A Commentary On Comments

Civil comments only, please.

This post is about three comments I received on posts on my Facebook page in the past few months, all of them negative. All three posts upset me at least a little bit, but all three posts made me think about why we communicate and what we hope to achieve in doing so. This post is an essay in the old sense of being an exploration.

I am starting with the most recent comment. I don’t want to get too specific about the content involved, since that would, I think, just muddy the waters, but I recently ran across a series of strips from 2007 that paid tribute to a book series. The author of the series has since become very controversial for their targetting of a vulnerable community. When I drew the strips, no one had any idea that the author held these dreadful views. I posted on Facebook about whether I should run the strips, written and drawn during a different time. I mentioned that I have had memebers of the vulnerable community who still read the books in question despite the author’s views.

I received one comment of support, and then a comment that gave me some food for thought. I had not realized from my research that the author had not only written about this community – they had spent money to contribute to their oppression. They told me I should not rerun the strips. But then they said something else.

They said that my students that were part of the vulnerable community deserved a better teacher than me.

I deleted my post. I decided to not run the rerun strips, because I always want to err on the side of not hurting anyone, especially those who are already being persecuted. However, the commenter had already changed my mind with information before insulting me. My question became… what was their point? Had they decided that I was a thoroughly bad person and a biggot for even thinking of running comic strips from 18 years ago? My whole point in making the original post was to be an ally and get feedback. Insulting me seems to be a way of assuming the worst of me. If I am uninformed, inform me. If my experiences with my own students confused me, please help me be less confused. But please don’t assume the worst of me.

If the commenter’s goal was not to assume to worst of me, but to change my mind, I’m going to tell say… insulting your audience is one of the worst things you can do. Being attacked personally automatically makes a person defensive – which means people lean into the very view you are arguing against. By the time the insult hit me, I had already been convinced. Being insulted made me doubt the intent of the speaker. Was their goal to actually affect change, or just to vent their anger? I understand having a sense of righteous anger at injustice – but venting that anger at someone who is trying to be an ally seems counter-productive at best. When I consulted with friends about the strips, including a former student who was part of the community, they suggested that I run the strips with a disclaimer. I chose to not to run them at all. All the friends I consulted with said that telling me my students “deserved better” was out of line.

My point is not to attack or insult the person who made this comment. I am grateful for the information they gave me. The insult was simply unnecessary. As Paulo Freire says in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “Dehumanizing the de-humanizer has the adverse effect of dehumanizing oneself.” To simply write me off as a teacher who is not worthy of his students was to assume the worst of me, to dehumanize me. I would say to think really hard before insulting your audience. Unless your goal is to interfere with your own argument.

The next comment was in relation to the following strip:

A reader objected to other people finding it amusing by saying it was offensive and perpetuated stereotypes of the “dumb blond.” I said it was based on something that had actually happened in my class – it was just a weird, silly real-life event. The reader still found it offensive. I finally asked, “How do you know this student is blond?”

The response was that they had assumed they were blond.

I replied at this point that I didn’t start using color in the strip until many years later, and often didn’t think about hair color. She asked if the outfit wasn’t a stereotype. Well – it is the kind of outfit many students wear. The question, I suppose, is whether putting this outfit on a student who behaves this way a stereotype? Part of my point, as always, is absurdity. Students, both male and female, often wear very “lightweight” clothes but also wear a heavy jacket. It’s odd. That was part of the point.

After more back and forth, I posted the following comment: “For many years, I only differentiated between black hair, textured hair, and non-black hair because I was in black and white. Weirdly, I seldom thought about hair color except for when I colorized a few characters for the heading image for my website. Mr. Fitz’s hair is not colored, but he is has reddish brown hair, as it turns out. I did, much later, when I switched to a Sunday format give Tessy yellow hair, but I also give Mrs. Fitz yellow hair. And she’s mostly smarter than Mr. Fitz… You’ve given me a lot to think about: intention and perception; how can we be sensitive but still have sense of humor?; what is the purpose of humor – to create victims or to point out the humorous foibles of our common humanity. I know cartoons tend toward caricature, and can be used for evil. I really never intend to that. But a lot of funny stuff goes on that’s kind of weird and I assign it to my existing cast of characters.“

The commenter thanked me for my thoughtful reply and I guess we ended on a positive note. But again – and I am reminding myself here as much as anyone – I think it is always best to try to not assume the worst of people. I have my own topics I am sensitive about. Having grown up around a lot of alcoholism, I don’t find “drunk” humor all that funny. But I try not to assume someone has malicious intent if they use it. I mean, the I Love Lucy episode about Vitameatavegamin – a boozy tonic – still makes me laugh hysterically, despite my background.

