We need to leave room for people to admit that they could have been wrong. If we label people, we push them into defending their positions even more strongly. It’s not about being nice, it’s about making them realize on their own.
I sort of understand why activists react so badly when people tell them to be nice to people who are deemed racist assholes. I get it. I’ve tried to talk about feminism to people in a nice way, and in an angry way, and I find them both unsuccessful. Being angry makes them reject everything you say, and being nice is paternalistic as fuck.
I’m a feminist with a few caveats. I don’t particularly like the idea of safe spaces, I don’t believe in making people shut up just because I don’t like what they are saying, I believe in debate and in asking questions. And that doesn’t happen today. I’ve seen activists and people making mistakes in good faith, and then a bunch of screaming people shouting at them for saying the wrong thing. That’s not my feminism. My feminism is a place where people realize they can make mistakes, they can say the wrong thing without it being a big deal.
For instance, this video shows perfectly how to tell someone they SOUND racist. Not that they ARE racist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Ti-gkJiXc
What really worked for me was to think my feminism and my debates as places where people could ask what they wanted. Outrageous things if they wanted to, I don’t care, I can’t be offended, I don’t get angry. Basically what I’ve done with my (mostly male) friends that didn’t get feminism or had problems with it, was this. I told them: “Ok, what would you ask to a feminist. What are these things that you think are wrong about feminism but you don’t say them out loud? Do you think women lie about rape because they regret having had sex? Do you think women are less intelligent? Or that they should be at home with the babies? You don’t believe in the pay gap?”
And it has worked wonders. Once I was with this guy who genuinely believed that women don’t get cat called on the street, and a bunch of my friends started yelling at him when he asked if it was that big of a deal. His body language was so obvious after the yelling… He crossed his arms and started rebuking everything we said, defending himself because they had called him insensitive! They were making him feel bad. And what do people do when you call them something horrible that goes against the positive self image we all have? You defend your ideas. Your previous conceptions need to be defended even more strongly because either you were right, or you were wrong and are a bad person. And who wants to be wrong and become a horrible person?
And yes. Obviously. Making him feel bad is nothing compared to the trips I had to endure on the metro alone, or the fear I felt when a guy cornered me in a dark ally, but was this necessary? Making him feel bad was completely pointless, his world view was clashing with ours and he was asking about it! I don’t know, I am not telling any activist to be nice to a racist person. I want to tell them to not cross them unnecessarily, specially when these people are your relatives, friends, coworkers…When you tell somebody that they are a “bad person”, defending themselves is the only option to carry on having a positive self image (and your brain will fight tooth and nail to keep that, believe me). I don’t want activists to be nice, I just want them to not make it harder for the rest of us…
You have to understand that not many people think that they are racists, except KKK assholes, obviously. And if you still think that Trump was the biggest racist presidential candidate, I have news for you, he wasn’t different from previous republican AND democrat candidates:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
Labeling people is counterproductive. It’s not efficient. It makes us all lose even harder. Yes, you will have the moral satisfaction of saying to a person that you hate how horrible you see them. Good for you, take your pound of flesh, but at the end of the day, what do you want?
Do you want to win or do you want to be right?
