On Being an Ally or, I CAN Breathe

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be an ally.

Allies, of course, can be found in all kinds of movements; there are white allies and straight allies, male allies and upper class allies. And allies serve an important role – even if you don’t face a certain type of oppression directly, you have, I believe, an obligation to recognize and work against that oppression.

But being an ally is also complicated.

Complicated, but not that complicated. It’s complicated the way every day life is complicated. The way it’s complicated when someone asks how they look in an outfit, or its complicated when you move from “dating” to “exclusive.”

It’s complicated because social interactions are complicated.

I wonder how complicated being an ally would seem if we were all more used to talking about issues of discrimination and oppression. It would still be complicated, I imagine, but perhaps not paralyzingly complicated.

I heard a white man on TV the other day frustratedly complain that he wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to use the term “African American” or if it was okay to call somebody “black.” I just don’t know what you people want me to say! he exclaimed.

I think it was at “you people” where he really went wrong.

Being an ally is full of tension. It’s full of competing concerns and changing expectations. And that’s okay -

Life is full of tension.

As an ally, you should defer to the leadership of those most directly affected. You should be mindful of your power and privilege and do everything possible not to exert that power over others. You should listen, you should learn, and you should engage in the ways you are asked to.

But as an ally, you can’t let the work of speaking out always fall to those most directly affected. You should be the one raising questions of equity. You should be the one pointing to areas that need to change. You should be the one pushing the envelope and speaking out.

On the surface, it sounds like those things can’t co-exist – how can you simultaneously defer leadership and lead the charge?

It’s possible, I believe. And it’s complicated, but not that complicated.

Listen and learn, speak up and fight. Do the best you can, but always know you will make mistakes. Do your best to encourage those around you to point out those mistakes. Do your best to learn from those mistakes and do your best to help others learn from those mistakes as well.

It’s a journey for all of us.

In the wake of the recent grand jury decisions, I’ve been faced with some specific questions about what it means to be an ally.

Should a white person participate in a die-in about police killings of African Americans? Should a white person gesture “don’t shoot”? Should a white person yell, “I CAN’T BREATHE!”?

I’m not sure there’s a universal answer to these question, but doing the above doesn’t feel quite right to me.

I CAN breathe. Police are unlikely to shoot me without repercussions. I am white. That comes with privileges, and claiming too much understanding of things I don’t experience is inappropriate.

I am not Trayvon Martin.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t fight. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t fight. It just means my role in the fight is different, just as my experience in the world is different.

I don’t know if the word “ally” is too passive, I don’t know if a more active word would abuse too much power.

But I do know I have a responsibility to speak up and to speak out. I know I have a responsibility to do so in a way that is respectful of all people. I know there’s not a secret activist etiquette handbook, and I know I will make mistakes along the way.

I know I will do my best to apologize for those mistakes, and I know I will resolve to do better next time.

Institutions as Bystanders

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

Much has been said about the negative impact individuals have when they are bystanders – when they remain silent in the face of hate.

As Elie Wiesel eloquently described, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”

Being a bystander is not being neutral – it is being complicit.

Much education and advocacy has gone into helping individuals realize the wrongness of being a bystander. Much education and advocacy has gone into giving individuals the tools to speak up and to take action. Much education and advocacy has focused on the role of individuals in countering injustice.

But what of the role of institutions?

Institutional racism and other forms of discrimination are, after all, institutional. But what is the role of an institution is speaking out and acting against injustice?

The question, in part, may depend on the type of institution – does a corporation have the same responsibility as a school?

Probably not – a school has a responsibility to educate, while a corporation has a responsibly, I suppose, to profit.

It’s not that you would never see this issues addressed in the corporate sector, but you would really only expect a brand to speak up on an issue under a certain set of conditions.

Most notably, if a bias incident at a company makes big news, that would certainly force a crisis-communications response. But if that’s the only time an institution reacts – I’m not sure that’s any different from being a bystander.

Companies may arguably also take a stand through their editorial decisions. After all, it seems we are not past the days when an advertisement featuring an interracial couple or a gay couple counts as a political statement.

But this is rather light support. A general a nod to inclusivity, without the teeth that real activism requires. As one of my grad school professors described it, its often done as an attempt to reach out to a target demographic while not offending another target demographic.