The final comment I want to mention was in response to this strip, which was widely shared. The comment appeared on a major education Facebook page.

The comment on this strip was that it was “pathetic” that these ideas were being presented in the form a comic strip and that students shouldn’t be allowed to read anything with pictures past, I believe, first grade. That students shouldn’t be allowed to read anything with pictures at all after age 7.

I didn’t really get into it with this commenter. Using a word like “pathetic” means you are absolutely assuming the worst of me. It is a dead-on insult. But it makes you sound – unpleasant. What was your goal, dear commenter? To change my mind and make me give up cartooning? Unlikely I will do that, but especially unlikely when you insult me. Insulting my cartooning just makes me want to turn you, dear commenter, into a cartoon character in a future strip. I hope you read it.

But most imporantly, your comment does not come from a place of knowledge. For starters, many classic novels were illustrated. I am currently reading Charles Dickens’ 996 page novel David Copperfield. It is illustrated. I am also finishing the nueroscience/history book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist. It is llustrated throughout with a special full color section in the center of the book with examples from the history of art.

Also, comics and graphic novels, technically known as sequential art, can be a sophisticated and profound art-form. Not only that, but they can be, as Art Speigelman (creator of the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus said, “a gateway drug to literacy.” They were for me. As I have recounted elsewhere, I learned to read – and then continued to read to this day – because if my intense desire to read the comics section of the newspaper for myself – especially Peanuts. I really wanted to read Peanuts. Peanuts changed my life. I still read Peanuts. I own The Complete Peanuts.

So why do these comments matter to me – or more importantly, to you?

Because our online world is responsible for the real world we live in. And when we are not civil here, it makes it easier to be not civil there.

Here are a few simple suggestions, things I try to remind myself of:

1. Unless someone is openly announcing that they are prejudiced, don’t assume the worst of them. Take Ted Lasso’s advice: Be curious, not judgemental. Maybe ask me, “Are you unaware of the real harm this author has done to this vulnerable community?” or “Is that character supposed to be blond? Were you trying to deal in stereotypes?” Or – “Is a comic strip the best way to present this idea?” (The answers are: 1. No, I was not as aware as I might have been, so thank you for letting me in the know. 2. I did later color her blond, but she was not blond when I drew this strip, and no, I was not trying to deal with a stereotype. 3. Yes. It was quick to read and probably would not have been viewed as much as an essay.)

2. Ask yourself what you are trying to accomplish with your comment. If it is merely to insult someone or vent your spleen, perhaps it’s best to keep it to yourself. If you sincerely want to change someone’s mind and think it is possible to do so, avoid insulting the other person and be as agreeable as possible. (The first rule of argument is Be Agreeable according to Jay Heinrichs, author of Thank You For Arguing.) If what you hope to accomplish – changing someone’s mind – is unlikely to happen no matter what you say, perhaps it is best to not engage.

3. If your goal is to actually change someone’s mind, avoid insulting them. If your goal is to insult people online, I am now assuming the worst of you. Go read a book instead of being online.

4. Ask yourself if you actually know what you are talking about and where you got your information. Also ask yourself if you are having a knee-jerk reaction. It’s good to breathe a bit and go take a walk before posting a knee-jerk reaction.

5. Be aware that not everything is a binary good/evil, my way/the highway binary. There are ambiguities. There are gray areas. If we decided we were going to ban every book or author we disagreed with or who didn’t live a perfect life, there would be very few books left in the world. Are there authors/creators we should reject? Yes, I guess there are. But read Breaking Bread With the Dead by Alan Jacobs. It’s good food for thought.

I said this was an exploration, but I guess I did have a point. Civility matters. How we interact online matters. A lot of the rancor and hate we are seeing could be easily avoided.

Of course, I deal in humor, and humor can be dicey. It can have victims. Conan O’Brien, in his acceptance speech for the Mark Twain Prize this year, talked about the need for comedy to punch up at power, not down at the downtrodden. I hope I’m always punching up when I’m punching – but I also hope I’m not always punching. I think humor, at its best, can be about the shared absurdity of the human experience. Students have strange attitudes about school, but many of those attitudes have been drilled into them by school itself. And many of the adults and systems in school are absurd. And human nature can be ironic and absurd. So I try to find the absurd. We need comedy. Especially now.

Okay. I’m done. If you disagree with me, please don’t assume the worst of me. And please keep your comments civil. But also keep in mind, my audience is so small, I won’t be influencing very many people anyway. That’s something to celebrate if you think I’m an idiot!