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    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

Petition asking the APA to issue a statement of support of Emory’s George Yancy

Brian Leiter

The petition is here.  Briefly:  Prof. Yancy wrote about racism at the New York Times blog, and has since been subjected to disgusting racist abuse and threats through e-mail and other social media.  I gather the APA is going to issue a statement of support.  I confess I'm not really sure what the point is here.  Every civilized person is appalled at the outbursts of racist, misogynistic and/or criminal abuse that follow any public statement that offends some segment of the deranged population.  Anyone who airs such views in cyberspace has been a victim of this kind of abuse, though the worst is typically reserved for women and minorities in my experience.  As I advised elsewhere, Prof. Yancy, like anyone else targeted by such garbage, should report criminal threats to law enforcement (I always do, and the University of Chicago police have often been helpful, usually in confirming that the threats are the idle malice of irrelevant cranks).   But I confess I'm at a loss as to the point of an APA statement on the matter:  the vile and often sociopathic people who send these hateful messages are not going to be at all affected by an APA statement, if they even learn of it.  There are many ways to express solidarity and sympathy with Prof. Yancy's predicament, quite apart from the APA statement.  Unlike the situation in Turkey, in which the state is the malevolent actor but also sensitive to reputational costs, it's just not clear to me what will be accomplished by an APA statement in this instance.   Since this is another issue pertaining to the role of the APA, I wonder what readers think?

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30 responses to “Petition asking the APA to issue a statement of support of Emory’s George Yancy”

  1. AnonAdjunct

    Even if its source is a bunch of idle cranks, online intimidation still works sometimes, because it leaves the victims suspecting that they appear like awful people to the larger public. Realizing the loudmouths are not representative of the public is only a partial remedy. For intimidation to succeed, it only needs to make its victim feel isolated, which can diminish his or her zeal and courage to go forward. If petitions remind the victim that the public – and especially members of the public whose esteem the victim values – are on their side, I think they can accomplish a genuine good.

    I'm quite sure that Prof. Yancy is not alone in his views, but if people who want to bring up similar concerns see that we didn't get Yancy's back, that will have a chilling effect on their willingness to express their agreement. An official and successful petition can reduce this chilling effect, and maybe even embolden the people who were hesitant to speak.

    BL COMMENT: Useful points, but then why only Prof. Yancy? The targets of this kind of abuse are many, so if your empirical suppositions are right, they APA should be doing this regularly. And maybe that's right.

    Reply
  2. Natcphd

    https://www.change.org/p/american-philosophical-association-support-george-yancy/c/380313030

    It is vital that we do not mistake what Professor George Yancy is enduring as racism that is individual. Although it seems that what is happening, here, is 'individual racists' sending private communications to one individual (isolated?) philosopher, what is actually happening, here, is that a social system, in which it is perfectly possible and perfectly permissible to demean persons racialised as black, is facilitating the very communications that, as an institution, it is its function to facilitatate. The system is doing its job. Dismantle that social system.

    Reply
  3. Cookerson

    I think part of the point of issuing a statement is to acknowledge two problems. First, as Natcphd suggests, many (most?) American institutions, including colleges and universities, continue to tolerate and even to foster practices of racial marginalization and subordination. Second, it is therefore not clear that the "deranged population" lies exclusively beyond the walls of the academy–or the discipline of philosophy. (Comments on articles related to diversity in the Chronicle often give me the shivers.) It Would be meaningful, then, for the APA to issue a statement against cyber-bullying, hate speech, etc., that makes abundantly clear to members that the Association stands against it. "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends" (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.).

    BL COMMENT: There's no evidence, nor have I seen Prof. Yancy allege, that any of the racist abuse and threats he received came from faculty or students in universities.

    Reply
  4. Scott

    I think that many people supporting this statement lack important empirical knowledge relevant to this decision.

    When you publish things in a widely-read forum, particularly on a religious, political or ethical issue, you're going to get some very nasty hate mail and comments. This was true before the internet and it's got much worse now. I've received hate mail for some fairly unobjectionable things I've written in a big public forum, with some extremely nasty personal comments. Simon Blackburn once told me that he was inundated with emails from angry people insulting him in horrible, personal ways and wishing he would die and go to hell, all because he wrote an introductory textbook on philosophy that was too atheistic for some students whose professors assigned the text. So the hate mail and death wishes/death threats Yancy is allegedly receiving are not unique to him. The're par for the course for those who wade into public disputes on sensitive issues from gun rights to religion to abortion to immigration.

    If Yancy has been receiving far more, or far worse, hate mail than other people discussing other issues, then that would be particularly troubling. But I don't know what basis anyone has for thinking that. I just went to the comments section on the Yancy's editorial: many people praise the article, some criticize it, but none of the comments I saw after spending a quarter of an hour briefly scrolling through them were nasty or inappropriate. Quite possibly, the offending comments were flagged and then removed by a moderator. But then I don't know why we should think that this is a particularly special case needing special attention. The discussions I've seen on the blogs and at the petition site don't mention anything about the comments he received. I'm sure he's received some terrible ones: we all do when we write things like that. Scroll through the YouTube comments after any video talking about a controversial issue, and you'll see some pretty awful stuff. It gets directed at people of all races and all opinions.

