The very idea of political conflict with "the establishment" is central to progressive politics. By contrast, there seems to be a kind of tension at the heart of the conservative self-understanding. On the one hand, conservatives take themselves to be “quietist” guardians of tradition, where “tradition” is conceived as an accumulation of time-honored skills, habits, and hard-won wisdom of past generations. For the conservative, the progressive’s high-minded social theories and struggle against the status quo can never provide a worthy substitute to tradition, and so tradition must be preserved (or restored). On the other hand, this call for preservation is also the source of reactionary periods when the conservative must confront the progressive who seeks reform or revolution.
If, to the conservative’s ear, “tradition” signals a set of traditions that are to be defended against progressive reform, then those traditions are those that progressives find discriminatory against particular groups. Generally speaking, those traditions tend to fall under the descriptor “white patriarchy,” and seem to include implicit expectations for men of color and women. In other words, the conservative’s preservation of tradition entails the preservation of traditional power structures. These traditional power structures have the general effect of benefiting white men at the expense of (broadly) colonized populations and women, and the conclusion therefore seems inescapable that, among the political conservative’s interests, is the preservation of some historical forms of oppression.
But, to many conservatives, concepts like “white supremacy” and “patriarchy,” as names for pervasive social forces, are just inventions of progressives—these terms have application only to confused fringe groups that enjoy no significant social influence; we’re all equal now in the developed West, and any claim to the contrary represents a distortion of social reality. After all, many African-Americans and women, themselves, identify as conservatives. (A stronger version of this view is that terms like “patriarchy” and “racist” are used to oppress white men.) Such a view rejects the very idea of institutionalized racism and sexism, or, relatedly, that one’s political ideology could be the product of unconscious, automatic thought processes. Racism and sexism, according to this view, exist only in explicit form—in KKK rallies and on shadowy skin-head websites.
I am convinced that the progressive should reply that racist and sexist attitudes are largely implicit, and that self-report—while perfectly acceptable in some contexts—is simply not a reliable identifier of such attitudes. Of course, implicit biases are not confined to conservative ideology: given the overwhelming complexity of modern life, any individual’s ability to cope socially would be hopeless if she could not rely on some shortcuts in thinking, including stereotyping, and other automatic (emotional, moral, intuitive, etc.) reactions. It has been sufficiently demonstrated by psychologists that these shortcuts and automatic reactions are the implicit source of much of our explicit behavior. Nosek, et al. in a 2010 paper called “Implicit Political Cognition” note that political ideology in particular is best understood as a phenomenon of implicit cognition. That is, ideological commitments have been shown to swing free from explicitly stated political views and identity. The ability to articulate one’s ideological position in the space of political reasoning, “is not a necessary condition for one to have an ideology or ideological motivations.”
Insofar as there exists institutionalized racism and sexism, the source of its perpetuation is a set of practices that are discharged outside the conscious deliberation of society’s members.
The conservative might reply as follows: “I don't believe in institutional racism. Society is composed of individuals. I participate in no organization that in any way practices racism of which I am aware. If redlining is practiced, as you say, then it is repugnant, period. But if it is based on economics, then it is an economic reality.” Redlining is indeed based on economics—pure and simple. Bankers do not tend to make decisions based on their personal attitudes toward people of color, wishing them ill, or desiring to make life economically harder for them. No, the extent to which the decision is economic is precisely the extent to which racism is institutionalized. If it is an economic fact that investment in, say, black neighborhoods is a risky affair, then this just is a demonstration of institutionalized racism. The unfortunate fact is that economic decisions are routinely based upon an economic reality that tends to disproportionately affect people of color.
If the conservative were to accept that these structural biases operate within social practices (and not just in the skulls of individual people), and further accept that an uncritical attitude toward such practices perpetuates racial and gender injustice, he or she is forced to take responsibility for having defended racial and gender biases in the name of tradition and either, (1) work with the progressive to eliminate such injustice, or (2) admit that such injustice does not bother him or her. But the conservative’s reaction to (1) and (2) all but guarantees a defensive reaction against the acceptance of the obvious reality of institutional racism and sexism.
