By now everyone has learned more than they really cared to learn about Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner. The formerly male Olympic gold medalist is now female.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caitlyn_Jenner
Just as this was fading in the news cycle we are given another name to conjure: Rachel Dolezal. Rachel is a professor African American Studies in East Washington University (Spokane) and describes herself as an “African American woman”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal
Her parents claim she is white. They have provided photos of her revealing her to be a blue-eyed blonde.
Rachel resigned as the head of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP on June 15 (the 800th Anniversary of Magna Carta) and is reported to be in seclusion at this writing. In the next few days and perhaps weeks the media will be relentlessly picking apart Rachel’s life and spreading it out before anyone who cares to look. In all likelihood the focus will be on the individuals and their unique social circumstances. The “rationalities” that will be sought in these dissections will all be one way or the other “local”.
There are three pairs of rationalities which are illustrated in these two cases. Subjectivity and Objectivity, Individuals and Groups, Trust and Justice. These three dimensions and the focal points we choose to take along each of them determines for us how we will experience “identity” in many of life’s situations. The complexities of the first two dictate to some extent who we trust and how we experience or define justice in our social dealings.
In terms of objectivity, we have some fairly good evidence to support calling Bruce Jenner biologically male and Rachel Dolezal biologically white. Rachel’s case is a bit more difficult because the male/female distinction is usually determined by a few physical attributes and the XX or XY chromosome difference. Race, while being “observable” and so to some extent “objective” is on a number of sliding scales. Both sex and race designations make predictions (challenged or not) about attitudes, beliefs, and abilities.
The social constructivist school regards almost all differences as the result of ‘nurture’ and not ‘nature’, of the social roles we play and not our biology.
From this perspective, the (white?) woman known as Caitlyn Jenner came into social existence in June of 2015. I’m assuming Caitlyn is white. I may be wrong on this.
Rachel Dolezal’s arrival as a black woman took place about 20 years ago. In terms of “time in role” it is possible to argue Rachel is “more black” than Caitlyn is “female”.
But maybe “time in role” is not important. Maybe it’s how each of us “feels” that is important. Maybe, too, the facility with which we play the roles is the crucial factor. If the role does not require any specifically biological attribute (such as are given by genitalia or the need for SPF 50 in winter) then we could possibly argue that the way the role is played is more important than anything else.
If we take this seriously then we have a problem with the designation of certain “visible” (that is “objective”) criteria for affirmative action considerations. In some settings now applicants are asked to “self-identify” as it relates to their racial, sexual, gender, orientational, or other category. Could able-bodied people “self-identify” as disabled in order to get better parking spots?
Caitlyn did not in all probability emerge from Bruce because some affirmative action employment advantage was available. Did Rachel find in her early school career a strong interest in “African American studies” and come to the conclusion her employment opportunities would be substantially enhanced if her “birth race” were otherwise?
If the categories of race and sex and gender are used as visible proxies for assumed lacks of opportunities are hardships in early life then are these policies not making a huge problem? What about the “hidden injuries” of poverty, homelessness, and simple isolation from networks and resources that are taken for granted by the children of privilege?
In 1972, British author Richard Sennett wrote “The Hidden Injuries of Class”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sennett
Will President Obama’s daughters ever be asked to check theirs?
The children of the relatively disadvantaged: those who grow up in poor parts of town and attend inferior schools and do not have well-connected and stimulating friends, they are all reminded of one fact of life when they are growing up.
Poor people have little if any margin for error. The smaller your margin for error, the more you will rely on the predictability of the rules of the game to be able to plan for an honest and successful life. It’s not enough for the system to be fair or the playing field to be level. They need to be stable. Stability is even more important than fairness or levelness as long as these two are not too extreme.
The honest disadvantaged people in this world need to trust that the rules won’t change. Nobody really expects perfectly fair rules. At least not once they get to be seven or eight years old. What they do want is for the rules to be stable. Cheating is “breaking the rules” much more than it is “getting a lucky break in life” because of who our parents are or the country in which we were born.
When we decide as “individuals” we want to think of ourselves as male or female or oriental or occidental that’s one thing. When we take these “self-designations” into a biased context which will assign selective advantage to some choices more than to others then charges of “cheating” may arise.
Cheating brings up the idea of “local rationality”. Some CEOs define their corporate actions as “rational” from the point of view of “increasing shareholder value”. Moving the frame of reference a bit it may be possible to see that putting 50,000 people out of work by closing a profitable but marginal facility does not so much “increase shareholder value” as much as cost the wider community far more money because of the increased need for social service expenditures and these costs will be passed on to taxpayers. Increasing shareholder value may be another way of phrasing “redistributing wealth to the benefit of those who are already wealthy”.
Rachel may be just as subjectively sure of her identity as being that of a “black” person as Caitlyn is of her identity as a “female” person.
The larger social problems begin when the subjectivity of these assignments is applied to categories which have group or collective impact. What would happen to the Affirmative Action or Positive Discrimination policies of companies and government agencies if all applicants just decided to “self-identify” as African American Lesbians?
Are we going to wind up having to enunciate our own variants of the Nuremberg Laws? Are the now abandoned Apartheid Laws of South African going to appear to future generations as models of simplicity and clarity? What does it mean to be “black” in America? In 1961, the white southern male John Howard Griffin wrote “Black Like Me”. He used walnut oil to make his skin dark, he shaved his head, and he set off to live like a black man in the southern states of the US in 1959.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me
These questions lurk just below the surface of the coverage of the Jenner and Dolezal diversions. If we look more closely at the underlying social context of these events and pay less attention to the personal factors involved in each we can ask better questions.
What do we mean by “identity” and how do we determine what “objective” collective policies should be when all of the identity categories to which they apply are “subjective”?
Societies, like physical structures, cannot progress to their next level of development until the already existing levels are stable. It is this stability which gives people the degree of trust they need to make informed choices in the present because of what they anticipate will result in the future. When these factors are damaged or destroyed the first people to suffer are those who are honest and hard working and just coincidentally come from modest backgrounds.
The difficulties do not stop there. Collective trust and predictability are the psychological equivalent of glue. Societies are stable only to the degree people can predict one-another’s actions and trust one-another’s motives and intentions. This is one reason why now, as the global order is under so much pressure to change, we see the unmistakable rise of ethnic and tribal loyalties. These are loyalties which are assumed to be more stable and more enduring than contractual obligations defined by written documents and interpreted by members of one or another group of intelligentsia.
This brings us to the context of this comment. Followers of George Lakoff will call it “framing” while Jürgen Habermas enthusiasts will detect “systematically distorted communication”.
The focus can either be “individual” or “group”, the interpretative dimension can be either “subjective” or “objective” and the trajectory of the narrative can either be directed towards the goal of “people feeling good about themselves” or “maintaining a social order which fosters trust and stability”.
Is there an opportunity here to open up a conversation examining the potential conflict in a society which celebrates local short-term rationality so much its own collective long-term rationality is being called into question?
We can only hope the pundits and sages can find a little time, in between segments picking apart the childhood difficulties of the temporarily famous, to ask themselves if they are contributing positively to making the world a bit more stable and predictable for those who need it most.
Unjustified Margins 