I give another example. We have some serious problems, as I'm sure everyone here is aware, in this society around questions of race and inequality and poverty and violence. We know that the environment in our cities is a terrible thing from the point of view of the people who have to live there. There are many dimensions to confronting that question. Some of them have to do with how generous is the social welfare budget. Have we gone far enough and taxed ourselves sufficiently with respect to providing the resources that people in need must have before they can be expected to live decent lives. And those questions are, I think, effectively explored. But there are of course other questions as well that are raised by these conditions and the phenomena that occur there. The violent behavior of youngsters in these communities raises itself a set of questions of normative character that might well engage us if we were able effectively to look at them. But then the looking at those questions raises many other questions as well. Who would be doing the judging? Someone stands up and says, "Well, we must have more effective law and order. People's behavior is outrageous. They should be put away." Well that, of course, is not just a neutral judgment. That's a judgment that then raises a larger set of questions. The person who says that, how are they connected to the community? Who has the authority to say it? If the Rev. Jesse Jackson stands up and says, as he did a year or so ago,
"Violence in the central city is a fundamental problem for African-Americans ourselves. We did not struggle so long to achieve civil rights only now to kill ourselves at far greater rates than the Ku Klux Klan ever did,"
That's one kind of statement. If a Congressman or a Senator, let's say from a Republican district, who's voted against social spending, stands up and says exactly the same thing, the meaning is entirely different. An our response to the statement would be, Well, that person's motives are only to frame the question in those terms so as to avoid the social responsibility of having a decent provision for people. Whereas, with respect to Jesse Jackson, we might think that person's motives are a deep, heartfelt connection with this problem, and the issuing of a plaintive cry to call upon moral as well as social resources in addressing it.
Unfortunately, or perhaps I should say fortunately, in our society we don't have conversations that take place only among blacks or only among whites. Any effective political discourse that we have has to take place out in the open and engages all of us as citizens. And therefore, because these conversations cannot be partitioned off, the fact in history of racial inequality and conflict comes to bear on any discussion about the concrete problems, such as I've given in this example of violence, and tends to limit what it is that can be effectively accomplished with that discussion.
I'll give another example. Suppose you opposed affirmative action at your university. Someone might say, Oh, did you? What kind of person would do that? Why did you come to that intellectual position? Suppose it turns out that you're a nominee for the Supreme Court, and in your past writings, let's just say, we go back and we find out that you did make arguments against affirmative action. Well, we're prepared to draw some judgments, some of us would be, and not just in the partisan heat of a confirmation battle but upon reflection, about the values and beliefs that underlay that expression. The reason that an issue like affirmative action is so freighted and so difficult to discuss candidly is precisely because of this process of inference. Listeners are asking, What kind of person is it who is speaking to us in this particular way. They're making an ad hominem argument.
I used to think that ad hominem argument had no place in serious intellectual discussion. I thought that high-minded people would not engage in ad hominem argument. And I thought this until of course I began myself to engage in political discourse, and found that ad hominem argument was a commonplace in the way in which people would respond to things that I would say. They would ask, Who is it that's saying this to us? They would ask, What kind of person is it that would take this position? And I began to think and to ask myself, Why is that so? Why is the kind of ad hominem inference so commonplace? Why do people care where an article is published? Oh, if it's published in The Nation and it says a certain thing, well, that's one thing. If it's published in Commentary and it says exactly the same thing, well, that's quite another. I published my article in Commentary, not The Nation, and people would want to know, "Why would you publish there? Don't you know what those people are about?" In other words, the context, the framing, of the expression of the argument matters. Now you lend aid and comfort to these reactionary forces if you say it in that forum.
All contents copyright (C) 1995,1996 Richard Landau. All rights reserved.
Revised: January 21, 1996