Discussing High Conflict

In my congregation’s 4th Principle Dialogue Group, we discussed the book High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out, by Amanda Ripley. We found it to be a good source for understanding community conflicts when they turn polarizing, and here are some resources if you want to run your own book discussion or just learn about the book on your own.

Concepts & Terms

The book High Conflict has several concepts and practices that seem like pure gold. In particular, I have seen looping lead to productive dialogues on hot topics that are otherwise impossible to discuss.

Fourth way. A way to go through conflict that’s more satisfying than running away, fighting, or staying silent, the three usual paths. Leaning into the conflict.

Illusion of communication. The extremely common and mistaken belief that we have communicated something, when we have not.

Looping for understanding. An iterative, active listening technique in which the person listening reflects back what the person talking seems to have said—and checks to see if the summary was right. Developed by Gary Friedman and Jack Himmelstein and detailed in their book Challenging Conflict. 

“Tell me more.” Simon Greer’s ground rules were: “We’re going to take seriously the things everyone holds dear”, “We’re not going to try to convince each other we’re wrong”, and, “We’re going to be curious”. The phrase “tell me more” embodies these rules, and it’s a handy response whenever someone says something that you don’t know how to respond to. 

Magic ratio. When the number of everyday positive interactions between people significantly outweighs the number of negative, creating a buffer that helps keep conflict healthy. (In marriage, for example, the magic ratio is 5 to 1, according to research by psychologists Julie and John Gottman.) 

Crock pot. A shorthand term for the issue that a conflict appears to be about, on the surface, when it is really about something else (see Understory). 

Understory. The thing the conflict is really about, underneath the usual talking points (see Crock pot).

Online Resources

Here is a link to Amanda Ripley’s list of discussion questions. Some of them you can answer from your personal experience with conflict even if you haven’t read the book. 

https://www.amandaripley.com/blog/discussion-questions-for-high-conflict

Here’s a solid review from the NYTimes (no paywall).

https://nyti.ms/3OsHdLl

Session Schedule

Our format ensures that everyone gets to speak. Our goal in the Dialogue Group is not just to discuss valuable topics but also to develop the skills and habits of good dialogue. 

7:00 welcome, settling in

7:05 introductory words, intentions, ground rules, do-not-disturb, chalice lighting

7:10 opening comments. 2 minutes each: introduce yourself, questions or comments about the chapters we’re discussing, or for that matter what you’d like to say about any part of the topic

7:30 suggestions for topics and questions to discuss (might be obvious)

7:35 forty minutes of open conversation (alternatively, 50 minutes with a 10-minute break in the middle)

8:15 last words, 1 minute each for closing comments or thoughts about future sessions

8:25 closing words

8:29 optional group photo

8:30 done

“High Conflict” in Unitarian-Universalist Communities

Ever since 2017, the UU community has been in “high conflict” over the national leaders’ political agenda, so for us this book is timely. The section on gang violence is interesting but doesn’t much apply to our experience. The section on conflicts within a liberal Jewish community, on the other hand, parallels our own experience in a lot of ways.

More Resources for Better Dialogues

See also this post: https://jonathan-tweet.blogspot.com/2022/03/resources-for-better-dialogues.html

Mothers’ Helper

Zoom’s whiteboard = playtime

Over the last several years, I set up weekly meetups with little kids as a way to give hard-working moms a break. Mostly they’ve been in person, and for the last couple years they’ve been online. My own kid is grown, and hanging out with kids has been a rewarding way to stay in touch with the next generation. If you’re not currently managing kids, maybe you have some spare time to hang out with a kid or two. Modern parenting puts a heavy burden on moms and dads—especially moms. For what it’s worth, here’s my experience hanging out with kids.

A younger friend of mine has two daughters, and I would truck over to their place once a week to distract and occupy the older one. The stay-at-home mom appreciated having one fewer kid to worry about, and a couple hours a week doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice on my part. The daughter is shy, but she warmed up to me, and the mom appreciated it. The real payoff was seeing the two girls have fun when they showed up at parties at my place. Since they were both used to me, they felt secure around a bunch of people they didn’t know. 

Before the pandemic, once a week I would pick up a grade-school kid from school. Mostly I hung out at the school’s playground while he played with his peers, and eventually we’d go back to his place. My big contribution was to give him some unsupervised play time with his peers, something that kids don’t get enough of these days. When school was out, we switched to me taking him to the grocery store once a week. We would walk together from his place to the store, do some shopping, and walk back. He had money to spend at his discretion, and we talked a lot about how to make good money decisions. He also got to see me struggle in the sun carrying too many groceries up the hill, an object lesson in reaping and sowing. 

During the pandemic, I met weekly with a kid in another time zone. We used Zoom’s collaborative whiteboard to draw zany adventures. The features seem designed for business, but the whiteboard works as an impromptu play space. The graphic tools let me draw myself and then pick up that drawing and move it around the whiteboard. That way, the kid could see me climb the stairs into the attic, or whatever the adventure was that day. Our adventures were mostly about me getting hurt when my parents are away and I break every safety rule. The graphic tool let me distort my image, so I could turn left and right , and when I fell down the stairs I flipped the image upside down. I could also get squished flat, which happened. We also talked about stuff, but mostly it was play. 