    True, the fact that it happens doesn't mean that we should feel fine about it happening. It always makes me feel sick when I read comments like that. I'd love to live in a world in which nobody would ever be inclined to say or think the things that people say in response to these editorials. Ideally, all conversations on controversial topics would be joined only by people who have meaningful contributions. But even if we could get 99.99% of the population to be sane, coherent, ethical and nonmalicious, that pesky .01% would still be a very large absolute number of unhinged, incoherent, immoral, hateful people out there getting their kicks from spewing inane vitriol at others and trying their best to hurt them through their words. For that matter, even if it were only .0001% of the general population or lower, the effects of their comments could be significant. Even if we believe that we can stop this fraction of a fraction of the population from acting and thinking this way through a huge social engineering project the likes of which has never been realized, can anyone seriously think that a petition or APA statement is what will help bring about the perfect world? As Brian says, why would any of these people care what the APA has to say, even if they somehow read the statement (which they won't)?

    NatcPhD's suggestion that the response to Yancy is "the system doing its job" because the 'function' of the 'system' entails shutting down people revealing the ugly truth about racism is also not plausible here. Perhaps, if Yancy were disclosing some earth-shattering secrets about racism that the 'system' doesn't want people to think about, for fear that they will rise up in outrage and overthrow the 'system', that might be a viable explanation. But, aside from the fact that hate mail and hateful comments are normal for people writing in support for any position on these issues, there is really nothing in Yancy's editorial that supports that. Yancy begins his editorial by telling us that he is giving us a huge gift and that we need to accept it with love. Then he tells us that all white people are racists in various stages of denial, and urges us not to keep denying it. That's really all he's saying. It's been said many times by many people. There's nothing shocking that the system would need to suppress in that. Also, the system is clearly not doing its job very well, on this account, since the comments thread contains hundreds of notes from allegedly white people who seem to have found Yancy's message meaningful and to take it seriously.

    All in all, this just seems to be a non-event, however sad it is that a few people out there are miserable enough to react this way to controversial editorials. So why are we discussing an APA statement about it? A large part of it is probably just a knee-jerk reaction: someone starts a petition and says that someone faced hate mail, probably connected with racism, and we compete to be seen (including by ourselves) as at the forefront of pushing back against it. I'm sure none or almost none of us have seen any of the offending comments or emails, or even know much of what they're about or how many there were, but it feels good and costs us nothing to sign the petition, plus you get to have your name there for all to see. And it feels even better to propose that things get taken to the next step by having an APA statement about it, and then all of us will scramble to sign that, too, even without knowing anything about the issue. But I think that, mixed in with the rest, there are some signatures by people who actually think this is somehow an unusual for people writing on hot-button issues for the general public.

    But I think another reason is that we've recently manufactured a successful outrage machine in the profession, and we need to keep feeding it now. A couple of years ago, we at least had some sexual harassment allegations to get outraged about. And we could even publicize those in the mass media, inextricably connecting 'philosophy' and 'sexual harassment', since everyone loves a good sexual harassment scandal. But none of those have surfaced in awhile, so now we're scraping the bottom of the barrel and the best we have is that someone wrote an article on racism in the New York Times and apparently got called really nasty names for it by an unknown number of people.

    The thing is, this isn't going to play as well with the general public. Philosophy really is under attack. People already think of us as a bunch of eggheads with nothing serious to offer the world. We need to try our best to present ourselves as bold thinkers who come up with genuinely insightful, well-argued positions on issues that are or might turn out to be really important, and brave enough people to handle the opposition with dignity and confidence. More important, we need to present ourselves as people who can bestow these virtues onto our students. Come and learn philosophy, and we will teach you how to weather the storms of life without being intimidated by empty verbal salvos or fallacious reasoning. You, the student, will learn to confidently disarm these attacks as an independent thinker, and will also have the courage to take on the very important social role of standing up for what's right in the face of universal or near-universal opposition.

    How exactly does this square with the public image of a philosopher as needing special protection, in the form of statements from the APA and even a proposed American Association for the Protection of Philosophers? Cab drivers, celebrities, servers at truck stops, mental health professionals, politicians, trial lawyers, and pretty well all other people are expected and able to handle abusive comments without the protection of special statements, petitions, or associations designed to support and advocate for their right not to be insulted. Is the image of philosophers we want to send to the general public? That, unlike all the rest of you who bear up and find ways to endure or fight hateful comments on your own, we need and deserve special protections? Do we want to send a message to the thousands of racial minorities working at Wal-Mart in godforsaken corners of the country that when they get called by racial epithets by nasty, unhinged customers in their daily routine, they have to grin and bear it, but that when George Yancy does once, the rest of the philosophy professors go to work just for him and the other philosophers? Really? Let's think carefully about this.

    Reply
  5. Ruth Chang

    I agree with the 3 comments above.

    First, we shouldn’t understand the attacks on George Yancy (which by the way rise to a level of viciousness and racist vitriol that boggles the mind — and his attackers have stalked him beyond the internet) as just an instance of the sort of attack that might be experienced by a white male philosopher who sticks his neck out to say something unpopular. The attacks are fundamentally racist, replete with racist epithets and racist calls to violence. They presuppose for their success exploitation of a social system that unjustly makes certain groups, in particular women and minorities, more vulnerable than others.

