Unsolicited advice for activists: What you say and what others hear

Anti-racists face a communication challenge. It's the same challenge everyone faces when trying to persuade people of their cause. Here it is:

What you say can be heard differently by those to whom you say it. The "different hearing" is sometimes willful and deliberate and sometimes innocent and hapless. Very often (usually, in my opinion), the mishearing is some complicated combination of the two, along with deeper currents in thought processes about which one is usually only partly aware.

Example: Travon Free's speech at the Oscars (& me)

Take, for example, this YouTube clip [at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3-8_nIH0HU>, accessed May 1, 2021]. It represents the speeches by Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe after they won an Oscar for best short film: 

 

What was said

I want to focus on what Travon Free said, and in particular the portion that begins at about the 38 second mark. Here's my rough transcription:

Today, the police will kill three people. And tomorrow, the police will kill three people. And the day after that, the police will kill three people. Because on average the police in America every day kill three people, which amounts to about 1,000 people a year.

And those people happen to be disproportionately black people. And James Baldwin once said, "the most despicable thing a person can be is indifferent to other people's pain." And so I just ask that you please not be indifferent. Please, don't be indifferent to our pain.

Here is what I take to be Free's argument:

• In the U.S., the police kill too many people.
• Too many of those killings are unjustified.
• Black persons are killed disproportionate to their numbers of the U.S. population.
• That disproportion demonstrates a larger problem in the way U.S. society treats black people.
• That disproportion is also the a cause and a reflection of the suffering that black people in the U.S. experience.
• Those of us who aren't black need to be aware of that, and take steps to lessen the occurrence of police killings against persons of color.
  

What I heard

When I listened to Free's speech, I was struck by how heartfelt it was. I was strongly impressed, on an emotional level, that there is indeed quite a lot of pain. I "heard" that, and I also "heard" something like the bullet points I listed above.

But I also "heard" something else, something Free almost definitely didn't intend. When Free said, "And those people happen to be disproportionately black people.," I heard him to say that if only that disproportion didn't apply, there would be no problem. If, for example, the police killed more white people so as to make the numbers more proportional, that would solve the problem.

Why what I heard was wrong

Now, I don't for a minute believe that he believes killing more white people would solve the problem. I believe that he believes killing more white people would solve nothing and be deeply wrong. I also suspect that even if there be no racial disproportion, there are still too many killings by police.

In fact, I could probably add the following to Free's speech, and he would probably sign on to it:

There are two problems here.

The first is that black people are too often targeted and they're killed disproportionately to their numbers. Along with the inherent injustice in this disproportion, there is the added pain that comes from having to fear for one's life more often and more deeply simply because of one is black and feels targeted. There is also the added pain of believing, and having plenty of evidence to believe, that U.S. society devalues their lives. White people, who don't as a rule have to fear for their lives simply because of being white, should keep that in mind and work to resolve that problem.

The second problem is that police kill too many people in general and too many of those killings are unjustified. Even if the racial and ethnic disproportion were non-existent and if the police killed whites, blacks, and members of other races in proportion to their overall numbers in the population--even then, the police still kill too many people and too many of those killings are unjustified.

I choose in my statements to focus on the first problem. It is the most pressing and demands the most immediate attention.But let's not forget the second problem is real, too, and needs to be addressed.

It would be ludicrous to suggest he add that to his speech. Doing so would double its length. His speech wasn't an academic discourse on the problems of policing and racism. It was an impassioned plea,  which he had very limited time to make. It's also the case that just because a person focuses on one problem doesn't mean that person denies the existence of other problems. People choose their focus and shouldn't have to add a disclaimer to every statement they utter.

Ideal vs. real

I know all that. And yet I still "heard" what I "heard." And what I remember is the claim that simply killing more white people would resolve the problem.

Again, Free emphatically did NOT make that claim, and I have absolutely no evidence that he'd agree with that claim if it were put to him.

I wrote above that people "shouldn't have to add a disclaimer to every statement they utter." Well...at least in an ideal world, they shouldn't have to. People like me, who are fortunate enough to identify where our "hearing" is mistaken, shouldn't let the dissonance keep us from doing the right thing.

But in the world as it actually exists--the less than ideal world where the police kill too many people and too many of those killed are persons of color--people like me (and me, I must admit) forbear doing much of anything even though we know we ought. Perhaps if activists widened their argument, if they built a bigger tent, maybe more of us would join in, at least on some issues and in some circumstances.