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untonugganI can and will try to write a short answer to this, as I have Many Thoughts on the US ideals of "progress".
(Note: I am writing from a US history perspective here, so I use the word "we" in places to mean "the US mainstream narrative" but it's to save lots of words; I know there are a lot of other perspectives throughout the world and even within the US and I don't want to discount them. Just, language is hard, and expanding beyond the US begins to be beyond the scope of one blog entry.)
Much of the ideas we currently have about progress coalesced during the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s), though they draw from other times and have morphed since then as well.
The Progressive Era was kind of a mixed bag, in a "tally up how we did by today's moral standards" measure. Sure, reformers started trying to treat people with mental illness (however problematically). The government formed the FDA in response to unsafe food (though, side note, The Jungle was actually about way more than fucked up meat processing plants). Ida B. Wells spearheaded some kick ass anti-lynching campaigns, as well as early transportation desegregation lawsuits. Margaret Sanger did early work on making birth control -- or at least information about reproduction -- accessible to women. Women got the right to vote. Prohibition did not work, but it passed because of concerns about domestic violence. Which, consider: the 18th Amendment happened before women had the right to vote, it banned the sale of alcohol, and it was largel designed to protect women from abusive drunken husbands. That's pretty badass, even if it did unintentionally result in the creation of the mafia.
Then come the ugly sides of the Progressive Era. I forget how much of this is well known because if you spend ages studying it for your honors thesis it becomes seared into your mind to the point where you have to resist the urge to run up to random strangers and yell important facts in their faces.
Not only did people make the original Birth of a Nation, but it premiered in Woodrow Wilson's White House (yes, the same pacifist dude that pioneered the League of Nations). Ida B. Wells (and the world) needed that anti-lynching campaign because, well, lynching was a huge problem and I won't go into too much here because of the massive trigger warnings necessary. Working conditions were terrible because unions didn't have any power. (Oh, huh, does that sound familiar?) Except not just "fired for no reason" or "sexual harassment" bad, more like Triangle Shirtwaist Fire bad.
So yes, the Progressive Era itself was a mixed bag, and I could say much more, specifically about the negatives. But why does the specific word Progress make me twitch.
Now we come to eugenics and racism and gross things white people believe(d). I'm going to use the past tense here, but I think that if nothing else a Tr#mp's campaign has shown us that these beliefs still persist.
Due to the advent and popularity of Darwin's Theory of Evolution, anthropologists, sociologists and a lot of other disciplines started thinking up other unifying theories that would tie in with evolution. One was an idea that societies evolve: this got talked about by lots of white men.
Sociocultural evolution can basically be summed up (if I am not being snarky) as beliefs that:
You can use these beliefs to justify all kinds of terrible things.
See also: why I get super shouty about that couple who live "as Victorians" because that is exactly the period I am writing about and OMG. Though in their case I think they believe, what, the pinnacle of progress *is* the 1880s and everything afterwards is the end of times? Yeah, fun people.
I could go on, but I'm depressing myself and you get the gist. Though props to anthropologists at least, because they now have Lots of Talks About Ethics and What We Did Wrong and How Not to Do It Again.
So, do I think "progress" should be a taboo word like "f-g-t" or banned from the language? No. Plus "I'm making a lot of progress on my life goals" is certainly a fine use of the word.
But I think that knowing the history of how the idea of Progress has been misused is important. (It can have its good points, too.) When I reflexively flinch at the word, now, I also look very carefully at how people use it -- because the speaker can often betray traces of progressivism's history without meaning too.
David Brooks is a soft target, being a noted conservative pundit for the NYTimes. But just consider this quote (from an article about Haiti written two days after the earthquake in Haiti), especially in the context above:
"We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them."
*twitch*
(Note: I am writing from a US history perspective here, so I use the word "we" in places to mean "the US mainstream narrative" but it's to save lots of words; I know there are a lot of other perspectives throughout the world and even within the US and I don't want to discount them. Just, language is hard, and expanding beyond the US begins to be beyond the scope of one blog entry.)
Much of the ideas we currently have about progress coalesced during the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s), though they draw from other times and have morphed since then as well.
The Progressive Era was kind of a mixed bag, in a "tally up how we did by today's moral standards" measure. Sure, reformers started trying to treat people with mental illness (however problematically). The government formed the FDA in response to unsafe food (though, side note, The Jungle was actually about way more than fucked up meat processing plants). Ida B. Wells spearheaded some kick ass anti-lynching campaigns, as well as early transportation desegregation lawsuits. Margaret Sanger did early work on making birth control -- or at least information about reproduction -- accessible to women. Women got the right to vote. Prohibition did not work, but it passed because of concerns about domestic violence. Which, consider: the 18th Amendment happened before women had the right to vote, it banned the sale of alcohol, and it was largel designed to protect women from abusive drunken husbands. That's pretty badass, even if it did unintentionally result in the creation of the mafia.