    Second, the APA, as the professional representative of the American philosophical community, has a duty to stand up for the professional rights of its members but also to express its solidarity with members who are the target of serious racist and misogynist abuse in the course of their professional activities. The APA is preparing such a statement.

    Third, a statement by the APA, which may be picked up by media outlets, sends a message to philosophers and to the public that philosophers who risk venturing into controversial issues in the public domain and receive ad hominem racist, etc. abuse, harassment, and death threats in reply are supported by their philosophical peers. As AnonAdjunct so nicely puts it, we as a philosophical community want to say to such philosophers: 'we’ve got your back'.

    Reply
  6. Scott

    Having read all the other comments in this and other discussions of the proposed APA statement, or for the proposed American Association for the Protection of Philosophers, I'm still at a loss as to what the point is. It looks to me as if all the justifications for it have been shown to be inadequate. And as I argued at the end of my long comment above, a statement would have some negative effects, too.

    The justification that the statement or Association will help prevent Yancy and others from receiving obnoxious, racist comments has already been answered. The people who make these comments almost certainly will not read the statement or hear about the Association, and if they do, they won't care.

    The justification that these things are needed because sometimes the aggression faced by Yancy and others goes beyond mere internet vitriol and actually constitutes harassment or endangerment has also been answered. When things get to that point, they become a police matter.

    The justification that the targets of the nasty comments might become demoralized because they falsely believe themselves to be hated by everyone, including their philosophical peers, and hence we need a public statement, seems misguided. First, there doesn't seem to be anything extraordinary about the Yancy case: many of us receive abuse from people. We can take it for granted that the overwhelming majority of professional philosophers oppose anyone being targeted with inane invective and that if we receive hate mail or nasty comments from random people, the rest of the philosophical community is on our side. If the worry is that it's easy to forget this simple fact in the face of nasty adversity, then we can solve that problem by having each APA member receive an email once a year saying simply "Remember that your colleagues are on your side if you receive insulting and inappropriate comments from members of the public." (You should be able to opt out of those reminders if you don't feel you need them, though.) Such reminders would clearly be true, and there wouldn't have to be a different statement for each person we know about. We would therefore cover everyone who gets insulted, not just the people who tell us all about it.

    Are there any other justifications for the statement or Association? If so, what are they, please? Or is there a good counter to these responses to the justifications? If so, what? Or if this is the state of play, why are we still moving forward with the statement or Association ideas?

    Reply
  7. Daniel

    I want to thank Scott for these series of great posts. I completely agree.

    Reply
  8. E.

    I understand Scott's point, since in my department, we don't send condolence cards when someone's parent or spouse dies. Instead, we receive an opt-out email once a year that says, "Remember that your colleagues are on your side if you have recently been bereaved."

    Reply
  9. Scott

    E., I think it would be fine for individual philosophers to write private notes of commiseration and support to George Yancy (though I hope none of us would suggest that being called insulting names by random people in private contexts or places that apparently cannot easily be found by a ten-minute internet search is at the same level as losing a parent or spouse). It's the theatrical gesture of having a large professional association make a public declaration that many of us find inappropriate, not to mention embarrassing.

    To continue with your own analogy, if a loved one died, I would tell people I felt like telling and they could offer me comforting words if they wanted to. I wouldn't want the APA to issue a statement about my spouse's death and ask people across the country to give me sympathy and support. I'm probably not alone in this. I also wouldn't have wanted the APA to do that in response to the nasty comments I've received when publishing in a public forum.

    Perhaps George Yancy is very different from me in this way, and feels better and better as more and more people sign the petition and as the APA works toward making a statement. If that's the case, then perhaps we should send messages through the philosophical grapevine that all of us should send him an email expressing support, since that would really make his day. Fine. But an APA statement is a public declaration that portrays the professional face of American philosophers as a whole. The Yancy affair is not something on the forefront of anyone's minds but our own. If you do a Google search for 'George Yancy' and 'hate mail' or 'racism', you don't find anything but his editorial itself, plus the petition. If you look through the comments on the editorial, none of them that I can see say anything racist (again, if there were some, they seem to have been redacted early on). This is not a current event. It isn't on anyone's radar. There's no need for a public statement by our professional body. All that statement would do is show outsiders who read it, both within and outside of academia, that we're accustomed to being spoken to far more nicely than ordinary people and that it's a big news day if one of us gets hate mail after writing an op/ed.

    This whole thing is really making us look silly. Yesterday in the checkout line, someone asked me what I teach at university, and I must admit I hesitated from shame before telling her. Let's not be a bunch of fools. I'm sure George Yancy gets it by this point that we don't agree with the people who called him racist names and whatever else they did or said. It's enough. There's no need for a petition or a statement. Petitions don't make sense unless you're petitioning some specific authority or body to do some particular thing. A discipline's official public statements should be reserved for major current events or discoveries of public interest that are relevant to the discipline. We're really setting ourselves up to look like a bunch of weaklings here. Many in the profession have moved to transform it into a place where every space is 'safe' and seldom is heard a discouraging word, and there are some small enclaves where that has actually been pretty well achieved. But look, the rest of the world is just not like that, and when you return to earth, the adjustment is bound to be pretty shocking. Just please don't make the rest of us look like people who can't handle negative comments without a thousand people plus a professional association lining up to help. (That's not a negative comment on Yancy, by the way: for all I know, he doesn't like this attention any more than I would in his position).

