The Content of our Characters
Before we can make true progress, we must first learn to avoid disingenuous arguments whose only purpose is to create additional obstacles
Times had been turbulent for a few years now, as unrest grew and spread throughout the country. People were in the streets, either protesting or rioting depending on who you asked, and many lamented the divisiveness of society. Gone were the years of relative tranquility of a few decades past, when people just got along better, and instead gave way to a time of discord and troublemaking. And it was in this context, in 1963, 8 pastors sat down to write an open letter, encapsulating their thoughts.
The primary complaint from the clergymen revolved around outside agitators arriving in Birmingham to protest and demonstrate. And even though these groups were peaceful themselves, the protests sparked violence from police and other locals and so the demonstrations should be abandoned, they argues, or toned down in the name of unity, law, and order. As they put it, they “recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.” They were willing to acknolwedge a problem, but disagreed with the methods.
Last year, when trying to get to the heart of why so many arguments end up spinning their wheels, columnist Jane Coaston, coined the useful term “thing-adjacency” as a way to describe this kind of argument. The thrust of the idea is that when people find a topic that is hard for them to speak about, or where they feel they might not occupy the moral high ground, they simply refuse to discuss the difficult thing. Instead they find the thing nearest the original issue and centralize it to avoid the core of the matter. It is not quite a strawman, but it guides the argument towards less consequential issues, leaving the actual area of conflict untouched.
Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling during the anthem is a prime example of this phenomena as he made plain the reason for it (police brutality), but his detractors bypassed the the issue entirely in favor of the friendlier battle ground of “respecting the flag/troops/country/etc”. Like the eight, white clergymen, they were not interested in discussing racism, but controlling the conversation, and shifting the frame into areas that wouldn’t implicate them while implicitly defending the police. Four days after the letter, “A Call to Unity” was written, Martin Luther King Jr responded, excorciating the pastors for their approach, labeling them as worse than the Klan or the White Citizen’s Council. They wanted a negative peace, free of conflict instead of a positive peace where everyone does the work necessary to bring justice. Dr King was not going to be drawn into an debate and let those refrains, that would be familiar today, pull him off course from pursuing justice.
More recently, as increased scrutiny has been cast upon police forces and the overall tone has moved towards an aggressive stance of defunding the police. For a movement that, only 8 years prior, was castigated for declaring “Black Lives Matter”, having debates about defunding the police is streets ahead of where things used to be. Not only that, but the phrase “Black Lives Matter” has advanced around the world, permeating soccer culture in Europe and inspiring a true, global movement. For all the talk about “All Lives Matter” and the reactionary “Blue Lives Matter”, the entire argument was merely thing-adjacent. One might still hear the latter occasionally, but the former has mostly disappeared because it was never about the phrase. It was about the excessive violence committed by armed agents of the state.
Eight pastors composed a letter against Dr. Martin Luther King, and while they seemed to support him nominally, but disagreed with his methods. Instead of fighting for justice, they added an additional roadblock to achieving equality by adding yet another obstacle to overcome by adding a purity test before they felt they could support the Civil Rights Movement. It is likely they were never going to support the movement in the first place, but did not feel great about it but, by arguing the means of progress, they were able to voice support for equality while also obstructing it.
As progressives push for defunding the police and prison abolition, it should be no the same trick is being pulled. Among myriad explainers from what “Defund the Police” does and doesn’t mean to folks who argue the slogan damages the cause, they engage in the very same thing-adjacency that purports to be helpful but is, in effect, opposition.
A slogan like “Defund the Police” only matters if a person wants it to matter. A person who demands you rephrase it is not going to side with defunding the police, even if you explain every nuance of the position, and further, the entire line of argument remains thing-adjacent. The core issue is that we give police too much money for too little benefit, and in many cases, it cause active harm. A good faith argument would defend the money they police receive with some type of evidence. An argument over the accuracy of a catchphrase is a waste of time.
It is easy for anyone to slip into thing-adjancency, and it is important to avoid it in your own argument just as much as it is to avoid gettin trapped by it. If the issue is police brutality and reducing their ability to harm certain communitites, do not argue about kneeling, or flags or troops because the odds are, anyone making those arguments is fine with existing police brutality, they just don’t want to admit it.
What I’ve read:
This Must Be Your First - Zeynep Tufekci talks about coups and the ways you might miss them happening
The Art of the New Old South - Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom explores “The South”, how we tend to view and frame it vs. what is actually happening throughout the region.
The Prison Industry: How it Started, How it Works, How it Harms - I am not remotely finished with this, but this report delves into the depths of the carceral system, and how it works on a level that is invisible to most Americans.