Some of my attempts to set up online hangouts failed to take hold. That was no fun, but it was all right. It can be hard to keep a kid’s attention in a Zoom room, so now I know to lead with a whiteboard or some other way for the kid to meaningfully collaborate with me.

Now I’m married to a mom with a kid, and I get all the reward I need helping her out. Maybe when my wife and I are empty-nesters, I’ll find some other kid to hang out with. 

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Samson the Old-School Terrorist

Philistines are going to starve

When my daughter was little, I wanted to tell the story of Samson to my daughter orally, as it was originally told, instead of reading it out of a “Bible story” book. To get the story right, I opened the Bible and read about Samson. Turns out that his big claim to fame is massacring Philistines, most of them civilians. 

To the Hebrews, Samson was a folk hero, someone who killed their enemies by the thousands. He killed a lot of people, most of them civilians, whose crime was that they were Philistines. Today we expect more than that from a hero. 

Here’s how Samson’s first heroic act goes. He marries a Philistine, and then he challenges thirty Philistines with a riddle, betting them “thirty sheets and thirty change of garments” that they can't solve it. When they solve his unsolvable riddle, Samson knows that his wife has given them the answer. To settle the score, he collects the sheets and garments by killing 30 Philistines...

“And the Spirit of YHWH came upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon, and slew thirty men of them, and took their spoil, and gave change of garments to those who had solved the riddle.”

Later, he torches fields, slaughters Philistines, and kills a thousand with the jawbone of an ass. He dallies with a harlot in Gaza, and then falls in love with Delilah, who betrays him. He’s captured and blinded, but eventually he pulls the Philistines’ temple down around him, killing three thousand more people on his way out.

“So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.”

I never told the Samson story to my little daughter. By modern standards, this guy isn’t a hero. He’s a terrorist.

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Resources for Better Dialogues

Open Mind Platform is one of
several programs for better dialogues.

This page compiles resources for fostering better dialogue. I compiled these items to share with friends, and I’m making them public because these days more and more people seem to be talking about dialogue.

Books

The first two are highly recommended in general, and the third is great specifically for the issue of how to deal with “high conflict” (usually about politics, religion, or identity).

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler

Game-changing. Even just reading the chapter titles helps you think better about conversations. An important point is that you and the person you disagree with should agree on a shared goal for the conversation you’re having, such as understanding each other better.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt
Eye-opening. We think mostly with our feelings, conservatives and liberals feel differently, and our differences are heightened when they fall along differences of group identity. An important point is that adversarial positioning, such as in a debate, makes it harder for people to be open-minded. See also Open Mind Platform, below.

High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out, by Amanda Ripley
A close look at conflicts as they are playing out these days, including a Jewish congregation that was nearly divided over political issues. A big idea is that when you are in “high conflict”, the things that seem like the right approach, such as hosting a debate or referendum, usually make things worse. 

Online Resources
Two online programs that I’m familiar with.

Open Mind Platform
This program puts into practice the theories developed by Jonathan Haidt and others. The solo introductory program is worth doing on its own. The program features guidelines for various sorts of communities, such as congregations. 
https://openmindplatform.org

Braver Angels
This program brings together people with differing views and fosters dialogue in a variety of formats. I’ve done one of their forums, and their structure works well. 
https://braverangels.org

Previous Dialogs
Here are recordings of a few moderated dialogues that I’ve participated in.

Christianity: Good and Bad
A “better debate” hosted by Seattle Atheists. I moderated this one.
https://youtu.be/3AoG5gIt6uI

Religion: Good and Bad
Another “better debate” among atheists, this time with me as a participant. 
https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/seattle-atheists-podcast-596599/episodes/valerie-tarico-and-jonathan-tw-24102396

White Privilege
A Unitarian-Universalist future minister (Justin Almeida) talks with an ex-UU friend of mine, with me as the moderator. Both interlocutors said that they felt heard. How often does that happen in a conversation like this? 
https://youtu.be/wboY_DPR6v4

Foot Poll
One way to get a group of people to share their opinions without a few voices dominating the discussion is to conduct a “foot poll” or a “walk-and-talk”, which I blogged about back in 2015. 
https://jonathan-tweet.blogspot.com/2015/07/walk-n-talk-discussions.html

Take-Away
Dialogue between people with different perspectives can be wonderful, but usually it’s terrible. When done popcorn-style, with one speaker popping up at a time, forums and Q&A sessions get dominated by people whose desire to talk exceeds everyone else’s desire to hear them talk. Fortunately, a little structure goes a long way in helping dialogues be more productive. 

Guest: Hanania’s “Tears”

My friend Casey Jordan would like to get feedback on this summary of an Internet pundit’s recent essay. (Here’s that essay.) If you’re familiar with the essay, how good do you think the summary is? If you’re not familiar with the essay, Casey hopes that reading this summary is better than reading the original. In either case, what do you think? I’ll pass comments on to Casey.

Richard Hanania’s essay, distilled

Casey Jordan

Way way back in February of 2022, Richard Hanania (political ponderer? podcast provocateur?) wrote an essay that got some traction around the web. It explored some surprising ways gender functions in this, an era that claims to be gender-blind.

I find some of his observations fascinating, and wish they could be considered, discussed, and held up to the light by more folk - especially by people who’d be skeptical of the conclusions he draws, so they can give reasoned pushback. 

