On Listening as Essential — Daniela V Gitlin

Thank you, Dr. Fitzgerald for this subtle example of the influence of privilege on word interpretation.

Since Trump and the GOP swept the 2016 election, it’s been one unthinkable legal change after the other in the wrong direction, practically daily. With each thing, I’ve thought: It can’t get any worse. And then it does.

Massive protests against institutionalized racial injustice have swept the country—and rightly so—in the wake of three back-to-back murders of unarmed black civilians by white police: Ahmaud Arbury, who was jogging; Breonna Taylor, an EMT, while she was sleeping in her bed; and lastly George Floyd, suffocated by the officer’s knee on his neck for 8 minutes, 46 seconds, pleading for his life and in the end, for his mother.

The Liberty Bell has a crack in it for a reason. This country was built by white male enslavers and that legacy of state sanctioned white oppression of black people continues today. In a democracy, leadership respects the tension created by the people’s disapproval, listens, and enacts policy changes to remedy that discontent. Authoritarian leaders, on the other hand, do what they want until their abuses of power cause people’s misery to reach the tipping point, and they rebel.

We’re there with these three murders—in combination with 100,000+ dead from COVID-19, 21 million people unemployed and the galling hypocrisy and cost to taxpayers of Trump’s golf habit (estimated $110 million)—and that’s just cherry picking. Trump (and his GOP enablers), like all toxic authorities, used violence (tear gassing protestors, exhorting state leaders via tweet to use violence to put down protests) to crush this ground swell of momentum for change.

We have the opportunity now to vote in leaders that will listen and enact legal changes that end the oppression that causes black people to live in constant terror of law enforcement, along with economic and social injustice. We mainstream white people need to listen and act to support what it takes to make this happen. If black lives don’t matter, no one’s life matters.

When I follow the news, this is the refrain I hear on every media and social platform, over and over and over, from black folks speaking out and rising up and protesting: White people, you’re not listening, you’re not hearing us, we’re dying from your abuse and neglect. LISTEN to us.

I can do that. I will do that. We must all do that. It’s the first, and most fundamental thing we can do, now and continuously, to end systemic injustice.

As a psychiatrist, what I mostly do is listen, with great attention. Getting a good history requires asking good questions and listening closely to the answers, then thinking critically about what I’ve heard, which then determines treatment. Even when all else fails (sadly common), I can still make a difference by continuing to listen and bear witness to my patient’s suffering. You’d think that this would be something any caring human being would do, a duh.

But the reality is that most people won’t, and don’t, listen. Because it’s hard. It’s easier to interrupt, rebut, share a similar experience you’ve had, give advice, and/or change the subject. That’s not listening.

To listen actively is to be engaged with the other person and what they’re trying to share with you. To listen actively is to speak only to ask for clarification or to ask if you’ve understood. To listen actively, you have to be willing to receive, to be taught, to learn from the other person.

To be genuinely listened to, and heard, is therapeutic all by itself. It’s affirming and validating and healing. To not be listened to by another person can be wounding psychologically, spanning the range from mild to traumatic. If refusing to listen to an entire group of people is built into the political system, it’s obvious the consequences can be fatal.

Research reveals that reading builds empathy. When you’re reading, you are actually listening to the author, and truly listening builds empathy. Empathy connects us to one another out of our common humanity, and that connection can unite us and lead to action. Targeted group action yields social change.

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Elie Wiesel

If listening builds empathy, and reading is listening, here are a few articles worth listening to. (Quoted sections are italicized.)

On being a young black man in this country today. Gioncarlo Valentine’s Searing Portrait of the Fear of Young Black Men, by Kiese Laymon.

On the mass effect of a lifetime of tiny racist humiliations and degradations. My White Friend Asked Me on Facebook to Explain White Privilege. I Decided to Be Honest, by Lori Lakin Hutcherson

…5. When I got accepted to Harvard (as a fellow AP student, you were witness to what an academic beast I was in high school, yes?), three separate times I encountered white strangers as I prepped for my maiden trip to Cambridge that rankle to this day. The first was the white doctor giving me a physical at Kaiser:

Me: “I need to send an immunization report to my college so I can matriculate.”

Doctor: “Where are you going?”

Me: “Harvard.”

Doctor: “You mean the one in Massachusetts?”

