Thread by @magi_jay

What happened to Neera Tanden was wrong, not just in terms of her personal story, but also because of the larger socio-political dynamics at play. Tanden was attacked because she is a woman who is confident in her political affiliation & who justifiably criticized Republicans.

This interacted with other dynamics, such as grudges over the 2016 primary, the fact that twitter amplifies & even creates stories out of thin air, & the tendency from some in the media to drive scandals motivated by perceived personal conflict, rather than objective evidence.

This resulted in an evidence-free situation in which a woman’s reputation was bound to “mean tweets,” despite the fact that the "mean" tweets don’t exist. And, yes, this was made possible by the fact that Tanden is not just a woman, but a woman of color.

Pause and just think for a moment how ridiculous it is that the GOP criticism of “mean tweets” stuck so thoroughly to Tanden in the post-Trump era. And that the media gave this narrative any credence at all.

This wouldn’t have happened to a white man.

And, no, Neera did not exhibit cruelty towards the twitter political left either. Did she argue w/ some? Yes. Is that cruel? No. The animosity from some on this website is not motivated by actual behavior or ideology, but only b/c of nonsensical post-2016 factionalization.

So I think a lot of things happened that contributed to the treatment of Tanden, but here I’ll focus on gender & race, given many seem to be denying these could be factors at all. I’ll just go through some research and see if you find any of it familiar.

WOC face intersections of sexism & racism. The biases individuals hold about WOC both converge & diverge between groups, such that, for example, Black & South Asian women will both experience the effects of negative stereotyping, but the exact stereotypes may differ.

Overall, however, it is safe to say that women in general will be dinged more than men for being "assertive," regardless of race, & that WOC *in particular* will be penalized more than white women, as well as in ways that relate specifically to different racist stereotypes.

Research on general gender-based stereotyping has consistently documented a phenomenon sometimes referred to as “lack of fit,” such that when an individual woman’s behavior conflicts with a stereotype, she is subject to negative backlash. repository.uchastings.edu/cgi/viewconten…

So what do women do? If we appear gentle, people will approve of our personalities, but also deem us to be too weak for positions of power. However, if we appear tough enough for the position, people will judge us as cold, anti-social, or overly aggressive.

Research has also shown:

-men’s success is attributed to skill & women’s to luck
-objective requirements are applied more stringently to women than to men
-women are more "polarizing" than men
-women’s mistakes are noticed more and “remembered longer”

Sound familiar?

In academia, research has found that female profs not only receive lower ratings than male profs, but that qualitative aspects of these ratings significantly differ. For ex, students are much more likely to comment on the appeal of women's personalities. gustavus.edu/kendallcenter/…

So women in general face a lot of issues when pursuing power or just when expressing confidence in their everyday lives. Again, these issues afflict all women, but are they are *especially* exacerbated when combined with racial stereotyping.

For example, Asian American women have specifically reported that white colleagues “expected them to be ‘passive and deferential,’ and expressed surprise when they ‘spoke up and resisted unfair treatment.’” repository.uchastings.edu/cgi/viewconten…

In one report, an Asian American woman spoke of being perceived as “passive” and “quiet,” even though this did not match her personality. She then said that when she “successfully [overcame] those misperceptions,” she was “thrown into the ‘dragon lady’ category."

Does any of this sound familiar? The value given to “demure” traits & how this conflicts w/ power? The hyper-focus on “personality?” to the exclusion of skill? The differential memory of small errors? The dichotomy between “nice woman” and “dragon lady?”

It sure seems familiar to me when considering the Tanden case. A lot of people are responsible for at the very least unconsciously giving into this. This is nowhere more apparent than in the fact that the mean tweets do not exist & yet this is how she was judged.

And that, insofar as critical tweets *do* exist, they were directed at individuals who were actively engaging in racism & other oppression, including the intentional abuse of children. Yet we allowed confident criticisms of such actions to evolve into a narrative of “mean tweets”

On a personal note, I have met Neera in real life. She is very assertive & equally kind. She likes debate b/c she cares about the issues. In my convos w/ her, she's always been confident but also invites challenges. These are qualities that would be valorized in a white man.

When I’ve spoken to others who have met Neera, I have commented on how she treated me as worth listening to & the response has universally been, “She didn’t treat me like a nobody either.” This is Neera’s real personality, not the one manufactured by the GOP & some in the media.

Neera would have been an exceptional OMB director. At the end of the day: she's an expert in domestic policy who's devoted to expanding the safety net, she seeks out different POVs, &, unlike many in politics, she’s not a snob.

It is unfortunate that interactions between sexism, racism, petty grudges, and a media drive towards amplifying & creating personality-based conflict derailed her nomination.

It is especially frustrating that the narrative that Neera was too cruel to the GOP gained prominence. We witnessed the GOP trying to take healthcare away, increasing inequality, literally torturing children as a matter of policy, & ignoring mass death. And yet Neera was mean?

Everyone needs to be more critical of the narratives we amplify, as well as how personality-based factionalization, not just btwn parties, but w/in the D-party, can be harmful. & we need to be aware of how biases influence which narratives “stick” in our collective discourse.

At the end of the day, a lot of factors were at play here, but one can safely say that Tanden was taken down b/c she was a WOC who was confident and, yes, *loud* when it came to extreme injustice. We should all examine why the GOP was allowed to scapegoat her for that.

oh, and PS: do not come at me w/ a straw man about how you can't criticize Neera w/out being accused of racism or sexism. I'm talking specifically about the "mean tweets" narrative. Neera's a policy person. There's plenty to debate her about & she will welcome it.

If you cite a leaked email that Tanden sent a decade ago which she has repeatedly apologized for, you are not actually refuting my points, but supporting them