Your opponent might smile at you

I have a blog post in the works that, if I ever finish it, will be critical of workplace DEI [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion] initiatives.

In part, I draw my critique from frustrations stemming from my encounters with adamantly pro-DEI coworkers. They tend to speak the loudest and in the most preachy terms. And because the meetings are now done remotely on everyone's favorite webinar tool, they often place messages in the "chat" feature. And the messages read like, say, comments on a particularly contentious blog thread. The lesson I'm inclined to take from those encounters is that they're promoting diversity (within a narrow range of accepted viewpoints), equity (which means what they want it to mean right now, regardless of what they meant yesterday or what they'll mean tomorrow), and inclusion (by excluding people who might see things differently). My takeaway is that their main strategies are bullying and shaming.

That's online culture. It's also "big meeting with a lot of people culture" and "workplace culture where some (like me) are timid about speaking up and others aren't." I should also point out that while I have maybe 100 or so coworkers at my specific unit, we're divided into subunits. That means that even though we know each other by site and name, we don't always work with each other, and it's common to go years without much interpersonal interaction.

But then recently I was involved in a community building event at my workplace. Well, not at my workplace. It was still virtual over everyone's favorite webinar tool. But it was with coworkers and loosely sponsored as a socializing event by my employer. There weren't a lot of us--maybe 10 or 15?--and it was a mostly unstructured game. By "unstructured," I mean that even though there were rules to the game and even though we were grouped in teams and even though there were winners and losers and we all tried to win--despite all that, no one actually cared too much about winning and we let some of the rules slide when people (like me) forgot them occasionally.

And some of the people who most aggravate me (in the DEI) context were there. And for the most part, DEI didn't enter the discussion. I do recall one comment made by somebody that, if you squint right, had more than a trace amount of DEI'ish snark. But otherwise, no. We had a good time. 

And I saw a different side of some of my coworkers, with some of whom I had had only minimal interaction. They were having fun and socializing. The contentious DEI issues weren't at the forefront. They were in the background, of course. But they didn't dominate, for that brief hour.

What does it mean to "support" something

In my last post, I talked about police reforms I might support. In the post before that, I chided anti-racist activists for not broadening their appeal. I used police reform as an example:

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.

The question is, what counts as "joining in"? Or put another way, what does it mean--what might it mean--to say I "support" something like police reform?

Talk is cheap. I can say I support X, but if I don't really do anything to advance X, saying I support it doesn't matter much. I can imagine circumstances where it might matter more than others. But simply uttering something doesn't usually do much by itself. It's not nothing, but it's not much. That's especially true when I do it pseudonymously.

So, when I say I "support" police reform--or anything else--I should consider what I could do and what I would do to support it.

What I probably won't do

• March in a protest or demonstration.
• Phone banking.
• Canvass voters at their homes. 
• Pass leaflets to induce people to do some sort of action.
  
• Place a slogan-sign in my window (or on my lawn, if I had one). 
• Sign a statement when that statement has at least one point I disagree with. In other words, any open statement I have ever seen.
  

What I might do

• Write a blog post
• Write a letter to my congressperson, alderman, mayor, senator, etc.
• Donate a modest sum to a cause I support
• Sign a petition or statement, or place a sign in my window, expressing my support for  substantive cause. An example would be to show my support for or opposition to a bill or ordinance that the legislature.
  

Disclosures

Disclosure: I'm much more likely not to do the things I say I "probably won't do" than I am to do the things I say I "might do." You can chalk that off to the aphorism that it's easier to do nothing than to do something. 

Another disclosure: I've had plenty of opportunity to do the things I've said I "might do" and I've almost never done them. For example, last August (or so), my alderman announced that he would support some arrangement where the federal government would send soldiers into Big City to keep order after the then latest round of riots. I thought about writing a letter explaining to him why I thought it was a bad idea to do that (hint: it's not because I think riots are good). But I didn't. 

Yet another disclosure: I fully realize that writing a blog post does almost nothing. It is basically the equivalent of talk, which I said above is "cheap." In my case it's doubly cheap because I blog under a pseudonym and evade (I hope) professional consequences for speaking my  mind. (At the same time, I always aspire to keep aware that I may be doxxed at any point, so I try--despite repeated failures--to ensure that what I say is civil and well-reasoned.) Even so, A series of blog posts, especially those in conversation with others, can at least plant the seeds of discussion. Weak tea, yes. But tea, nonetheless.

A final disclosure: I have done many of the things (e.g., read this post at Ordinary-Times) under the section of things "I probably won't do." I've gotten a taste for what those entail. I may explain in a later post, but for now I'll say those tactics tend to be blunt instruments, almost never necessary, and usually ineffective in the short term.

Send off

If talk is cheap, then speculating on what I might do isn't much dearer. I suppose the key is to act. I realize that. I certainly should have acted when my alderman said what he said, even if it had been only a lonely letter.

Police reform: what I'd support and what I probably won't

I gestured in my last post to the topic of police reform. Here, I'll list what types of reform I would support and what types I (probably) won't support.

What I'd support

• Mandatory body cameras for police.
• Automatic federal (and state, and local) review of all killings by police.
• Curtailing, or possibly eliminating, qualified immunity for police officers.
• Forbidding police unions to bargain collectively with their employers and otherwise deinstitutinalizing police unions.
• Re-calibrating funding so that police departments have much less incentive to invest in quasi-militarized units and quasi-military equipment.
• Implementing "good enough" discipline against bad police officers when criminal prosecution is unlikely to be successful, even in cases where, in an ideal world, the officer would be prosecuted.
  

