In the last part of this series, I talked about “scripts”. Scripts are the unwritten lines, stage directions, cues, and notes that shape how people behave in particular situations. The term implies an actor on a stage, and that is intentional. The scripts we learn allow us to perform, as it were, the many roles we have in life. The roles we have are in turn determined by the statuses we have. For instance, I hold the status of professor. One role tied to that status is teaching students. To do that well, I draw on a collection of scripts I’ve picked up through training, trial and error, and observing others. In this way, statuses, roles, and scripts are the basic building blocks of social interaction.
I suspect some folks might wonder - is that even sociology? Isn’t all this talk about statuses, roles, and scripts more psychology than sociology? Where’s the focus on race…class…and gender?
On the one hand, the simple answer is that society defines these statuses, roles, and scripts. They don’t belong to individuals. A newborn learns what it means to be part of the Cherokee tribe (status), what tribe members are expected to do (roles), and how they are supposed to feel and act when doing it (scripts). To truly understand how and why people act the way they do, we have to look at the social world they inherit. This approach is often called microsociology.
On the other hand, it is true that the “big ticket” items in sociology are group and institutional level phenomena. Sociologists are less interested in, say, how one student moves from college graduate to the world of work. Instead, what would pique the interest of the sociologist is how similar students - similar in class, race, gender, sexual orientation and so on - move through higher education and find work in the information economy. This is technically macrosociology. In the next few pieces, I’ll shift to “macro” sociology—the study of groups and institutions.
To set the stage, let me make one claim: groups are not unique, social conditions are.
Let me explain this idea in my own peculiar fashion.
Groups are not unique; conditions are
After the death of Charlie Kirk, many people were, quite frankly, jubilant. Although it is not in my nature to celebrate suffering, I understand why people felt this way. To the extent that you feel a person is the generator of your misery, you will feel that much relief at their passing. Many people who had these sentiments, expressed them publicly on social media. Supporters of Kirk then set out trying, with some success, to get those people removed from their jobs. Teachers were especially vulnerable, under the premise that “I don’t want that person celebrating violence teaching my kids.”
It’s not hard to see some form of hypocrisy here, as many (most) Kirk supporters are conservative, and members of that population had been complaining about the “cancel culture” of liberals since before the pandemic. Moreover, conservatives had long been the standard bearer of free speech, and balked at the notion that someone using the n-word or not using the proper pronouns should face type of punishment just for their words.
I argue that it is not hypocrisy.
Those attempting to silence critics of Kirk are, in effect, responding to the same social conditions that once led trans people and their allies to call for the canceling of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, who has repeatedly made comments widely regarded as anti-trans.
What are those conditions?
It seems to me that Kirk was more than a political commentator; he was a vessel for an identity. I want to say a MAGA identity, but I am not quite sure. Maybe a more narrow Christian Nationalist identity makes more sense here. At any rate, people seek to silence or punish speech not merely because it is offensive, but because it undermines the moral narratives that hold their identities together.
When J.K. Rowling questioned the legitimacy of trans identities, she threatened the progressive conviction (my conviction) that personal autonomy and self-definition are sacred. Likewise, when people openly rejoiced at Kirk’s death, they violated a different sacred value: the belief among Christian nationalists that Kirk was not just a man with opinions, but a chosen defender of their cultural order. In both cases, the urge to “cancel” was about defending the boundaries of identity itself.
Let me give one more example. See the images below. The first comes from a Reason article published in 2023. For those unfamiliar, in early 2023 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis replaced New College of Florida’s board of trustees with conservative appointees. The new board quickly dismissed the president, dismantled diversity programs, and oversaw an exodus of more than a third of the faculty.
Now, this may be spin from Reason. I’m not at that college, nor have I spoken with anyone who is, so I have to take my own advice and be cautious of what I call the “people in the valley” phenomenon—hearing reports about bad people doing bad things somewhere else. We see the same dynamic right now with millions believing that “those people over there” in Portland are living in a violent, antifa-led war zone.
Even if the article is trafficking in a bit of spin, it reflects what I think is a common sentiment amongst people who identity as conservatives. I posted one of the more extreme versions of that sentiment below the Reason image: a claim that all public universities should be required to have 50 percent conservative professors.
Wut?
Isn’t this hypocrisy?
Maybe.
Let me offer another explanation.
The person posting that is not using conservative as a political philosophy. They are using it to signal identity. In other words, it is not professors with a conservative political philosophy they would like to see on college campuses, but professors who identify as conservative on college campuses.
That slight rewording is significant. Seeing this not as a matter of political philosophy but instead as one of group identity offers a different lens.
People who identify as conservatives are now faced with a similar set of social conditions as women and minorities have faced historically—and are responding in the same way. They observe an institution they care about not being populated with people they think represent them. They surmise, correctly, that if a person does not share their identity, they may not see the world the same way they do. And because these are public institutions, and they are members of this country, they feel entitled to that representation—which is the same damn argument that women and minorities have been making for decades.
Yeah, I’ll go ahead and write it again—groups are not unique; conditions are.
No essences
I take great comfort in this idea.
It allows me to lean into my compassion for others. I do not like the fact that teachers were fired for not expressing the proper sentiment. But I understand the feeling. I am almost certain that if we had Facebook in 1968 when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, and I had children, I would not want my Black child being taught by a white teacher who expressed joy on social media. I would want, at least in the moment, for that teacher to be fired. I would be up in my feelings just like conservatives were at Kirk’s death (and no, I am not trying to draw an equivalency between the two figures only the social conditions brought about by their deaths).
Similarly, I did not have a Black male teacher until I went to college—at an HBCU—and I believe that was to my detriment, and to that of other young Black boys. Faced with those conditions, I would have gladly supported DEI efforts to get more Black men in the classroom. And so I can understand the conservative’s urge for DEI now.
It is also intellectually satisfying. It conforms to my understanding of the human species. There are no MAGA, woke, Black, Southern, American, female, or trans “essences” that determine group outcomes. The patterns we see at the group level are not powered by some internal and eternal trait. We thankfully discarded this idea—along with most of our racism and sexism—during the 20th century. Instead, the distinctive group patterns that emerge in any society are contingent upon the social conditions those groups must navigate.
In the next installments of this series, I will focus more on those social conditions.