Just Talking vs. Talking Justice
We ban books but not bullets.
We forgive hate but not college debt.
We are for life but not quality of life.
We celebrate patriotism but not democracy.
And we tend to cancel people but can’t critique ideas.
There are deep flaws in our world. That much we know. We also know that things need to change for the better and they need to change for all, including and especially for those with non-dominant identities. While change is never easy, and the process of change is hardly ever clear it is important to know how changes in ideologies, values, and thought come about.
The adage is that action speaks louder than words and there is much truth to that. But there is something to be said about how we speak, what we speak about, and who we speak to and with. Dialogism is the idea that meaning making is done in interactive spaces when ideas negotiate for legitimacy. Dialogism proposes a pathway for meanings to change based on how a word, a concept, a phrase, or an utterance is understood based on its conventional use. For instance, the way we understand “professionalism” has changed and evolved over time as new and different voices have challenged conventional notions of “professionalism.” The dialogic scholar Mikhail Bakhtin suggests that our very existence means that we are participants in the dialogic process, and in the act of talking to and with each other that we construct meaning. If constructing and changing meaning is facilitated by the process of dialogue it is worth considering how good, we are at it.
The dialogic process is not simply talking, but talking with the intent of introducing, contesting, affirming and (re)constructing taken-for-granted-meanings by inviting multiple and varied perspectives. Evaluating our media and communication ecosystem with the concept of dialogue in mind reveals hard truths about a truly broken system.
How We Talk – Political Conversation as an Example
You sit in front of your screen, ready to evaluate which candidate deserves your vote. The bright blue and red animated background backlights the candidates who are vying for the voter’s attention. The moderator has the questions for the candidates. Carefully vetted and researched questions can distinguish policy stances between the candidates. For the discerning voter who is still on the fence, the policy debates can be the moment which leads them to a decision. That is, if the candidates abide by some understood rules about how we relate with each other and how we talk to each other. Unfortunately, debates from the last few election cycles were probably as far from a dialogic process as one could expect. Debates by their very nature are not dialogic. But what we have witnessed of late on these platforms is barely just talking. Candidates usually spoke in soundbites that lacked nuance; recitation of facts were replaced with invention of facts; and generally meaning making was overshadowed by often clumsy character takedowns.
How political debates have changed is just one symptom of a larger problem. We have become less tolerant of nuance and perspective taking in our conversations. Divergence of thoughts, experiences and positionalities are too often indictments of character rather than a space for imagination and meaning making. Celebrities are cancelled for saying the wrong (or right) thing. People are named and shamed on TikTok and other social media channels for misbehaving. Books are being banned in schools. University faculty are being fired or not having their tenure applications approved. Families are torn apart by ideological divides at the dinner table. In response, many social thinkers including Pres. Barak Obama have called for the return of civility in our talk. The assumption is that if we just listen to each other instead of talking over and around each other we can re-build a different and better world. But does civility provide a pathway forward to a better democracy for all?
A Critique of Civil Discourse
Those who call for the return to civility in our everyday discourse yearn for the good ‘ol days when one could expect to speak without being interrupted, cancelled, or name called. There are several definitions of civil discourse; most of them circulate around the ideas of honest conversation, engaged listening, agreed upon rules of engagement, moderation of tone and owning opinions and viewpoints. Civil discourse is often positioned as a tool for increasing understanding about an issue. Perhaps given the current context, a return to civility would be a welcome change. Civility promises a manner of reasonable turn-taking in speech; a process of rational argumentation; a degree of decorum that doesn’t involve criticism of the character; and a prioritization of logic over emotion. This is a construct of civility advanced by those who are currently in power, with the ability to define and regulate what kind of speech is rewarded or even permitted. The question we must consider is if this kind of speech provides a pathway to participation for those who aren’t in power and have been excluded from participation in the dialogic process.
Imagine intruders who walk into your room, push you out, close and lock the door behind you. They jam the keyhole and then invite you in, but only if you can get inside without using any force or breaking down the door. The call for civility in discourse is precisely this. We must remember that there was nothing “civil” about the colonization of Indigenous land. There was nothing “civil” about the enslavement of African people. There is nothing “civil” about the violence that was (and continues to be) perpetrated against women, Queer people, and Trans people. There is nothing “civil” about imprisoning immigrants who come to these borders looking for a better life. Suggesting that these marginalized communities can have their rights and their land restored if they participate in society civilly is at best naïve and at worst a willful strategy to maintain status quo.
To be clear, I am not advocating for violence. I am suggesting that expecting non-violent responses but not providing a pathway for change and progress is a serious miscalculation on all our parts and of the patience and grace of people who have been rendered invisible for too long. Our comfort and ease cannot continue to be at the cost of others’ discontent. History (if we choose to learn from it) has taught us to know better.
Change by its nature is an agitation project. It is often the consequence of people realizing that something isn’t working. That realization only happens when there is discomfort or disruption to everyday life. The problem with civility is that it reduces the friction necessary for people to realize that something is radically wrong. Civility can smooth over the rough edges of pain and harm so that people in power can participate in the intellectual exercise of considering change without reckoning with the real life-and-death consequences of not changing. Civility blunts the urgency of change and instead waits for those in power to willfully give up power, while also disincentivizing it. Change by its nature requires and results in discomfort. Change will unsettle ways of thinking and being. It will invite us to re-imagine a world that is unfamiliar to us. But change is also inevitable. It is best we plan for it and invite it in.