Alas! Hanania’s prose style is, let’s say, a bit much. He’s needlessly acerbic; he picks fights even when it limits his reach. His essay is, for many people, almost literally unreadable.

Which is a shame: interesting ideas should be engaged (Hanania would probably say “attacked”) by all sides.

So, in the interest of getting more people to explore his ideas, I summarize them below, minus the punch. His original essay, I think, argues five big ideas. The fifth idea is mostly aimed at his in-group (conservatives), so I’ll leave it out of this. 

My apologies for anything/everything this summary gets wrong.

1: We have a double standard

On the surface, our society claims to treat men and women equally. But in at least one important way, this is a facade: for very (very) good reasons, we treat aggression toward women as a much worse thing than aggression toward men.

Probably this is something we can all get behind. Probably this is something we all should get behind. But in the fast-and-furious world of political debate and social policy, this leads to an unexpected wrinkle:

When a man and a woman disagree in public, the man has to tread exceedingly carefully - or the audience will view him as the aggressor, and disregard his ideas.

Hanania cites a bunch of examples of this, but here, let’s consider just two situations:

Situation 1

You’re a man. You find yourself confronted, publicly, by another man. He’s screaming at you, cursing, and crying. What can you do?

If you escalate, you risk the situation spiraling out of control. You may come to blows. Others may intervene. If you de-escalate - say, by walking away - you risk losing face.

Both of these are bad, but, well, dem’s the breaks. At least they’re better than the other situation.

Situation 2

You’re a man. You find yourself confronted publicly by a woman, acting in a similar way. What can you do?

You certainly can’t escalate: even raising your voice is likely to be seen as an implicit threat of violence. You’ll turn onlookers against you. You can’t de-escalate, either - if you walk away, you’ll appear heartless, and turn onlookers against you. You lose the argument, regardless of how you react. 

In sum

Just to repeat the obvious: it is for excellent reasons that our society treats aggression against women as much worse than aggression against men. However, this creates a no-win situation for any man who finds himself arguing against a woman who’s willing to employ a full suite of emotions.

Is Hanania saying that men and women can’t argue publicly? Not at all! He points out that people of any gender can debate with cool-headed logic and reason, and that the majority do. But, predictably, the outliers can have an outsized effect.

Is Hanania saying, as one person put it, that “it’s unfair women can scream, if men can’t slap”? Not at all!

Men who are outliers tend to express their full suite of emotions through physical violence. Our society has developed ways of dealing with this - for example, jails! Women who are outliers tend to express their full suite of emotions through screaming and crying. We haven’t yet developed a way of dealing with this.

(Keep reading for more on this.)

2: We’re in the darkest timeline

Given that women have been freed of the shackles that kept them out of the public sphere, there are two ways that the norms of public debate could work.

Norm A 

We decide the goal of dialogue is to find what’s true and what works, even though it means that feelings will be hurt. Thus, we urge people to keep their emotions in check when debating the issues of the day.

Historically, this has been seen as a norm of men’s discourse.

Norm B

We decide the goal of dialogue is emotional and mental well-being, even though that means it’s harder to find out what’s true and what works. Thus, we support people when they let their feelings loose in debate.

Historically, this has been seen as a norm of women’s discourse. 

(And historically, many people thought this was because men’s and women’s “natures” were different, through blood or genes or whatever. But we don’t need to accept any of that to understand that, culturally, these two norms were seen as gendered - and to remember that our society has held onto many old ideas.)

You might be imagining here that Hanania is one of those complaining that our society has shifted from Norm A to Norm B. You’d be wrong! Hanania thinks either of those situations would be better than the two-faced reality we actually live in: Norm C.

Norm C

We decide that men and women play by different rules. Men need to stick to Norm A: if a man expresses his feelings in a debate, he loses credibility. (This is actually true whether he expresses them in a stereotypically male way - by throwing a punch - or a stereotypically female way - by crying.) Women can, if they choose, take Norm B. And when arguing against a man, Norm B leads to victory.

3: We’re all hypocrites

Hanania argues that this makes hypocrites of the Left, Right, and Center. How?

The Left

People on the Left lean toward believing that gender differences stem from culture, not biology - and we should therefore deconstruct and dismantle them. (The gender differences - not people on the Left!)

However, they don’t treat men’s tears the same way as women’s tears. (Men’s tears are laughable, while women’s tears are allowable.) Hypocrites!

The Right

People on the Right lean towards believing that gender differences stem from biology, not culture - and we should respect and affirm them. (The gender differences - not people on the Right!) 

However, they don’t actually believe that men and women should play by different sets of rules. Hypocrites!

The Center

Hanania saves his greatest vitriol for people in the Center, who cheer on studies that argue that gender differences are, in fact, biological, at least in a statistical way - and then ignore that, and commit to treating everyone as an individual. Hypocrites!

[Summarizer’s note: I’m not confident I’m putting it properly here.]

4: We need to choose, and (A) works better

Norm C is terrible - it systematically works against the participation of men in public discourse. Assuming one finds that unacceptable (!), we need to choose between Norm A and Norm B, and Hanania challenges anyone to argue against the fact that Norm A works better in public discourse.

Again, this doesn’t mean that stereotypically male norms are better. In fact, the excesses of these norms are obviously worse - when left unchecked, they lead to robbery, murder, and war! But the fact that these excesses are so obviously bad means that societies have spent millennia evolving ways to check them (think prisons, anti-bullying campaigns, international war crimes, and the general social stigmatization of violence).

