Thursday, August 12, 2021

Content of their character: nobody gets an A

[UPDATE, August 13, 2021: I made minor stylistic changes and some content changes.]

You are probably familiar with Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech and in particular this portion: 

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

This is one of those enduring, iconic statements. It's also controversial, especially when it's used by people to criticize what today passes for anti-racism. The ways people use that statement and react to people who use it merit criticism. And the statement itself needs to be looked at more critically, too. In the process, nobody gets an A, but some at least get passing marks.

Critics of DEI: D

Some critics of DEI trot out the "content of their character" phrase in an effort to deligitimate almost any race-conscious claim that an activist might make.

They are usually wrong to do so. It contributes nothing to say, "I, for one, believe that people should be judged on the content of their character."

It assumes too much. It assumes that any one who promotes any race-conscious approach to resolving racism is necessarily acting in bad faith. It assumes that the critic not only is right, but has so convincingly demolished counterarguments that there's nothing to discuss. It begs the question in the original sense of the phrase "beg the question": it assumes as a given that which is to be proved.

I accept (and insist!) that we need to look at race-conscious approaches to resolving racism. I don't reject race-conscious approaches out of hand. But race-conscious approache have important drawbacks, tradeoffs. They bring unexpected and unwanted consequences. We should adopt them (if we do) in full acknowledgment of those negative features. We should mitigate the bad when we can mitigate it and acknowledge the bad when we can't.

But trudging up the "content of their character" quotation is argument by sloganeering. DEI critics don't like it when activists use slogans to silence them. DEI critics shouldn't reciprocate.

They also might want to consider a couple other things.

First, show your work

How do you propose to judge the content of another person's character? That question, in my opinion, represents a problem with the "content of their character" idea, and I'll discuss that in my last section below. But if you, my friend, rely on that quotation, then consider what you're doing to live by it.

Let's take a look at race-based affirmative action. If you oppose it, a fair question to you is, how can you judge someone's character if you don't have the chance to meet them or work with them?

That's not a slam dunk argument for affirmative action. I can think of good-faith reasons why someone might still oppose it. But the possibility that affirmative action will allow white and black people to interact with and learn from each other is one point in its favor.

And even if we're not talking about affirmative action, you may wish to ask yourself how broad your world is and whether you could or should broaden it? Bringing up the "content of their character" quotation makes those questions valid. You cannot refuse to answer them and still be counted as sincere.

To be clear, your answer may very well be that you are doing enough. Or you may marshal an argument to prove you have no such obligation. Or maybe you have competing obligations that are more important. But your insistence on bringing up the "content of their character" quotation makes the question a valid one. You cannot then refuse to answer. Or you can, but you'll have to face the consequences.

Since I'm getting personal, I'll admit I do almost nothing other than write cranky blog posts which on balance probably agree with you. But then, I'm not peppering my conversations with "I believe people should be judged by the content of their character."

Second, the civil rights movement wasn't only the March on Washington

You may also want to give some thought to the broader context of the "content of their character" quotation. That quotation was only one part of one speech. The speech was only one part of the 1963 March on Washington event. The March on Washington was only one episode in the post-World War II civil rights movement. That movement was multi-faceted.

(Before I go further, let me confess that while I'm trained in U.S. history, I'm not an expert in the civil rights movement.)

MLK himself was criticized by other members of that movement.

One faction was the "black power" "radicals," who often weren't so "radical" as people thought. One of their more sensible arguments was that focusing on non-violence doesn't solve the immediate problem of defending yourself when someone attacks you.

It wasn't only the radicals who criticized MLK, either. Sometimes it was more "moderate" people who resented his organizing style. Local activists might work very hard to address a local issue, and then MLK comes to town for a few days, gets all the press, and leaves the locals perhaps a little better off, but having to live among the same people as before and getting very little credit. Who has heard of Ella Baker?

Also, MLK had to manage public image. Sometimes he had decide which cause was more photogenic and had to downplay the contributions of embarrassing allies. Bayard Rustin, a black, gay, former communist who refused to serve during World War II--he was allowed to help out, but he had to do so one step removed from the spotlight. And in Montgomery, before Rosa Parks, there was another person who refused to go to the back of the bus. The problem, she was an unwed mother-to-be and too embarrassing to use as the public face of their challenge against segregation.

Or look at MLK's framing of and approach to the problems of poverty and housing segregation in northern cities. One tactic was to parade through a particularly notorious white neighborhood, after which point I'm sure the fish scales fell from the eyes each and every resident and racism was thereby abolished forever.

Not that I can blame MLK for his decisions. At least he tried. A Monday-morning quarterback like me who has never played football can second-guess forever. The truth is that MLK faced hard choices in a certain context and had to make difficult decisions.

I mean none of that as a brief against MLK. I'm pointing out that using "content of their character" seems to elide all the complexity of the movement. Just because MLK said something in 1963 doesn't mean that it's a final refutation of what someone else says in 2021.

Modern-day anti-racists: C

Anti-racist activists have reason to be annoyed when a critic resorts to the "content of their character" quotation. The main function--and probably intent--of bringing it up is to end the discussion.