That still sounds like a bystander.

And perhaps this is all well and good for corporations – which do have an obligation to make a profit – or perhaps we should ask for more. Perhaps instead of boycotting company’s whose stances we disagree with, we should boycott companies who think they can take no stance at all.

And perhaps we should push other types of institutions – schools, cities, associations. These institutions which do have a social mission, which do have a duty to the public and not just to stockholders. Perhaps we should push all institutions to take a stand and speak out against bias.

Perhaps being neutral should not be an option.

Who are the Oppressed?

Posted on December 5, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire writes of oppression as a process of dehumanization, a process which dehumanizes the oppressed and the oppressor alike., albeit affecting them in different ways.

Critically, he argues, it is only the oppressed who have the power to humanize us all:

This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both.

The oppressors can only conceive of liberation as a trade-off, Freire argues. Rather than seek true liberation and humanization for all, oppressors “attempt to ‘soften’ the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed.” An act which “almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity.” Or, in another word, paternalism.

The oppressors cannot liberate because they can only come up with solutions like affirmative action or Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. They can only come up with solutions which at their essence say, “For generations our people have oppressed your people, but we will gesture towards this trivial concession because our people are so generous. Feel fortunate to receive this from us.”

So the task of liberation must fall to the oppressed.

But who are exactly “the oppressed”?

Freire seems to draw this line so clearly, but our society is not so neatly bimodal.

There are, of course, fractures of clear comparison: in the United States, black people are oppressed and white people their oppressors. Generations of slavery and generations of paternalism have seen to that.

But there are other fault lines as well. Women are the oppressed. Members of the LGBT community are the oppressed. Latinos, Asians, and multiethnic people are the oppressed. Those with real or perceived mental health issues – the mad, as Foucault would say – are also the oppressed.

In individual’s identity is complex. No person fits into one neat little box.

Perhaps we all are “the oppressed.”

Yale Law School professor Kenji Yoshino studies “covering” – the social and legal pressure to hide your authentic self, which, as Freire would agree, leads to dehumanization and the degradation of the self. As Yoshino describes:

When I lecture on covering, I often encounter what I think of as the “angry straight white male” reaction. A member of the audience, almost invariably a white man, almost invariably angry, denies that covering is a civil rights issue. Why shouldn’t racial minorities or women or gays have to cover? These groups should receive legal protection against discrimination for things they cannot help, like skin color or chromosomes or innate sexual drives. But why should they receive protection for behaviors within their control – wearing cornrows, acting “feminine,” or flaunting their sexuality? After all, the questioner says, I have to cover all the time. I have to mute my depression, or my obesity, or my alcoholism, or my schizophrenia, or my shyness, or my working-class background or my nameless anomie. …Why should my struggle for an authentic self matter less?

I surprise these individuals when I agree.

Yoshino would argue that we all are “the oppressed.”

It important here to interject that a recognition that every one “covers” – or more boldly that everyone is oppressed – does not imply that everyone is oppressed equally.

As part of a dialogue a few months ago, we were all asked to share a story of a time we felt like an outsider. It was a powerful and humanizing experience.

But it would have been inaccurate and inappropriate for me to walk away from that conversation feeling like my experience being “othered” was comparable to an African American’s experience being “othered.” Or, really, that my experience was comparable to anyone else’s at all.

I imagine that we have all felt the fear and shame and degradation of the oppressed, but I know we have not all felt it equally and it has not affected us all the same.

I do not know what it is like to be black in America. I only know what it is like to be me.

Despite the danger of falsely equating or comparing experiences, there’s something I find promising in accepting the mass of Americans as “the oppressed.”

Perhaps as Freire argues, it is only the oppressed who have the power to liberate us all – but we cannot let them wage the war alone.

The voices, vision, and agency of people of color should lead the movement for racial equality, but I cannot let it be their job alone. It is my responsibility as well to think critically about my own privilege and to openly question structures of power.

I may be “the oppressor” but it is morally imperative that I play an appropriate role in this fight – the role “the oppressed” ask me to play.

And while I recognize myself as a person of privilege in this dichotomy, I believe it is my own identity as “the oppressed” which helps me be the person I most need to be. An “oppressor,” perhaps, but also an ally.