During that time, women have been confined to the home, kept out of the public space. Female norms have only recently entered the public sphere - societies haven’t yet evolved ways to check these kinds of excesses.

Also, this doesn’t mean that male norms are better in all (or even most) contexts. Much of the time, we should adopt female norms, privileging mental well-being over the search for truth. (“Don’t be a jerk” is important life advice.)

To put it all together

Folk on the far Left, Hanania consoles, have long argued that Western institutions are sexist to the core - we all need to accept that they’re right. Public debate was built on stereotypically male norms, and it works better this way. 

Folk in the Center, Hanania argues, have tried to hide this fact. We should drop the facade. We should be honest about how our society works, so we can make it work better.

In a public debate, it’s not okay to throw a punch to get one’s way. We should acknowledge that it’s just as unacceptable to cry.

Please comment on Twitter.

MLK & UU Timeline

For over twenty years, I’ve been a Unitarian-Universalist, and I didn’t know most of this stuff until I started researching MLK two years ago. If you haven’t listened to his speech “The Other America”, follow this link and do that instead of reading my blog post. 

[youtube]

Are Schools Anti-Racist?

 

tl:dr Our school system is both racist and anti-racist, and it’s evidently more anti-racist than it is racist. 

It’s well understood that the US schooling system is racist, in the sense that it perpetuates disparities between more privileged students and underprivileged students, who in turn are disproportionately African American. More privileged kids go to better schools, and underprivileged kids go to worse ones. With the racist nature of schooling agreed on, we can consider whether the school system is also anti-racist, and indeed it looks as though that’s the case. 

Can a racist institution be at the same time anti-racist? Alternatively, to think that an institution can be only racist or only anti-racist is to engage in either-or thinking. Tema Okun famously identified either-or thinking as an aspect of “white supremacy culture”. I’m no expert on critical race theory, from which we get the “white supremacy” theory, but I sure agree with Okun that either-or thinking is bad news. It’s categorical thinking as opposed to empirical thinking, and it’s a recurrent cognitive bias and popular logical fallacy. If we reject either-or thinking, then it makes no sense to describe our school system as either racist or anti-racist. Any system that wide-ranging can easily have multiple results, some racist and others anti-racist.

With the inegalitarian failures of the school system in mind, can we think of anything anti-racist about the system? Imagine what would happen if we shut down the public school system tomorrow as a way to fight disparities between racial groups. If “school” is only racist, then “no school” would be anti-racist or at least less racist. If schools make things worse, then shuttering schools would make things better. Do schools make things worse? Without public schools, racial disparities would be even bigger than they already are. Parents with more privilege would use their resources to get their kids some education, one way or another. Underprivileged parents would have fewer such options or none, and the disparity in reading, math, and other basics would get wider, not narrower. Shuttering schools would make racism (that is, disparity) worse. 

The school system is imperfect on an institutional level, but even with these imperfections it still reduces achievement disparities compared to what those disparities would otherwise be. If schools—relative to no schools—reduce racial disparities, then to that extent the system is effectively anti-racist. Can we compare the degree of racism in the system versus anti-racism? It’s hard to measure, but it’s easy to agree that underprivileged kids are better off with the system we have than they would be with no such system or alternative system in place. This thought experiment leads to the conclusion that schools are more anti-racist than they are racist. 

Still, compared to a hypothetical school system that’s not racist at all, today’s system looks pretty bad. Everyone would benefit from the nation having a better school system, and to get there we need to understand the system we have now. Our challenge isn’t to dismantle a system that’s anti-racist, full stop. Our challenge is to build up the elements of the school system that are already anti-racist and to make the school system work better for the students who aren’t getting what they need from it. To reform schools effectively, we need to recognize the anti-racist side of the system. 

Honest Dialogs Outperform Debates

Dialog is hard but doable.

tl:dr Better dialogs are possible and in fact have been occasionally taking place, especially when participants try to paraphrase each others’ views. 

The traditional debate format is counterproductive. Luckily, we have some new and better ways to approach disagreements. Daniel Dennett recommends four rules in particular, and the most powerful of them is generously paraphrasing the other participant’s position. In Scout Mindset, Julia Galef refers to this tactic as the “epistemological Turing test”—can you state an opposing position so accurately that you could be mistaken for a proponent of that position? It’s also basically steel-manning, the opposite of straw-manning. See Agreeing How to Disagree.

Starting 2014, Brandon Hendrickson and I developed a number of dialogs as we experimented with how to put these principles into practice. Our best result was a dialog about the value of religion. See Honest Debate: Religion, Good and Bad.

Brandon and I also arranged a dialog on Christianity, which went better than your average debate. Both these debates are by and for atheists, but the format of the dialogs is generally applicable. See Honest Debate: Christianity Good and Bad.

Brandon is a innovative educator, and he boiled down the process to a series of structured exchanges. It really works. Here’s a dialog about white privilege, at the end of which both participants feel as though they have been heard. It starts with a lot of glad-handing in order to establish mutual trust between two strangers. You can fast forward through that part, but if you run a dialog, give this step the time and energy it deserves. See White Privilege Dialog.

