I have avoided this topic for a long time. I am not a person who deals well with people. I don’t get a lot of sarcasm and jokes on the internet. I tend to see things in ways that a lot of people don’t. I also tend not to form opinions on things that don’t directly affect me until I am challenged to and have had time to research and learn about the subject.
Now you know more about me that if I had said, “I’m a liberal” or “I’m a science geek” or “I’m a humanist”.
These labels, like all labels, are a way to categorize groups of similar things. These things will tend to have the same ideas. Notice that word “tend”.
People are individuals. They are not labels. They are not collections. They are not stereotypical ideals.
People are nuanced. They have wildly divergent opinions and are capable of holding conflicting ideas.
For example. I could label myself as a Democrat. But I disagree with some of the ideas of the Democratic Party. If I say, “I’m a democrat”, then people assume that I hold to all the ideals of that party and group… even more so because it is a formal group with specific ideals, goals, and missions.
What I find so interesting (and somewhat scary) is that people who are members of a labeled group will often participate in ostracizing those who might agree with them, but do not accept the label.
It is possible to disagree with someone and still support their right to speak. It’s even possible to disagree with the actions or words spoken against someone you disagree with.
For example, some people find it amazing that I can vehemently disagree with someone and still think that threats against that person are wrong. It took almost a dozen attempts to get that across to people. They seemed to think that because I disagreed with someone that I would be accepting of threats against that person.
And it appears it’s because I refuse to use a certain label to describe myself. Because I didn’t accept that label, then I should have denied all that people who do accept that label stand for.
Except I don’t deny those things. I embrace those things. I just don’t accept a particular label to define my thoughts.
There are times when labels are useful. It is often convenient, even necessary to group people together for a large group analysis. Yesterday I posted some statistics about how often minorities are killed by police vs. Caucasians. In this case, there is a very specific reason for grouping together people with labels. Because that’s the intent of the study. To show that some groups are disproportionately affected by some event.
It’s no different from saying that, on soot covered trees, white moths tend to get eaten more frequently. When we’re studying the effects of actions or policies on a group, then it makes sense to talk about a group. I wouldn’t want to read 400 pages of personal notes that describe each individual in a large scale study and try to find some correlations.
But when you’re talking to an individual, it’s important to recognize that the individual is not the label or the group. They can have differing, even contradictory ideas. Unless you take time to learn exactly what they think, then you (and I and everyone) are in danger of making an error about what they actually think about a topic.