It seems there could be great power in this approach. If we all see our selves as oppressed. If we reject the notion of liberation as a zero-sum game and work together to ensure that all people are free to pursue the “vocation of becoming more fully human.” If we recognize our brutal histories of oppression have impacted us unequally, but we collectively refuse to rest until all people are true free.

If we truly worked together in this humanist endeavor -

Perhaps, then, change could come.

Individuals and Institutions

Posted on December 4, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

It strikes me that one of our many societal challenges is that individuals don’t know how to work with institutions and institutions don’t know how to work with individuals.

This seems a little odd, since, after all, institutions are really just a collection of individuals.

But, having been an individual in many types of institutions, it just doesn’t seem that simple. The individuals who make up an institution can have a huge impact on institutional character, but that’s not all there is to it.

There’s something that happens when a group of people gathers together. Relationship direction, impact, and strength, are not uniform across the group. Patterns of information flow become settled and routine. Ways of thinking or avoiding become comfortable. People across the group have different goals, concerns, and complaints.

The character of the individuals matter, of course, but the character of the institution is unique.

Even the best institutions become bureaucratic, slow-moving, and are prone to failure.

As an individual, then, whether inside or outside the institution, the question becomes how to move the institution – how to change the institution.

As a citizen, an individual must be prepared to influence the institutions of government. As a member of a work or a school environment, an individual must be prepared to influence those communal institutions.

But how does a person do that?

On the other hand, a good institution should be welcoming of being influenced by individuals. A good government is of the people, by the people, and for the people. A good work place ought to want employees who are empowered to bring their best ideas forward, to co-create with together.

Arguably, the failures of our society come down to a problem of corruption in institutions. Who actually believes that government has our best interests at heart? It’s certainly hard to believe that if you’re a black man in American.

Many of our institutions are corrupt. And as individuals we should work to change that.

But corrupt institutions are so hard to move, and we are so tired.

Perhaps there is nothing we can do.

It is only a slice of a solution, but too often, I think, people don’t know how to work with institutions.

I’ve seen too many activists, of all types and at all levels, undertake actions which ultimately hurt their cause by antagonizing their target institution. Some organizations really do have good intentions.Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of times when antagonizing can be a productive way to go, but when did we decide that the best way to make change was to be an a-hole about it?
It’s also important here to be clear about your end goals. Working well with an institution often means playing by that institution’s rules. If your real goal is to disrupt the system, to demonstrate a basic inequity in the way the institution does business, perhaps shutting it down is the best thing to do. Don’t play by the rules if the rules are broken.But if your goal is more practical – if you care more about implementing a policy change than changing the whole system – then perhaps you should learn the institution’s rules, and learn to play by them.On its face, this approach can be more successful – it might result in more tangible changes and outcomes. But the practical-biased among us should be careful – Don’t call a policy change a win if it comes at the cost of accepting basic inequity.

Solutions

Posted on December 3, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

I’ve been making a lot of complaints the last few days. Complaints about the deep injustices of our systems, complaints about how we as a society watch racially-charged tragedies happen again and again and again.

How many more black people need to die before we find solutions?

The Onion had an article a little while back, “Ebola Vaccine At Least 50 White People Away,” as if efforts to cure disease can best be measured by the threat to white people. As if.

How many more black people need to die?

I’ve wanted to write a post about solutions for days, but I’ve found it deeply challenging. There are some great solution-oriented posts out there, like Janee Woods’ 12 things white people can do now because of Ferguson.

If you haven’t read that piece yet, you should do that right now.

But I’ve challenged myself to find my own solutions, to identify the actions and inspirations which speak most to me.

It has been challenging.

As I’ve written before, I have no deep expertise in this matter. I know about physics and communication, not about policing and law. What could I possibly know? What could I possibility offer?

Yet this is the challenge that falls to every citizen. We each have expertise in some areas, and a lack of professional knowledge in others. But the work of societal solutions is our collective task and we each must be involved.

If we always defer to the professional experts, we lose the essence of our democracy and miss out on the best solutions. Seriously.

Having no expertise, should I just throw my hands in the air and leave the problem for others to solve? Certainly others have more developed and nuanced views on specific tactics that may be implemented – such as having officers wear body cameras. But that doesn’t mean I have no role in the solution.

That doesn’t mean I can just stand by.