But you might wish to examine your annoyance more closely than you seem to. Do you reject the notion that we should judge people by the content of their character? If so, do you reject it completely? Or do you see it as a theoretically worthy goal, but one that must temporarily give way to a more race-conscious approach?

I can think of a range of very thoughtful, considerate answers to those questions, from a reaffirmation of the "content of their character" standard to a reasoned view that it doesn't or shouldn't apply. (As you'll see below, I have my own reservations about that standard.)

But regardless of you answer, it may help the cause to acknowledge that some people truly believe in judging people by the "content of their character" and that those people can so believe in good faith.

Keep in mind that people of a certain age (me, for example, born in the early 1970s) might have had that speech and that portion of the speech inculcated into their minds throughout their public schooling career. It's only a mild exaggeration to say that that speech was presented as something akin to scripture, or if not scripture, as something akin to the Declaration of Independence. It was something to be revered. MLK, too, was something to be revered as an almost superhuman person. The March on Washington was to be revered as "the event that ended racism," even though, as my teachers and talking heads on tv frequently reminded us, "a lot more needs to be done."

For all its problems, the "content of their character" trope had legs. It seemed at one time to serve the civil rights movement quite well. Does the movement now reject it when the standard it sets is no longer convenient? Does the movement reject it now that its called to live by it? Anti-racists' failure to openly acknowledge and engage those questions closes off potentially fruitful discussions.

I admit that's an unfair way of putting it. The complications in the civil rights movement I noted above militate against my simple statement that "it worked for them then, but now it's inconvenient." There has been a long tradition of self-empowerment in American black history that extends at least as far back as Booker T. Washington. That tradition probably never completely signed on to the "content of their character" ideal of racial harmony. Or if it did, it did so with reservations when daily reality intervened.

Even so, when you take note of a critic's "content of their character" trope and writes it off as "weaponizing Dr. King," you're losing a chance to address a seeming inconsistency in your advocacy. 

Maybe that's unfair. Maybe you shouldn't have to revisit that issue on every occasion and go back to square one. Your activism is predicated on the unfairness--even urgency--of the present situation. If the situation is so unfair and so urgent, you may wish to avoid alienating potential friends.

I get it. I'm not of your number. I don't get to tell you how to do your activism, even though I try. You have to balance competing interests. Some people so unreachable, you have to write them off. Or maybe they are reachable, but making that effort means less effort and fewer resources devoted to other, more necessary things. But holding too fast to the "weaponizing Dr. King" counter-trope has serious disadvantages. Activists would be wise to consider them.

Martin Luther King Jr.: B

I actually have reservations about the content of the "content of their character" trope. MLK could turn a phrase. He knew how to give a good speech. And much of the rest of his speech offers a good glimpse into the promise of one aspect of the civil rights movement. It disclaimed violence. It urged the country to fulfill its post-Reconstruction promises. It celebrated a perhaps unattainable but still-to-be-aspired-to era of equality. It did all that in a time when it was still (mostly) legal for states to impose racial segregation and systematically violate voting rights.

But the "content of the character" bothers me. What especially bothers me is the unmindful way we seem to have accepted that "content of character" trope.

"Character" is too slippery a concept. It can have different meanings. I know one historian who argues that in the late 1700s English-speaking world, it meant something like "reputation, informed by one's past actions" (not his exact words, my paraphrase). Maybe that meaning no longer really applies, though I suspect we judge others' character by their actions and we know their actions by their reputation.

Today, character seems to mean how much or how little a person displays one or a combination of the following traits: honesty; consistency; openness to learning from mistakes; conscientiousness; kindness; and willingness to sacrifice for the greater good. You could probably add other traits, too.

Yet another way to conceive of character enters more deeply into the internal lives of others. It's a question of whether someone is basically, intrinsically, "good." It's almost something you either have or you don't, almost to a degree that the person has little or no control over their "character."

With the partial exception of the now archaic meaning of "reputation, informed by one's past actions," all those conceptions of "character" are mostly subjective. There is almost always some balancing of interests. There are sometimes contexts that make, say, dishonesty seem understandable or even like the right thing to do. Character is messy.

We should inquire how personal we want to get. If we judge too much by character and not, say, by the strength of a person's position or the rightness of one's deeds, we enter the borders of ad hominem territory. A person's peccadilloes in one arena are used to invalidate that person's actions in another arena. As I've argued (here and here), we should be very careful about when or whether we choose to use ad hominems. (Note that above, I use an ad hominem argument against critics of DEI when I ask how they themselves honor the "content of their character" standard. I'll leave it to you, dear reader, to decide if I was right to do so.)

While I suppose it's better to judge people by their character than by their race, we enter dangerous territory when we presume to judge anybody's character. I doubt I could stand up to such scrutiny. I doubt if most others could, either.

Of course, we can and should judge people's actions. We can and should try to discern people's intent or inner motivations. We have to make practical assessments in order to relate to others, protect ourselves, and decide who to vote for. Whatever we call "character" certainly enters into those assessments. But again, it's very, very complicated.

"Content of their character" makes for a good speech. It also represents an aspiration worthy of consideration. But I believe we should decide what we're signing on to when we profess it. If we do profess it, we should take responsibility for the implications.

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