Abstractions

This last month, the New York Times released a podcast on the so-called Trojan Horse scandal in Birmingham. The podcast is really good listening for anyone interested in the various issues that come into play when racist structures and ideologies come into contact with the petty disagreements of day-to-day life in institutions. What seems to be the driving force behind suspicions about Muslim leaders in schools during this ‘scandal’ was that there were latent prejudices about Pakistani Muslims in Birmingham that manifest themselves as abstract stories about terrorists being groomed in certain areas of Birmingham. Those abstract stories were just that: abstract. They represented strongly held beliefs, so when evidence (in this case, very weak evidence: a clearly inaccurate letter) appeared, it was much easier to believe that it because it fit with that abstract storyline with which people already were familiar. If you believe that immigrant communities are up to no good and plotting terrorism, it’s much easier to believe someone when they tell you that they have evidence of a terrorist plot.

In the stories I have been analysing so far, it’s struck me how easily people move between specific details of stories to how those stories represent the regular sorts of things that people in their lives do or did, or how those details represent the way that specific categories of people do things. It’s not just stereotyping and racism — it’s in everything people do to explain the world around them. Your father was very kind to you, and you can remember one specific time that he was particularly kind. Or the school that you went to was very strict and you can remember one time when they were particularly strict with your friend. These estimations and judgements seem to be tied to stories, and those stories, in their telling, also seem to be stories that people have told before. They aren’t ad hoc memories that appear for no reason — they are the stories that define how each individual sees the world. Hopefully, further investigation will reveal more about how exactly the process of storytelling becomes moral reasoning.