Consider what Patricia Hill Collins calls the “matrix of domination.” Collins explicates this concept by reference to the felt experience of individuals living at the intersection of multiple oppressed identities. Her focus is black women in a white, patriarchal society, but, as she says, whatever the particular intersection, “structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal domains of power reappear across quite different forms of oppression.” These forms of oppression constitute the matrix of domination. Many conservatives will have a visceral reaction to the language, and general perspective, contained in this last sentence. No fancy social theory employing new terms and turns of phrase will convince them that the benefits of a critical look into the origins of current social practices and treatment of the areas in which misogynistic, white supremacist infections linger, outweigh the risks that lie in our becoming untethered to “our” common traditions, the latter being our best guide to a better future.
Donald Trump managed to win the presidency in part by tapping into this reactionary vein of conservative voters who have witnessed the burgeoning values and opinions of marginalized groups gain legitimacy, thus threatening “our” tradition, the traditional standpoint of white men. The “suppression of Black women’s intellectual traditions,” writes Hill Collins, has forced Black woman to “feel” their way to a “Black women’s standpoint.” That is, it is not clear what the Black women’s standpoint will look like until individual Black women “[use] their experiences as situated knowers.” The preference of the Trump conservative is that Black women, Black men, Muslims, Mexicans, and every other nonwhite instead embrace a universalizing of the white-male tradition—including the tradition of their own secondary status.
David Millar is a writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. His work focuses on the philosophy of language, politics, and the social sciences.
The lack of substantial examples makes this argument hang on implicit bias. A path to solution on that would require an adequate understanding of implicit bias, multiple tests and a consistency across those, which there is no evidence for. Reeducation via anti-bias training is nowhere near having this solution. I find that very detrimental, so the clinging toward conservatism in favor of tradition is a large question. “What will you do in order to enact change?”
Right now, a discussion about what works and what does not has little room for psychology to become an arbiter. The idea that, because it was white men who founded this country there are exclusive values belonging to our tradition. is unrealistic and un-compelling. People have contented themselves with these values over other ones and part of that is not using the government as a club to adjudicate values over peoples. I see the conservative movement as being primarily interested in the least coercive adjudicator of value. In the United States we try and let price do that to the degree it can. Fighting racism, sexism, etc is noble and if you can point to a business that is practicing this we can shun them together, otherwise you have me fighting windmills. This did not seem to be what happened with the businesses who had locations in the north and the south. There were oppressive businesses once the government interference was lifted, of course, and those are worth boycotting. This is not the process progressives want to take, however. The idea as Power as God and the intersectional oppression for this reason is not productive. Small incremental change on a social level with a respect for the fragility of civilization and a functioning economy is completely tossed out.
The progressives I talk to and get to debate all seem to be sure of a historical determinism in favor of justice and good overcoming. Conservatives, however, seem very convinced that we are naturally in a state of decline and therefore need to fight for the present because it is better than the alternative and change is a liability. Incremental change can happen, radical change aimed at the structure of a good working civilization is dangerous and I have not seen a solution which doesn’t seriously jeopardize this. (The idea that “civilization is good but not for all” is null. The standards of living from Rome did not resume until the 16 or 17 hundreds.) Sorry if this is simply a critique, which I would mostly agree with, but I did not find it compelling for lack of solution.
The conservative I’m addressing is the one who is resistant to the kinds of incremental changes you seem to be describing. This conservative demands that the progressive name, for instance, one right that women are denied. But the point is not that women are consistently denied constitutional rights, though this does happen. The point is that there are implicit attitudes that make structural misogynistic social practices invisible.
Those social practices include the obvious (lower pay for women, less opportunity for advancement), and the not-so-obvious (so-called “mansplaining”, as well as the egregious insult suggested to the straight male who has been called a “bitch” or otherwise characterized as effeminate). Most conservatives explicitly reject efforts to curb these latter practices (fearing that their “free speech” is threatened–though, ironically, their demand is the freedom to silence the oppressed), and they implicitly reject calls for reform of the former,
Analogous examples could be readily be given with respect to social practices that discriminate against people of color. My experience has been that it is the progressive who is interested in reform (calls for revolution is more on the fringe), and that the conservative tends to resist such reform, charging the progressive with hyperbole, and frequently resorting to “gaslighting” in response to complaints from people of color and women.
I don’t think the neo-con’s have much in common with Burke.
