angrier. But I’ve tried not to let those feelings stagnate, rather using them to speak out about problems in the field and identify what and how my communities can do better.
I’m not winning any popularity contests doing this. And it’s possible I may never attain a faculty position because of it. But one day I realized I had to be able to live with myself, in my head, and I just couldn’t be a relatively silent bystander, for example, to the racist discourse about the Thirty Meter Telescope.
I can’t put my conscience on hold for tenure.
Isn’t it bizarre that essentially academia asks us to? Isn’t it bizarre that academia values immediate research productivity at all costs, even if it leads senior researchers to destroy rising young researchers or rising young researchers to destroy themselves? How can we be this shortsighted? How can we not value people who will steward the next generation?
And again, there’s that cost. I could have ignored my conscience and allowed my physical and mental health to continue to degenerate with self-hatred due to that, thus risking my career. Or I could risk my career by speaking out, knowing that I could at least feel proud of the person I was.
I could also choose not to mentor students and then try to live with the demons associated with leaving them in sometimes dire psychological situations. It would go against everything that I am.
Apparently who I am doesn’t mix well with having a long-term research career. Because as a Black queer person, because as a Jew, it is a fundamental value that I not turn away from suffering in my community.
So, yes, I sound a little angry these days. Yes, I have called people out. Yes, they have not enjoyed it. I haven’t either. There’s been a cost to me too.
But the cost to our community is greater if we don’t change. So I push. I push hard because there are students who can’t wait.
And I can’t wait. I’m fighting for a community where I don’t feel like it’s a violation of my values to be a member, where it is normative for someone like me to be a member.
Racism (discrimination) hurts. We don’t always cry (in front of you), but it hurts. Anger is an expression of that pain.
If this makes you uncomfortable, if what I’ve said publicly feels personal, think about how personal it is for an entire community to be designed as if you didn’t exist and then tries to push you out when you try to make comfortable room for yourself.
Try to have an empathy practice. Yes, there I go again, offering feedback. But seriously, a lot of people in our community need one. They need to pay more attention to the emotional experiences of people who are marginalized in ways that they are not and understand that they will always be learning about those experiences, can never fully understand them. Pay attention to the fact that the wounds they bring to the table are both old and constantly being ripped open again. Consider whether it is most useful to creating change to center your feelings and enforce your sense of propriety on those around you. Consider what this pressure to assimilate means to people who come to the table with their own background, hopes and dreams.
I’m sorry for all of us that we are stuck having this conversation over and over. Help me end it by making the changes we need. If you’re not sure where to start, start with your invisible knapsack and create new lists for other axes besides being white.
Finally, a comment that is ostensibly about the 2016 Presidential election but is highly relevant to the question of which tactics are the right ones. A statement by Jacqui Germain has been circulating on Facebook about the first Democratic Presidential debate and discussions of Black Lives Matter:
Okay. Everyone getting hype about Bernie Sanders saying Sandra Bland’s name in his response and *almost* every candidate saying ‘Black lives matter’ during the Democratic debate… Do you think that would’ve happened without folks blocking intersections and highways? Do you think that would’ve happened without marching night-after-night on West Florissant? Without occupying the Ferguson PD lot for weeks? Without coordinated protests and die-ins and shut-downs across the country? Do you really think that would’ve happened without repeatedly disrupting the candidates’ rallies?
This is for the perpetually pressed and distressed crowd, the “I agree with your cause but your methods turn me off” crowd, the “you’re upsetting people who could’ve been your allies” crowd, and the “you’re making us look bad” crowd: Things don’t actually move without people taking risks to move them. The arc of justice King mentioned doesn’t just bend; people have to lean and push and disrupt and keep the pressure on it until we can position it where it needs to be (or hell, break it and build a whole new one). Please don’t forget that.
Stop worrying so much about my methods. Start worrying more about a field that locks out everyone but a highly specific demographic and then claims to be a meritocracy. Because frankly, that’s so fucking stupid.
