Read on Twitter
Since I often explain this in discussions, let me take a quiet Sunday to write a detailed thread on why "not all X" replies are almost always based in misunderstanding.
Let's start with a neutral example. Suppose I go to Amsterdam and post, "Wow, the Dutch are tall!" And then some goof jumps in to say, "NOT ALL DUTCH PEOPLE!!!1!" What did they get wrong?
This will be easier with illustrations, so let's start with a bell curve of human height:
What did the hypothetical goof think I was saying? Apparently that ALL Dutch are tall. In graphical terms, like this:
But my statement wasn't an absolute. I didn't say "all". It was a generalization. So more like this:
However, that's not really what I meant either. Twitter is a casual medium. I'm not a researcher or a population geneticist or anything. It's an expression of my *personal experience*.
My personal experience is obviously subjective and incomplete. So a better representation is more like this, where the vertical lines are my experience, and the curves are how I talk about it.
My real-world experience is a non-random sample from which my brain generalizes internally. And from which I generalize further when I put something into words.
Really, I wasn't making a scientific assertion about X. I was telling a story about my experience. But, as we all do, using generalizations for narrative tractability.
So why is "not all X" a bad reply? Because it misses the point. It *aggressively* misses the point.
But why do people get aggressive about this? In general, they don't. We generalize all the time. There are very specific things that trigger a flood of "not all X" replies.
In practice, the X in "not all X" is usually "men" or "white people" or some other group with power that the speaker belongs to.
Why do white men freak out about this? As a white man, my firm belief is that they are deeply uncomfortable thinking that they might be part of a pattern of injustice.
Sometimes that discomfort comes from actual guilt; they know they have done bad things. Sometimes it's awareness of complicity, as when they have let friends do sexist or racist things.
Often I think it's just unwillingness to recognize privilege. We all want to believe we are good, that we are part of good things. Who wants to be the bad guy in the story?
Regardless, they not only refuse to see their participation in an unjust system. They also insist on intervening to stop any discussion of that unjust system.
And I think that's the real meaning of "not all X" comments. Whatever their conscious intent, they are acting to derail discussion of an oppressive system.
Whether they know it or not (and I think they mostly don't), that oppressive system has trained them to defend the oppressive system.
"Not all men" is defending the honor of all men in a patriarchal system. "Not all white people" is defending the honor of white people in a racist system.
(And for the people about to leap in to contradict that, ask yourself: are you sure you're not proving my point by doing the exact thing I'm pointing out?)
I should be clear. This isn't about people who are *genetically* white or *genetically* male. This isn't about an intrinsic. It's about being part of a socially dominant group.
We are primates. Dominance hierarchies are part of our animal heritage. They are universal and pervasive. But we have a choice about whether we indulge or resist that.
If I were writing this in China, I wouldn't be talking about the dominance of white people. It'd be about the Han dominance of Tibetans and Uyghurs. But I'm in America.
America's founding fathers explicitly started it as a place where white men dominated. Where only well-off white men could vote. It was objectively racist and sexist and classist.
(And credit where due: it was way better than a racist, sexist, classist hereditary monarchy. So they get a solid B- from me.)
We have slowly and erratically gotten better. But America's structural racism and sexism never ended. We still are trying to fight it off.
So if you are a white dude wondering why your "not all men" intervention got you a lot of frank pushback, you have to see your comment in the context of our history and the lived experience of the people you're talking to.
*You* might not be aware of that history. For a long time I wasn't. Why would I be? Nobody really taught it, and it worked mostly in my favor.
But people on the sharp end of that system will certainly be aware of it. And trying to stop them talking about it won't work any more.
If you'd like to stop participating on the side of patriarchy and white supremacy, the first step is to learn. And that won't be easy.
You might do that by following individual voices, as @bjmay did: https://medium.com/@bjmay/how-26-tweets-broke-my-filter-bubble-88c1527517f3
If you are bookish, I really liked Loewen's "Sundown Towns", which exposed for me a lot of the hidden racist history in America: https://www.amazon.com/Sundown-Towns-Hidden-Dimension-American/dp/0743294483
Another enormously helpful book for me was Bancroft's "Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men". It's a very precise and detailed look at how patriarchy works on the micro level: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-He-That-Controlling-ebook/dp/B000Q9J0RO
I think it's also very worth reading about the syndrome that drives a lot of "not all white people" posts. It's called "white fragility": http://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/view/249
Hopefully others will add resources useful to them. But my main point here is: listen and learn. You don't have to experience the discomfort that drives you to do the "not all X" thing. Or the discomfort that comes with your richly deserved pushback.
You can just be quiet and let people get on with telling their stories. I recommend that! And if you really want, you can work to help end these absurd systems. It's up to you. /end
P.S. Anyone should feel entirely free to just link this thread as a reply to "not all X" sealions. I would much rather they bothered me than somebody in a marginalized group.
I see this thread is getting more attention. So I'll add one more resource. Robin DiAngelo, mentioned upthread, now has a book out and gave a great talk on white fragility. I was not always comfortable, but it was very worth it:
And folks have asked for Native American-related resources. This was recommended in a related thread by @TimberGhost7. What others do people like as 101-friendly to understand this aspect of America's history and present? https://www.npr.org/2016/04/17/471622218/horrors-pile-up-quietly-in-the-other-slavery
