SUPERANDO EL MULTICULTURALISMO: LAS NUEVAS HERRAMIENTAS TEÓRICAS DE LA SUPERDIVERSIDAD Y

Introduction

In this chapter, I argue that the mistaken judgments identified in the previous section— that an emotional response is inapt, misplaced, or too intense—are at least in part the result of anti-emotion bias. One might think that those mistakes result only from ignorance about oppression or from some other kind of prejudice. In the following discussion I show how anti- emotion bias does contribute to these mistakes. Though it may not be the only factor, identifying its influence is important to forming more accurate assessments of emotion and working to undermine oppression.

I identify anti-emotion bias in two main ways: unjustified assumptions and prejudiced language. We might think these are signs of prejudice: when a person makes unjustified assumptions or uses language in a particular way it shows that they have prejudiced beliefs or attitudes. What is most important for my purposes is that whatever a person’s explicit beliefs or attitudes, these assumptions and ways of using language result in unfair negative evaluations of emotional response.

I will focus my discussion on an example. Several years ago, the outrage of some Yale students became the object of extensive criticism after footage of a confrontation between the students and a faculty member went viral. Leading up to this confrontation, Yale’s Intercultural Affairs Committee sent an email encouraging students to be mindful of whether their choice of Halloween costume might be racist or appropriative. Erika and Nicholas Christakis, heads of

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Silliman college, sent an email to all Silliman students suggesting the IAC email was

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well as their response to backlash from the email dismissive of student concern about racism on campus. A timeline of events, both emails, the students’ open letter to Erika Christakis, and a partial transcript of the interchange between Nicholas Christakis and the students can be found in Appendix 1. Although I focus on a single example, much of the analysis has broader relevance (for example, to the kinds of examples discussed in Chapter 3). It is difficult to accurately

evaluate judgments of emotional response without significant attention to context. And, this case is particularly useful because there was so much explicit evaluation of emotion in public

discussion, as well as explicit connections made to arguments about emotion in the academic world.

First, I review some responses to the student outrage. I also offer some analysis of oppressive costumes and the Christakises’s actions to show why it is plausible that outrage was appropriate. Then, I argue that bias can be identified in the unjustified assumption that outrage is a barrier to productive discussion. After that, I argue that emotionally-loaded language is

dismissive, and that this dismissiveness is the result of how certain terms imply or make salient prejudiced and stereotyped ideas about emotion. Finally, I consider the connections between oppression and anti-emotion bias. While my arguments about language and unjustified

assumptions make it plausible that anti-emotion bias contributes to misjudgment (and the general devaluation of emotion), it interacts with other factors. Oppressed groups that are stereotyped as emotional in certain ways are impacted the most by anti-emotion bias. This helps to explain some of the nuances of anti-emotion bias. It also shows that the solutions I suggest in Chapter 5 are not only a possible fix for certain issues within philosophy of emotion, they may have an important role in anti-oppression projects as well.

105 The Example: What happens at Yale does not stay there Criticism of Student Outrage

The students’ outrage received all kinds of criticism. Ruth Marcus advises students to “…grow up. Learn some manners. Develop some sense of judgment and proportion.” It

characterizes their response as a tantrum and condemns outrage on the basis that it forecloses the possibility of “reasoned interchange.”202

Conor Friedersdorf implies their outrage is inapt, characterizing their response as

“overreacting,” “making mountains out of molehills,” and asking in disbelief “they can’t bear this setting that millions of people would risk their lives to inhabit because one woman wrote an email that hurt their feelings?” before going on to claim that “either they need help from mental- health professionals or they’ve been grievously ill-served by debilitating ideological notions they’ve acquired about what ought to cause them pain.” He suggests that even if broader patterns of racism warrant outrage it is a mistake for the students to direct their response to the

Christakises: “That isn’t to dismiss all complaints by Yale students. If contested claims that black students were turned away from a party due to their skin color are true, for example, that is outrageous…Some Yalies are defending their broken activist culture by seizing on more

defensible reasons for being upset…But regardless of other controversies at Yale, its students owe Nicholas and Erika Christakis an apology.” He also criticizes outrage based on the claim that insisting it be “validated” makes civil disagreement impossible, as well as being

202 _{Marcus, R. (2015). “College is not for coddling” The Washington Post. Retrieved from}

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/college-is-not-for-coddling/2015/11/10/6def5706-87db-11e5-be39- 0034bb576eee_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7c723fb8ecab

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counterproductive to the students’ own aims (“In their muddled ideology, the Yale activists had to destroy the safe space to save it.”)203

In an article referenced by Marcus, Friedersdorf, and the Christakises in reply to student response, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff criticize emotional responses like the Yale

students’ outrage more generally, observing: “Surely people make subtle or thinly veiled racist or sexist remarks on college campuses, and it is right for students to raise questions and initiate discussions about such cases. But the increased focus on microaggressions coupled with the endorsement of emotional reasoning is a formula for a constant state of outrage, even toward well-meaning speakers trying to engage in genuine discussion.” 204 The reference to “well- intentioned” speakers suggests this kind of response is misplaced: that outrage is inappropriate unless there is malicious intent. This statement also implies that outrage undermines well-being, an idea they later return to, asking: “What are we doing to our students if we encourage them to develop extra-thin skin in the years just before they leave the cocoon of adult protection and enter the workforce? Would they not be better prepared to flourish if we taught them to question their own emotional reactions, and to give people the benefit of the doubt?” It appears that outrage is perceived to be counterproductive to success in the workplace as well as to undermine flourishing in a broad sense. Haidt and Lukianoff later confirm this when they expand the article into a book (discussed in Chapter 1), arguing that the students would be healthier, stronger, and better able to achieve their goals in part by tamping down emotion.

