Language Games

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

I’ve been reading Ludwig Wittgenstein, a German philosopher fascinated by a seemingly simple question: What do words mean?

“One thinks that learning language consists in giving a name to objects,” Wittgenstein writes. “To repeat – naming is something like attaching a name tag to a thing.”

Yet, as he points out, language is far more complex than that.

“Our language can be regarded as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old an new houses, of houses with extensions from various periods, and all this surrounded by a multitude of new suburbs with straight and regular streets and uniform houses.”

A word’s meaning is dependent on context – when it’s used, how it’s said. Is it followed by a question mark or an exclamation mark. Does everybody have the same understanding of the word being used?

Through countless language-games (Sprachspiel), Wittgenstein argues that language is always in exact, and that understanding the inexactness is critical to communication.

“Only let’s understand what ‘inexact’ means!” he exclaims, “For it does not mean ‘unusable!'”

Indeed, an inexactness of language does not mean we are unable to communicate. It just means that we are likely to be misunderstood.

And of course language is inexact, he argues. “Thinking is surrounded by a nimbus.”

“What is essential now is to see that the same thing may be in our minds when we hear the word and yet the application still be different. Has it the same meaning both times? I think we would deny that.”

Wittgenstein even demurs from defining the word “game,” though it’s used heavily throughout his work.

“One can say that the concept of a game is a concept with blurred edges. – ‘But is a blurred concept a concept at all?’ – Is a photograph that is not sharp a picture of a person at all? It is always an advantage to replace a picture that is not share by one that is? Isn’t one that isn’t sharp often just what we need?”

All this is important because – we need language to communicate. With out it, we are alone.

Searching for Inspiration on Dark Days

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

I’ve been thinking a lot about actionable steps, recently. Amid the murders in Charleston. Following the deaths of Walter Scott, Kalief Browder, Michael Brown, and far, far too many others.

I’ve read articles on how to be an ally, read commentary and analysis on the perpetual racism pervading our society. I’ve added my voice to those calling for change. I’ve joined mailing lists calling for action, attended protests and demonstrations. I’ve given financially where I can.

And none of it feels like enough. Nothing feels like it’s changing.

I woke this morning with the words of Oscar Wilde ringing in my head:

We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
Or give our anguish scope:
Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.

I rather wanted to spend the day hiding in my closet sobbing silently at all the ills in the world, but that didn’t seem like it would do anybody much of any good.

Besides, who am I to take the bench when people of color are dying? Not everyone has the privileged to just look away.

As I am wont to do at such times of despair, I re-read Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus.

They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

I generally suspect that I’m the only one who finds the words of Camus a comfort. Who, after all, likes to imagine that “the workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd” than the fate of Sisyphus. The man who defied the gods and was pushed to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain.

Sisyphus, “powerless and rebellious.” (impuissant et révolté)

What an interesting juxtaposition of words!

Sisyphus knew he was powerless and yet he rebelled. The Gods couldn’t punish him, for still, he rebelled.

In Power and Powerlessness, John Gaventa examined the role of social power in maintaining the oppression of the poor in the Appalachian Valley.

Gaventa identified what he calls the three dimensions of power.

In the first dimension, A has power over B insofar as A is has more resources or can use more force to coerce B. The first dimension is a fair fight, where one side is stronger than the other.

In the second dimension, A constructs barriers to diminish B’s participation. Voter ID laws, monolingual meetings. In the second dimension, A rigs the game.

The third dimension is the most insidious. Not only does A control and shape the agenda, but A’s power is so absolute that A influences the way B sees the conflict. In the third dimension, B is not even sure she’s oppressed. It’s a woman who just naturally does all the house work.

I sometimes think that the pervasiveness of racism in America stems from Whites’ inability to reach this total level of dominance.

We brought people over as chattel and expected them to obey. We beat them and tortured them and did unspeakable things to break them, but they continued to resist.

We fancied ourselves as gods, and yet among those who were most powerless we found ourselves impotent. Unable to exert total power. Still they rebelled.

There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn.

Sisyphus is stronger than his rock.

But I imagine that it’s of little comfort to one who looks back on generations of oppression, who looks around to see their brothers and sisters dying. It’s of little comfort that some dead, French philosopher thinks you’ve won.