So, here’s a – doubtless incomplete – list of things I’ve come up with that I can do. Me, personally. I no doubt will fail at times, but I will endeavor to do the best I can do. In no particular order:

Smile at strangers
No really. Most people aren’t creepy or dangerous. I’ve had my fair share of creepers follow me down the street, and those folks are gonna creep no matter what you do. Don’t let that be a reason not to be neighborly. (Also, in my experience of creepers, white Harvard boys are the worst.)
Ask permission to be in spaces
Don’t assume that your presence or participation is welcome in all spaces all of the time. This is particularly challenging for me, as I traditionally don’t feel welcome in spaces and am more at risk of feeling silenced than one might think. But there are times when you should push boundaries, speaking up even when it feels uncomfortable, and times when you should let those who feel even more silenced than you set the rules.

If a space isn’t for you, don’t take it personally and don’t take offense. Just recognize that the conversation would be different if you were there, and that’s not the conversation participants need to have right now.
Educate yourself
Ask good questions and seek guidance from others, but don’t let it be the job of people of color to explain everything to you. Read everything you can.
Educate and engage others
Ask people of all backgrounds, races, and ethnicities about their experiences and views on racial injustice in this country. As someone who is white, I think it is particularly important to engage in these conversations with other white people. Share your story with others.
Speak up and speak out
Raise questions of equity. Don’t let it be a person of color’s job to raise these issues.
Question your assumptions
A lot of assumptions and implicit biases are hardwired into our systems. Know what yours are and question yourself when you make assumptions. You will make inaccurate and inappropriate assumptions about people, don’t let that dictate the way you act and think. Check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Leverage your power to have an impact where you can
Perhaps you will never have an impact on “race relations in America,” but you can have an impact within your communities – such as your neighborhood, your school, and your work. What power do you have in those communities and how can you affect change?
Listen genuinely
Care about what other people are saying and try to understand what has shaped the way they think.
Always look for solutions
There will always be more work to be done.
Challenge yourself to be your best
You will make mistakes. Forgive yourself, but do better next time.

Being White’s Not Necessarily a Walk in the Park, But it Does Come With Privilege

Posted on December 2, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

“White privilege” can be complex to understand. There certainly seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about what it means.

And a lot of that misunderstanding I can appreciate.

For me, the phrase “white privilege” invokes images of royalty lounging about on Roman-style chairs – perhaps with someone feeding them grapes. Or, perhaps, it might conjure images of rich people sitting around drinking tea and speaking in fake British accents. You know, as they do.

For a long time, I couldn’t understand how “white privilege” might apply to me. That wasn’t my life. That wasn’t me.

I’ve had racial slurs used against me. I’ve had violence threatened against me. I have buried my true self out of fear. I have seen things I’d rather not share, and I have experienced things I’d fight like hell to prevent anyone else from experiencing.

So, I wouldn’t call myself privileged.

But, you see, that’s not what white privilege is about.

I grew up in a predominately black neighborhood. A neighborhood with drugs, and crime, and gun shots ringing out every night.

It wasn’t always easy, but I got by. And perhaps, more importantly, I got out.

I got a world class education at schools which weren’t in my district. At schools where kids didn’t carry knifes or guns. Where students weren’t denied access to computers for fear of theft or vandalism. At schools with enriching arts programs and science field trips. Schools which inspired students to think critically and to speak out against injustice.

And no one ever questioned my right to be there.

I had to hide myself in someways, perhaps, but I could hide myself.

The school district where I went to high school recently hired a private detective to investigate whether a a 2nd grade Latina girl was legitimately a resident of the city.

No one ever investigated me.

I went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree, a Master’s degree, and I have been fortunate enough to build a wonderful, middle-class life.

I earned those things, yes, but – it was also easier for me to earn them because I am white.

And make no mistake, “easier” does not mean “easy.” It has been tough at times. I’ve had little handed to me.

But I have still benefited from a system that favors whiteness. The trajectory of my life has been profoundly impacted by the color of my skin.

I am well qualified for my work, of course, but studies show that employers tend to favor resumes from people with “white” sounding names.

How is that fair?

The answer is simple: It is not.

And the real thing is, living in a society that favors whiteness, that makes success more attainable for someone with my skin – well, that’s no a reason to cry reverse racism or to protest every time a thing doesn’t go my way.

