We Are More Than Just Who We Are
Heading toward Election Day, we don’t care as much about what the candidates are saying or doing as what the polls are telling us. Who is ahead? By how much? In what states?
The analysis slices us into slivers. Suburban white women with college degrees. Blacks. Hispanics. Rural white men without college degrees. Retirees over 65. Millennials. Evangelicals.
The underlying message is who we are determines our values. What we believe. How we vote.
Unconsciously, we accept that message and it affects how we think about ourselves and the “others”. If you are white, male, have a high school education, and live in the country, you are expected to vote for Trump. If you are Black you are expected to vote for Biden. In talking to a Black radio audience, Biden himself bought into that assumption when he said that anyone having trouble deciding between him and Trump “ain’t Black.”.
The expectation, and the peer pressure that comes with it, becomes the reality. More than one study has shown that the message most effective in influencing behavior is, “Your neighbor is doing it.” It is difficult to be different from your group. One person interviewed by the New York Times said she and a friend had decided to lie about their voting intentions. “I don’t feel like getting crucified for what I think.”
We are defined by who we are. By characteristics we can’t change. Characteristics that are different from others. The political assumption is that our interests are different. Candidates craft messages that appeal to the differences. It is easy to begin thinking we are in competition against each other. If they win, we lose; we have to win so they lose.
The communities we live in are not particularly diverse. Most of the people we associate with are like us, think like us, and look like us. We buy into stereotypes of the other. Angry white men. Radical socialists. The left-wing mob. Our mind closes to the variety of individual realities because we don’t know any of them. Conversations that can take place only when there is common ground never get started.
Our whole approach to politics emphasizes our differences. Even when we go through a litany of supporters to show how diverse and inclusive we are, we leave some out. They notice. And so, we divide.
Our politics is not going to change – at least not soon. Polling based on demographics is not going to go away, nor will candidates stop appealing to group interests.
We can, however, understand how it effects how we perceive ourselves and others.
And we can contemplate an alternative politics, a politics centered on community, on who we are when we all get together, on what it takes for all of us to thrive.
When we think of community interests, the concerns we all have even in our separate demographic silos, the things we want are similar: a working economy, good wages, great schools, access to health care, security, decent housing, safe streets, respect, and the freedom to speak freely and act politically.
We have not achieved those goals. None are distributed widely. People don’t take to the streets when things are going well. Social unrest is a symptom of our failure.
Let’s figure out how we can accomplish what we have failed at up till now. Let’s center our politics on transforming all of our communities into good places to live, work, play, and nurture the next generation.
The first step is to think of ourselves as being connected, each to the other, in the experiment of learning to live together peacefully. First, in our own communities, then in our states, in our nation, in our world.
Geraldo Cadava, professor of history at Northwestern University, suggests. “Instead of talking to American voters as representatives of distinct groups of dairy farmers, autoworkers or suburban housewives … candidates should work to stitch our communities together, making all Americans feel invested in the lives of others.”
He goes on to say that the idea goes contrary to the advice of political strategists who would further segment Latino voters into Cubans, Venezuelans and Puerto Ricans in Florida, and Mexicans in Arizona, and micro-target each with advertisements that feature familiar accents, cultural icons and issues specific to individual national groups.
Despite the pollsters and the strategists, we can start practicing community centered politics. If the voters approve and community politics wins at the ballot box, there will be imitators.
We have the ultimate power to decide. On Tuesday we will choose the direction our politics will take over the next four years. Do we reinforce our silos, or start tearing them down?
Douglas Kane is the author of "Our Politics: Reflections on Political Life" published in 2019 by Southern Illinois University Press
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