Yet there is something in this, I think –

For the battle goes on.

The battle goes on, and slowly bending the arc of the moral universe can feel very much like futile labor, it can feel like an effort in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing.

But still the work goes on.

For we know that all is not, has not been, exhausted, and we know that fate is a human matter, which must be settled among men.

And there is so much work for us to do.

With Thoughts of Charleston

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

I often wonder what moments will be remembered in history. Which moments, in retrospect, will seem to mark a turning point, a watershed change.

Will history remember a church founded by Reverend Morris Brown? A church burnt to the ground in 1822 for its involvement with a planned slave revolt. A church rebuilt, only to be forced underground for 30 years after Charleston outlawed all black churches in 1834.

Will history remember the day in 2015 when nine black men and women were murdered at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church?

To be surprised is to be naive.

All this has happened before, and we’ve done far too little to keep it from happening again.

“I have to do it,” the gunman was quoted as saying. “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”

Then he murdered people at church.

It may be the act of one deranged man, but its the rhetoric of too much of our nation. For too long we have allowed such hateful speech to flourish, giving a pass to hateful ideas – too afraid or unsure of how to intervene.

Where did the gunman learn to hate like that?

He learned it from us. From white America. From people who nurtured his hate or who simply left it there, unconfronted.

They say the gunman sat with parishioners for an hour before opening fire. He sat with them as they discussed biblical verse and prayed.

But in that garden of Gethsemane, it was Rev. Clementa Pinckney’s and Cynthia Hurd’s cup that would not pass. It was Myra Thompson, Sharonda Singleton and Tywanza Sanders who had to die to remind us that there is still hate and evil in this world.

That there is still hate and evil in our communities.

You wouldn’t think we’d need reminding, but clearly we do – since black churches are burned and black bodies are scattered in our streets. And yet we, white America, continue to sit by and sigh.

And nothing changes.

I want to make sense of this senseless horror. I want an action I can check to solve this problem once and for all.

But there are no easy answers, and it will take hard, long work for solutions.

All I know is that we can do better, and amidst this heartache, this pain, and sorrow we must do better.

How many more have to die?

Happy Bunker Hill Day

Posted on June 17, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

Today, June 17, is Bunker Hill Day, a little known holiday celebrated, I believe, only in parts of Massachusetts’ Suffolk and Middlesex Counties.

While the Boston Globe reports that it used to be a day “on which city government offices would close,” the day is still celebrated within my city of Somerville, MA. Perhaps that’s just some of the civic-mindedness that got us recognized as an All America City.

And just what is Bunker Hill Day?

Why, it commemorates, of course, the June 17, 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill, which took place largely on Breed’s Hill in Charleston.

It’s not all madness, though. In fact, Bunker Hill was intended site of the battle.

But let’s back up: The battle took place during the siege of Boston – April 19, 1775 to March 17, 1776 – when American militiamen effectively contained British troops within Boston.

After taking Boston, the British sought to fortify their position by seizing the nearby Charlestown peninsula.

Before the British could act on this plan, though, Colonels Putnam and Prescott set out with orders to establish American defenses on Charlestown’s Bunker Hill. However, “for reasons that are unclear, they constructed a redoubt on nearby Breed’s Hill.”

The British, “astonished to see the rebel fortifications upon the hill” led two costly and unsuccessful charges against the Americans.

After receiving reinforcements, the British led a third and ultimately successful attack against the fortification, taking 1054 casualties – nearly 40 percent of the British ranks – in the process.

At the time, Somerville was part of Charlestown – “Charlestown beyond the neck.” Though Somerville was established as its own town in 1842, we still proudly remember the game-changing battle.

“While for the Army of New England the battle was technically a tactical defeat, it was also a symbolic victory of strategic proportions. A small colonial force of men from all races, classes, and occupations made a defiant stand against some of the best trained and equipped soldiers in the world.”

Race, Gender, and Social Constructs

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

This story about Rachel Dolezal – the NAACP leader who represented herself as black even though she is white – has been blowing my mind since I first heard about it.

Seriously, I have so many questions.

But with Dolezal announcing her resignation today, it seems unlikely that I’m going to get any of the answers I’m looking for.

But the whole affair has raised some interesting questions.