Dialogue as a Method to Transform Meaning
Dialogue, when practiced well, has the transformative properties that provide us with an opportunity to create a more just world. Researchers at the University of Michigan’s Program on Intergroup Relations study the process and impact of dialogue on meaning making and transformation. They begin with the assumption that meaning making is a relational process where competing meanings, based on a variety of lived experiences, are negotiated through discourse. The challenged and changed meanings can then be at the foundation of newly constructed understandings of the world.
The dialogic process, however, is not sterile and reason driven. People who have experienced oppression and violence have reason to be fearful, angry, and mistrusting. Sterilizing the meaning making process of these emotions is both dehumanizing and invalidating to those who have experienced harm. The process of dialogue instead invites the expression of emotion and places it in its historical context. Furthermore, dialogue assumes that dominant ideologies (whiteness, masculinity, heteronormativity, ableism, etc.) are always represented in the conversation by way of the people who occupy those identities or by normative ways of thinking. Balancing the power dynamics of dominant ideologies then requires a series of conversational maneuvers that intentionally dislodge these ideologies. Below we explore the kind of critical questioning that can yield new meaning construction that centers justice as its guiding framework.
Talking Justice
Justice requires an honest accounting of harm perpetrated, a restoration of the damage inflicted, and a commitment to discontinue the practice that inflicted the harm in the first place. Talk alone is not likely to yield justice. That requires serious systemic changes and courageous decision making. But talking about justice requires us to rethink conventional ways of understanding the world and create space for new (and more just) ways of thinking and being.
Moving toward a justice framework means asking critical questions that interrogate the underlying normative ways of thinking, and then inviting different lived experiences and perspectives to reshape and reimagine how we understand a concept.
For example, consider how we have always understood the concept of employment. For the longest time it meant waking up in the morning, dressing up a certain way, traveling to a worksite, performing certain tasks within a particular timeframe, heading home, and repeating this process each day, Monday through Friday each week, year over year and expecting to be compensated for that work performed based on the kind of skills. Asking the following critical questions reveals the kind of harmful notions that we have long held about employment that have contributed to our current inequitable system.
Critical Question: How did we arrive at this concept? What is its historical standing?
Possible Answer: Post industrial revolution, labor unions, largely consisting of male factory workers argued for a 40-hour 5-day work week to prevent over-working and profiteering from industrialists.
Critical Question: How is this concept or meaning entrenched in our way of being in this world?
Sample Answer: Schools and day-care are largely organized for traditional 9-5 work hours. Unemployed people are routinely stigmatized as are women who choose employment over caregiving. The work week is organized around Anglo-Christian holy days. People who exercise traditional notions of intelligence (mathematics, logic, scientific thinking, etc.) are compensated more than those who use their physical skills in areas like carpentry or masonry.
Critical Question: Who is served and who is harmed or excluded by this taken-for-granted meaning?
Sample Answer: Men, who have lower expectations of parenting children are served, women and caregivers are harmed. Employment is location-bound and people who can live close to work are served, people without means for transportation and live in rural areas are harmed.
Critical Question: How can it be different so that the harm is eliminated? Or mitigated?
Sample Answer: Flexible work schedules allow for a diverse and larger workforce to join an organization. Equal pay for equal work values workers equally incentivizing retention and participation of people with non-dominant identities. Equally valuing different work (care giving vs. STEM professions) allows people with varied employment and identities to live lives of dignity.
Critical Question: What is my role in changing the taken-for-granted meaning?
Sample Answer: Advocate for flexible work schedules at your place of work. Destigmatize care-giving professionals by better valuing this work with better compensation.
These are just a sample of answers that became more palatable in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Employment practices as we knew them will likely never be the same. That is the dialogic process at work. Conversations took place across workplaces that included voices and perspectives that had thus far been drowned out by the steady beat of normality. When the voices were finally heard and listened to the concept of employment changed irreversibly making employment more accessible for people who were otherwise on the sidelines.
Imagine if we apply this same framework to crime, fair housing, reproductive care, or gun rights. Ask the same questions and invite participation from varied voices but especially the marginalized ones that never had the opportunity to speak into the meaning-making process. When the way we understand an issue changes, our priorities change. When our priorities change, the way we act and our commitment to taking action changes. The pathway to change requires a higher form of discourse than mere civility.
Changing the Way We Talk
In recent years there is a proliferation of programs that advance civil discourse as the remedy to our social ills. We see that in our institutions of higher education, in political think-tanks, in our social-media channels, in our media commentators and even in our elected leaders. Civility moderates the content and the process of expression in ways that align with the values and comfort of the academic and class elite. This in turn keeps important voices and perspectives outside of the dialogic process. The “angry black woman”, the “eccentric queer person”, and the “illiterate immigrant” do not get to participate in the meaning making process if civility is the cost of admission. What we require is a way of talking that invites people in as legitimate and valued voices and then integrates their lived experiences into creating new meaning even if and especially if it is a departure from the way we have done things.
Perhaps in our current circumstances the nature of our discourse has deteriorated so far that civil discourse is all we can aspire to, or perhaps we are unwilling to imagine a kind of discourse that can change status quo, because status quo provides us with some comforts. But either way we should be under no illusion that mere civility in our discourse is enough to precipitate systemic change. Imagining a new and better world for all requires a mode of talking that allows for new meaning to be constructed. When our (those of us in positions of power and privilege) imagination is limited by our lived experiences, it is time to invite others to help with this process. That is the pathway to a more just world.
The pathway to justice doesn’t begin with just talking…. but talking about justice.
