Petty Coercion -2 Truth

Not too long ago, Jim Carrey starred in a movie called, "Liar, Liar." He fell under a horrid enchantment, the effect of which was that he couldn't "tell a lie" for 24 hours. During the time of his enchantment, he said some really awful things that were called "truth" and that were supposed to conform to the comedy format. I didn't think they were funny, even though I recognized that a lot of people would, because they were embarrassing and I just don't happen to find embarrassment funny. My bad. But I didn't think they should be called "truth" either, because I distinguish between truth and candor. By candor, I mean expressing however you happen to feel at the time. By truth, I mean being careful not to mislead people when it is important that they know what you mean.

This post concerns the second of Marilynne Robinson's emphases in her essay, "Petty Coercion," (there is a hyperlink to the full chapter in the previous post, but no citation: it is from her book, The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought.) Having dealt with public courage and private courage at the beginning of the essay, she goes next to truth.

Let us say that the sort of courage I wish to consider can be defined as loyalty to truth. I am not entering any epistemological thicket here. The kind of truth that interests me is the type sometimes represented in the statement, "The house is on fire."

She does have a more political statement in mind. It is this.

"...the disparity between rich and poor in this county exceeds any previously known in American history (putting aside the marked economic disparity between plantation owners and slaves) is to say something falsifiable--that is, for practical purposes, verifiable, and in any case, arguable.

The people I read, Paul Krugman, for example, ordinarily say "the worst...since the decade before the Great Depression," but let's leave that aside. It isn't Robinson's concern anyway. This is her concern:"But such statements are now routinely called "Bush bashing." In other words, something that is true--"arguable" is the lowest of the standards she cites--is set aside because it is a slur cast by a hostile subgroup. If she were not as articulate as she is, would say, "Bashing, schmashing. Is it true or not?"

I think she's right. The Republican party during the Bush administration presided over the continuation of the polarization between rich and poor. I'm not saying they caused it because it was going on before they got there. I will say they furthered it and they justified public policies that exacerbated it. So it's "true" using Robinson's standard.

It is the setting aside as a partisan slur that really irks her. If they said, "Yes, the people with the lowest incomes have indeed suffered under our economic policies, but there is a larger logic to it," I would understand. I wouldn't like it, but I would understand. If they said, "In the long run, the public treasure we heap on those who have acquired private treasures will, in the long run, provide the jobs that will help to close the equality gap," I would understand. What they did, in fact, accuse the Democrats of was "playing the class card," or, sometimes, "urging class warfare." The logic of this defense is what Robinson says it is, "Don't ask whether it is true or false, ask only what the intention behind it is."

Doesn't that just irk you? A Congressman gets caught blatantly breaking the law. The person who points it out is accused of having a "political motivation." The accusation is "politically motivated," they say; they don't ask whether it is true and they don't care. It is that attitude that focuses a clear light on what Robinson means by "truth." She cares, in this instance, whether the Congressman did or did not violate the law.

This is a question that has some deep emotional roots for me. I think I can tell this story briefly. I was raised in a culture where blacks were casually derogated. There weren't any actual black people in the little town where I grew up, but "They" were available in jokes and political comments and cultural presuppositions. "That's mighty white of you," is, for instance, a compliment that belonged within the cultural complex I am describing.

So naturally, when I became liberal, I rejected it all and the racial part of the rejection was the position that black people are just white people with unusual amounts of melanin. "Skin color" was the only allowable criterion. All others, even differences that everyone could see for himself, were said not to be true and the people who said that there were other differences were, simply, racists.

Then, one Sunday, I was reading an article in the New York Times Magazine. The black owner of a men's clothing store in Harlem was telling the reporter that the clothes they sold were actually designed for blacks. The reporter didn't understand what he meant. "Well," the owner said, he seemed to me to be feeling for the right words for this ignoramus, "you might have noticed that a lot of black people have rounder butts than white people. We design clothes that take that into account and they fit better." I was humiliated. My face burned. I wanted to look around to see if anyone could have seen me running smack into the wall the reporter ran into.

I had seen a lot of black bodies by then and I knew how characteristic that rounded butt was. I knew how much effort I had put into "not noticing," or, when necessary, "denying" it. Because noticing this particular truth is "racist" and I was not prepared at all to deal with this question on the basis of whether it was true. I was busy being liberal and I wanted to see all the truth I could see without being racist and without giving up my moral superiority to the people who said forthrightly what we could all see. I didn't have the courage to see what was there to see.

There are two sides to this virtue. I may be courageous in continuing to argue for the truth even when people don't like it and when I may be subject to retaliation for doing it. This is not, except in the rare "whistleblower" case, a matter of public courage. It is more often private. That means it is a kind of courage that people will have to define for themselves, all over again in each new situation. It is costly. I have to be willing to be a "Bush basher" or a "class warrior" even if I am sure I am not.

The other side is the passive side. On this side, I might be someone associated with the Bush administration or a pro-Bush Republican, and when a social critic brings up the economic equality crisis, I say, "That's a point that is worth attending to." It is easy to dismiss the critic as a Basher, but I don't.
There's a beautiful example of this in the amazing movie, Invictus. President Mandela is out on an early morning walk with two black guys who have been his public protection for a long time. They stop to see a newspaper headline, which says, "He can win an election, but can he govern a country?" One of the guards protests, "Not even one day on the job and already they're after you." Mandela responds, "It's a legitimate question."