Isn’t race a social construct? How is being ‘transracial’ different from being transgender? Why should we celebrate Caitlyn Jenner but shun Rachel Dolezal?

Those are good questions, and they are important questions.

In my circles, these questions have mostly come from well-intentioned liberals – myself included – trying to articulate what our instinct tells us so plainly: ‘transracial’ – if that even is a thing – is not the same as transgender.

There may be some parallels, sure. For example, I can imagine Dolezal claiming that she is a “black woman on the inside,” or that she was born into the wrong body. I’ll never know Dolezal’s true motivations, but I have personally heard at least one white person make such a claim.

My instinct is to scoff and to find such a statement deeply offensive. I mean, what kind of white privilege do you need to feel comfortable declaring such a thing?

But perhaps that’s how transphobic people react to the struggle of the transgender. I couldn’t say, but it seems tenuous to simply trust my instinct with such a response.

There have been some great take downs of so-called “transracialness”: in pretending to be black, Dolezal indulged “in blackness as a commodity.”

Transgendered people face a real struggle – as Jenner told Vanity Fair, “I’m not doing this to be interesting. I’m doing this to live,” while “Dolezal is not trying to survive. She’s merely indulging in the fantasy of being ‘other.'”

Or as another article puts it: “Rachel didn’t want to be Black because she *felt* Black, because Black is not a feeling. Black is an existence that was created for us by racists as a tool to justify ill-treatment and codify oppression into law.”

These are helpful arguments, but they still don’t quite satisfy me.

After all, it was just last week that I was hearing that long-time feminist leaders felt uncomfortable with Jenner’s decision to come out as femme. After all, what does it mean to “feel” like a woman? Certainly it is more than being a pin-up girl.

While it is easy to dismiss such concerns as transphobic, I think it’s more productive to engage assuming good intentions.

Elinor Burkett writes that “Women like me are not lost in false paradoxes; we were smashing binary views of male and female well before most Americans had ever heard the word ‘transgender’ or used the word ‘binary’ as an adjective.”

Whether appropriate or not, I can see why she might be disappointed to see a person who has benefited much of her life from male privilege choosing to showcase her womanhood in such a gender-stereotypical way.

So all of this has gotten us nowhere.

Power and privilege are make it more inappropriate for a white woman to claim blackness, but its not solely an issue of power and privilege.

After all, there is a power dynamic at play when it comes to trans women – but I believe it is our moral responsibility to welcome trans women as sisters and invite them to (re)define womanhood with us – whatever that means to them.

The situation with Dolezal is different. I wouldn’t presume to tell the black community what they should or should not do, but neither would I fault them for refusing to embrace Dolezal and for finding her blackface routine offensive. It is offensive.

The reality is that race is a social construct, and that gender is a social construct, but that does not mean that we should treat them the same.

That fact that this is all so confusing is good – it emphasizes the constructed nature of these institutions and forces us to re-evaluate what it means to have a gender or a race, and it makes us confront the important question of who has the right to define those terms.

As a white person, am I comfortable leaving it to the black community to define blackness, but as a woman I would be dissatisfied with any definition of “female” which excluded trans women – even if that’s what was wanted by the majority of people who were identified as women at birth.

So power is a critical piece of this, but there is some more.

Michel Foucault brilliantly documented how mental illness is a social construct. And how, like many other constructs, it can be dangerous – giving those in power permission to detain and torture those who are found to be outside the norm.

But just because it is a social construct, doesn’t imply that anyone can declare themselves mad.

In fact, mental health can be a positive social construct – allowing people who need help to get the help that they need. And hopefully, someday, removing the stigma around mental health.

All of that is to say that “social construct” is not one thing. They are not universally bad and we should not deconstruct them all to be universally permeable.

Social constructs are how we make sense of the world around us. They are how people in power maintain their power, but they are also how those who are oppressed reclaim their power.

It’s messy and it’s complicated and its complex – because by its very definition a social construct is “constructed” by society. It’s a thin facade that quickly looses coherence when questioned.

These are our rules, our collective rules, and we have the right to change them – or not – as we see fit.

The social construct of race has a very different history from the construct of gender for one simple reason – they are not the same and they shouldn’t be treated as such.

Focused Giving vs. a Portfolio Approach

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

Conventional wisdom indicates that it’s best to be focused when it comes to charitable giving and even volunteer activity.