The second was in a store, looking for supplies I needed from Harvard’s suggested “what to bring with you” list.

Store employee: “Where are you going?”

Me: “Harvard.”

Store employee: “You mean the one in Massachusetts?”

The third was at UPS, shipping off boxes of said “what to bring” to Harvard. I was in line behind a white boy mailing boxes to Princeton and in front of a white woman sending her child’s boxes to wherever.

Woman to the boy: “What college are you going to?” Boy: “Princeton.”

Woman: “Congratulations!”

Woman to me: “Where are you sending your boxes?” Me: “Harvard.”

Woman: “You mean the one in Massachusetts?”

I think: “No, bitch, the one downtown next to the liquor store.” But I say, gesturing to my LABELED boxes: “Yes, the one in Massachusetts.”

Then she says congratulations, but it’s too fucking late. The point here is, if no one has ever questioned your intellectual capabilities or attendance at an elite institution based solely on your skin color, you have white privilege…

This example reveals the intersection of racism with sexism, a systemic double whammy for black women.

On the difference between being a lip-service ally and an actual ally in the fight against systemic racism. Performative Allyship is Deadly (Here’s What to Do Instead), by Holiday Phillip

…To understand performative allyship, let’s first look at what real allyship is. An ally is someone from a nonmarginalized group who uses their privilege to advocate for a marginalized group. They transfer the benefits of their privilege to those who lack it. Performative allyship, on the other hand, is when someone from that same nonmarginalized group professes support and solidarity with a marginalized group in a way that either isn’t helpful or that actively harms that group. Performative allyship usually involves the “ally” receiving some kind of reward — on social media, it’s that virtual pat on the back for being a “good person” or “on the right side.”

I want to make clear that I do not exempt myself from this kind of behavior….

I understand the urge to say something, especially when people are reminding you that to be silent is to be complicit. But the problem with performative allyship is not that it in itself damages, but that it excuses. It excuses privileged people from making the personal sacrifices necessary to touch the depth of the systemic issues it claims to address. If you hashtagged #sayhisname, you’ve done your bit, right? You’ve publicly declared you stand against racism and therefore can check that off your to-do list. Wrong…

The author then lists four concrete ways to work on being an actual ally in the fight against systemic racism.

On implicit bias in media reportage, “racism in plain sight;” the work of journalist and artist Alexandra Bell. How Alexandra Bell is Disrupting Racism in Journalism, by Doreen St. Felix. Make sure to watch the 8 minute video.

…She earned a master’s degree in journalism, from Columbia University, in 2013, and has since honed a public-art practice that exposes biases in print journalism. Her “Counternarratives” series interrogates the shaping and spreading of information, and the ways in which narratives in reportage advance the agendas of the powerful. She uses redaction, omission, annotation, and text editing to alter articles, primarily from the (New York) Times. She then prints out enlarged versions of her deconstructions and plasters them onto walls around the city…

Word choices, image choices and layout matter hugely, and subliminally (out of verbal consciousness) support racism and other ism’s. This is the essence of implicit bias. We need to question the news we’re reading and hearing.

On the need for getting politically involved at the local level. How to Make This Moment the Turning Point for Real Change, by Barack Obama

…But the elected officials who matter most in reforming police departments and the criminal justice system work at the state and local levels.

It’s mayors and county executives that appoint most police chiefs and negotiate collective bargaining agreements with police unions. It’s district attorneys and state’s attorneys that decide whether or not to investigate and ultimately charge those involved in police misconduct. Those are all elected positions. In some places, police review boards with the power to monitor police conduct are elected as well. Unfortunately, voter turnout in these local races is usually pitifully low, especially among young people — which makes no sense given the direct impact these offices have on social justice issues, not to mention the fact that who wins and who loses those seats is often determined by just a few thousand, or even a few hundred, votes…

On why the GOP enables Trump, and why it’s extremely important to vote. Milgram: On Obedience and Authority, chapter excerpt from my book, Practice, Practice, Practice: This Psychiatrist’s Life.

Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram, Ph.D.