Resources

Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt is amazing. I’ve run two book discussions on it at my Unitarian Universalist Church, and Haidt’s a fan of Grandmother Fish. His book helps explain why people are so polarized over symbols. See Resources for Studying The Righteous Mind.

Human Swarm by Mark Moffett grounds Haidt’s theories in anthropology and zoology. Roughly, he explains what a “nation” is, for humans, pinion jays, Argentine ants, and a few other species. Can a student of E O Wilson’s do wrong? See my review of Human Swarm.

High Conflict by Amanda Ripley is like the practical take on Haidt’s theory. At the end of the book discussions on Righteous Mind, people would say, “OK, but what do we do?” Ripley has some ideas in that direction, including an account of a liberal religious congregation managing unexpected conflicts among members. 

Scout Mindset by Julia Galef zeroes in on the experience of the individual, especially the attitude one needs to cultivate in order to be right more often. If you want to be right, you must be willing to learn that you’re wrong. 

The organization Braver Angels organizes structured dialogs across lines of polarization, and they’re worth a look. 

The Open Mind platform takes Haidt’s theories and puts them into practice, not as a book but as a program. The introductory module is done individually, and it’s worth undertaking. I’d love to get some experience with this system. 

Chickens Are Dumb

the chicken chicken

When I open the cage to let the chickens out, one particular chicken is always afraid of me. She is the last of four chickens out of the cage. She hesitates and backtracks before finally hopping past me through the open door. Every time. Why hasn’t this stupid chicken learned to trust me? Chickens are so stupid.

That’s what I told myself. Then pretty soon I caught myself ginning up needless worries in my head on one topic or another. Have I ginned cup needless worries lots of times in the past? Yes. Has it ever paid off? No. Am I learning faster than a chicken? Dear lord, I’m trying. 

Atheist Judo

Tim LaHaye on humanism

Of two equally convenient gas stations near my house, one is run by an evangelical Christian who sells Christian-Right books at the counter, including one bout how terrible we atheists supposedly are. He once told me that Seattle is a “very dark” place, probably because there are so many people like me here. One day, I thought about skipping his place for the neutral gas station across the street from it. The proprietor and I are cultural enemies, and shunning his place would be my own little boycott. But instead I went to his place, and after the transaction at the book-laden counter I had a word with him.

“You know, you and I probably disagree on just about everything when it comes to religion,” I said, “but I'm glad you're selling these books. I'm glad you live in a free country where you can do whatever the hell you want.” He laughed, warmed up, and genuinely thanked me. Like Jesus said*, “Don't beat ’em with brutality. Baffle ’em with beneficence!”

*I’m paraphrasing. 

McGhee’s Positive-Sum Take on Anti-Racism

Heather McGhee’s new book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, offers an updated way of looking at racism. She abandons zero-sum thinking in favor of appreciating how racism drags the whole society down. In a war or in an election, zero-sum thinking makes sense because any disadvantage for “them” is an advantage for “us”. In society, however, we tend to prosper more when others in our society also prosper. McGhee is right that we would do well to embrace positive-sum thinking and to work together for a better America. 

McGhee leads with the story of Hinton Rowan Helper, an antebellum Southerner who wrote about how the slave economy hurt the South rather than helping it. He pointed out, for example, that the North had many more schools than the South. In zero-sum thinking, the labor that white Southerners took from enslaved Africans should have made the South rich. For Helper, however, the statistics plainly showed that the North’s capitalist society was outpacing the South, with its medieval social structure and land-focused economy. 

The plantation society of the South represented an intentional attempt by the elites to recapture the lost glory of the Middle Ages, especially as romanticized in Ivanhoe, by Walter Scott. The point of a plantation was not merely to make a profit off of stolen labor but also to establish the owners as lords, with the same power of life and death over their slaves as medieval lords had over their peasants. Rather than using their profits to invest in capital or education, southern “lords” expended their wealth on cotillions and gambling. In contrast to the feudal slavery of the southern states, capitalist slavery is perhaps best represented by Caribbean sugar plantations, whose owners were in London or Paris. 

McGhee uses real-world, historical examples to show that racism hurts the whole society. McGhee’s iconic image representing the society-wide cost of racism is the filled-in public swimming pool.  Municipal swimming pools were once a symbol of American civic pride. After the federal government ruled that even bigoted cities in the South have to provide equal access to African American swimmers, many of these cities filled their pools in rather than see whites and Blacks swimming together as equals. McGhee also offers the example of sub-prime loans. African Americans might have been disproportionately channeled to predatory loans, but all of America was hurt when the home loan industry collapsed.

It’s easy to think of other examples. Mass incarceration disproportionately affects African Americans, but it’s also a drain on the whole society. Poor schooling disproportionately affects African Americans, but society as a whole loses out if kids don’t reach their potential. 

McGhee’s book offers a welcome perspective. It reminds me of Kendi when he points out policies that would be good for white Americans and even better for African Americans. Feminists have long said that ending the patriarchy would be good not just for women but also for men. Maybe now we’ll hear more people talking about how ending racism would be good for white people, too.