Sure, we could fight over the scraps of a society that not only favors whiteness, but which also favors one gender, one sexual orientation, and prefers a certain sort of upbringing and sense of decorum.

But, if anything, the knowledge that being white has made my life easier…just makes me more angry and more committed to real justice.

If my life were the definition of easy, I sure as hell don’t want to see the definition of hard.

It is bad enough that so many people in our country live in poverty, are treated as second class citizens, or are otherwise discriminated against and oppressed. That basic inequity is terrible enough -

But it is unthinkable, conscionable, that there is a systemic regularity behind that inequity. In 2012, 28% of African Americans were living in poverty, compared to about 16% across all races. Black men are less likely to graduate from high school, and are more likely then their white peers to go to prison or to die from homicide.

That systemic, deep, persistent, inequity is the real horror here.

And that is what white privilege is.

It’s Not About Ferguson

Posted on November 25, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

I wasn’t sure what to write today. I’ve had a hard time finding my words.

Ferguson is all that’s on the news, and with good reason. A grand jury failed to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed, 18-year-old, black man.

I could write about how the role of a grand jury is to evaluate a case by the low bar of whether there is probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed – advancing the suspect, still presumed innocent, to face a trial.

I could write about how incredibly rare it is for a grand jury not to indict, how of the 162,000 federal cases U.S. attorneys prosecuted in 2010, grand juries declined to indict in only 11 of them.

I could write about how the jury which failed to indict white police officer Darren Wilson was composed of nine white and three African-American jurors.

I could go through the thousands of pages of evidence, giving my own lay opinion of what it all means.

But none of that feels sufficient. None of that is enough.

What happened in Ferguson was shocking, but not surprising. It was horrifying but routine. It was a noteworthy moment, but a moment of little note.

The thing is – the true, deep, terrifying thing – is that it’s not about Ferguson.

In that moment, in that place, the details, of course, are everything. But in the grand scheme of things – it doesn’t really matter whether Officer Wilson genuinely felt threatened or whether he had genuine cause to feel threatened. It doesn’t really matter what the evidence indicates in this specific, individual, case. I mean, it matters a lot, but it also – it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that black men and women face a dramatic difference in life expectancy than white people do.

What matters is that black men and women are hugging their children tight, desperately praying for their safety. I don’t know whether Officer Wilson was genuinely threatened, but I know that my black brothers and sisters are genuinely threatened.

I know that black people are disproportionately more likely to be shot by police officers.

I know a 12-year-old black kid was shot and killed by police while playing with a toy gun.

You see, that’s the insidious thing about institutional racism – there’s always a reason why its “not about race” this time.

A police officer is trained to react a certain way, to anticipate a certain danger in order to stay alive. Can you really blame a white officer for feeling seriously threatened by a black man? It’s almost easy – especially as a white person – to look at the details and rationalize the injustice away.

But not everyone has that privilege.

Not everyone has the luxury of turning off the news with a sigh, saying this news has nothing to do with me. Not everyone has the privilege of feeling safe walking down the street in their own neighborhood.

Not everyone has that privilege. But everyone should.

As a white person, it seems so obvious, so assumed, that a person would have that safety. But my Facebook feed is full of people of color wondering which of their family members they might lose. My neighborhood is full of black men who look at me askance and hustle on their way – fearful I might find them a threat.

That reality is simply not okay.

I’m not interested in getting into a fight about evidence or laws. I’m not interested in picking apart the details or analyzing every action that has happened in Ferguson. What’s happening there has meaning, but it’s not the details that matter.

Black lives matter.

Black lives matter. We cannot simply breath a heavy sigh, finding just enough compassion to calm our conscious. We cannot keep rolling our eyes, assuring ourselves that it’s not really about race this time. Assuring ourselves that we are not racist, or that there is no privilege which comes with being white.

We cannot let people of color fight this battle alone, and we cannot, we cannot – we cannot let our fellow man continue to die because of the color of their skin.

Cooperation and Competition

Posted on November 21, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

I believe that the best solutions come from diverse opinions.

Several years ago, I participated in a simple activity: in a large group we were individually presented with a list of items and asked how we would prioritize taking them if we we about to escape a sinking ship. Essentially, we were asked to identify which items would be most essential to survival. After individually ranking these items we formed small groups and discussed our answers, generating a collective list of priority items.

