Kamala Harris: Enjoy The Long Weekend

[Dill]

(06-12-2021, 11:12 AM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: Dill: My reasons are partly ethical and partly (I think) rational, but I never set down pre-conditions for discussion, especially agreement with me, at the outset on issues to be discussed. 


When it comes to the quotes we've seen, I don't think setting pre-conditions for discussion (simply agreeing that these are vile statements that have no place in an educational setting) is at all an unreasonable position.  If we can't at least have a starting point of denouncing the languange used then it's abundantly clear to me that further discussion isn't something I'll be terribly interested in partipating in.

 
Change "white" in that women's speach to any number of other races or religions.  Would we really need to hear how she audbily spoke these words, the context in which they were used, or spend any time whatsoever side-stepping the obvious?

Sorry I am late responding.  But again, this comes down to our very different approaches to understanding social and political issues.

1. It's not clear to me what our further discussion could be about if we "simply agree" at the outset that "these are vile statements that have no place in an education setting." Would we just vent our anger as we confirmed our biases? What can we learn, if we think we already know?  I'll likely never agree that we don't need to learn/understand the original context of "representative" quotes in media reporting. For me, there are no special exemptions from this guideline.

2. So, "sidestepping the obvious," I listened to Dr. Khilanani's conception of her practice and its goals, as well as her experience as medical student and finally professional practicing psychiatrist who also treats white patients. I learned that--

A. She believes that white people suffer guilt and rage because of racism, and that they have difficulty acknowledging it. If they really want to "get past racism" they need to work through these emotions, which they cannot do if they don't admit they have them. White denial is for her a kind of medical condition. She also thinks that conservatives are better positioned than liberals, as they are more in touch with their rage, express it more easily. She imagines herself getting along better with Ann Coulter than white liberals, on the assumption Coulter owns her rage. 

 B. as a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst, her job is to be empathetic with patients, to listen to THEIR experience, anxieties, fears, rage etc., not interject her own into the dr.-patient relationship. Patient honesty is important here. If patients have rage and acknowledge it, that is a first step in dealing with it. If they don't acknowledge it, that is denial and inauthenticity. (I add that, from what I know of psychoanalytic practice, it is not unheard of for doctors to challenge denial when they see, in efforts to break it down.) 

C. As a speaker, it is part of Dr. Khilanani's MO to model how she thinks psychoanalysis should work especially in treating mental problems connected to racial disparities in power.  So, at some moments of her Yale talk, she disclosed some of her own feelings of rage, e.g., expressed as the fantasy of shooting whites, and in her action of "unfriending" most of her white friends, frustrated at their difficulty in understanding/respecting her experience of racism/white supremacy. This unfriending followed years of attempted dialogue, she says, and among the worst offenders were "woke" white liberals who suggested that she was "overreacting" and "overly sensitive." 

I believe her assumption here was that, as speaker modeling a psychoanalytic approach, it was the role of the audience to empathize with her experience, and her role to share it honestly.

D. In the interview given after the talk, she says that obviously she does try to talk to white people, though she said it was a waste of time in her speech.  She also reminds us she was speaking to a specific audience of professionals and students, most of whom could be counted upon to understand something of the proposed intersection of psychoanalysis and race, but a number of whom probably believe that such explicit address of racial issues, disparities, and concomitant rage should be kept out of medicine. She would likely counter that is denial in the guise of presumed scientific neutrality. 

3. One of the "learning goals" of Dr. Kilhanani's speech was to set up "white peoples lack of empathy for black rage as a problem." That in itself inclines me to pump the brakes on any rush to judge her before listening to her, lest I simply model the very behavior she is complaining about. To "substitute 'white' in her speech for any other minority" would led us right past one of the problems she was seeking to make visible so it could be addressed, namely that people of color, as people, are not directly and equitably "substitutable" for whites in our existing institutions: they have more obstacles, "ceilings" and fewer opportunities. I understand why she might be very angry if, after experiencing institutional racism directly, she is then held to "equity" in her language to avoid discomfiting those who don't recognize the problem she sees. 

So in conclusion, I find that "the obvious" gives us very little to discuss regarding Dr. Kilhanani's speech. Whereas figuring out what problems/issues she is attempting to address, ranging from white denial of white rage/guilt to institutional racism in the medical profession, and assessing her methods in terms of audience, psychoanalytic practice, stated professional goals, does give us something worthy of discussion and exploration.