Aaron Helton

Elsewhere, long ago, I wrote about “whiteness” as a negation, a thing defined in terms of what it isn't. I'm not the only one to have made this point, of course, but what I was thinking about at the time was how such negations fit within the discourse around the paradox of tolerance. In short, it is right to be intolerant of negations, because they hollow out whatever tolerates them and lets them in. But how, precisely do they get in?

I would suggest the primary path is neutrality. Oh, it doesn't start there, of course. Negations nip at the fringes of the social fabric, slipping into serious clothing when they can to appear legitimate, driven by a collection of grievances they can wield against their opponents. But the moment they wear the mask of legitimacy, the politically neutral stance practiced by news media, for instance, elevates them and invites them into the mainstream. In part this is because the tenets of neutrality are a nothing, a nihil.

Neutrality isn't the same thing as centrism. Centrism attempts to sit in the middle of the bell curve, rejecting ideologies at either end of any particular political spectrum. That it can only do so within the bounds of the Overton window means that it also can be pushed and pulled, however slowly, by winds of discourse, so that what is centrist here and now isn't what may be centrist elsewhere and elsewhen. More pragmatically, however, centrism attempts to identify and guard against extreme ideologies, doing so from within the frame itself. It often succeeds in this, perhaps too well if you happen to hew to ideologies further to the left or right of the current mainstream.

But neutrality attempts to sit outside the frame entirely, propped up by a fervent belief or hope that the right combination of ritual language and public action are sufficient to maintain institutional legitimacy. Neutrality does not even allow the identification of extreme ideologies, because the act of doing so requires passing judgment, which the adherents of neutrality must avoid at all costs. Thus institutions mired in neutrality must treat all ideologies as on equal footing, regardless of the circumstances in which they arise. In this way, neutral institutions cannot help but allow negations to enter the mainstream, since doing otherwise would threaten their own sense of legitimacy. At best, when neutral institutions reinforce the status quo, they can operate with a minimum of cognitive dissonance. At worst, they are, in fact, participating in their own destruction.

Let's not pretend, however, that neutrality is either irrational or or powerless. Neutral institutions understand that their continued existence depends on not making overt enemies of the power players around them. Neutrality in that light is rational, since it's a survival mechanism. Similarly, neutral institutions wield considerable soft power. In the case of news media, this is through influence. In the case of other organizations it might look more like moral weight or just as a forum for political interchange through which others exercise their power and influence.

But crucially we must also not pretend that neutrality is actually neutral. Choice of language, choice of institutional focus, choice of response to changing circumstance, and other biases make neutrality an aspirational goal, an ideal. Therefore its only remit is power for the sake of it, cloaked in its own circular definition to distract from the idea that within, it is nothing.

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