For the last nine years, I’ve worked for an organization that tries to make our public conversation richer, smarter, and more diverse, a social justice organization devoted to the idea that the best ideas, no matter where they come from, deserve to be heard and to change the world. The way we do that is by showing people how to leverage one means of entry to the public conversation — the humble op-ed piece — into a louder and more influential public voice.
For almost a decade, I have travelled the country and the world teaching a workshop in which I try to convince people of the following propositions: the public conversation is too white and too male-dominated; more opeds written by a diverse range of subject matter experts is one way to change that; and you, yes you, have the expertise required to write an oped. You’re an expert in something that matters.
In these workshops, we play a game called “Peak Credibility.” We used to call it an exercise, but a while ago we started calling it a game so that people would think it was fun. It is not fun. To play the game, we go around the room, and every participant has to complete, out loud, the following sentence:
Hello, my name is ___, and I’m an expert in ___ because ___.
It usually takes 20 people about 90 minutes to play this game because a stunning number of people who are not white or male or both believe they are not experts in anything. Sure, they’ve worked on the thing for years or they have a degree in the thing or they won a fancy award for doing the thing or they have lived the thing since the day they were born. But no, no, they’re not experts, and they feel wildly uncomfortable claiming that they are, even in a room full of people they’ll never see again, even for the purposes of a game.
I’ll admit that after running this workshop close to 100 times, sometimes I get a little sassy with people who are clearly experts and who insist they are not. There are lots of reasons they resist using the term — they’ve been taught it’s bragging, they’ve been told their knowledge isn’t valuable, they’ve learned the hard way what happens when people who aren’t white men lay claim to expertise and all the power that comes with it. Still, it can be exasperating and disheartening to hear these same misgivings repeated over and over again, especially when the value of someone’s expertise is so clear to me and to the rest of the room.
So, sometimes I sass. Oh, you teach this subject to graduate students but you’re not an expert? You ran an organization devoted to this issue but you’re not an expert? I have very active eyebrows, and over the course of delivering this workshop to almost 2000 people, they have gotten quite a workout.
And now, I owe almost 2000 people an apology. Because I just wrote a book about ballet, and the other day, I told someone about the book I just wrote about ballet, and that someone called me an expert in ballet, and I physically flinched in response. I wanted to claw my own face off.
The book is now in its final stages of tweaks and tiny edits, which means that any typos that currently exist in the text will probably make their way into your copy (sorry). We are now, officially, in the promotion stage of the book life cycle — more details about events to come as soon as I have them for you. So now, instead of thinking about what I want the book to become, I spend a lot of time talking about what the book is, and about who I am to have written it. Book promotion is basically self-promotion, and self-promotion can feel... squirmy. Not to mention deeply un-Australian.
No, no, no, I wanted to say to this person. I’m really not an expert. There’s so much I don’t know about this topic, things I will never know about this topic, things it hasn’t even occurred to me I don’t know about this topic. It’s just one book. And sure, I interviewed almost 100 people to write it, after spending months reading and a few years reporting, but… Oh, you wrote a book on this topic but you’re not an expert? my sassy workshop facilitator self smirks back.
I’ll never sass again. Or at least, I’ll try not to. Because that physical response was a reminder of how high the stakes of expertise are - so high we feel it in our muscles and bones. What if I say I’m an expert, and people believe me, and I’m wrong? What if I say I’m an expert, and people don’t believe me, and they try to prove I’m faking it? What if I say I’m an expert, and they believe me, and I’m right, and then I have to keep on being right forever? The question of expertise is at once deeply personal and extremely public. Of course no one enjoys that game we play, it’s confronting as hell. It is an act of looking our own knowledge in the face and asking ourselves: what am I obligated to do with this power?
One of the most important things for an expert to know is the limits of their own knowledge. To know what they don’t know (and to know who to call or read when they need to know more about it), and to find ways to speak about what they do know, because otherwise all that knowledge is going to waste, helping no one, serving no public.
It’s a constant renegotiation, asking yourself what you know, how you know it, and how it can be of service to others — without overstepping your bounds, saying more than you should, claiming expertise you don’t really have. I don’t know everything about ballet — who ever could? There are things I don’t know, things I will never know. I believe this book has things of value to say anyway. I believe I am — gulp — an expert.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go claw my own face off.
Thanks, as always, for reading,
Chloe.