Tone and Conflict Management
Okay, this is kind of an outgrowth from the "tone argument" post, but it's really a separate question...
Anyone who's been through any kind of relationship or group communication counseling (maybe this is an assumption?) has probably gotten the same basic template for "how to have a difficult conversation":
Person A: expresses something
Person B: says, "okay, what I heard you say was, yada yada yada."
A: accepts B's summary or corrects and redirects.
B: "when you say yada, it makes me feel sort of blahdiddy blah."
A: "I hear that you feel blahdiddy blah"
and so forth. "I" statements, engaging behavior rather than person, engaging specific incident ("when you did this") rather than sweeping generalities ("when you always"), reflecting back what is heard, owning your own feeings, respecting the other's right to feel whatever they feel, etc. and so forth.
Maybe I missed it, or maybe I was clueless enough at the time that I missed it, but I saw precious little of this going on during Raceflail. (Is it over? I've stopped following, but is the Flail still Flailing?) Most of the conversations, especially the heated ones, seemed to be more about winning/losing or defeating the evil antagonist than about actually resolving the conflict.
Almost more interesting, I saw (or thought I saw) a far greater proportion of clueless (and yes, they were really clueless) white people attempting to engage these tools in conversations (sometimes ineptly), and a comparably great proportion of POC or allies abandoning them entirely in favor of anger (not necessarily unjustified) and retaliative (not necessarily unearned) attacks.
Which makes me wonder (as usual, it's taken me paragraphs to get to the point): IS THIS "ESTABLISHED" TEMPLATE AND METHOD OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION ITSELF A PRODUCT AND BYPRODUCT OF PRIVILEGE? Because the pattern seemed to happen over and over again:
CWP: clueless and racist statement about something they know nothing about
POC: that was racist and you're clueless
CWP: Wait, obviously you didn't hear what I said, so I'll say it again, more clearly but unfortunately no less cluelessly
POC: @#$%^&*()!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CWP: I can see that you're feeling angry and I wish you didn't feel that way, because I still don't think you hear what I'm saying--if you heard what I was saying, I'm sure you wouldn't be angry, so I'll say it AGAIN, because the point of all this is for you to hear what I'm saying and reflect it back, and THEN we can talk about your feelings.
POC: #$%^&*#$%^&#$%^&!!!!!!!!!!!!
CWP: Wow, you're not interested in healthy conflict management at all, are you? Fine, then I won't either--$%^&*#$%^&#$%^&!!
POC:@#$%^&*#$%^&*$%^&*$%^&*(!!!!!!!!!!!
CWP: See, if you didn't overreact so much, this would never have happened. Why can't we have a healthy conflict management conversation?
(Let all be assured that the levity indicated above is intended as no indication that the situations themselves are funny; they are not funny, they are painful in the extreme.) (Let it also be clear that a lot of CWP in those conversations sort of suck at healthy conflict management conversations, despite their attempting to engage in them.)
So: Conflict management conversations. Group relationship counseling. Is the use of their techniques itself an indication/exercise of privilege?
Or does no one know what I'm talking about because I'm the only one on here who's been through marriage counseling? twice?
--J