What is the Overton Window?
How topics become more or less acceptable to discuss
If you follow politics, you’ve probably heard of the Overton window. If not, you’re probably familiar with the concept, and it’s useful to have it laid out clearly and classified with a term you can refer to.
The Overton window, put as simply as possible, is the range of acceptable ideas. It’s a political term, named after the man credited with articulating it, but it’s actually created and controlled by society at large. Politics follow changes in society, so it’s useful to think of the Overton window more broadly than just politics. Society tends to have more things it’s willing to talk about seriously than politicians are. This is as it should be since politicians follow societal changes.
I tend to think of society having a wider Overton window than politicians, but they’re generally centered on the same point. It is acceptable to have radical ideas in the social discourse, whereas radical ideas generally aren’t acceptable in politics. Politicians should be negotiating and enacting policies acceptable by most people, and radical ideas are by definition not that. But radical ideas are necessary in the social discourse, as they are the beginning of change.
Every idea has its own location with regard to (but not necessarily within) the Overton window. A good example of how this works is prohibition. The idea of banning alcohol moved from radical to mainstream in the mid- to late-1800s and then became policy in 1920. The national response was swift and loud. Prohibition was repealed in 1932. This indicates that the move from an acceptable idea to policy was too fast and without sufficient debate and consideration for the will of the majority. This is why a wide Overton window is a good thing. Something that may be seen as radical should be discussed and debated in an open, democratic society. This is how we grow, adapt, and progress.
Some people hear me and others (such as Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsay, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying) criticize Critical Theory/Critical Social Justice (CT/CSJ) as going too far. They bring up other ideas that have gone too far, such as white supremacy, and claim that Critical Theory is a necessary counter to such ideas, that in fact, the very continued existence of bad ideas like white supremacy are justification for CT/CSJ. If there was no white supremacy, there would be no need for CT/CSJ. This is false, and we know it’s false. Let’s leave aside for now the work done by CT/CSJ itself to infuse white supremacy into everything and thereby justify its own existence. We know CT/CSJ is not needed to fight white supremacy because it’s been successfully and consistently fought and beaten for at least decades, if not the entire existence of the United States. Can we prove this? Yes, the Overton window proves it. One hundred years ago, it was acceptable in some places in the US to enact laws that treated people differently based on skin color with the advantage going to whites.
Today, this is not acceptable. This idea has been removed from the Overton window (or the Overton window has moved away from it, however you like to conceptualize it) in politics and society. Do people still think white supremacist thoughts? Yes. Do people still want white supremacist laws enacted? Yes, though the size of the population that does is very small. Here’s the issue: we can’t legislate away bigotry, hatred, desires, or ideas. We can’t force people to think a certain way, nor should we try. What we can do is make these ideas unacceptable in the social discourse and political system.
This is how the Overton window works. Racism was removed from the Overton window after the successes of the civil rights movement, at least politically. People who want these things now just aren’t allowed, through social pressure and lack of support, to participate in governance. Racist ideas have been steadily moving out of the boundaries of the social discourse ever since.
CT/CSJ reverses this. Joe Biden has a policy on his website as I write this that wants to provide advantages to people based on skin color — not need, not economic status, not anything to do with what challenges or life events they’ve gone through. We’ve let racism back into the Overton window. You can argue that it was on the fringes of radical social discourse, but as I said, the political window is narrower, and policies based on race have been even less acceptable there (affirmative action being the sole exception).
Meanwhile, CT/CSJ is trying to kick subjects out of the Overton window that are based on true facts and long-settled science, such as biological sex. It does this with ‘cancel culture’ which tries to force the Overton window in the direction it wants. This is not how social discourse works. Instead of convincing people over time with good arguments and evidence, CT/CSJ is threatening people to get their compliance or at least silence. These aren’t even metaphorical threats. When a mob shows up demanding that you pledge symbolic fealty to their cause, people submit, because we all know what a mob does to an individual that defies them.
The important thing here is that you have a say in the location and width of the Overton window. Your speech and your votes contribute to whether it moves or not and whether it shrinks or expands. If you are no longer willing to openly discuss a topic, you shrink the window. Alternately, if you start discussing a topic with people, you expand the window. And that’s true whether you agree or disagree with the topic. It’s the discussion itself that determines the window. I encourage everyone to discuss the widest array of topics possible. When ideas are brought into the light they can be evaluated, and our understanding improves whether the topic is ultimately tossed back out the Overton window or moves closer to the center.