Charity Navigator, for example, includes “Concentrate Your Giving,” among its list of Top 10 Best Practices for Savvy Donors.

“When it comes to financial investments, diversification is the key to reducing risk,” they argue. “The opposite is true for philanthropic investments…Spreading your money among multiple organizations not only results in your mail box filling up with more appeals, it also diminishes the possibility of any of those groups bringing about substantive change as each charity is wasting part of your gift on processing expenses for that gift.”

I’ve heard similar arguments made about other forms of giving – particularly, in-kind donations of time, skill, and energy.

You can have more impact if you focus on one cause, on one organization.

I don’t think I agree with that.

Not that there’s anything wrong with focusing on just one organization, but there’s nothing wrong with diversifying, either.

The fact of the matter is that there a lot of issues, and there are a lot of complex problems which need to be solved. And there are a lot of great organizations doing important work.

A good organization has a focused mission and vision, but I think a savvy donor is capable of supporting many issues and causes.

The right balance is different for everyone, of course, but I personally like to have a healthy handful of organizations to engage with personally and financially.

With this approach, it’s important to know your limits – don’t make commitments beyond what you can sustain, for example – but it allows you to delve into a range of issues, while providing space to reflect upon why those issues are important for you, and how you see them as connected.

We’re not trying to solve just one problem here, folks. There is so much work to do.

The Revolution Comes in Pieces

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

I’ve written before about my skepticism of “scaling up” as the solution to all our social challenges.

That’s not to say there aren’t some solutions which can provide more value by being brought “to scale,” but when it comes to issues of democracy and engagement, I prefer to think of “scaling sideways.” Lots of little, individual programs running parallel within parallel communities.

So I was quite taken with this little snipped from Joshua Miller and Daniel Levine’s recent paper on Reprobation as Shared Inquiry: Teaching the Liberal Arts in Prison:

“We do not know how to spark a revolution that will overthrow mass incarceration all at once and transfigure our society, but we believe that it can be made to fade away through a proliferation of non-carceral practices.”

The paper builds on Miller and Levine’s work with the Jessup Correctional Institution Prison Scholars Program – which you can support here.

Essentially, Miller and Levine argue that in order to build a truly just and effective prison system, we have to radically shift our society, doing away with our current systems of dominance and subordinance.

It’s not just a moral problem that “for the past 30 years, between 40 and 60 percent of prison inmates were below the federal poverty line,” or that “at midyear 1998, approximately 16 percent of inmates in US state prisons and 7 percent of inmates in federal prisons had a mental illness.” And it is not just a moral problem that the US “incarcerates Blacks and Latinos at disproportionate rates.”

Those are serious, moral problems within our society, but…those deep inequities also render our criminal justice system ineffective.

That is, “it is morally unreasonable to expect an offender to be moved by condemnations coming from agents of a system that routinely subjects him to injustice it is unwilling to recognize as such.”

Miller and Levine offer the Liberal Arts as a tool to break this dominant/subordinate cycle, a resource for engaging incarcerated people – not as subordinates in the ultimate system of domination – but as agents in reflecting on the “the nature of value, and the proper way to relate to other human beings in society.”

“Prison classrooms,” they write, “become political spaces at the heart of an institution where politics is disallowed.”

They acknowledge that their own work is small compared to the vastness of the challenge, but argue that “the utopian vision of a society in which the whole encounter between currently-dominant and currently-subordinated social groups is transformed is likely to be made up of a multitude of small, piecemeal encounters like this.”

Scaling sideways.

And that’s the thing: democracy requires individual engagement. It requires engagement from the individuals within a society, but more deeply, it requires that those individuals are engaged…individually. As autonomous beings, as agents of their own destiny and desires.

The challenges of democracy are challenges of collective action, to be sure – how to work together across differences and interests, how to divide and distribute limited resources.

But at its heart, democratic values are about the individual. The belief that every person’s voice has value, that all people are created equal and that all people demand your respect.

It’s not a simple case of rugged individualism, but rather a subtle interplay of individual and collectivist thought: all voices have value, and therefore we each have a responsibility to ensure that all voices are heard.

But a focus on individual agents requires programs that are small and flexible, developed for a local context and shaped by local knowledge.

You can’t scale up something like that without losing what gives it value.