Other Posts about Politics
Colorblind Racism, 2021
Secular Apocalypse, 2021
Kendi Says Change Policies, 2021

Group Instincts and Modern Politics, 2020

Family Climate Action Event, 2020

Being Wrong Sucks, 2019
Resources for Studying The Righteous Mind, 2019
Calls to Liberal Action, 2019

Burning Things with Meaning

starting a fire is magical

With SARS-CoV2 receding in Seattle, I threw the first yard party since fall of 2019, complete with a bonfire. Over the years, my guests and I have developed the practice of intentionally burning things in the fire as a little ritual. When our primeval ancestors danced all night around a fire, fire was literally at the center of human spiritual practice. Ancient Persian religion established the now-familiar pattern of a holy man (Zoroaster) and his holy book (the Avesta), and Zoroastrians have revered sacred fires ever since. Today, fire is still a potent symbol in people’s minds, and even Unitarian-Universalists have a flame as a symbol, in a slight nod to those ancestral fires. More prosaically, I have found the grownups and kids can both take joy in burning things up. 

In the latest fire, we had a chair to burn. Chairs are always welcome, as the first big item I purged many years ago was a dilapidated chair. Of special note this time was an original portrait provided by an old friend of mine. It was a portrait of her ex-boyfriend, and he had given it to her as a gift after breaking her heart. Into the fire with it! I contributed a bird nest, a literal empty nest to mark this part of my life now that my daughter has bought a home in Pasadena. It was fun to point out to other at the party-goers what the baby birds had left in the empty nest: crap. What a metaphor. Other party goers, young and old, wrote notes on paper and consigned them to the fire. Usually these notes document the negative things that people want to purge or have purged. They can also be love notes to the universe or whatever you want. For one party years ago, the theme was beautifying the world by burning ugly things, and ugly things are always a good addition to the fire. One friend brings old checks to burn, although I don’t know if he still uses checks. A couple I know burned stacks of old documents related to an online controversy that they had been embroiled in. Sometimes what gets burned is something well-loved but worn out, something too beloved to throw into a landfill but no longer worth keeping. 

big fires not allowed this year

Thanks to the heat and drought in the Pacific Northwest, there’s a burn ban across Washington state. Our next fire has to be a modest affair in a metal container. Stupid climate change. 

Other Posts about Ritual

Dance Church Seattle, 2017

Table Grace for Nonbelievers, 2016 

Land of Nice Atheists, 2014

Reading about Religion, 2014

Christmas Unitarian-Style, 2013

Welcome Ceremony at Burning Man, 2013

Burning Man Temple, 2013

Race-Blind Racism

Rev William Barber II

In the 80s, I learned one of the tenets of Critical Race Theory, and it changed the way I think about racism to this day. It’s the understanding of how racial disparities are perpetuated even if no individual person in the system has anti-Black bias in their heart. It’s a powerful way to understand racism, and I wish that antiracists talked about it more. In general, I like all the parts of anti-racism activism that have evidence behind them, and this concept seems like the one that needs the most attention. It’s both powerful and seemingly downplayed. Here I’d like to consider this concept’s value separate from the rest of Critical Race Theory. When I learned about it, it was not associated with the other tenets of CRT, such as convergence theory or counter-storytelling. 

In sociology class, we were taught to call it “institutional racism”, but I no longer use that term. Alternatively, this sort of racism is sometimes described as systemic or structural, but I don’t use those terms either. Different people use these terms in different ways, so I never know what someone means when they use one of them. Sometimes they mean what I’m getting at here: racism that operates in the absence of bias. Sometimes they mean the opposite: racism that operates through bias that is systemic, structural, or institutional. The term “meritocratic racism” has some promise since it’s the meritocracy that primarily perpetuates inequality from one generation to the next, but its meaning isn’t obvious. I hope that the phrase “race-blind racism” is clear enough that people know what I mean. 

Ibram Kendi gives an example of race-blind racism when he cites climate change as racist. Climate change is already hitting non-whites around the world harder than it hits whites, a sort of racism that rolls out without anyone directing it to roll out that way. Meanwhile, our carbon-fueled economy brings in profits to Texas oilmen, Norwegians, Dutch, Arabs, and Persians—all of whom are “white” under US law. Fighting climate change is anti-racist regardless of people’s feelings. (It’s no coincidence that I’m the co-chair of my church’s climate action team.)

Another example from Kendi is health insurance. Our current system is an example of race-blind racism. It disproportionately disadvantages African Americans even if you can’t find reference to race anywhere in the regulations or insurance policies. Expanding health coverage is effectively anti-racist, and I’m all for it. (Unitarian-Universalists recently passed a resolution in favor or universal healthcare coverage.)

Kendi echoes King in saying that antiracists should focus on changing policy over changing hearts. Policy, not feelings, is where race-blind racism operates. Let’s hope that Kendi’s many readers take him seriously. 

A key driver of race-blind racism is the way that resources and advantages are largely heritable from one generation to the next. For both white and Black Americans, the primary factor that determines one’s socio-economic status is the SES into which one is born. As long as the previous generation of Americans had a racial divide in terms of resources, the next generation will perpetuate that divide. Here you can consider “resources” in the broadest terms, not just money but also education, neighborhood, family stability, personal security, etc. Progressive taxation of income is one way that the system pushes in the opposite direction, but it’s not much of a push. Tax wealth, I say, but that’s another post.

