Commitment in the Gray

Many praise doubt as a critical virtue—but what happens when skepticism becomes an excuse to waver in the face of injustice? As Gaza burns, intellectual ambivalence becomes a mask for moral evasion.

In October 2024—one year into Israel’s ongoing campaign of extermination in Gaza—Vox’s podcast “The Gray Area with Sean Illing” released an episode featuring acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates discussing his new book, The Message. As a fan of Illing’s show and a close observer of the media firestorm that accompanied the publication of The Message, I eagerly tuned in. As it turned out, however, the conversation went beyond Coates’ argument about Israeli apartheid; it spoke directly to a subject I had dedicated the past decade of my life exploring: doubt, moral conviction, and commitment.

Illing’s exchange with Coates centered around the latter’s forceful insistence that what is happening in Palestine is quite straightforward and easy to understand. As Coates says, “The math is clear…It’s so obviously Jim Crow.”

The ensuing exchange is worth quoting in full:

Illing: I’m glad we got here. You know, because, you’re on the show, it’s called ‘The Gray Area’ for a reason, right? And—

Coates: and I’m giving you black and white [chuckles].

Illing: No, I love that. I mean, this is the shit, man. This is what we’re here for. It’s called that because I think life is messy and complicated, and the temptation to blot out complexity for the sake—

Coates: [cackling in knowing laughter]

Illing: Hold on now [laughing], hold on professor…Just, the tendency to blot out complexity for the sake of a more simple story is understandable. But I do think it can become dangerous in its own way. And I’m constantly attuned to that threat. Maybe too attuned, actually. And I like that this is a reflex you challenge in the book and you’re challenging here, because it really forced me to think about it.

Illing’s faith in the principle of doubt is by no means unique. Doubt is widely celebrated as an enriching and liberatory orientation to the world, even as the liberal order that helped elevate this principle is coming apart.¹ Yet valorizing skepticism often amounts to little more than a sophisticated cover by which to dress up existing commitments while avoiding any real reckoning with them. Between stable certainty and endless suspension of judgment, there is another option: sustaining commitment to a collective cause or form of life, while still acknowledging the uncertainty and ambivalence we inevitably carry as individuals.

Doubt Is Not a Useful Principle