    Reply
  10. Ruth Chang

    Hi Scott, I wonder if you’d feel less embarrassed if you knew that many of the philosophers who have been subject to very serious racist and misogynistic abuse would welcome a statement of support from their professional association? And, as the petition seems to show, that a lot of people think a statement would be a good idea? The APA has duties not only in relation to the wider world but to its own membership. So while the wider world may be worrying about whether Putin will put polonium in their tea, the APA is concerned about how its members are treated both by each other and by nonphilosophers, including universities and the general public. It’s especially bad if the APA doesn’t stand up in support of its members who are subject to racist, misogynistic or ‘status’ abuse. It seems to me perfectly appropriate for a professional organization to make a statement in support of its members who suffer such abuse, especially given that the membership seems to think that such a statement is warranted.

    I agree with you that a statement would be less necessary if, whenever something like this happened, a bunch of philosophers – especially powerful ones – would spontaneously send supportive emails to the person who, in the meantime, is busy wading through threats and vitriol, spending time with the local police, filtering his phone messages, wondering whether his peers think he ‘deserves’ this response because of what he wrote, etc., etc. But the truth is, often the philosophers who stick their necks out get not only threats but lack of support from their peers. That is too bad. The APA is the only organ we’ve got to do something ‘official’ about it, and in way that could get traction in the wider world.

    You rightly point out that most of us don’t have the empirical data to make pronouncements about whether an APA statement against racist or misogynistic bullying and abuse would be silly and unwelcome. As APA Ombudsperson, I do have some of that data and have been privy to all manner of abusive comments. I am convinced that such a statement would be welcome in many quarters. Whether it’s silly for the organization that is supposed to represent us to show that it supports its members in this way may depend on your vantage point within the profession.

    Reply
  11. Scott

    Thanks for your reply, Ruth Chang.

    Again, I hope it goes without saying that I commiserate with George Yancy for having received these comments from others. I wish he didn't receive it, I sympathize from my own experience with him for receiving it, and if I could do something to stop him and others from receiving it, I would. I'm pretty sure that most if not all APA members agree with me in those things.

    What I still don't understand is the purpose of the statement. You say it will be especially bad "if the APA doesn't stand up in support" of Yancy and others in similar positions. But stand up to whom? If someone were threatening to fire him, then yes, we should stand up to that administrator. If someone at his job were harassing him and his university did nothing to stop that, then yes, we should stand up to that university. We should also stand up to a political party that arrests, deports, or tries to intimidate members of the profession.

    But the people who seem to have said and done bad things to Yancy, and I admit that I'm just making inferences here because what exactly has happened is so unclear to almost all of us, are not members of the profession or accountable public figures. They are unknown and unhinged members of the public, unaccountable to anyone and almost certainly indifferent to what the APA says or does.

    So again, I'm unclear on what the statement is meant to accomplish. If we think that Yancy doesn't realize that we're on his side and not on the side of the apparently unhinged racists whose comments I can't find anywhere, then let's send him emails and reassure him of that. But why the official statement? And whom are we petitioning in the petition? That's what I'm not getting. Thanks.

    Reply
  12. Mary C Rawlinson

    Dear Brian Leiter,
    Did it not occur to you that a statement of support from his colleagues might mean something to Professor Yancy?
    Maybe that's "the point." Or do you think a show of solidarity beside "the point."
    Mary Rawlinson

    BL COMMENT: I can't imagine the APA, or any professional organization, making statements whenever it would "mean something" to a victim of abusive behavior by random members of the public. Surely, as Prof. Chang's comments suggest, there must be some general, principled rationale, otherwise the fact that the APA doesn't regularly issue condolences to members who have suffered grievous losses would also be puzzling since it might well be meaningful to some of them to receive such acknowledgment.

    Reply
  13. Simon

    Scott:
    "If we think that Yancy doesn't realize that we're on his side and not on the side of the apparently unhinged racists"…
    I think if I received such a torrent of racist abuse I wouldn't be certain of any good will, and I would doubt that anyone had my back. You seem to be in an enviable position where you can assume that anyone who sends out racist abuse is apparently "unhinged," easily spotted amongst the general population and OBVIOUSLY nothing to do with the civilized community of Philosophers. Well, let's make that as evident to everyone as it seems to be to you. From your comments it seems that you either don't believe there is any point to institutional expressions of moral commitments or that any such things must be justified by their demonstrable effect on specific individuals. I don't find either position plausible.

    Reply
  14. Scott

    Hi, Simon.

    So you think Yancy is disoriented by the torrent of racist abuse and now thinks the rest of us are racists, too, and you want to urge people to send him emails reassuring him that we're not racists? As I said, sounds good to me. If it would help him, let's send him the emails.