One place where educators are pushing back against race-blind racism is in the educational meritocracy. Educational resources are routinely restricted by “merit”, such as admission to universities being contingent on academic achievement. Since white and Asian kids tend to do better on academic achievement than African American kids, gatekeeping by achievement disproportionately hurts African Americans. Higher educational institutions respond by lowering standards for African American candidates and often by raising them for East Asians. This policy has some antiracist effect but doesn’t come close to generating equal outcomes. Some schools are questioning the very idea of meritocracy. Gifted programs disproportionately help white and Asian kids because those are the kids that more often qualify for them. Eliminating gifted programs works against race-blind racism by taking a benefit away from white and Asian kids. The NAACP’s Youth Council, for example, demands that Seattle schools dismantle their “Highly Capable Cohort” program, and the school board has recently started this process. Likewise, Lowell High School in San Francisco is switching from admission based on achievement to a lottery system. The student population has been 60% Asian and only 2% Black, and the lottery will change that. In general, any education program that benefits higher achieving students disproportionately disadvantages African American students. (Personally, I see value in education programs for highly capable students, but I’ve been wrong before.)

After Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr saw the civil rights movement succeed, he pivoted to fight poverty. Within six months, he was assassinated. King knew that freedom to compete doesn’t help much when the race-blind meritocracy benefits those who are born into privilege and leaves out those who are born into poverty. His plan was a massive program to redistribute wealth, including a guaranteed minimum income for people of any race. All anti-poverty and pro-safety-net policies are antiracist. 

Personal bias certainly also plays a role in racial disparities, but it’s pretty common for people to overstate its role, as if race-blind racism isn’t a factor. Race-blind racism works by driving higher rates of dysfunction in poor communities and then letting the meritocracy play out. If poor kids show up to kindergarten already behind rich kids in reading and math, the meritocracy rewards the rich kids over the poor kids. Those poor kids, of course, are disproportionately African American. Structural issues that exacerbate racial disparities, such as higher levels of lead in inner city environments, are hard to get excited about. It’s easy to get excited about bias. When King switched from fighting racial discrimination to fighting poverty, he caught flak from his supporters, and no one picked up King’s campaign after he was murdered. Maybe only a leader of his stature had the potential to change the movement’s direction. Fifty years later, Rev William Barber II picked up the banner of the Poor People’s Campaign, and I’m hoping for the best. 

The Liberal Victory of Same-Sex Marriage

Good times, 2015

When same-sex marriage swept the United States, it was a stunning liberal victory. In 1999, no state in the union even had civil unions for same-sex couples. By 2015, gay marriage was the law of the land. Hats off to Vermont for igniting the movement. I fondly remember in 1999 when Vermont’s supreme court called bullshit on limiting the benefits of marriage to cross-sex couples. Then in 2000, Vermont became the first state in the US to allow civil unions between same-sex couples. Other states followed Vermont’s lead, establishing either civil unions or marriage for same-sex couples until, in 2015. the US Supreme Court made gay marriage legal in all fifty states. 

The implicit message of the gay-marriage campaign was that our institutions are good, and that everyone should have the right to be part of them. Marriage is a good thing, they said. Most voters are married, and the gay-marriage campaign validated married life. It was a positive message about love and commitment. Who doesn’t like a rainbow? 

If your political opponents are associated with happy things like rainbows and parades, you’ve lost. Opponents of gay marriage came across like haters, which is not only accurate but also politically convenient for liberals like me. I’m hoping that legalizing weed can be another feel-good campaign for liberals, and I think it’s about time, but that’s another story. 

Meanwhile, the proponents of marriage equality did not ask heteroes to confess their hetero privilege. The leaders did not have their eyes on dismantling western civilization. Smashing hetero supremacy was not on the agenda.

In terms of human history, gay-marriage advocates accomplished something remarkable. In societies all across the globe, strict gender roles have been the norm. Gender-nonconforming people were generally expected to take on a different gender role rather than transgress the boundaries of the gender role that they were born into. Modern liberal society, in the other hand, is remarkable for how loose gender roles are, relative to the rest of history. Same-sex marriage seems fine to kids born into our society, but it was unthinkable for our ancestors except perhaps the last few. In terms of being something new under the sun, same-sex marriage really is.

Sixteen years is a short amount of time for such a momentous change. The gay-marriage campaign was a big success, and it was part of a successful movement across the globe. When it comes to social justice, I like approaches that work, and that’s why I’m a liberal. Maybe we can learn from what’s worked and do more of it. 

Secular Apocalypse

apocalyptic science fiction
for children, 1976

The global power network on which governmental authority depends has been revealed to be a corrupt, racist oligarchy. Capitalism is driving the natural world to ruin and pushing humanity toward total war. Corporations poison us for profit, politicians embrace racism, and the police rely on brutality for crowd control. Racism, sexism, and homophobia are built into the system. The expanding population leads to more pollution and more extinctions, with no end in sight. Humanity’s only hope is a definitive break with its oppressive, destructive past, especially Western civilization. Humanity will be destroyed if we don’t establish a revolutionary new society, where all people share the world equally and children are raised to be kind instead of greedy. 

Anyway, that’s how it looked in the mid-70s when I was 11 years old. So today when people tell me much the same narrative, I can empathize. 

