The Shared Experience of Oppression

Abstract

In an influential recent account, Tommie Shelby posits a pragmatic relation between experience and political judgment. He defends a model of pragmatic black nationalism through which black Americans should forge public joint commitments, given their exposure to anti-black oppression. In essence, for Shelby, the shared experience of oppression inclines victims to understand and resist their oppression. Call this the journalistic conception of the shared experience of oppression. It is journalistic in that it treats group experience in public reasoning as if it were a conduit of empirical information, like a newspaper report that confirms the existence of structural inequalities. The journalistic conception views repeated bad experiences as educational: they enhance victims’ moral understanding, which, in turn, enhances public moral perception of structural inequalities. What is more, on this model, the shared experience of oppression prompts the oppressed to act. It assumes that oppressive experiences motivate groups to transform an unjust world and function as the basis for the coordination of collective action. The noted Africana philosopher W.E.B. Du Bois rejects the journalistic conception of the shared experience of oppression and its characterization of moral learning via the direct, firsthand experience of oppression. He objects that the shared experience of oppression is not only insufficient to guide political judgment and reform, but inflicts a serious moral injury on victims. Oppression damages a victim’s moral self-awareness, leading to moral self-alienation. That is, a victim can neglect to affirm a moral ideal that attests to their self-value or to pursue actions for the sake of it. For, the shared experience of oppression can undermine, rather than enhance, political judgment and the inclination to resist. Du Bois favors instead what I call an associational conception of the shared experience of oppression. An association is an informal social practice consisting of ongoing interpersonal interaction that invokes moral or cultural ideals; and it imparts a shared evaluative outlook to participants. On this model, intragroup associations in civil society—especially cultural associations that cultivate informal social bonds—are crucial avenues for forming political judgment and resistance, as they hone victims’ moral self-awareness in the aftermath of their brutal shared experiences. In this essay, I defend Du Bois’s associational conception of the shared experience of oppression and argue that his position is superior to the journalistic model favored by Shelby. For Du Bois, black cultural associations in the arts help victims of anti-black racism develop moral insight and public joint commitments to fight for justice. Shelby neglects that intragroup associations—and cultural associations in particular—are essential for shaping political judgment and resistance in nonideal democracies. Against Shelby, Du Bois argues that cultural associations are effective for fostering intragroup political solidarity. Cultural associations can better prepare victims to discover that they ‘share’ an experience of oppression—and should do something about it. I argue that on Du Bois’s associational conception, black cultural associations should effectuate victims’ moral self-awareness to prepare them to understand and resist oppression. I take as a case study his defense of the Harlem Renaissance as an art movement that both advocated for basic rights and opportunities and proliferated a positive group self-definition.