Marginalized People Don't Need Politeness, They Need Power

There’s an ever-percolating fight happening in left-of-center spaces about the tactics of the “call out” and shaming culture. This fight is rarely productive. Critics of those tactics argue they are counterproductive; defenders counter that these critics are really just defending racism, sexism, etc.

I have a number of objections to these tactics, primarily strategic (they scare off many potential allies) but also on principle (we should want our movement to embrace compassion and forgiveness). But the biggest thing is this: the bigotries that afflict marginalized peoples are structural, not personal, and shaming can only ever target people, not structures. Even in the rare extreme case of the shamed losing their job or suffering other real personal setbacks, no one has ever articulated a way that these tactics materially undermine the actual inequality that marginalized people face. Shaming culture is often called destructive, but arguably its greatest fault is in its powerlessness, not its power. ICE, the racial income gap, and cissexism can’t be shamed.

Shaming culture teaches people from dominant groups that policing their language and thoughts is sufficient to achieve change. But you cannot be polite enough to black people, as a white person, to undermine white supremacy. You cannot be respectful enough to women, as a man, to dismantle patriarchy. You cannot celebrate LGBTQ people sufficiently, as a straight person, to reduce homophobia. Instead, tackling these things requires fighting for changes that will actually cause you real diminished status, as a member of a dominant group — reparations, equal pay laws, legalization of the undocumented. Thus shaming culture, though derided as too harsh on white people, men, and cis/het people, actually lets us off the hook.

All of this should flow from the beliefs of the very people who defend the call out. When we say patriarchy instead of sexism, or white supremacy instead of racism, we’re acknowledging the preeminence of the structural rather than the personal. So act accordingly. Stop trying to fight structural problems by shaming individuals. It will never work.