As a final step we scored our lists – the version we created individually and the version we created collectively. In a room full of 100 people, every one was more likely to survive when they had input from others. Alone, we had each demonstrated imperfect judgement and imperfect knowledge.

That experience helped me realize that cooperation isn’t just nice, it isn’t just something you do to feel good about yourself or to garner a warm and fuzzy feeling. It is literally about survival; about generating better solutions.

Our world is facing many serious problems – economic instability, global warming, and diminishing resources, just to name a few. These problems are non-trivial, and they require non-trivial solutions.

There is not one of us who can do it alone.

So I strongly agree that the best way for a society to prepare its young people for leadership in government, industry, or other fields is by instilling in them a sense of cooperation, not competition.

Those who would disagree with this statement would likely highlight the valuable role that competition can play.

In Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, a futuristic novel of rich social commentary, one of his characters outlines a parable illustrating the importance of competition. In this space-fairing universe, there is a world called Sanctuary. Of all the worlds in the galaxy, Sanctuary is unique. Not only is it suitable for human life, it experiences virtually no radiation from space. There is no element forcing hardship, mutation, or change. While at first this sounds good, the full picture Heinlein paints illustrates why competition, while perhaps unsavory, can be beneficial.

You see, nothing on Sanctuary every changes. The life there never evolved because it was never forced to evolve. Anyone who moves there becomes virtually trapped in time – genetically, socially, and technically stagnating as they face no challenges to their fitness to survive, no competition forcing them to be better.

Sanctuary, Heinlein concludes, is nice respite to visit, but it is never a place to stay.

I appreciate Heinlein’s vision and I agree that competition does have value. Humanity itself has indeed only evolved as a result of generations of competition.

However, surely as a society we can provide an appropriate balance. I don’t suggest we coddle our young people, encouraging them to never face a hardship or to never know real trouble. But surely – life is hard enough as it is.

The challenges we face individually and collectively are monumental, and it won’t help to be fighting amongst ourselves. As a society we ought to encourage our young people to collaborate, to interact fairly with others, and to improve themselves by learning from others.

There will be plenty of opportunities for competition, plenty of opportunities for young people to get their heart broken and to grow from the hard lessons of life. But as the stewards for the next generation, we must instill a sense of cooperation. Indeed, that is the best thing we can do to support their future leadership.

This is actually a response to the writing prompt, “how much do you agree with the statement: best way for a society to prepare its young people for leadership in government, industry, or other fields is by instilling in them a sense of cooperation, not competition.” Hence the somewhat formulaic response. Obviously, there are more than two options, and I’m not sure cooperation and competition are actually diametrically opposed.

Group Membership and Individual Agency

Posted on November 19, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

What obligation does a group have to develop the agency of its members?

It is entirely possible that “groups” generally speaking have no such obligation.

Perhaps a non-profit with a stated mission of increasing agency has an obligation, while a corporation with other priorities does not. That certainly seems to be the functional way of things. But is that ideal?

In a practical sense, I don’t think I would advocate for every group – a broad term, indeed – to be focused at all times on the agency of its members. Agency is important, of course, but sometimes it’s more important to just get things done.

Yet if every person is to develop the capabilities of agency – to feel a sense of voice, a sense of influence over one’s world – where is that development to happen? Certainly we can’t rely on a few good hearted non-profits to win the battle for us.

Civil society more broadly seems the obvious place to turn: Develop curriculum that supports students as agents, structure governments which include citizens as agents, encourage voluntary associations which empower members as agents.

All of that is good. All of that important.

And yet, I find it strangely unsatisfying. An insufficient solution to a Goliath of a problem.

Schools don’t embrace agency unless the people demand it, governments don’t embrace participation unless the people demand it, and associations cannot flourish unless the people demand it.

None of these will simply sprout forth from the earth.

So, idyllic visioning aside, we are back to having a few non-profits advocating for agency and training the next generation of advocates. Perhaps we will achieve a critical mass of agency in a few hundred years or so. We’ll see how it goes.

Surely there must be other engines we can turn.

