Chloe Valdary Can See More Clearly
With a keener focus on her light
Introduction
by Steven J. Lawrence
This is a guest post written by Josh Medley, a Licensed Professional Counselor at the New Leaf Psychotherapy Center in Boulder, Colorado. It was written in response to Chloe Valdary’s recent article, The Problem with Overfitting to the Data in DEI: How Jazz Can Help Us See More Clearly, which I cross-posted for this Ground Experience Substack page in March.
From our dialogues and communications, I can honestly say that Josh and I agree that he is also, in his own words— “a student of human nature, a couples therapist, and passionate about ‘both/and’ thinking and [a person who] aspires to use disagreements as an opportunity to grow and believes we are here to learn from each other.” In addition, he is a person who—again in his own words— “seeks to join with others who wish to create a welcoming, vibrant, and durable political center, something that can hold all the differences of our society without breaking”.
I’ve personally seen Josh’s words in action, and so, I am inspired to share his essay on this page.
While Josh’s views on some issues—including the essay he is critiquing—may differ in some respects from my own, there is much that we have in common, which he clearly demonstrates in this piece of writing. As I hope you will see, he comes at it with grace, thoughtfulness, balance, and rigor.
Josh and I have known each other for several years now. We have had many Zoom dialogues, chats, email exchanges, phone conversations and texts around social justice issues, the need for open exchange of ideas without reputation destruction and finding our way towards a balanced approach to human rights issues that does not veer too far towards what Josh has called “social justice fundamentalism” while advocating for needed changes in a way that is strong enough to have enough teeth to make a real difference in people’s lives.
As you will see in Josh Medley’s essay, there are many overlaps in his work and Valdary’s work. Both share an interest in bringing heart and presence to difficult conversations. Josh’s therapeutic work involves conflict resolution (both inner and outer), Internal Family Systems, depression, anxiety, grief, trauma, couples counseling, and trauma. One could say that Chloe Valdary works with many of these same issues, often in a broader context, but also on the smaller scale of helping workplaces and communities develop what she calls “Compassionate antiracism”. For an in-depth examination of that work, please visit the piece I wrote that same year called “How Chloé Valdary's "Theory of Enchantment" Empowers Communities”.
In closing, I want to say that I have always been inspired by the combination of both universalism and particularism in Valdary’s work. We can honor what is true for all of us while deeply acknowledging and doing the real work around what makes us different. That is, treat people like human beings rather than as political symbols. As Valdary states so eloquently in her 2021 Boston Globe article “Hole in the heart of antiracism training”, “reducing people to caricatures and abstractions pushes us all further apart.”
In the essay below, Medley hopes to bring us closer together with the reminder that this is advice that we could all use from time to time.
Including me.
Chloe Valdary Can See More Clearly
With a keener focus on her light
By Josh, Medley
Licensed Professional Counselor
MA, LPC, NCC
The image above is from a Braver Angels podcast, titled: “Pop-Culture and Polarization: with Chloe Valdary”, in which Valdary explains her “Theory of Enchantment with John Wood Jr., the founder of the depolarization non-profit Braver Angels and Ciaran O’Connor, who is the Chief Marketing Director for the Braver Angels.
Chloe Valdary is an innovative thinker who has brought new ways of thinking to diversity and inclusivity. Her work on the “Theory of Enchantment” is a new approach to the topic. Part of her work has been to offer thoughtful critiques of “conventional” or established styles of working with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). In this work, she often points out distortions such as overgeneralization, negative interpretations, ad hominem attacks and such things. This work is very important in helping the quality of thinking and dialogue in DEI to improve in the world at large.
However, the present day climate of polarization makes nuanced approach difficult. Even for those who wish to chart a different path, the frustration of dealing with such a charged atmosphere makes it seductive to straw man different sides. In her recent article, The Problem with Overfitting to the Data in DEI: How Jazz Can Help Us See More Clearly, Valdary critiques this current in DEI thinking saying that such “DEI theorists take evidence of bias against a particular group and overgeneralize it to the entire population, which leads to crude and inaccurate framings and conclusions. Indeed the actual framing of black Americans and other people of color as ‘oppressed’ and of white Americans as ‘the oppressor’ is evidence of this overfitting." Valdary is not a reactionary; she acknowledges the history of oppression and the present day impacts of that oppression.
