When you woke up this morning, the first thing on your mind probably was not, ‘I would like to offend someone’.
This makes sense. Getting on with your fellow folk is important for your survival. But a multicultural society makes things trickier. In the wrong environment, anything from ‘who should be in charge’ to ‘what makes the economy work’ can be divisive. So it makes sense that we tend to avoid discussing tricky issues.
But censorship does not make these issues disappear. Rather, it covers them up.
The result is that controversial subjects can only safely be raised in bubbles of like-minded people. The bubbles turn into echo chambers, endlessly bouncing the same set of attitudes around.
And then, things turn nasty.
An echo chamber does not merely repeat a message. It reinforces and magnifies it. You, as a bubble member, are ever more aware of your prejudice and make ever more effort to avoid discussing your views outside of it. ‘The other’ becomes ever larger. The views inside the bubble become ever more extreme. More aggressive. More racist.
This is nothing new. Perhaps the most familiar bastion of white male privilege are ‘gentlemen’s clubs’. They are known for obscure rules concerning behaviour around ladies. In an environment where women are all but excluded, this usually has little to do with gentlemanly conduct. More likely, it ensures that any sexist attitudes are invisible to the outside world. Put simply, it ensures that their prejudices were left unchallenged.
If we leave our 'bubbles' unchecked, I worry that the gentlemen’s club offers a vision of our future. Because yesterday's 'gentlemanly conduct' has become today's fear of 'microaggressions'.
Microaggressions are as damaging as they are real. The effects on minority groups are well documented. If you're subjected to enough passive hostility, you cannot help but feel unwelcome.
But avoiding them at all costs comes with nasty side effects. Do we refer to a given minority as 'Jew' or 'Jewish'? 'Black' or 'African'? What if we get it wrong? True connections are replaced with squabbles over labels. Paranoia escalates until it seems too risky to ask ethnic groups what they are comfortable with. Better to keep our ingrained prejudices safe and sound inside, with absolutely no threat of challenge.
And so, the ‘separate but equal’ message that spawned 20th Century US racial segregation becomes the norm.
Such separation is the perfect hotbed for intolerance. Genuine concerns over immigration, for example, give way to illogical suspicion of foreigners. Worries over crime in black communities spawn a demonization of anyone with the wrong skin colour.
So how can we avoid becoming victims of our own don’t-mentionery?
By plucking up the courage to approach other groups and ask questions. What do they feel strongly about? What makes them feel that way?
The risk of lifting self-censorship is clear. But the only alternative is to destroy inclusivity upon its own altar.
That’s a risk worth taking in my mind.