What I probably won't support

• Less aggressive enforcement of traffic safety.
  
• Radical de-funding of the police.
• Abolishing the police.

Some explanations

I have reasons for what I support, and I won't review them here. I would like to say this, though. I realize every single thing I support comes at a cost or with tradeoffs. Body cameras, for example, are probably a net good. But they will inevitably justify some egregious police behavior, perhaps even behavior that would otherwise be disciplined.

 

The items I don't support are, for the most part, vaguer than the ones I do.

 

The exception is the point about traffic safety enforcement. Some proposals have been made to end, curtail, or revise the way routine traffic safety stops are done. (An example here (accessed May 12, 2021, Washington Post paywall applies): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/16/remove-police-traffic-stops/.) I'm open to some ideas for different approaches, and I certainly recognize that "routine traffic safety stops" can and will be an invitation to harass minorities. But....traffic safety is important. At least in the city where I live, drivers are a danger to pedestrians, and in my opinion, every run stop sign or near-miss against a pedestrian is a broken window that invites more irresponsible driving. I might be open to changing my mind on this issue, but it's a real problem.

 

Finally, this list isn't comprehensive or final, and I'm not an expert.

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: 

Unclear on the concept: Washington Post and anecdotes about the AstraZeneca Vaccine

You may have heard that some European countries have postponed the use of what is called the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19 amid fears that it might lead to blood clots. (For what it's worth, that vaccine hasn't yet been approved for use in the U.S.)

This Washington Post article [paywall, probably] argues that such fears are unfounded. Public health officials state that there is no proven link between taking that vaccine and the onset of blood clots. They also state that what evidence there is seems to back them up.

The only evidence for the supposed blood clot/AstraZeneca link is "anecdotes." Some people who have taken the vaccine have had blood clots. And the public health officials claim that the incidence of clotting is actually somewhat lower among AstraZeneca takers than what we might expect among the general population.

Fine. I buy the argument and accept it. (And for what it's worth, I'm terrified of blood clots. They can kill you. And the main way to treat and manage them is to take blood thinners, which have a narrow therapeutic range and come with their own complications, such as nosebleeds that are difficult to stop. As a epistaxiphobe, that terrifies me, too. I have also heard, though I'm not sure how well-established this point is, that Covid-19 itself can lead to blood clots.)

Unfortunately, the same article relies includes these two paragraphs, one after the other and without a hint of self-aware irony:

Evans [Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine], who is 77, said he has received two doses of the vaccine and did not experience any serious adverse effects.

The current concerns surrounding the vaccine are an example of “anecdotes being turned into data, which is not what epidemiologists deal with,” he said.

Anecdotes are not what epidemiologists deal with....unless they're relating their own personal experience with the vaccine.

I don't really mean any of this as a criticism of Mr. Evans. The reporter probably asked him, "have you taken the vaccine and experienced any adverse effects." He probably honestly said, "no," and then went on to explain that anecdotes aren't data.

I also don't mean this article's use of anecdotes to combat other anecdotes disprove the article's argument.

I do suggest two things, though. The first is that this is sloppy reporting, or sloppy editing. The Washington Post article seems clueless about the irony here. It uses an anecdote to refute other anecdotes, all the while insisting that we shouldn't rely on anecdotes.

Second, it's quite possible that anecdotes are indeed "data." Almost by definition, anecdotes are not systematic data. They're not collected and related in a controlled process, with a control group. But they are one piece of real, lived experience. We shouldn't build public health policy on anecdotes, at least not as a general rule. But they might clue us in to something. Early studies and comparisons with general populations might simply be wrong. And that one nugget of information we dismiss as "anecdote" today might prove tomorrow to have signaled something.

The capitol riot and the spirit of 1776

The riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 was emblematic of the spirit of 1776 and that's a bad thing.

As I've tried to argue elsewhere, the American Revolution, so called, was essentially an expression of mob violence. You don't like the Stamp Act? Tar and feather the stamp collectors. You don't like people who stand by their oath to support the King (the same oath you took just a few short years ago)? Burn their property and chase them out to Canada. You don't like Catholics? Rail against the Quebec Act as the abolition of "the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies." You don't want to respect the boundaries of American Indian nations, or "merciless Indian savages" as the Declaration called them? Defy the compromise of 1763 and settle on their lands anyway.

The supporters of the Revolution voiced some very good ideals, and sometimes acted on them. The changeover to popular democracy it helped usher in was probably, on balance, a good thing. Most important, I believe and have believed for a long time that the Revolution initiated the process which eventually led to the abolition of slavery in North America. 

That said, let us not forget the essence of the Revolution. Its proponents used violence to overthrow a government that they called tyrannical but that was only a dim and incomplete instance of "tyranny." The Revolutionists' idols were some cant about taxation and representation or freedom or some such. The idols of the capitol rioters were basically the same, perhaps with a touch of hero worship of the former president. Ideals were the currency of the violence, and the real goal of struggle was power, or perhaps some visceral embrace of violence for the sake of violence.

The rationalist community & me

You may have heard of the "rationalist community." To the (very imperfect) extent I understand what it is, it's a group of people who profess to observe reasoned inquiry. That inquiry requires being aware of one's own biases, owning up to and being honest about the "epistemic status" (i.e., degree of certainty) of what they know, and using statistical probabilities in an approach known as "Bayesian analysis" to resolve questions. My apologies to any member of that community who might be reading, for I'm sure I've misrepresented them.

My experiences with the community are in the e-world.