203 _{Friedersdorf, C. (2015). “The New Intolerance of Student Activism” The Atlantic. Retrieved from}

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/

204 _{Haidt., J and Lukianoff, G (2015). “The Coddling of the American Mind” The Atlantic. Retrieved from}

107 What’s wrong with oppressive costumes?

Certain kinds of costumes—such as those constructed from stereotypes of oppressed communities or that trivialize the trauma of oppression—can be located within the broad

category of microaggressions. That is, they are seemingly insignificant symbols or instruments of oppression that are of more consequence than they may initially appear, especially understood as just one of countless instances of insult and injustice within an oppressive system. Costumes, specifically, are morally problematic in at least two (overlapping) ways. First, they play a role in maintaining oppressive systems. These costumes degrade and mock members of oppressed communities, trivialize centuries of horrific injustice, and perpetuate harmful stereotypes. For example, the costume for a “ghetto chick” from Compton, described in the invitation to an event held in 2010 by UCSD students named “Compton Cookout,” included “short, nappy hair,” “cheap weave, usually in bad colors,” and “very limited vocabulary.”205 _{Instances of another}

costume showed up on multiple college campuses in 2014: some students dressed as Customs and Border Patrol Officers and the others were “Mexican.” The latter costume was composed of a fake moustache, sombrero, sarape, and handcuffs.206 Oppression is almost always justified by the false claims that the oppressed are inferior to privileged groups, and that their inferiority or disadvantage is natural. Costumes can play a role in reinforcing and normalizing those claims.207 The “ghetto chick from Compton” reinforces stereotypes of impoverished Black women and

205 _{Screengrab of Original "Compton Cookout" event (+ another similarly themed event). (2010, February 19).}

Retrieved from https://stopracismucsd.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/screengrab-of-original-compton-cookout-event-

another-similarly-themed-event/

206 _{Jones, A. (14, October 31). A Child's Treasury of This Year's Most Offensive Halloween Costumes. Retrieved} from http://gawker.com/a-childs-treasury-of-this-years-most-offensive-hallowee-1652874318

207 _{I offer an in-depth explanation of how claims of inferiority get normalized in Chapter 3 pertaining to the door-} holding example. Much of that discussion can be applied to understanding how something like a Halloween costume plays a role in an oppressive system. I also discuss stereotyping in the section of this chapter titled “Oppressed Populations and Anti-Emotion Bias”.

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mocks their presumed taste in cheap accessories and lack of formal mainstream education. The fact that racial oppression may explain why an individual’s vocabulary largely comprises what is considered “nonstandard” English, or that some communities are discriminated against on the basis of dialect is obscured. Women who fit this stereotype are made to seem ridiculous. These costumes help facilitate ignorance of injustices such as race- and income-based inequity in education and the lack of recognition of the legitimacy of dialects outside “standard” English. By characterizing these traits as personal flaws and worthy of derision, these costumes reinforce the lie that low-income people of color are the cause of their own misfortunes (including those “misfortunes” which are actually the result of histories of oppression) and thus that they are less intelligent.208 Second, these costumes alienate and exclude students who belong to oppressed groups. Consider the concept of a costume. One cannot “dress up” as oneself. To be intelligible as a costume, the identity one pretends to be is by definition “other,” or else it is not pretend. The kinds of costumes in question are often worn in connection to themed parties on college

campuses (discussed further later on). Parties with themes such as “Compton Cookout” or “Colonial Bros and Nava-Hos” presume there will be no actual “ghetto chicks” or indigenous women at the party. Furthermore, someone who actually hails from Compton could show up, but will still only count as being in costume if they are dressed as the stereotype.

Costumes exist on a spectrum. The examples I have mentioned perpetuate stereotypes, trivialize trauma, and maintain the “otherness” of oppressed identities in obvious ways. Other kinds of costumes may be more subtly objectionable, or it may be unclear whether they are objectionable at all. I discuss this briefly below in the section titled “Offense as subjective.” For

208 _{If this seems a dramatic accusation for a single costume, remember this is just one of countless ways stereotypes} are perpetuated and oppressed identities are demeaned. The claim is not that the costumes have a sizeable impact on their own, but that they are part of a much larger system.

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my purposes, it is enough that the kinds of extreme examples I have described are both common and problematic in ways that justify taking offense.

What’s wrong with the Christakises behavior?