But we can tackle the problem piece by piece, through networks of small efforts and regional connections.

We can scale these solutions sideways and little by little we can radically transform our society, making our deep inequities and injustices fade away through a proliferation of better practice.

Support Your Local Business

Posted on June 10, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

Tonight marks my last meeting on the board of Somerville Local First.

After three and half years, I’m stepping back in order to focus on my studies as I begin a Ph.D. program this fall.

But the work goes on.

Somerville Local First builds a sustainable local economy and vibrant community. We work with business owners and entrepreneurs, providing technical assistance and networking opportunities. We educate community members on the value of shopping locally, and we bring the community together in celebration of our local charm.

(Pro Tip: Somerville Local First is hosting a Back to the Future, 50’s-themed prom on June 26._

There are lots of reasons while local is important.

Local businesses create more and better jobs. Locally sourced products tend to be more environmentally friendly. Locally owned businesses are better for the local economy – bolstering the tax base and benefiting from owners invested in the community.

But more even than that, local businesses are important because –

Local businesses are who we are.

Local businesses determine the character of a community.

Whether quirky or traditional, upscale or casual, it’s the local businesses that stand out when thinking about what makes a community unique.

Anyone can have an iHop, but only Somerville has the Neighborhood Restaurant.

A community with local businesses is one where people know each other. Where neighbors say hello and the guy behind the bar is an old friend. Indeed, they are communities where everybody knows your name.

In our increasingly anonymous, standardized world, you can’t undervalue the importance of that.

Nobody wants to be a cog in the machine or a brick in the wall, and local businesses help fight that tendency.

There’s something profoundly radical, something subversively democratizing, in the local movement.

In response to the trend of big box stores putting mom & pop shops out of business, the local movement seeks not only to counteract the negative environmental and economic impact, but more fundamentally, the local movement seeks to reclaim our communities as our communities.

There may be red states and blue state, liberal brands and conservative brands, but local businesses remind us – we are all just people.

People with different interests, experiences, and affiliations, of course, but people who share a community, and who can find – literally – common ground, even if they can’t seem to agree.

If we are ever to solve the great problems of our country, if we are ever to unite and find ways of working together and improving together, we will need local businesses to get us there.

So, yes, even as I step back from leadership with Somerville Local First, the work goes on.

The work always goes on.

Please consider supporting this work by making a donation or attending Prom.

The Value of “Just Talk”

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

As I was reeling yesterday from the seemingly unending stream of assaults on people of color in this country, I was struck by a concern which I’ve often heard echoed:

Yes, there is something wrong in this country, but the real question is what should we do about it?

In many ways, one more blog post decrying the national tragedy of police brutality and our unjust criminal justice system seems vain. It is almost certainly issued in vain, unlikely to affect any real change, and it would most certainly be vain of me to think it might have an impact.

But I keep writing.

I don’t know what else to do.

To be clear, I don’t think my commitment to social justice is fulfilled by a few strong words and inciting posts. But I also don’t think writing is completely superfluous.

It does have value.

And I don’t mean my writing – I mean everyone’s writing, or more specifically, everyone’s self-expression on this topic. In whatever media fits them best.

That has value.

We’ve grown so accustomed to relying on professionals and experts, we’ve become so focused on the institutions and the systems, that we’ve nearly lost track of the individual. We’ve forgotten about our own agency.

Our systems and institutions are broken, and we must surely find ways to tackle those challenges, but even with a terrible police response, we ought to remember –

The police aggression at a Texas pool party was started by a white woman yelling racial slurs.

Our problems aren’t about a racist cop, and they’re not about a racist police department. They are problems endemic within our society.

We each play a role in perpetuating, experiencing, or interacting with racism, and the solution must come from all of us.

We shouldn’t let the cop off the hook, and we shouldn’t let the police officer off the hook, but we should also look at ourselves and look at our communities.

We should ask how we can do better, individually and collectively.

We should share our stories, we should share our views, we should learn from each other and we should work together.

We should talk together as much as we should decide how to act together.

Indeed, the question may be “what should we do?” but to find real solutions, we must ask that question together.

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Author Archives: Sarah Shugars

Language Games

With Thoughts of Charleston

Happy Bunker Hill Day

The Revolution Comes in Pieces

Support Your Local Business