One challenge is that there is little incentive for any large organization to be concerned about agency. We may not expect this of large corporations, but even among the political crowd – too often the emphasis is on one act of agency which is swept up in a sea of voices. There’s no room for real political participation. For dialogue or for the real work of building policy together.

Walter Lippmann was deeply concerned with what he called the centralizing tendency of society – to get things done, you need to centralize, you need to bureaucratize, and ultimately – you need to cut people out of the process. It is democracy which pays the price.

Perhaps even more troubling is that the way to seemingly organize against centralized power is to build your own centralized power. Form a union. Create a new political party. Who is in power changes, but ultimately the system remains the same. And democracy pays the price.

I’m afraid I’ve stumbled upon no grand solutions in this line of inquiry, but I wonder what a…system in equilibrium would like like.

Through our many formal and informal groups, could we build a society which supports every individual’s agency, and yet still get the work done? Not every interaction with every group will increase your agency, but what is the right mix, the right balance of experience to create a good but workable system?

I cannot solve the troubles of the world, so perhaps, more simply, I should ask myself this: as a person who is a member of many groups and of many kinds of groups – do I do everything I can to increase the agency of those around me?

The group, after all, has not it’s own soul – it is ultimately up to us to make this vision so.

The Adjustments Between Individuals

Posted on November 18, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

What is society? What does that word describe?

The first dictionary definition I ran across describes society as, “the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.”

Without over thinking it, that sounds about right. A society is a group of people. They may be in the same physical place, and they may have some means of communicating with each other. They may share certain values or have other characteristics in common.

Those are details over which reasonable people are right to quibble, but the fundamental concept is the same: a society is a group of people.

But what if that fundamental concept is a myth? An oversimplification, or, perhaps a convenient lie? What if society is not a group of people?

Well, then, what should we conceive it to be?

In his 1925 book the Phantom Public, Walter Lippmann argued that we ought to “think of society not as the name of a thing but as the name of all the adjustments between individuals and their things.”

That is to say, society is not a group of people – it is a group of relationships. Relationships between people, between objects, between issues. A complex web describing how each person interacts with the word, and by extension, how we interact with each other.

As Lippmann bemoans:
We have been taught to think of society as a body, with a mind, a soul, and a purpose, not as a collection of men, women and children whose minds, souls and purposes are variously related. Instead of being allowed to think realistically of a complex of social relations, we have had foisted upon us by various great propagative movements the notion of a mythical entity, called Society, the Nation, the Community.

In Lippmann’s account, the error of taking society to be Society is more than an issue of semantics, and it is more than an innocent oversimplification. A theory of democracy which personifies society as a coherent whole, rather than a network of individuals and relationships, is not only mistaken – it is dangerous.

In post-World War I America, Lippmann looked out and saw the challenges of an increasingly globalized, centralized and professionalized world:

To defend themselves against the economic powers of darkness, against the great monopolies or a devastating competition, the farmers set up great centralized selling agencies. Businessmen form great trade associations. Everybody organizes, until the number of committees and their paid secretaries cannot be computed. The tendency is pervasive.

The concern, of course, is not necessarily with the centralization per se. Rather:

The men who make decisions at these central points are remote from the men they govern and the facts with which they deal. Even if they conscientiously regard themselves as agents or trustees, it is a pure fiction to say that they are carrying out the will of the people. They may govern the people wisely. They are not governing with the active consultation of the people.

Whether these people are elected, appointed, or otherwise endowed with power makes little difference in the end. Those with power are the ones who have power – everyone else is left out.

Yet the myth of Society, allows this to be so. A democratic people would never accept a king imbued by God – but they will accept government anointed by Society.

The people have spoken, they say. They cheer in victory or moan in disagreement, but the sentiment is the same. It is the Will of The People.

But “The People” is not a collective whole. Society has no unified will – and the myth that it does only allows those in power to falsely view themselves as benevolent actors of the people.

It would be impractical to do away with representative government, but what would it look like, I wonder, if we could divorce ourselves from this collective notion? If we could see society not as a unitary object, but as a messy web of relationships? If we truly saw our elected officials not divinely as the Voice of People, but as individuals themselves – given power not by social fiat, but simply for necessity’s sake.

Civic Studies

An intellectual community of researchers and practitioners dedicated to building the emerging field of civic studies

Category Archives: Citizens & Civil Society