Privilege and the rhetoric police

[Image from George Walling’s 1887 Recollections of a New York Chief of Police]

A lot of people assume that the only function of rhetoric is to persuade all readers to adopt your point of view. That’s wrong in a bunch of ways. A lot of times people have a composite audience, and might have different intentions for different audiences (such as a text with dog whistles, intended to calm some audience members down about whether the rhetor is a war-mongerer while having enough dog whistles that other members of the audience are cheered by the racist and war-mongering of the text—Hitler’s March 23, 1933 speech).

But, in addition, sometimes people have an intended audience, and have no intention of trying to persuade every person who comes in contact with the text.

Imagine that you and a friend are chatting quietly in a fairly empty Tacodeli, and you’re talking about how much you hate squirrels and how awful squirrels are. Although uninvited, I come in and sit at your table, and then say, “You shouldn’t be saying this or talking this way. I like squirrels, and you are doing nothing to persuade me that you’re right. In fact, you’re making me think that your kind of people are irrationally anti-squirrel.” You’d be thoroughly justified in saying, “We weren’t talking to you.” This is rhetoric policing.

Imagine that you and a friend are ranting about squirrels in a Tacodeli, and everyone there is forced to listen to your rant—it would be fair for someone to tell you to tone it down.

The internet makes that analogy weird, in that you can wander into all sorts of conversations in which you’re not part of the intended audience. Imagine a site oriented toward talking about college football. A person who thinks college football is boring might wander on and say, “This site is stupid, and I’m not interested in anything you’re saying, so you all suck. You need to make this site more interesting to people who hate college football.”

Perhaps it’s someone who loves Twilight, and the site has a lot of snark about Twilight, and so that officer of the rhetoric police says, “I have no interest in college football, and I love Twilight, and so your site is doing nothing to persuade me to like football. You should be more welcoming to Twilight fans who hate college football.” It would be perfectly fair for the regular members of the community to say, “I am so sorry that there is something so wrong with your internet connection that you have no possible way of engaging with the vast array of possible communities, and only have access to this site.” Or, perhaps, “I am so sorry that someone is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to read this site. Try dialing 911.” Or just, “Go away.”

I once wrote a talk I rather liked, oriented toward academics, about the ways that Milton’s Samson Agonistes exemplifies misogynistic discourse about women. I had a misogynist (let’s call him Bunny) not at the conference,but who ran across the talk somewhere, tell me that it wasn’t a good talk because it didn’t persuade him. He was rhetoric policing, and he wasn’t part of my audience.

But, he said, if feminists really want to change things, we will have to persuade men like him that there is some validity to our arguments. Therefore, I should have imagined someone like him when I wrote that talk. I pointed out to him that he didn’t try to think about how feminists might respond to anything he wrote, including what he was writing to me at that moment. He never understood that point. He was pretty clear that changing things about feminism would require that anything that any feminist wrote at any time and for any audience had to be oriented toward him, but he honestly was confuzzled at my notion that he would try to be aware of my rhetorical needs in something written to me.

All discourse had to accommodate him and his beliefs, but he didn’t have to accommodate others’ beliefs. His rhetoric policing was an absolutely perfect gem of privilege.

One of the powers of privilege is the power to interrupt conversations of which you are not a part and insist, not just that you be made a part, but that the whole conversation be oriented toward you, accommodating your beliefs, answering your concerns, being careful about your feelings.

Imagine a problem-solving discussion between two highly-ranked tech people about a very specialized issue. It would be seen as weird (or worse) if an intern in advertising interrupted their conversation and insisted they have the discussion in a way he could understand. But their boss, even if zir background wasn’t tech, could interrupt and rhetoric police. The boss has that privilege.

And lots of people have that privilege. Parents have the privilege to ask what their children were talking about (and most children will lie), K-12 teachers have the privilege of asking students what they were talking about (college teachers have the privilege of saying “STFU and listen to what I’m saying”).

If you are from a privileged background (as I am—very privileged), you have a tendency to assume that everyone must accommodate your beliefs, preconceptions, prior knowledge. Bunny unintentionally gave away the playbook for misogynists—what he was saying was that he knew people like him were in power, and that they would only go along with change if their concerns were pandered to.

There is a website that is, as it says everywhere on their site, “Black News, Opinions, Politics and Culture.” And a white guy wrote in and said that, while he was trying to be anti-racist, he found the site didn’t really accommodate his beliefs.  And so, Michael Harriot wrote back:

“The Root is a site for black people, by black people, about black shit. We are not in the business of transforming racists into social justice warriors or changing hearts and minds in hopes of reversing white supremacy. Words cannot do that. If they could, I would have slit my throat with the sharpest, shiniest razor I could find years ago. I would consider my life a failure.
We don’t mind if white people read our content. In fact, we like it when you do. But don’t think for a minute that we are selecting words while considering the sentiment of Caucasian acceptance.
I know that you are accustomed to existing in a universe where everything bends toward whiteness, but do not let that factoid delude you into believing that you are the sky. You are eavesdropping on a conversation among black people. We don’t care if you listen. In fact, we are happy that you are listening, but don’t be bamboozled into thinking we are talking to you.”

Rhetoric policing can be helpful, when it’s from someone we’re trying to reach, and they’re helping us be more effective. As soon as it’s about how you can persuade me, and you should do so because I count more than the audience you’re explicitly trying to reach, it’s all about privilege.