Decompiling Oppression #8
Sam McVeety
As we navigate our current reality, we are depending on formal and informal networks of information (perhaps more so than ever) to make sense of the world around us. This week, we'll be exploring the idea of counterstories, a term coined by Richard Delgado in advocating for a greater amount of personal narrative in otherwise sterile disciplines like legal writing and advocacy. His stated goal was to solicit these counterstories in a way that would destabilize and challenge dominant ways of thinking, as well as provide a source of strength and solace for those who identified with these counterstories. (The longer piece is Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others, highly recommended for those with some additional time.) In his own words:
Stories, parables, chronicles, and narratives are powerful means for destroying mindset - the bundle of presuppositions, received wisdoms, and shared understandings against a background of which legal and political discourse takes place. These matters are rarely focused on. They are like eyeglasses we have worn a long time.
We've already spent some time talking about how counterstories can appear in practice, including our discussion of speculative fiction. This week, we'll return to the effects that counterstories can be intended to have, and look at some specific examples as they relate to the current crisis. My thanks to Dean Mario Barnes for the class discussion that inspired this week's entry.
One of the many tragedies of our current moment is the racialized severity of the pandemic, as Black and Latinx folks are dying from COVID-19 at higher rates than the population at large. One narrative calls these trends race-neutral, and explains the disparities in outcomes as caused by underlying differences in so-called comorbidity factors, such as hypertension and diabetes. Some go even further, and explain these disparities in terms of community behavior, shifting blame onto the victims themselves.
The counterstory, however, identifies that these underlying factors are racialized as well. The racial wealth gap, food deserts and food injustice, disparities in health care coverage and access, and more, all contribute to these causes. Further, the fact that the American Medical Association must explicitly call for service providers to begin gathering race-aware data on the pandemic is a sad commentary on these kinds of colorblind assumptions, to say nothing of our ability to learn from the past (e.g. Katrina and the 2008 Recession). When we talk about the deadly consequences of racism, our present moment is a stark example, and lends undeniable weight to Ruth Wilson Gilmore's blunt definition of racism:
Racism, specifically, is the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.
Beyond the immediate health factors, there are a number of additional racialized factors that emerge as we dig deeper. Home health care service jobs are disproportionately held by Black and Latinx folks, and these correspond to higher exposure risk. A more specific counterstory to consider: the many domestic care workers who are delivering essential medicine and services to homes, and perhaps not receiving the same attention as more privileged medical professionals.
Here in the tech industry, we've seen counterstories emerge around the idea of a spotless meritocracy, from Susan Fowler's exposé at Uber, to the Google Walkout. The entire #MeToo era reflects the power that a counterstory can have, when it receives sufficiently widespread attention. Another set of counterstories to consider: what constitutes the "normal" that we hope to return to? Invitations for this week:
Personal: Consider why a return to normal might not be a welcome prospect to those for whom "normal" has failed. What can we do differently?
Communal: As you talk about the crisis and process it, think about whose stories you are telling, implicitly or explicitly. Think about what counterstories you can find and amplify.
Solidarity: Support community health organizations like Country Doctor, and/or pledge to donate a paycheck to frontline organizations.
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