a recurring point I find myself making in private conversations is that I believe that representation might possibly be the #1 most powerful force for social change. it’s the tip of the spear. if you want to help a marginalized person or group, create media that centers them
I’m revealing my own media bias & the limitations of my worldview here, but until I know better: I think Ellen, for eg, is disproportionately responsible for hundreds of millions of people learning to see LGBTQ people as, well, people. I feel like everything else is downstream
Representation matters. I know some intellectual folks have galaxy-brain takes about how you shouldn’t limit the way you see yourself, but this isn’t about how you see yourself â this is about how other people see other people.
For most people, before you first encounter a high-resolution depiction of a person in all their complexity and nuance, all you have is low-resolution caricatures. Gay people are like this. Black people are like that. Disabled people are like this. And so on.
But every person is an entire universe. And it’s quite radical, really, to simply sit down and take that in. Once you recognize that That Other Person is actually full of richness, nuance, struggles, etc, it becomes quite obvious that they matter; just as much as you do.
â 2 â
2015:
Iâm thinking about Sanjayâs Super Team, and Ratatouille, and overcoming âvillainsâ. Overcoming cynicism. I was a very optimistic kid and that I think that changed quite dramatically when I took on a mortgage.
What I found interesting about SST is that itâs about a young, modern Indian boy finding a way to bridge the gap between himself as a globalized, 3rd/0th culture kid and his father, who has a traditional, religious point of view.
And whatâs interesting is to get meta about it and see how this piece of art, fiction, film â helps to bridge that gap in real life, between Sanjay and his dad, millions of Sanjays and dads. And so it becomes clear that art has utility. Art can mend relationships, or at least shed some light, help people understand one another better, empathize better.
What sort of dollar value do we put on that? What sort of dollar value SHOULD we put on that?
â 3 â
Wrote a response to someone asking, “Why should Muslims have to answer for what some madmen do halfway across the world?”
It’s not about what’s right or fair, unfortunately. It’s ultimately about controlling the narrative, in a reality where a vast number people, including those in positions of power, are troublingly uninformed.
Let’s avoid race and religion for a minute. Let’s take something like say, football fans and football hooliganism. Even here, the most extreme cases will always end up hijacking the narrative amongst the uninformed.
If you’ve never watched football before, and you don’t personally know anybody that likes football, and the only thing you see in the news is examples of riots and fighting following football games, you’re quite likely to assume (based on the news reports that you read) that football is a horrible sport.
This isn’t very fair, but that’s life. The implicit connection is made, often even if you try to tell yourself “I’m sure they’re not all like that”. (Consider how people feel less comfortable flying after reading about a horrible plane crash, even when we intellectually know that these are statistically unlikely.)
Unfair implicit connections are made all the time, and if nobody makes an effort to correct them, they persist. A stereotype is perpetuated, and a prejudice is born.
Now, suppose I love football. I see it as a beautiful, honorable game that’s all about discipline and teamwork and honour. I simply can’t comprehend why some “football fans” (and I use quotes because in my opinion, these folks don’t even qualify as real fansâ they’re OBVIOUSLY just thugs who use football as an excuse to commit acts of violence) do such terrible things.
Am I, as a football fan, obliged to speak on behalf of these radical, crazy hooligans?
Technically, I’m not.
In a perfect world, I shouldn’t have to.
But if I don’t, then that’s the only side of the story people ever hear.
So then I have to ask myself, should I remain indifferent to some people subverting the thing that I love, and others mistaking that perversion for an accurate representation of reality?
I could! I’m totally entitled to!
What I do next is entirely up to me. I can either witness an unfavorable stereotype be perpetuated, or I can step in and say no, that’s not cool.
Some people are lucky; they never have to care about this. If a certain type of person shoots up a school, nobody asks other persons of that background to step up and change the narrative. That’s a privilege the rest of us don’t have. Every woman has to carry this burden of representing her gender. Every minority has to carry the burden of representing their culture. It’s not fair, but it’s how it is.
Perhaps things will change in the coming decades. But it won’t happen by itself. It’ll take a lot of work.
The question is, who’s going to do it? If not you, who?
I’m reminded of Benjamin from Animal Farm. He was one of the wisest dudes on the farm, wise enough to know that he was witnessing some serious bullshit. But he was far too weary and cynical to get involved. And was he under any obligation to get involved? Of course not.
And when they betrayed and murdered his best friend, his protests were too little, too late.
He was the one creature on the farm who had the knowledge and perspective to actually make a difference.
TL;DR:
It’s deeply unjust that the world we live in is full of negative stereotypes and unfair generalizations. It SHOULDN’T be anybody’s responsibility to correct the ignorance of others.
But if you have the time to say “Why should I care?”, then you have the time to pitch in to make a difference. The power is yours.
â 4 â
Minorities have to be extra sensitive, October 2018
(these were thoughts in response to Sarah Jeong being called out for being racist towards white men)
I think one of the rules of being a minority is that you have to always be sensitive to the feelings of the majority. Outspoken, risk-taking minorities might try to fool around with boundaries, and get some laughs, but itâs dancing on thin ice. Youâre not allowed to be stupid
Are all race-directed jokes equally racist? No. Does that mean some race-directed jokes are acceptable? You better be really, really skilled at what youâre doing or youâre going to get burnt. âYouthful indiscretionsâ and âmoments of follyâ are acceptable excuses for some not all
Funnily Iâm reminded of marital jokes here. Should you jokingly insult your spouse? I extremely do not recommend it. âBut its an inside joke, we have a common understanding, we have a thing going!â Uhuh. Thatâs never gonna bite you in the ass ever. đ
Maybe the real crime was that her tweets werenât funny enough đ€ she spoke too plainly, was too brazen – unacceptable for minorities, particularly unacceptable for women, god help you if youâre both and you arenât operating with surgical nuance and lvl 3 encoding
No I donât think thatâs it. Thatâs a thing, but not the main thing here. Reflecting on my own tweets from years ago – the problem is that she was tweeting to a smaller audience which had a common understanding of the context she operated in. Eg my old tweets are full of Singlish
Iâm guessing she wouldnât be so dumb as to tweet those things today in the present context – but contexts CHANGE, man. It wasnât that long ago that âthatâs so gayâ was an acceptable slight, that homosexuality was a punchline. This was everywhere in pop culture. Also: âr*tardedâ
To be clear I donât think Iâm trying to defend her or support her or say she should be forgiven or not-forgiven or anything of that sort. I donât know shit about that. This stuff is moral fashion, itâll be fashionable one week and out of date the next
I have a feeling when she tweeted âI get joy out of being cruel to old white menâ she was referring to a narrow subset of old white men and did not at the time expect that it would eventually be seen to mean all old white men everywhere. (Not defending here; trying to understand)
I think itâs plausible and maybe about 70% likely that she was taking calculated risks with those tweets. onesâs calculus is always imperfect because you canât foresee the future. Ultimately I think sheâll be ok
Perhaps then ultimately her strategy was optimal given her context and circumstance, and this is just the price you pay for this particular path
All of that said generally I would discourage anybody from tweeting, even ironically or cleverly at some meta level, that they wish violence or harm or cruelty towards others. This is not about race; itâs just tacky tbh. If you want others to suffer, try to be classy about it
More extreme eg âHaha I was being ironic and clever when I tweeted about touching children inappropriatelyâ – why. Why is this the itch you need to scratch publicly. Then people gotta waste resources and goodwill defending your dumb ass from overreactions. I wouldnât, but still
Also definitely true that her tweets make great recruitment material for alt-right kids