At least since Ancient Greece, humans have recognized that they are not always rational. One of the major legacies of the Ancient Greek intellectual tradition (most famously articulated in Aristotle’s Rhetoric) is the three-layered theory of persuasion: logos–pathos–ethos. In this school of thought, reason (logos) was only one of three–often equally important–modes of human persuasion, alongside with credibility (ethos) and emotions (pathos). Therefore, to understand something, you must think, trust, feel – or engage in any combination of the three.
Two millennia later, we have overwhelmingly maintained the broader Ancient Greek notion that reason is not the only channel through which we understand things (and each other). Recently, however, some of the rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has taken Aristotle’s de-monopolization of the persuasive potential of reason one step further, but not in a direction Aristotle would have been likely to approve of.
Founded in 2013, the BLM movement was originally associated with its namesake slogan. During its recent boost, however, following the heinous murder of several unarmed African Americans by police officers, the movement seems to have complemented its signature “Black Lives Matter” motto with a parallel slogan for its non-African American supporters: “I Will Never Understand, But I Stand”. In the current ideological climate, many non-black BLM supporters seem more at home with using a slogan that not only highlights their cause, but also delineates them from African American proponents of said cause by explicitly stating their racial background.
For Aristotle, the means of persuasion could differ (reason, trust, or emotion), but the goal was always the same: understanding. By contrast, this increasingly popular slogan definitively precludes the possibility (and therefore the utility) of understanding (“I Will Never Understand”) as a driving force behind non-black activism against racial injustice. By juxtaposing the alleged inability of non-black BLM advocates to grasp racial injustice with their support for the BLM cause (“but I stand”), the slogan implies that these individuals cannot be driven by palpable comprehension of – and sympathy with – racial injustice, but rather by an axiomatic embrace of anti-racist activism.
The Trap of Constructing Racial ‘Hierarchies of Suffering’
The only scenario where the “I Will Never Understand, But I Stand” slogan would stand to logic is if the plethora of racial injustices in the US (anything from police brutality to socioeconomic inequality) could be definitively proven as unrelatable to other forms of human injustice around the world. This kind of reasoning would be contingent on a factually problematic – and morally dubious – hierarchy of global suffering, where racial inequality in the US would always come out on top.
Aside from the empirical difficulties around ranking different forms of human misfortune, this hierarchy is particularly counterproductive for a movement with a global appeal. By joining the “I Will Never Understand, But I Stand” hashtag, thousands of disadvantaged non-black BLM activists in developing countries around the globe have dishonored their own suffering by asserting that what they have gone/are going through – let alone any knowledge they may possess of racial disparities in the US – is insufficient for them to grasp the (implicitly more complex) grievances of African Americans. For the same reason, thousands of (otherwise sympathetic) others may have rejected BLM altogether.
Of course, BLM leaders could defend their slogan from this charge by arguing that their insistence on the inability of non-black individuals to understand BLM’s grievances helps expand BLM’s network, as it does not require its members to possess any familiarity with the issues at stake. They might also posit that, if other activist movements around the world were to take a similarly sui generis approach to their causes, there would be no ‘hierarchies of suffering’ left; if all grievances out there are treated as unique to their victims and impenetrable by outsiders, they will become inherently incomparable.
However, even if the slogan does prove beneficial to BLM’s growth, and even if it stops short of contributing to the further marginalization of third-world discourse at the expense of Western societal debates, it is difficult to see how it could have a positive impact on its very cause: fighting racial injustice in the US. This criticism strikes at the core of BLM’s increasingly postmodern orientation, which probably far surpasses – albeit being perfectly exemplified by – this slogan.
Collective Recognition over Individual Prosperity
The emphasis on “lived experience” in the slogan – and often in the BLM movement as a whole – logically results in BLM’s trivialization. Under the standard assumption that the success of a movement is measured by its impact on policy, BLM could surely benefit from the input of scholars (black or otherwise) who have dedicated their careers to studying some of BLM’s grievances and are sympathetic to BLM’s cause regardless of their race. This is particularly true in complex and polarized domains such as police reform, where poignant stories by African American victims of police brutality are probably less effective in preventing such brutality in the future than cold-headed proposals for institutional reform.
Instead, slogans like “I Will Never Understand, But I Stand” provide ammunition to Francis Fukuyama’s somber thesis that contemporary movements are rarely concerned (at least not primarily) with measurable policy impact. His 2018 book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment reminds us that some of the brightest minds in human history, such as Martin Luther, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Friedrich Nietzsche, have been fascinated by the human desire for recognition, which often comes before – or even at the expense of – physical and material prosperity.
By Fukuyama’s metric, BLM rhetoric that frames the plight of African Americans as incomprehensible to other races is more ‘effective’ than any specific policy outcome because it provides African Americans with the ultimate recognition of the uniqueness of their grievances. Thus, the success of the slogan is independent from – and might even be incompatible with – any measurable amelioration of BLM’s grievances. Tackling socioeconomic inequality, for instance, would require a pan-racial coalition of disadvantaged (albeit predominantly non-white) Americans that would strive to ameliorate each of their individual lives, but at the expense of undermining the collective recognition of the uniqueness of African American grievances. Paradoxically, and perhaps ominously, African American insistence on the unique nature and magnitude of their plight carries the danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
E Pluribus Unum?
Going forward, rhetorical universality could prove to be one of the decisive conditions for BLM’s future success. For an ambitious movement striving to upend America’s systemically racist social structure, Black Lives Matter is an appropriately bold name that has by now become largely immune to superficial criticisms under the misguided all-lives-matter banner. BLM activists have been right in pointing out that their name is merely a call for equality (BLM doesn’t stand for Black Lives Matter More). At the same time, slogans like “I Will Never Understand, But I Stand” are causing this line of argument an enormous disservice by framing anti-racist activism as an axiomatic truism rather than an intuitive response to blatant racial discrepancies.
In 2020, racial inequality in the US is, indeed, so well-documented that it is hardly difficult to understand. Black Americans are almost ten times poorer and more than five times more likely to be incarcerated than white Americans. African American women are more than four times more likely than white women to suffer a maternal death.
Yet, as of 2016, 38% of white Americans believed African Americans had achieved an equal social status. To understand just how wrong they are, these people need to do a simple Google search, not take some mystical leap of faith (“I Will Never Understand, But I Stand”). For this to happen, however, African Americans have a role to play, too. The same 2016 data reveals that as many as 44% of black Americans believe racial relations can be improved by highlighting inter-racial differences rather than commonalities. In a country founded around a credo of coming together (“E pluribus unum”), this particularistic lens, while not necessarily intended that way, is an ominous indication of an in-group mentality that is more likely to reinforce racial divisions than it is to narrow them.
This exclusionary mindset is only being exacerbated by the demand for abstract collective recognition embodied in BLM’s recent rhetoric. To narrow racial discrepancies, BLM needs to recognize that most of its grievances–while disproportionately experienced by African Americans–are not unique to any particular race. Whichever combination of Aristotle’s three persuasive tools is adopted by the movement in the future, it must rest upon an empirical elaboration of racial inequality as an objectively recognizable injustice, rather than a stubborn insistence on a counterproductive hierarchy of suffering.