    In my email, I'm not going to tell him I 'have his back', since it just seems misleading for us to say that. "I have your back" means 'I'm watching out for you and if anyone tries anything with you, I'll be there to help fend off the threat.' But we can't fend off the threat. No matter how many of us send him condolences, and no matter how much we'd like people to not send racist comments, well, people can send comments and we won't be able to stop that from happening. So if Yancy is being harmed by the comments and is worried that there will be more, we don't 'have his back' because we can't get between the comments and him, as far as I can tell.

    But none of this explains why you think the APA should issue a statement about this rather than it just being up to us (and there seem to be lots of us) who will write Yancy personal notes of condolence and support. I don't think I'm the only one baffled by this. Brian Leiter put it well immediately above your comment: "the APA doesn't make a habit of regularly issuing condolences to members who have suffered grievous losses."

    So here are three things I'm going to ask again.

    First, why make an exception with Yancy? Sure, he's received a nasty blow with all this. How about people who have lost loved ones? How about philosophers diagnosed with cancer or seriously injured? How about philosophers who have been divorced, beaten by muggers, unjustly accused of crimes or violations of professional ethics? What about philosophers who spent years working on a great book only to have it unjustly rejected by one publisher after another? What about philosophers who are mobbed at work by colleagues who hate them for no good reason, or PhDs who hang on in a tough market year after year without being able to make ends meet? Do they all get their own separate, personalized statements from the APA? Or is there some reason why what happened to Yancy is far more grave than any of the other things I mentioned (in which case, why, exactly?)

    Second, why should philosophers have a professional association that performs this service while no other people subjected to torrents of abuse, racist or otherwise, seem to get personalized public statements released on the occasion by a national professional organization? Or do you think that, say, every hospital orderly who deals with some nasty, ranting racists should get a similar statement from the American Association of Hospital Orderlies, or whatever?

    Third, why exactly do we need an APA statement rather than just some personal notes of condolence to Yancy?

    Thanks in advance for your answers to these questions. I'm sincerely trying to understand this, I promise.

    Reply
  15. Mary C Rawlinson

    Your reply indicates such a lack of ability to, in Nietzsche's words, 'shift perspectives' that it is hard to fathom. You put abstract principle before solidarity. It's not about "whenever it would mean something" but about standing with Professor Yancy against systemic racism. This is not abuse by "random members of the public": it is an orchestrated campaign. It is in no way analogous to condolences.

    As a privileged white guy, racism and sexism are something you have never experienced: your suggestion that the criticism to which you have been subjected for your attacks on other philosophers and philosophy programs might be analogous is nothing short of morally blind.

    BL COMMENT: We have managed to have an adult discussion so far, so I'd ask Prof. Rawlinson to refrain from smearing me, making assumptions about me and the attacks to which I have been subjected, or about why have I been subjected to attacks. (As just one illustration: the last person who sent me a criminal threat of violence, complete with a photo of me and my home, was a retired lawyer, motivated by nothing to do with my criticisms of any philosophers, or even of other lawyers. My lawyer and law enforcement dealt with this pathetic jackass.)

    When it comes to what professional organizations should spend their time on, I do put principles before solidarity; when it comes to my personal relations, I do not. It is only an "orchestrated campaign" in the sense that other racist crazies incite each other on the web, unless there is some fact that has not been made public yet (but Prof. Yancy has e-mailed me about this matter, so I think I am current on what's going on, but am happy to be corrected). Systemic racism requires actions by an actual system. What's going on in Turkey is systemic persecution of academics because of their political speech; it is systemic in that it involves institutional actors with leverage over state power directing the persecution. (So far, the APA has been silent on this, without even a public indication that it will make a statement, even as other academic professional associations have issued letters.) I have seen no evidence that Prof. Yancy, who enjoys the same perquisites as a tenured faculty member that you and I enjoy, is a victim of systemic attack–unlike, say, Prof. Salaita, whose cause I championed from the start, or Prof. Finkelstein at DePaul, a case I also covered extensively. I have argued in print that section 230 of the so-called Communications Decency Act should be repealed, so that non-systemic tortious abuse of the kind Prof. Yancy has suffered would give private causes of action against websites and perhaps service providers which constitute the fora in which such abuse proceeds. The APA might do something meaningful and constructive by coming out in favor of repeal of section 230, at least if the membership is on board with that.

    Reply
  16. Lexington

    I have no idea what Professor Yancy has been subjected to in any useful detail, and I know no way of finding that out. I strongly suspect that this is true of most philosophers, and most members of the APA.

    I don't see why the APA should be issuing this kind of letter unless its members, in whose name nominally it would be sent, have some way of making out what it is they might find so deplorable that they should render such an extraordinary gesture.

    And I'm sorry, saying that some of it was "racist" just doesn't do the trick. Absent any further description, I see no reason to believe that it must have been much worse than any number of other kinds of abuse to which commentators on the public scene are subjected. "Racism" — especially as the term is often used so loosely these days — doesn't represent a magic force, transporting abuse to a realm of psychological damage unreachable by other means.

    Reply
  17. Fred Evans

    George Yancy made an important philosophical statement about racism and received racist comments in reply. He is a member of APA and thus the attacks against him and his philosophical statement would serve as an effective and appropriate symbol of the racism our organization stands against, especially at a time when we’re currently realizing (once again) how virulent racism still is in the U.S. Thus the racist responses to Yancy’s statement provides us with an opportunity to contribute to the general protest against racism. I’m sure Yancy would welcome his situation being used to remark on the larger issue and still find it difficult to understand why some might think it inappropriate.