Yet, here and in several places, I see Valdary as falling into the current of polarization. For example, when she states the following:
“Let me be clear here. To perceive a person as an academic problem to be solved is not merely a technical error in one’s perception. It is fundamentally evil…..To perceive a people as an academic problem to be solved is its own kind of oppression. Though proponents of this method claim to be antiracist, they commit the same sin that racists do in that they treat people of color like infants, a role they cast us in because they seek to increase their own obtuse sense of self-importance.
Later in the essay she has this to say:
“Statement[s] about so-called whiteness and white supremacy culture which on its face appears to be helping black people is yet another form of colonization-by-narcissists, the very mental slavery that Bob Marley taught us to emancipate ourselves from……Again, to actually believe that white supremacy culture is the very air we breathe – as ubiquitous and omnipotent as God himself – is to believe that white people are in fact superior.”
I try to cultivate the reflex of waking up a little when people use the word “evil.” Like smoke and fire, it often signals some kind of distortion is nearby. I find that people appear most evil when we are at a loss for understanding them, and when their interests appear to run counter to our own. This is not to say that some people do not have harmful ways of being in the world. Certainly there are (and we do need to be cautious with such people). That, said, “Evil,” is a term, and the emotional energy around that term carries with it a kind of killing/cancelling energy - an impulse to deny someone’s validity entirely. When we look into the world of others and view their actions from their own eyes, we often find some benevolent intention is at the heart of the behavior we abhor. This is the conundrum of human beings—we are (fortunately or unfortunately I don’t know) - complex! And generally speaking, most actors mean well, with the problems we cause coming from our necessarily incomplete understanding of our world.
By this logic, I should make allowance for Valdary’s excursion into condemnation (and I do). But as a form of caring and integrity, I wish also to hold her accountable to her own standards. Someone who writes as much, as well, and as successfully as Valdary does, must play a delicate balance between the journalistic mandate to hold attention, and the diplomatic need for accuracy.
What a terrible series of straw man arguments she makes - and against a very vague and unclear target. She "essentializes" DEI in exactly the same way she objects to DEI essentializing people of color! Perhaps this applies to some people in DEI at some moments. But how on earth can she sum up all the people using this framework in this way and not see she is repeating the same reification?
There are also numerous examples of (extremely uncharitable) “mind-reading,” by which I mean a negative guess regarding the internal motivations of other people, for which she gives shockingly little corroboration. The attribution of “narcissism” to people in DEI world continues this pattern. Perhaps it applies to some people. But I know DEI people of all stripes - many of them have not only positive intentions, but positive effects on others! To blanket a whole group with your own negative opinion of them, and to cloak that in psychological language - I would call this "projection."
Valdary might object that DEI people, "can't treat a black person like a person and not like a victim of a symbol." but can she treat a DEI person like a person and not like a perpetrator or a symbol?"
I suspect who she is really targeting are some of her equivalents on the “other side,” thought leaders such as Robin DiAngleo and Ibram Xendi. For those people, in some cases those attributions partly fit, but it is a mistake for leaders to target each other when they are writing for a mass audience. What applies to the leaders likely does not apply to all followers - and are those the people Valdary should seek to influence? Calling people names is not a winning strategy. Most people interested in DEI come with good intentions, are not “narcissistic,” many of them are very sincere and want to help others (not a narcissistic preoccupation!).
The lessons for me here are that it’s important to:
1. Make a distinction between the leaders and the followers. If you are speaking about leaders, name them and quote them. IF you want to reach followers, make your case rather than cursing them. Try to make a bridge to the people with good intentions, rather than as tar-and-feathers the entire movement.
2. Consider that what you dislike in others may not be mental illness, but trauma.
DEI, in my view, over-applies global categories because it is responding to trauma, and that influences people to respond in extreme (and sometimes inaccurate) ways. There is also some kind of echo-chamber effect going on.
3. See you adversaries as human beings with complexity and communicate to them as that.
Otherwise, this piece is just preaching to the choir, and "cursing the darkness,” rather than lighting a candle.
Valdary has said her inspiration for forming her own approach to antiracism was rooted in the insight that there were many approaches that focused on conflict, but few that focus on “how to love.” A seminal moment in her own journey occurred when, in a college class discussion, her agnostic professor defended Christians, and the importance of respecting those who are different and think differently. This professor inspired Valdary when she said, “If you dehumanize people who have different beliefs than you, you are completely missing the point in this class.” I think that Valdary is generally quite a good student of this lesson.
None of this is meant to condemn, but to push for a keener focus of her light.