~A Synopsis for Your Edification~

All quoted material can be found in the original work: Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram, HarperPerennial, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 1974~

Stanley Milgram, a social scientist working out of Yale, was deeply ,troubled by the scale of the genocide perpetrated by the Nazi war machine during World War II. Implementation required massive numbers of workers, far too many to all be written off as sadistic monsters. In 1961, he set up an experiment that pitted two formidable human forces against each other:

“Of all moral principles, the one that comes closest to being universally accepted is this: one should not inflict suffering on a helpless person who is neither harmful nor threatening to oneself. This principle is the counterforce we shall set in opposition to obedience.”

Here is the experiment. Two men, strangers to each other, arrive at the lab and Dr. Milgram explains to both that the study is about the effects of punishment on learning. One man is designated the Learner, the other the Teacher. All three go to a room where Dr. Milgram straps the Learner’s arms to a chair and attaches an electrode to his wrist while the Teacher watches. Dr. Milgram tells the Learner that he has to learn a list of word pairs, such as blue box, nice day, etc., and that whenever he makes a mistake, he will get an electric shock. With each mistake the shock will increase in intensity.

Dr. Milgram then escorts the Teacher to another room, where the Teacher takes a seat in front of a large machine called a shock generator. It has 30 switches labeled by volts, starting at 15 volts, increasing in 15-volt increments up to 450 volts. The switches are also labeled with word descriptions from the first, Slight Shock, to the last, Danger-Severe Shock.

Dr. Milgram hands the Teacher a list of word pairs and tells him it is his job to administer the test to the Learner in the other room. If the Learner answers correctly, the Teacher goes on to the next word pair. If the Learner answers incorrectly, the Teacher must push a switch that gives the Learner a shock. With each wrong answer, the Teacher must increase the shock level by one increment, 15 volts.

The Learner is actually an actor and is not receiving any shocks at all. The Teacher doesn’t know this. It is the Teacher who is the subject of the experiment.

The Teacher calls out the first few items of the “learning test” and the Learner, Milgram’s accomplice, unseen in the other room, soon sounds very uncomfortable. At 75 volts, the Learner grunts. At 120 volts, he shouts that the shocks are painful. At 150 volts, he demands to be released from the experiment. As the shocks grow stronger, the Learner’s protests became more desperate and at 285 volts, he screams in agony.

Meanwhile, Dr. Milgram in a white lab coat, stands behind the Teacher seated at the shock generator and calmly gives a sequence of scripted prods, such as: Please continue. Or, Whether the Learner likes it or not, you must go on until he has learned all the word pairs correctly. So please go on.

This experiment has been repeated with thousands of people, men and women, from all walks of life, from different countries, and in many variations. The results are always the same.

If asked to predict at what point the Teacher will stop subjecting the Learner to shocks, most people will say the Teacher will stop, at the latest, when the Learner demands to be released from the study. But they are wrong: 63%—almost two thirds—of the total subject group pressed switches up to 450 volts, the maximum. They sweated, they complained, they held their heads in the hands, but they did it. Milgram drew the following chilling conclusion.

“A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitation of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority.”

Corollary studies and observations:

If the Teacher did not administer the shock himself, but told someone else to do it, the number of Teachers who shocked the Learner up to 450 volts increased from 63% to 93%. “Predictably, subjects excused their behavior by saying the responsibility belonged to the man who actually pulled the switch.”

The only common feature of the disobedient 37% was that they tended to be highly educated. Milgram speculated that they saw themselves as equal in status to the scientist/professor, which enabled them to question the legitimacy of his authority and defy it. That was in the lab. However, disobedience is much more difficult in the community. There, the disobedient have to defy both the established authority and the 63% that accept the authority as legitimate.

Milgram tested if modeling disobedience reduces compliance with illegitimate authority. It does. When two additional confederate teachers sitting next to the subject Teacher refused to obey (one stopping at 150 volts, the other at 210 volts), the level of obedience in the subject Teacher dropped from 65% to 10% for the highest 450-volt shock

In summary:

Milgram established a dark fact of human nature: the majority of people are capable of committing atrocities if ordered to do so by a leader perceived as legitimate. Resistance requires pushing back against both the authority and the obedient community. If people are not required to directly commit acts destructive to others, their compliance with authority increases. If supported by other resisters, obedience declines.

Obedience to authority is the group default. Disobedience, to effectively induce change, requires group effort, which is difficult to build given that default. Therefore, the disempowerment of toxic authorities is possible, but hardly a given.