Derail Using Education

Great Debates
1

Dear Straight Dope Message Board,

Our friend SmartAleq recently linked to a very interesting website called “Derailing for Dummies: A Guide to Derailing Conversations”. The particular chapter she linked to is titled “Derail Using Education”. In short, the chapter describes a bad-faith debate tactic where a privileged person derails conversation by asking a marginalized person to educate the privileged person into submission.

I ask now that you consider the question of whether such a tactic - asking a marginalized person to educate you out of your position - is always undertaken in bad-faith. I suggest that there are situations, especially here in the Great Debates forum of the Straight Dope Message Board, which call for such an education. I also suspect that some will disagree with me, and I invite them to participate in this debate.

I hope we can all agree that, if the intention is to derail a debate, to win by forcing the opposition to walk away, using the “educate me” tactic is necessarily an act of bad-faith. However, in the context of formal debate, I think it really is the responsibility of the opposition to choose between agreeing to disagree and “educating” their opponent. When overt intention to derail the debate is absent, I think the tactic can be valid.

The author of Derailing for Dummies heavily implies that a privileged person who insists on being educated into humility places an undue burden on those marginalized persons. I tend to agree. I think, if any person refuses to educate the privileged, that should not be held against them or their position - but neither should it be held against the privileged person for not already being educated. I see such a refusal to commit time and energy as essentially an agreement to disagree. Whether I am participating in the debate or merely observing, the overall strength of each position falls back to my pre-existing bias.

The second tactic raised in Derailing for Dummies is for the privileged person, whose invitation to educate him or her has been declined, to suggest that the marginalized person really doesn’t care about the issue. I am less sympathetic to this second tactic, and in my own opinion it is more likely to indicate bad-faith. In a formal debate, the only argument you are entitled to hear is the main argument. If someone refuses to argue in support of any premise, that does not necessarily indicate bad-faith on their part, and it is a sign of bad-faith to assume that they don’t care about the issue for that reason alone.

I look forward to your thoughts on this matter,

~Max

2

Like many other interactions between the privileged and the marginalized, good or bad faith is often a matter of “I know it when I see it.” If someone in good faith and genuine ignorance of a situation asks for direction in how best to educate THEMSELF that’s one thing and a good indication of good faith is they take the offered link to an educational resource, check it over and then come back asking more nuanced questions that incorporate at least the basic facts from the resource. The bad faith actor won’t read anything, preferring to drop back to rejecting the source (“Really? A link to [whatever they don’t like], couldn’t you at least find a REPUTABLE site?”) or simply rejecting every angle of the premise in the counterargument.

After one has spent enough time around exemplars of whatever privileged group one is trying to deal with the general tactics of the group will be stultifyingly obvious. Privileged people, by virtue of their privilege, consider themselves to be unique creatures quite unlike every other creature and reject out of hand any idea that they might actually be bog standard assholes acting exactly as all bog standard assholes of their group always do. Tell a privileged person how they aren’t special and fabulous and unique and watch the fireworks.

Of course, one great shortcut is to notice just how fast the privileged person rejects the marginalized person’s lived experience and refuses to accept that someone who deals with their type of shit all day every day actually DOES know it when they see it. To a privileged person only other privileged people can be allowed the kind of benefit of the doubt they reserve to themselves. All others must be forced to endlessly justify their beliefs, their experiences and their knowledge. Ad nauseam.

3

Most of what you’ve written seems agreeable enough to me. I’m not sure I would agree that privileged people, by virtue of their privilege, think themselves unique; I suggest, for the most part, that those who enjoy privilege think quite the opposite, that everyone else enjoys their privileged perspective. A privileged person need not be aware that others lack their privileges. It is the hallmark of privilege, and the topic of this thread, for a privileged person to question whether (or deny that) others really live without their privileges. And if this is the case, how can they think they are unique because of it? I think a more proper term for someone who thinks they or their in-group is unique and special and better would be “elitist” rather than “privileged”.

That is not to say a privileged person cannot be an elitist, as is too often the case, an elitist might think themselves better because of their privileged experiences.

~Max

4

Ever hear the “NOT ALL MEN!!!” chorus any time a woman exasperatedly expresses her frustrations with dealing with the male cisgendered privileged class? They can’t stand the idea of being lumped in with anyone even vaguely marginalized and insist they be specifically differentiated from whatever group they don’t like or can see are not held in favor. I can’t speak to marginalized groups I don’t belong to but I bet there’s a similar reaction any time a POC gets pissed off about “wypipo” and all of a sudden all the Honorary Enword cards are being thrown like confetti. Just sayin’ it’s been my experience that privileged people tend to be super protective of their privileged status and need to have regular reaffirmations that everyone agrees they’re wonderful and perfect unlike Those People.

5

Is this something you consider typical of privileged people and atypical of others? It occurs to me that perhaps you and I are talking about totally different concepts.

I had in mind a situation like this:

Alice and Bob the privileged asshole...

Alice: Bob, would you carry this?
Bob: Carry it yourself.
Alice: I can’t, I’ve got my hands full.
Bob: Just put that in your pocket.
Alice: I don’t have pockets.
Bob: What kind of idiot buys jeans without pockets?
Alice: Won’t you just take this for a minute?
Bob: It’s your fault for buying shitty clothing, so you can make two trips.
Alice: You’re a privileged asshole, Bob.

Or this:

Dave asks Charlie to educate him about white privilege...

