The dialogic coordinates, in particular, that were offered in this chapter highlighted what I view as the main focus of ethical communication as a whole. These coordinates (learning through listening, refraining from demanding dialogue, acknowledging your bias, acknowledging that not all communication is dialogue, keeping content foremost) are necessary to invite dialogue into a situation. Of the five listed, two stand out for me: learning through listening and acknowledging your bias.
There is a fad within our culture that revolves around the idea of consuming the Other. Whether that Other is the black community, the LGBT community, the poor community, the comic book community, whatever, there appears to be an obsession with taking aspects of the Other and trying them on for size (temporarily). Hegemonic systems of oppression allow the dominant culture to consume various superficial traits of the Other in an attempt to make themselves appear more "cultured" or "open-minded". I'm calling bullshit.
Think of when the "Vote No" campaign was whirling around campus. Everyone and their dog was wearing a Vote No pin or a little rainbow ribbon, but as soon as the voting was over everyone just forgot about all the other issues the LGBT community faces outside the realm of marriage rights. Same thing with other apparently-less-damaging consumption. Ya know the nerd obsession? How many people do you know that went out and finally got a pair of glasses to wear instead of their contacts? Or how many people do you know that suddenly have the need to bring up their kill-shot count in random conversation? It's hip to have some characteristics of a nerd, now, because those characteristics can be twisted to fit into hegemonic ideals of other sorts, like heterosexual desires and fetishes.
Basically what I'm ranting about is that, in order to communicate ethically, we NEED to acknowledge the fact that simply consuming the Other doesn't equate to understanding them or even trying to understand them. You can't learn about someone just by wearing a scarf reminiscent of their ancestry or listening to music by a musician of that ethnicity. You need you actually listen and put aside all the preconceived notions you think you have about that community. Learn by listening and acknowledge your bias. Don't just go by a tribal print scarf or Lil' Wayne's latest album. Woo, good for you.
I definitely see where you are coming from; that just because you consume another culture/community does not mean you are actually learning anything. A lot of people do this unintentionally without knowing how it affects other people or how it makes them look. It is just simply a fad, and I think people don't even seek to learn from it. But they just want to "appear" to be part of it. If they would seek to learn, it could have erased a lot of ignorance.
ReplyDeleteAs with Vote No, I thought there were a lot of powerful things that happened with this campaign. This is just coming from my own bias, but I didn't see it as being a "fad" and that people really didn't care about the issues the LGBT community faced outside of marriage rights. I do accept that there were probably tons of people that did just wear the Vote No shirts, stickers, buttons, etc without any intention to learn from it. The fact that this amendment would take away the rights for a group of people, really did catch the attention of many others. However, as a person coming from the outside looking in, there is only so much information we can consume at a time to deeply understand everything. And yes, it may have seemed like some people just completely forgot about all the LGBT community's other issues after the voting was over. However, in this context I would say it's one of those situations where you can't demand that dialogue because it's a new realm for a lot of people and it's a tough subject. In addition, maybe some people just don't necessarily know what "delivery system" to use to create dialogue and take the next steps of involvement. So it takes time, and I think the Vote No campaign was a huge step toward progress and is testing a lot of people with their communication ethics. Specifically, with the second point in "A Dialogic Learning Model of Communication Ethics," which relates to a person's consistency with their words and their actions. So now, after the Vote No campaign, will they still follow that guidelines they committed to during the campaign?