    Reply
  18. Scott

    Just so I understand, Fred Evans: are you suggesting that the APA should release a statement saying that it's opposed to racism in general (in case some people think the APA endorses or condones racism and that we cheer on racists when they write inane and hurtful drivel in response to articles written by philosophers, or that we don't really have an opinion either way on the matter, so that we can clarify that, surprise surprise, we're actually opposed to racist insults and that we think it's bad when pathetic racist loons hound public figures)?

    Or are you saying that, rather than or in addition to a general statement informing the public that we're actually opposed to people being called racist names, the APA should release a particular statement just about the fact that George Yancy received racist comments? In that case, why Yancy and not others? I asked this question again back in comment 14. What is your answer to it, please?

    Reply
  19. Fred Evans

    The answer is that this is an appropriate opportunity to make the general statement in the context of the concrete and personal attacks against George Yancy as well as in the context of the petition in support of it. Such public statements contribute to the struggle against racism in the U.S. What's on our website is likely to have further distribution outside of APA. If other such comments provide other occasions for such support we should consider them as they occur and take up the question of whether our earlier statement is sufficient. The APA public response is also a way to show, in line with Mary's point, our personal solidarity to George at this time even if we can't do it in the same manner for all individual cases.

    Reply
  20. Efk

    " If the worry is that it's easy to forget this simple fact in the face of nasty adversity, then we can solve that problem by having each APA member receive an email once a year saying simply "Remember that your colleagues are on your side if you receive insulting and inappropriate comments from members of the public." (You should be able to opt out of those reminders if you don't feel you need them, though.)" What a silly and trivial statement. We are a profession that has not managed to have more than a handful of philosophers of color. These numbers do not make it seem as as if we are "on your side"–when you refers to people of color. Given such vicious attacks, if we cannot send a public message in solidarity with the victim of the abuse, we are even worse than the numbers make us seem.

    When anti-semitic or racist attacks are waged even by a very few, the most powerful tactic has always been for the majority in community to send a clear and strong message of solidarity with the victims of such abuse. Silence, justified by the sentiment,"well everyone knows those a just a few thugs", comes across to victim and abuser alike as tacit acceptance.

    Ruth Chang makes the case so eloquently and convincingly, only the sort of obtuseness illustrated by the statement I quoted above is capable of missing the point. The armour of philosophy doesn't protect a person from threats that echo centuries of deadly violence.

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  21. Cookerson

    Yes, Scott. I urge you to email Yancy, if you haven't already, and ask him what's going on and what he thinks about it.

    BL COMMENT: Prof. Yancy has been proactive in sharing information about the racist abuse he has suffered and in solictiing the APA to make a statement.

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  22. Chris Rawls

    Thank you Fred. Well said. I am also in agreement with Dr. Chang and Dr. Rawlinson.

    Reply
  23. Scott

    Fred Evans and efk, thanks for your explanations (though I'd still like to know if the two of you think it's normal and proper for all professional organizations should issue public statements whenever they learn that one of their members was faced with racist comments, etc., or if you think that philosophers or academics deserve special treatment in this way).

    efk, as I'll explain below, you seem to be a paradigm example of the kind of person Yancy was speaking against in his editorial.

    I find your suggestions to be based on a very implausible description of what's happening now and what will happen. You talk about the proposed APA statement being distributed more widely and contributing to a broader, nation-wide struggle against racism. You see the public as viewing us with suspicion if our professional association doesn't release an official statement, since there are comparatively few philosophers of color. (There is also this categorical and completely unsubstantiated claim, for which I would like to see the support: "When anti-semitic or racist attacks are waged even by a very few, the most powerful tactic has ALWAYS been for the majority in community to send a clear and strong message of solidarity with the victims of such abuse.")

    It seems you imagine this happening: groups of non-philosophers are sitting around across the country this weekend discussing things, and someone brings up the topic of the racist emails George Yancy received. Someone else says, "And what has the APA said about that? Nothing!" A third person says, "Yeah, those philosophers — disproportionately white. I guess we now know why. They're a bunch of racism-enablers." But later that day, one of them walks by the newsstand and the headline of the Sunday New York Times catches her eye. It says "American Philosophical Association releases statement in support of George Yancy." She picks it up, reads it over, and then sheepishly says to her friend, "I guess those philosophers are good anti-racists after all. I take it back!" Across the country, other people in supermarkets pick up the newspaper, while other Americans from all walks of life surf the internet and find themselves on the APA website. They read the statement and are moved to say, "Wow, if the APA is willing to take a stand on the George Yancy issue, why can't the rest of America? It's time to rise up against racism at last."

    I know that description is cartoonish, but I'm having a hard time seeing what causal chain you're suggesting will lead from the release of the APA statement to the reduction of racism in the US. If you can give us a more plausible explanation of the causal process you have in mind, I'm keen to hear it.

