So I'm seeing discussion of Alan Dershowitz's (unsurprisingly cruel) views on trigger warnings, expressing shock that they're coming from "a former professor who should know better."
Let's talk about something I call 'the soft bigotry of high expectations.'
Let's talk about something I call 'the soft bigotry of high expectations.'
First and foremost, on this specific point, you don't need to be an academic to know a whole range of invective has been coming out of the academy itself on the question of trigger warnings. Jordan Peterson, for god's sake.
But what gets me frustrated is this sense that, in Our Lord's Year 2018, we're still shocked that genteel, well-educated, upper class people can spew crass bigotry. There was never an excuse for this, but especially now, it's galling in its implicit classism.
The same assumption, that rich, well-educated people are just better, is implicit in that tiresome "Donald Trump is a poor man's idea of a rich man" argument that some in the commentariat still use to explain his appeal. I pursue that question here: theestablishment.co/donald-trump-i…
At the end of the day, ours remains a hierarchical and highly-stratified society with a clear power elite. Brutal reactionary policies are engineered and put into practice by wealthy, well-connected, well-educated people who believe in them. Not a guy in a trailer park.
When you get suckered by the right's performance of genteel intellectualism, you lose sight of ideological substance. The National Review, that bastion of lofty Burkeanism, supported Jim Crow and Apartheid. Who gives a damn how well William F. Buckley dressed or spoke?
This perspective, which performs shock at the increasingly blatant bigotry of the well-educated, is ill-equipped to deal with prejudice as a structural phenomenon. And it is implicitly insulting to millions of people.
I've seen many elite institutions from the inside. There are a lot of nasty people, bigots, and less-than-clever sorts who are held aloft by indescribable privilege. My mother, who never finished high school, is their superior in every way that matters.
When rich and "smart" people pull some bigoted manoeuvre or say something horrid, recognise it's a feature of our system, not a bug. When you flatter them with your high expectations, you flatter their unearned privilege. Nothing more.