Then come the ugly sides of the Progressive Era. I forget how much of this is well known because if you spend ages studying it for your honors thesis it becomes seared into your mind to the point where you have to resist the urge to run up to random strangers and yell important facts in their faces.
Not only did people make the original Birth of a Nation, but it premiered in Woodrow Wilson's White House (yes, the same pacifist dude that pioneered the League of Nations). Ida B. Wells (and the world) needed that anti-lynching campaign because, well, lynching was a huge problem and I won't go into too much here because of the massive trigger warnings necessary. Working conditions were terrible because unions didn't have any power. (Oh, huh, does that sound familiar?) Except not just "fired for no reason" or "sexual harassment" bad, more like Triangle Shirtwaist Fire bad.
So yes, the Progressive Era itself was a mixed bag, and I could say much more, specifically about the negatives. But why does the specific word Progress make me twitch.
Now we come to eugenics and racism and gross things white people believe(d). I'm going to use the past tense here, but I think that if nothing else a Tr#mp's campaign has shown us that these beliefs still persist.
Due to the advent and popularity of Darwin's Theory of Evolution, anthropologists, sociologists and a lot of other disciplines started thinking up other unifying theories that would tie in with evolution. One was an idea that societies evolve: this got talked about by lots of white men.
Sociocultural evolution can basically be summed up (if I am not being snarky) as beliefs that:
- All change is good and leads to progress ("survival of the fittest")
- All societies progress begin as "barbaric" and progress to more "civilized" ones
- The pinnacle of "civilized" society is basically Europe/the US
- Eugenics. Lots of eugenics, and phrenology, and ultimately, Hitler loved this shit but so do lots of other people.
You can use these beliefs to justify all kinds of terrible things.
- "Colonialism is not bad, we're bringing civilization to these poor backward people!" (<-- actually a nicer version of lots of what was actually said at the time ... and is still said in some places but in different coded language)
- People who are not "civilized" are not actually fully people. See: Human zoos. See: police brutality, and how cops see people of color. See: medical racism, and the kinds of things white doctors belive
- Foreign policy towards "developing" or "third world" countries "over there", and also the language NGOs use. Probably best described in this Trevor Noah sketch about the UNICEF fly, with pushback on Twitter here.
- Forced sterilization of people with disabilities (See: Buck vs Bell, which is still technically on the books as legal) and indigenous/NDN people in the 1970s
- The entire anti-vaccination movement, with the idea that it's better for your kid or someone else's to maybe die of Measles/Mumps than to *gasp* be non-neurotypical (lbr, that's the basic gist of it)
See also: why I get super shouty about that couple who live "as Victorians" because that is exactly the period I am writing about and OMG. Though in their case I think they believe, what, the pinnacle of progress *is* the 1880s and everything afterwards is the end of times? Yeah, fun people.
I could go on, but I'm depressing myself and you get the gist. Though props to anthropologists at least, because they now have Lots of Talks About Ethics and What We Did Wrong and How Not to Do It Again.
So, do I think "progress" should be a taboo word like "f-g-t" or banned from the language? No. Plus "I'm making a lot of progress on my life goals" is certainly a fine use of the word.
But I think that knowing the history of how the idea of Progress has been misused is important. (It can have its good points, too.) When I reflexively flinch at the word, now, I also look very carefully at how people use it -- because the speaker can often betray traces of progressivism's history without meaning too.
David Brooks is a soft target, being a noted conservative pundit for the NYTimes. But just consider this quote (from an article about Haiti written two days after the earthquake in Haiti), especially in the context above:
"We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them."
*twitch*
no subject
Date: 2016-05-19 07:01 pm (UTC)But mostly yeessssss *Kermitflail* All of this. Argh.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-19 09:23 pm (UTC)I am glad this post made you Kermitflail. I could have written So Much More, because my honors thesis was about a figure during the Progressive Era, and I did so much background reading for historical context. I have also been getting twitchy hands because honestly I would write the entire thing differently now and I'm like, "No liz, let the research go."
(My thesis was about this guy, by the way, primarily focused on the reform school he founded, how it fit into progressivism at the time, and also identity politics/respectability politics. If I wrote it now, there would be a Lot More about Jim Crow and the prison system that developed. There is a section in there, but it is more about Ida B Wells' reforms and doesn't tie in as well as I would like and -- yes, liz, let the project go.)
no subject
Date: 2016-05-20 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-20 04:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-20 04:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-19 10:17 pm (UTC)http://eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/
Hosted at the Cold Sping Harbor Labs, where much knowledge about evolution AND eugenics was produced.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-20 04:41 am (UTC)Also, thank you for the link and the kudos. (I wanted to put Moar Links in to things I referenced, but I cut myself off.)
no subject
Date: 2016-05-21 03:37 am (UTC)Or at least T[beep] would be the laughingstock, instead of the candidate.