    There are at least two major problems here. One of them is that it elides the difference between implicit and explicit racism. People who would hound someone with racist taunts are among the country's few explicit racists. They presumably don't have a hard time recognizing their own racism (if they weren't racists, why would they use words like that?). I don't think any serious person claims that there's a significant national problem in the US with explicit racism. The claim, instead, is that many people and institutions in the US are implicitly racist. Actually, that's the main claim that Yancy is making in the editorial: he's saying that white people in the US don't even recognize the racism they're a part of because they don't have explicit racist views – they're tacitly part of a system that routinely disadvantages black people, but they fail to realize this fact because they would always be opposed to explicit racism.

    But here you come along now, saying that if everyone saw the APA opposed explicit racism, that would inspire others to join in the fight to end what (according to Yancy himself) is a problem of widespread IMPLICIT racism. What is far more likely to happen, as Yancy must be all too aware, is that people would sign the petition against the explicit racism, or smile approvingly, thinking "I'm on the right side of this issue!" and feel they are already part of the solution to the problem, so that they've done their anti-racism duty for the week. That's feel-good antiracism, and actually (again, according to Yancy himself) is more likely to avoid a serious solution to the implicit racism problem you claim it will solve.

    Saying that you're against racism, or won't stand for racism, or are really, really upset and disheartened that people are racists, or stand in solidarity with people who are insulted or harassed by racists, is not news to anyone. It's like saying you're opposed to child molestation. The default assumption among pretty well everyone is that people and organizations are not explicitly racist, would explicitly deny being racist if asked, and would like the world to know that they oppose all racism. To say that you're against racism is self-congratulatory and serves no other purpose in a world where pretty well everyone claims to hate racism and the explicit racists know they're in a minority.

    The second problem is that *nobody outside philosophy is talking about this or knows anything about it*. The Yancy case isn't front-page news, or even p.23 news. Aside from the petition, absolutely no information about it can be found online. It's not on anyone's radar outside of the profession. Aside from philosophers who read the blogs or got sent the petition, nobody knows about it. Nobody's waiting for a statement from the APA, even leaving aside the fact that no professional associations are in the habit of releasing statements on such occasions anyway. Nobody in the big world out there is putting the lack of a statement together with the underrepresentation of philosophers of color because they don't know the demographics of the profession in the first place, they don't know that anything has happened to Yancy, and they don't even know who Yancy is. And if the APA did release a statement? Well, that wouldn't change anything, because they wouldn't read it or hear about it. Nobody cares.

    If someone managed to persuade Ira Glass to mention the statement on NPR, then half the listeners would say, "Oh yeah, philosophy professors. What do I know about them? Hm: they sexually harass their students and they release statements about some minor racism thing I don't know anything about", and that would be the end of it until that image of us pops into their heads the next time their governor tells them that humanities professors contribute nothing to society. Then, they'll think to themselves, "Oh right, what are we paying those people to do again?" If the best thing they can think of is that we support other people whose salaries they're paying when those other people are harassed by racists in a way that is very minor compared with black people being killed by deranged police officers, well, they just might think "Philosophy professors sound like kind of decent folks, except the sexual harassers, but they don't seem to be saying or thinking anything the rest of us can't come up with on our own. I guess philosophy is like that." And there will end the great project of helping to solve America's racism problem through releasing an APA statement. If, that is, some of us have enough leverage over Ira Glass that they can persuade him to make the announcement.

    Reply
  24. Lexington

    I really do wish that Prof Yancy, if he expects the APA to issue a statement condemning the racist abuse he has suffered, would disclose to the membership of the APA just what that abuse has been. How severe was it? Did he feel obliged to go to the police or to lawyers?

    I find it very hard to understand why Prof Yancy hasn't made this sort of obviously key detail public, if he is seeking a public remedy.

    BL COMMENT: He has disclosed a fair bit in e-mails sent to many people and on various blogs. I see no reason to be at all skeptical that he has been subjected to a lot of racist abuse and threats. I think the focus of the discussion should remain on the issue of what, if any, is the role of the APA in such a situation.

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  25. Chris Rawls

    I know for a fact that groups of non-philosophers are not only sitting around discussing what Dr. Yancy is going through right now and his NYT piece, including how to further support him against the hate mail, phone calls, and threats he is receiving, but also that all of my students and the students of some of my colleagues are also doing so. Many have signed the APA petition currently, I believe it is approaching 1000 signatures, and some of them are from several individuals from around the world.

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  26. Scott

    How did they find out about it, Chris Rawls? I've been typing in Google searches like "George Yancy racist emails" and "George Yancy harassment", and the only useful things I'm getting are the petition and the feministphilosophers piece on the petition. My point, again, was to rebut the view that we should petition the APA to issue a special statement in order to respond to the major public discussion about the emails Yancy received. If the point of the petition and the statement are to respond to the public concern about the issue, and the only public concern about the issue arose as a result of the petition and the call for a statement to respond to the public concern, there's something worrying going on.

    But I'm still waiting for you to offer a coherent and plausible causal story illustrating how you think the issuing of the statement you want would actually be a sensible path to ending or even diminishing implicit racism. I'm also still waiting for you or anyone else to explain whether and why you think that philosophers deserve special personalized statements in these cases while no other professionals seem to get them. I'm still waiting for an answer to the question Lexington and I raised in different ways about what kinds of harms or losses entitle one to a personalized public statement from the APA, so that these goods aren't distributed unfairly. I'm still waiting to hear your response to Brian Leiter, who points out a far more effective way of dealing with the situation, and a much more important issue on which the APA, unlike the German philosophical associations for instance, has yet to release a statement.

