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Conversing with the Willfully Ignorant
Jul. 31st, 2024 05:03 pmI'm not sure how we fell into the conversation -- my co-workers know I'm on the progressive side of politics, and sometimes when social/politics topics happen to come up, I tend to get...um...enthusiastic.
But this morning a casual conversation (I forget about what) veered onto questions of innate versus socialized behaviors (around gender) and then slipped sideways into racial justice. And here's the thing: this particular co-worker is ... I'm not quite sure how to describe his politics accurately. "Conservative" is probably best, but not in a frothing right-wing sort of way. We've had some conversations of mutual incomprehension before.
But today I got too frustrated to keep trying. Because he slipped sideways into "I believe myself to be unprejudiced and to interact with all people as unique individuals, and therefore I choose to believe that everyone is like that. If you want me to believe that there people in the world who act out of prejudice (racial, gender, etc.) then you need to provide me with scientific studies that I will give due consideration to." And in the specific example we were discussing, "Unless and until you prove it to me, I will not believe that police officers are preferentially hostile to Black people, putting their lives in danger, because that wouldn't be a rational way to act and I believe that people are rational."
But here's the kicker. He ended the conversation with, "But we can agree to disagree and it doesn't affect our friendship and how we feel about each other."
And I had to tell him bluntly that his willful ignorance *did* affect my opinion of him. That his choice to be oblivious and incurious about how other people's lives and experiences were different from his own, did result in me having a lower opinion of him. It might have been easy to shrug it off. And I have no illusions that my answer will cause him to reflect any more deeply that he's chosen to do in the past. But I had to be honest.
He closed by saying he hoped we'd have a chance to have more in-depth discussions in the future, but I feel like I could drown him in statistics and studies and he'd find some reason to decide they weren't conclusive. So why should I do his homework for him?
But this morning a casual conversation (I forget about what) veered onto questions of innate versus socialized behaviors (around gender) and then slipped sideways into racial justice. And here's the thing: this particular co-worker is ... I'm not quite sure how to describe his politics accurately. "Conservative" is probably best, but not in a frothing right-wing sort of way. We've had some conversations of mutual incomprehension before.
But today I got too frustrated to keep trying. Because he slipped sideways into "I believe myself to be unprejudiced and to interact with all people as unique individuals, and therefore I choose to believe that everyone is like that. If you want me to believe that there people in the world who act out of prejudice (racial, gender, etc.) then you need to provide me with scientific studies that I will give due consideration to." And in the specific example we were discussing, "Unless and until you prove it to me, I will not believe that police officers are preferentially hostile to Black people, putting their lives in danger, because that wouldn't be a rational way to act and I believe that people are rational."
But here's the kicker. He ended the conversation with, "But we can agree to disagree and it doesn't affect our friendship and how we feel about each other."
And I had to tell him bluntly that his willful ignorance *did* affect my opinion of him. That his choice to be oblivious and incurious about how other people's lives and experiences were different from his own, did result in me having a lower opinion of him. It might have been easy to shrug it off. And I have no illusions that my answer will cause him to reflect any more deeply that he's chosen to do in the past. But I had to be honest.
He closed by saying he hoped we'd have a chance to have more in-depth discussions in the future, but I feel like I could drown him in statistics and studies and he'd find some reason to decide they weren't conclusive. So why should I do his homework for him?