Charlie: I’m telling you, the problem is that there are too many white people up in there. If they put a few more people of colour out, we wouldn’t have these kinds of problems.
Dave: White people isn’t the problem, Charlie. Racists are the problem. Not all white people are racists, hell, I’m not a racist, am I?
Charlie: Come on Dave, we both know you’re not a racist. But even you are blind because of your privilege.
Dave: Blind to what?

Maybe you have something else in mind? This I would not consider an example of privilege:

Alice talks with Charlie...

Alice: He wouldn’t get off his lazy ass because it was my fault they don’t sell jeans with pockets! Typical male privilege!
Charlie: Not all men are ignorant assholes.
Alice: That just proves my point! (???)

~Max

6

Yes. I agree that that’s a phenomenon associated with privilege. I highly recommend the podcast series Seeing White, from Scene on Radio. It gets into that phenomenon, and is a resource for dipping one’s toes into educating oneself.

7

I’m quite sure the experience of feeling unwarrentedly lumped in with the Bad Guys rankles everyone, but it’s the height of privilege to constantly assert that YOU must be excluded based on your awesome singular amazingness. I’m sure black people get pretty pissed when they’re all painted as criminal thugs who murder each other, and Asians probably get super duper tired of being assumed to all be math whizzes and tall people with the assumption that OF COURSE they must play basketball, but it’s just the Karens and Chads of the world who loudly insist at every turn that an exception be carved out for them–because it’s only marginalized people who have to put up with being stereotyped by the privileged classes and it must NEVER be allowed to go the other way. Hence the “Calling someone Karen is RACIST and it’s just as bad as the ENWORD!!!” and other similar high dudgeons we see every day.

@eschrodinger, thanks, I’ll check that out!

8

Well, we can agree to disagree on what constitutes privilege vs elitism… or perhaps it would be more acurate to say I just don’t understand what you mean. Some other thread, perhaps.

I’ve never heard of asians being stereotyped as tall, either. IME it’s the opposite.

I think we have some common ground on the question at hand, in that the “educate me” tactic can be undertaken in good faith. Or bad faith. It can go either way.

~Max

9

Agreed. The tricky part is that those employing the tactic in bad faith will never admit they are acting in bad faith. Sadly, I think often they don’t realize that it is indeed bad faith.

10

Sounds like a guide to clever trolling (pretending to be good-faith conversation). Not my cup of tea.

11

“By their fruits shall ye know them” and the bad faith actors never, never, EVER actually read and internalize what you’ve laid out for them. Putting yourself into another person’s shoes, the trick of imagining a world in which what they say and believe is true (no matter how impossible it feels to you or how wrong wrong WRONG) in order to approach an issue from another viewpoint is an essential skill in actually learning about other people and what they believe. It requires empathy, and empathy is something the super privileged either don’t have in the first place (or they’d abandon their privilege out of revulsion at the unfairness of it all) or it gets stamped out thoroughly as early as possible and denied in favor of that bootstraps litany we’ve all heard so many times. Maintaining privilege and continuing to benefit from it requires a level of cognitive dissonance that’s very uncomfortable, which is probably why those who deny it so fervently while benefiting from it completely tend to be super touchy and angry people–it must be painful having to think all the time about keeping your privilege jealously guarded while simultaneously denying it exists even to yourself.

12

He meant that Asians are assumed to be math whizzes. And separately that tall people are assumed to be basketball players.

Unless you’re making fun of the missing comma. In which case you were too subtle for me. Whoosh!

13

People who reject the fairness of the situation will still be labeled as “privileged” no matter what they do (although maybe not by you if this is how you use the term). It seems like you’re referring to more akin to a “sense of entitlement”.

A defense against individual racism and sexism is that they don’t act or believe in a way that supports the viewpoint (although not true for institutional prejudice). Whereas I’m not sure how many people who think that the term “privileged” is useful would think that it is possible to “abandon your privilege”.

14

Ironically, that entire site is written in a tone which positively drips with sanctimony and entitlement.

15

Well, sure, but you can’t control what other people think. You CAN, on the other hand, recognize your privilege and do your best not to work it like you own it. You can also use your privilege to help others to get a leg up, using the amplifier of privilege to give the marginalized more of a voice. That’s what I mean by abandoning your privilege, it’s acknowledging it’s nothing you’ve done or especially deserve, it’s just something that comes along unwarranted if you fit into certain admired categories.

For example, I have old lady privilege and my chances of being pulled over as “looking suspicious” are basically nil. I could drive a truckload of cocaine from coast to coast and not catch even a side eye from a cop. I recognize this as privilege and don’t pat myself on the back for being such an outstanding driver that I get away with shit others couldn’t. It’s just privilege.

I have education privilege–I have a sesquipedalian vocabulary, a wide range of interests, some college, a good memory and the willingness to speak up so I’m taken more seriously than someone who might actually have more knowledge of a subject but is inarticulate, the wrong color or age, or whose vocabulary is limited. We see this a lot in the treatment of immigrants, where the fact that they might have been a highly skilled professional in their own country is ignored completely because their English is imperfect. I don’t fool myself that my demeanor is just as good as a degree, it’s just privilege talking.

Recognizing your privilege and putting it into proper perspective is just part of being a good human, to my mind. Insisting that the opinion of others that you’re special and deserving of better treatment due to an accident of birth is just as good as earned achievements is the kind of thing a weak person does, rather than actually DOING something noteworthy and deserving of accolades.

16

That’s your perspective. Others see it as genuine sarcasm. Depends on your privilege, really.

17

And sorry for the triple post, but for anyone wanting a really good explanation of privilege and why it matters, check this out:

18

That makes more sense. I wasn’t making fun of a missing comma, I just misconstrued the sentence.

~Max