    Any hope you might provide those?

    Finally, I'm not sure how much to think the signing of the petition counts as knowing anything about the case. If you have politically concerned friends or acquaintances, you get tons of these useless, feel-good petitions all the time. Most people who get them and devise them put very little thought into them. Someone hears about the Yancy case, decides that something must be done, and the next thing you know, there's a petition going around. That doesn't mean that whoever put the thing together had any coherent plan for converting the petition to a positive result, or had thought through the way that a surfeit of petitions or statements from an organization greatly diminishes the effects of all of them, which are issues on which empirical moral psychologists have discovered a great deal. And once the petition is created, it gets signed more or less brainlessly by hundreds of other people if it has the right keywords and the names of the signatories are publicized. Nobody, particularly those who have been sent the petition by someone they'd like to impress or avoid disappointing, wants to be seen as the person who didn't lend support. Many of the signatories for this one probably thought, "Oh no, something racist happened to a person of color opposed to racism, and my friend sent it to me, OK, I'll sign it!" and didn't know anything else about it and never will. Then they feel satisfied with themselves for having done something to stop racism, however ineffectual it is sure to be, like all these other petitions and statements directed at nobody. One of the curses of the internet age, I'm afraid.

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  27. Fred Evans

    Scott, I think non-academic institutions should do the same as we (APA) are hopefully going to do. It can all contribute to society's struggle against its racists and other unjust and uncaring tendencies. The question for me is how to do it effectively, and that should be a question any institution should put to itself. I think George has provided us with just such a moment in our (APA's) case.

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  28. Scott

    Thanks, Fred Evans.

    Just to confirm: you think that this should also be undertaken by organizations like Starbucks, too? If Jane Doe is a bartender at a TGIFriday's and some rowdy customers make some very insulting and demeaning comments to her, you feel that the central management at TGIFriday's should issue a statement specifically about the Jane Doe incident? And if Terence, a longshoreman, gets a bunch of nasty comments from some random non-employees hanging out at the docks, casting unwelcome aspersions upon Terence's sexuality and saying they hope he dies, the dockworkers' union should come out with a special statement just about this incident with Terence?

    My guess is that, if your wish were actually to be realized, we'd have tens of thousands of these statements coming out every single week. (If you think we'd only have four or five across the entire country, then there doesn't really seem to be that big a problem to address after all). Do you have any thoughts on how these statements could be distributed? Should the bodies issuing them try to get them all on the national news? In that case, the news hour would have to be much longer just to include all the official statements. Or are you thinking that the organizations should just have a 'Statements' icon on their official websites for people who want to read through the latest ones?

    Also, would each one require a general vote or petition? Are you envisioning that everyone will sign and comment on everyone's petition or statement? Or if I belong to United Auto Workers, do I just limit myself to reading, signing and commenting on the ten thousand weekly statements and petitions circulating about insults and harassment directed against other auto workers that week, so that I'm not quite as overwhelmed by those pertaining to people in other professions? Even then, if I were to spend two minutes per petition and there are even a thousand-odd petitions or statements per week, that's my 40-hour work week, right there. Should there be an app that signs the petitions automatically so that I can get some work done?

    I'm being a little tongue in cheek, but there are some real logistical issues here I don't think anyone's thought through. This really seems to me to be a case of a poorly conceived project that's sweet and well-intentioned, but doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you stop and think about it.

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  29. a non

    For reasons already mentioned above, I'm ambivalent about whether the APA, in principle, should be issuing statements such as these. On the one hand, it's great that the APA wants to send a deserved message of support to Professor Yancy and to the wider public. On the other hand, it's unclear if it will have much, if any, substantive impact, and perhaps the APA, as a professional organization, is better suited to focusing on issues that are more clearly related to the profession as a whole, especially given that there are and will continue to be innumerable opportunities to express such sentiment.

    One reason, however, that I do not think has been mentioned, and which makes me view this proposal disfavorably, is that this is of a piece with the social justice warrior mindset that has taken over much of the philosophy blog world, if not much of the APA itself. It is yet another call to sign on for a symbolic expression of "solidarity." Symbolic internet expressions are of course the coin of these 'activists,' and if one dares merely to question the rationale or effectiveness of the symbolic display, like clockwork some brave soul (like Mary C Rawlinson above) comes along to tell you how morally obtuse you are, and how afflicted with "white privilege" you are so as to be incapable of understanding the depths of your depravity.

    In calmer times, I would likely be more supportive of this effort, even if still a bit skeptical as to the value of a symbolic display. But frankly I think it's being pushed with an all too familiar aura of righteousness, one which I have no interest in helping to sustain.

    I wish Professor Yancy the best during this time.

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  30. Fred Evans

    Hi Scott, I think the clause in my reply about petitioning effectively covers your objection. Will petitions always be carried out effectively? Will any class of actions? That's always part of the task and the alternative is unacceptable, silence. The issue of effectiveness has to be dealt with as it comes up; I think it works well in the Yancy/APA petition issue. We should all thank each other for out input and, hopefully, make the APA public statement in support of Yancy and anti-racism.

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