Erika Christakis’s email characterizes the IAC email as an exertion of “implied control” by the university that suggests students are fragile and incapable of tolerating offense or working out differences. She lumps together all costumes that are outside the wearer’s cultural

background, resisting meaningful distinctions between, for example, her white daughter wanting to dress as Mulan and those that utilize blackface, stating that where we ought to draw the line seems an “unanswerable question” and claiming that no particular standard for Halloween costumes is more defensible than another. She encourages students faced with offensive costumes to heed her husband’s advice to “look away or tell them that you are offended.” In reply to student complaints, the Christakises defend their original statements, point students to the article “The Coddling of the American Mind” (implying the student protests are requests to be coddled or perhaps that complying with their requests would amount to coddling), resist apologizing, and refuse to admit any wrongdoing or insensitivity.

I turn now to identifying anti-emotion bias in these criticisms. I argue that this bias can be found in the lack of evidence provided for critical claims, in trivializing and dismissive language used by critics, and in the lack of nuance employed in evaluations of outrage. As before, though this chapter focuses on one example I think the discussion applies more broadly to a pattern of similar judgments of emotional responses to oppression.

Bias and the Barrier Assumption

One reason to believe that the mistaken judgments are the result of prejudice is because they are often based upon assumption or stereotype. Negative beliefs about certain emotional

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responses are taken to be obvious, sometimes assumed to be true despite evidence to the contrary. Specifically, certain emotions such as anger and outrage are taken to be barriers to cooperation, rational engagement, civility, or other aims. This collection of assumptions—which I call the barrier assumption—is often used to justify claims that an emotional response is

somehow bad or undesirable. But simply referring to the “fact” that anger tends to get in the way of cooperation does not justify the claim that anger is inappropriate. That this is frequently assumed without offering evidence of or argumentation for its truth reveals bias. To be clear: I am not arguing that anger never functions as this kind of barrier. But because it does not always do so, it ought not to be assumed that anger functions as a barrier unless there is good reason to believe that it does.

There are various ways outrage is thought to act as a barrier. Emotions are thought to distort perception and judgment. The outraged person might judge their own concerns to be much more important than they actually are, they might interpret an accidental slight as intentional, or read a neutral expression as contemptuous. The critics sometimes make claims about outrage preventing reasonable or rational engagement. Often this seems to be a call for objectivity. Outrage may be thought to be a barrier because it precludes objectivity. The outraged individual may have difficulty perceiving things clearly, and so unable to come to agreement with their interlocutor on relevant facts. Or, the outraged individual may be unable to see things from any perspective but their own, which again could make agreement hard to come by. Another way outrage is thought a barrier is by making the outraged individual uncooperative. The outraged individual may be thought unwilling to compromise, unwilling to listen, spiteful, or uncharitable. They might be prone to yelling about unrelated issues or launching irrelevant

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personal insults rather than working toward a solution. I turn now to identifying instances of the barrier assumption in the Yale example.

Marcus states that “the possibility of reasoned interchange is foreclosed when a tempered communication is greeted by vitriol and outrage.”209 Friedersdorf asserts that “In their view, one respects students by validating their subjective feelings. Notice [this] position allows no room for civil disagreement” and concludes that the students became bullies who “had to destroy the safe space to save it.”210 _{Haidt’s view characterizes emotion as a barrier to accurate perception of}

reality, claiming that “critical thinking requires grounding one’s beliefs in evidence rather than in emotion or desire” and thus concludes that people would be best off “talking [themselves] down from the idea that each…emotional response represents something true or important.” He also portrays emotion as a barrier to dialogue and well-being, asking: “Would [students] not be better prepared to flourish if we taught them to question their own emotional reactions, and to give people the benefit of the doubt?”211

Critics take the existence of unresolved conflict and emotionally-charged confrontations as evidence that outrage was a barrier to rational engagement or conflict resolution. It seems clear, however, that this is an unjustified assumption. The students were perfectly able to engage in rational dialogue and to make genuine and substantive attempts at conflict resolution—

evidence that their outrage did not act as a barrier by making them uncooperative or

209 _{Marcus, R. (2015). “College is not for coddling” The Washington Post. Retrieved from}

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/college-is-not-for-coddling/2015/11/10/6def5706-87db-11e5-be39- 0034bb576eee_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7c723fb8ecab

210 _{Friedersdorf, C. (2015). “The New Intolerance of Student Activism” The Atlantic. Retrieved from}

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/ 211 _{Haidt., J and Lukianoff, G (2015). “The Coddling of the American Mind” The Atlantic. Retrieved from}

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unreasonable. Here are some examples of their attempts at cooperative and rational engagement: they drafted an open letter explaining their complaints. They attempted to have a dialogue with Christakis and explain their reasons for being upset. They appealed to content they had learned in a class Christakis himself taught to explain why they felt wronged—a detail that is significant because it demonstrates awareness of what may best help him understand their perspective. They provided analogies and clarified their points when Christakis misunderstood. It seems clear that all of these things are examples of reasoned interchange, being cooperative, resolving conflict.

Even during one of the most intense moments, when a student yells at Christakis and tells him he is disgusting, the student is making a substantive point. She articulates what she

understands the role of Head of College to be, claims Christakis has failed by that standard, and