Kendi Says Change Policies

a daring work

In his book How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X Kendi offers a number of critiques of social justice activism. Activists, he says, should fix their failing messaging, stop saying that African Americans can’t be racist, and change their focus. In particular, he emphasizes the importance of changing policy over changing hearts. As he explains, an emphasis on policy change is hardly new, even if it runs counter to today’s mainstream antiracist activism. Kendi says you’re not an activist unless you have a track record of changing policy. This bold framing comes as an indictment of a broad range of social justice action that seems to be aimed more at winning converts rather than at changing laws and regulations. As a liberal who has been surprised and disappointed by impractical rhetoric on the left, I heartily welcome Kendi’s perspective.

For years it has puzzled me why so many social justice messages fail to include a call to action. The documentary 13th has no call to action. The book Caste is the same way. Signs at the MLK march tend to express feelings but not plans or next steps. Activists have told me that it would be “white privilege” if they made practical plans to fight racism. Thomas Sowell suggests that movement leaders focus on feelings rather than on plans because that’s the less risky approach. If you don’t attempt anything, you can’t fail.

A good deal of demonstrations seem meant to declare or promote general support for a movement. Some activists explicitly describe their job as building participation in “Movement” until the population reaches a tipping point. Sometimes this tipping point is pegged at 3.5%, a figure derived from a study that confirmed the value of mass movements of nonviolent protest. For these activists, there’s little point to pursuing electoral victories? Until the population reaches its tipping point (the story goes), electoral efforts are going to be ineffective, and after the tipping point they’ll be a breeze. In Kendi’s formulation, the people marching on MLK Day are merely demonstrating, not really protesting. Until they have changed policy, they don’t even deserve the term “activist”, at least not in Kendi’s perspective. 

Some of the feelings-first rhetoric on the radical left appeals to the New Age imagination. We are enjoined to wake up, heed a new vision of humanity, embrace the spirit of abundance, dismantle civilization, and create a new society founded on equity. It’s sometimes called the Great Turning. Here the focus is on confession, repentance, and zeal rather than policy change. New-Age “visualization” makes an appearance here as “re-imagining” society.

Feelings-oriented antiracist rhetoric also appeals to some people because it tells them what they want to hear. The implicit message is, “Your personal feelings are super important.” Plenty of would-be activists respond warmly to the idea that the work they’re called to do amounts to reading, self-help, introspection, and being emotionally moved.

Kendi, however, calls all this feelings-oriented work into question. To back up his challenge, he cites Martin Luther King, Jr. Activists these days have a love-hate relationship with King. They love to quote him when he agrees with them, such as when he said that riots are the language of the unheard, but they hate it when he gets quoted against them, such as when he condemns riots as self-defeating. In Kendi’s case, he criticizes activists for failing to heed King’s message that it is wise to focus on changing policy rather than on changing hearts. Changes in heart, King said, will follow changes in policy. With 50 years of hindsight, Kendi backs up King’s claim with historical evidence. For example, the Supreme Court ruled that interracial marriages are legal in 1967, which was followed by a steady rise in support for such marriages. If King and Kendi both agree that policy change should come first, who will say otherwise?

If we accept Kendi’s message, what sort of policy change would be considered antiracist? Kendi defines antiracism as anything that improves racial equality, regardless of intent. In that view, any policy that helps Americans who are less well off is, by default, antiracist because it disproportionately helps African Americans. Fixing health insurance, Kendi says, would be antiracist. A do-nothing climate policy, on the other hand, is a racist climate policy. Kendi’s reference to policies that help the poor reminds me of King’s Poor People’s Campaign, now given new life by Rev William Barber II.

How much influence will Kendi’s dissenting take on activism have on social justice movements in the US? To date, I haven’t heard much discussion in social justice circles about Kendi’s challenge to feelings-first rhetoric, but maybe there’s dialog taking place behind the scenes. I’d love to see more focus on policy change because I agree with King and Kendi that it’s more effective. Is it wishful thinking to expect that Kendi’s book will really make a difference?

Cousins and Garbage

one bag for glass, one for aluminum

Some days, I walk half a mile to the Git-and-Go for a six-pack of Goose Island’s Next Coast IPA and maybe a bag of caramel corn. My mom likes caramel corn, and my sister-in-law is collecting beer bottle caps, so everyone gets a little something. Today, here was the exchange with the cashier.

Cashier, a Black woman: Would you like a bag?

Me, a white guy: Yes, thanks, could I get two bags? 

She, unamused: You can have one bag.

Me: I’m going to put my stuff in this backpack*. I want to use the bags to pick up aluminum cans and glass bottles.

She, warmly: Oh, yes, you can have two bags. 

Me: Thanks. The last time I was in here, I was too embarrassed to ask for bags.

She: It’s all right.

Me: We’re all in this together.

She, giving me two bags: That’s right. Here you go. 

Me: I figure if all Black people are brothers and sisters, then you and I are cousins at least.

She: We’re all from Africa. We all have the same DNA.

Me, resisting the urge to show her photos of my beautiful biracial daughter and instead putting my fist up to the anti-COVID plexiglass: That’s right.

She, fist-bumping me through the plastic: Take care.

Me:  See you.

Is this the first time that I have connected with someone different from me across a gas-station counter? No. Am I a dork? Yes, and that’s why I treasure being a Unitarian-Universalist, a community in that embraces dorkiness. Don’t believe me? Just listen to us sing some Sunday, once the pandemic is over.

*If you work for Amazon, you might get ground up, but you might also get a rocking backpack.