Photo by Amir Arabshahi on Unsplash
The practice of asking who, truly, is included in a “we” can make our assumptions visible to ourselves.
Try this:
Spend the next 24 hours noticing every time you hear/read/watch a person use the word “we.”
Or, ask yourself: “Who is being addressed, but not explicitly named, as the audience, viewer, or receiver of this information, or kind of art, or cultural product?”
Take a few moments to register the information about the addressed or implied “we” that you have identified. Pay attention to the emotions that arise in you, as you consider the identified or implied “we.”
Notice if there are any contractions, expansions, or tightness arising in your body, as you allow the information to register. Notice if there are parts of yourself that are trying to close off, shut down, or shame you for asking the above questions. Ask yourself if you are rushing, or if you have slowed down, as you do this work.
After you have taken a moment to register what you noticed, answer the following questions:
Who, specifically, is being addressed in the “we”?
Whose experiences, histories, identities, or cultures are being left out of that “we”? (Choose one or two examples.)
In what ways do you see yourself as included in the “we”? In what ways are you excluded?
Now, return to the content of the material you are thinking through. How would the approach to the subject change if the “we” that was addressed included not only human beings, but also other species, or aspects of the natural world that might be impacted by the subject (rivers, forests, etc.)?
Today’s Action Snack makes the word “we” as unfamiliar and strange as possible, to heighten our awareness of what we take for granted as “just the way things are.”
This exercise asks: “How do I come to expect certain people, or groups, or identities, to be represented as a “norm” and how do I notice—or not notice—the exclusion of perspectives that dissent from that norm?”
The purpose is not so much to notice that people and perspectives are “left out” of the dominant cultural consensus.
Instead, the process outlined above asks us to explore how the word “we” can refer not only to a group of individuals, but also to a “national consensus”—a thing in itself; a structure—that is said to be representative of the “will of the people,” functioning independently of, and not biased toward or against, any particular group.
Imagine for a moment if every headline in a mainstream media outlet, such as the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal, or NBC News, specified the audience to which it was addressed.
What would it be like to pick up a “general audience” publication, and read this:
The Dow Jones returns were up 40% today for affluent white men!
Or,
New cardiovascular treatment makes heart attacks less severe for white men!
The first headline draws attention to the fact that the majority of the investors who benefit from Wall Street are holders of generational wealth or positions of corporate power—people who are, statistically, most likely to be white men. In its specificity, it raises the question of how our economic infrastructure is designed, and who benefits from it.
The second alerts the reader to the fact that the vast majority of medical procedures are designed for, and tested on, white male subjects. It asks us to consider whose health, and which bodies, are seen as valuable, and the target of financial investment and exploratory research.
The high mortality rate for Black women from cardiovascular events, for example, is a direct effect of the fact that medical researchers do not account for differences in the ways heart attacks present in different patient populations.
Nor do they account for the impact of white supremacy on cardiovascular health, or examine the ways in which Black women’s physical experience of pain is often minimized by providers in medical settings, leading to delays in care, or the misdiagnosis of medical conditions as instead incidents of psychological distress.
But when I, as a white woman, read a headline alerting me to a “new cardiovascular treatment,” I don’t expect the article will include a discussion of the impact of white supremacy or systemic racism on cardiovascular research.
What makes the work of thinking about who is “we” so hard is that there is a “we” that is a group of individuals. And there is the “we” that is the idea of consensus, of “the way things are.”
I know very well that the impact of these intertwining structures is of immense consequence to the prevention of hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and heart attacks. I also know, and care about, the impact of patriarchy and white supremacy on physical health. I want to know what the medical establishment is doing to address these stressors.
I wonder if people in medicine assume that because patriarchy and white supremacy are structural in nature, that it is the responsibility of those in “public health” to address these topics, and therefore outside physicians’ scope of practice.
Despite my interest and research in these subjects, I have internalized the idea that the true subject of a “general news story” is white people, and more narrowly, the interests of middle and upper-class white men.
I have done a mind trick, even on myself. I don’t expect my own interests to be represented back to me. I expect that any story about cardiovascular disease that focuses on populations that are non-white, or that includes the impact of sex or gender identity on heart disease, will require a headline that flags its content as “special interest.” It will be marked as “not the norm,” even though the content may apply to a statistically greater number of people.
What makes the work of thinking about who is “we” so hard is that there is a “we” that is a group of individuals. And there is the “we” that is the idea of consensus, of “the way things are.”
A group of individuals can come together and decide to take action on something. But when we are talking about a structural “we”—an idea of consensus—we are not talking about a group of individuals.
It is not that people in Wall Street are getting together to avowedly exclude people from participating in the market. After all, it is in the financial interest of firms like Schwab and Fidelity to have as many folks participate in the market as possible.
Why are some needs taken to be more pressing, or more “normal” for the culture to address, and others “too big” or “too difficult” to solve?
Articles on generational wealth almost uniformly begin by hailing the fact that children as young as 18 with “even less than $500” can open brokerage accounts and start learning about the market, as if opening an account is the only barrier to entry.
Similarly, it is not that researchers desire to discriminate in their heart research.
So if there isn’t a conscious plot or intent by individuals or groups to exclude—or, conversely, to take actions that benefit a certain group of people—how is it that the needs of some people are prioritized by the culture at large, and the needs of others are invisible, unrecognized, or unmet?
Why are some needs taken to be more pressing, or more “normal” for the culture to address, and others “too big” or “too difficult” to solve?
If “we” are told daily that “our needs” are actually “human” needs, then we may be more likely to assume that meeting those needs is a shared, universally held, value. It is this idea of consensus reality, in fact, that makes so many people freeze up, when they are asked to imagine a future in which ecological extinction, or police brutality, is no longer thought to be our guaranteed future, but instead a challenge to be collectively faced, felt, and addressed.
Much of the grief, frustration, and rage that is currently being funneled into therapy is sourced in structural violence. We live in a paradoxical moment; one in which many issues that the dominant culture previously framed as “radical,” or “special interest,” or “fringe,” are now being understood as global, and widespread in scope and impact. But even as this former framing is cracking and imploding, there remains the drumbeat repetition of the idea that “consensus reality” cannot fathom what it will take to solve these problems. So there is grief, despair, and mourning. There is rage and violence. But there is no national narrative of hope.
I believe the narratives of despair and failure that are being recirculated in the mass media, and in places of institutional and governmental power, are a direct reflection of the limitations of this national consensus, and of the continued erasing, sidelining, and punishing of the peoples, knowledges, practices, and perspectives that it cannot incorporate, or believe. To ask “Who is ‘we’?” is a first step towards undermining this narrative of consensus, and of breaking free.
I hope you’ll not only try this exercise, but write about it in the comments. I’d love to know if you saw something in a new light. I’m curious about how it felt in your body when you were answering the questions. If you talked to someone in your life about these ideas, I’d love to hear how the conversation went.
And as always, thank you so much for reading and sharing this post!
Action Snack! Blow your mind open with one simple word: “we”