I think it is possible to have a ‘progressive’ politics based on conservative values. Eg safe-guard the family by reducing working hours. Financial institutions have effected this individual badly, so we need to reform this institution (we value institutions on the basis of their impact on individuals). The precautionary principle means moving the economy to being based on renewable energy.
Thanks Evan. I agree with you. Piecemeal economic reform is key; both “tragedy of the commons” scenarios and “free loading” need to be addressed through legislation, or some other kind of institutional reform. There seems to be some reciprocal relationship between discriminatory social practices and the implicit biases of individual members of society, and that relationship seems to have taken on a life independent of the explicit political judgments of those individuals. I think that better legislative practices demand an honest appraisal of both implicit bias and institutional discrimination.
Dave,
Are you willing to cosign on the loan? If you are willing and able to provide collateral for a loan that is at a higher risk of defaulting than others perhaps the economics would support the issuance of the loan., If you are not willing to put skin in the game then why would you expect a bank to?
BTW, how long do you think the meeting is going to last if you insist that the banker first admit that they are racist (although perhaps unwittedly) as the basis of your attempt to convince them that they should issue the loan? How does that actually contribute to a solution?
What is the purpose of arguments like this? You present conservatives as being so inflexible and committed to tradition that they are opposed to any change and then argue that they are thus responsible for the most egregious evils in the world. Do you expect a conservative to break down in tears renounce their evil ways and commit to working for the Bernie 2020 campaign? A real come to Bernie moment! Or, do you not actually expect them to be a part of the conversation? I really want to know.
This country actually made an effort to encourage and in someways force banks to make the very loans you speak of. The result was that the unintended consequences of that policy nearly blew up the world financial system. Now, there was a lot of fraud, greed, and malfeasance contributing to that result and it doesn’t mean that high risk loans can’t be a part of the solution but, it also doesn’t mean that the people who questioned the wholesale abandonment of loan underwriting were racist tools of the patriarchy because they refused to get with the program. The details matter. We can’t just push them aside because they don’t agree with our philosophy. A liberal arts degree doesn’t mean that you know everything. (Whoa, now I’ve thrown the poop against the fan!)
When are we going to all channel our inner Marcus Aurelius, calm down, and get back to discussing the issues? No one wins this kind of fight.
Hi Ken. Thanks for your comment. I’m not blaming the banker herself. Her responsibility is to her employer, who is responsible to shareholders. The point is that the discriminatory practices are inherent in such an institution. The reason we don’t see sufficient outrage to such non-egalitarian practices is that each of us to greater or lesser degrees is comfortable with that sort of discrimination. We don’t believe that we are comfortable with it, and that’s what makes it implicit. So, I’m not asking the banker to admit to being comfortable with discrimination, and I’m not suggesting that she ought to ignore risks in granting loans. I’m saying that if we agree that (for instance) the practice of redlining flies in the face of the ideal of equal opportunity for all, then mortgage lending, as an institution, is flawed and ought to be reformed.
I am sorry, that just isn’t good enough. You can’t use an inflametory word like racism and then get all wishy washy about it. The banker may actually be to blame. If she denies the loan because the applicant is a racial minority she is a racist. If the decision was based on economics rather than race then well you now want to make vague aspersions against her employer or the owners of the business? If her employer or the shareholders made the decision based on race then they are racist and she has to decide if she can continue to work for them. If it was an economic decision then why are you calling it racism? What purpose does that serve? Because “discriminatory practices are inherent in such an institution?” Sure they are. They discriminate in favor of those who are more likely to be able to repay the loan and against those who are less likely. That’s called underwriting. Not all loan applicants are equal You call that a non-egalitarian practice and imply that we should be outraged by it. Why should we be outraged by it? Why would we not realize that we are not outraged by it? Redlining based on race is wrong. Why would making the loan decision based on economics mean that mortgage lending as an institution is flawed?
What does the left think they are accomplishing by dressing their arguments up in all kinds of threatening blather about the “patriarchy” and “white privilege” and you are a racist you just won;t admit it because you are not self aware enough to realize it. But don’t worry I am not asking you to admit it. What? If I understand you right even you think that that kind of language led to Donald Trump becoming president. How is that working out for you?
I assume you want loans that are now being denied to be issued. Wouldn’t it make more sense to talk about why you think that should be done, on what basis those loans should be issued, and how we are going to make sure it doesn’t blow up the financial system or otherwise do more harm than good?