When I read about tires being slashed, spitting in people's faces, and how 10% of americans cannot shake the idea that Obama is somehow a closet Muslim, it gets me thinking about why.
Why would people be so convinced that their perspective is right that they are willing to resort to violence or vandalism?
Follow me below the fold for some thoughts.
I was convinced I would vote for Obama when I listened to his speech on race. I was impressed he tackled the issue at all, but then when I saw the depth and nuance with which he tackled it, I was sold.
I was particularly struck by his discussion on both sides of the race issue. He denounced Rev. Wright's statements, but gave a compelling, but not excusatory, explanation of where they came from:
We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
After a brief rundown through racial history Obama said:
For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.
Then he turned to the other side, showing how well he understood that too:
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch.
to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
Obama did something most people, particularly politicians and pundits, think they do but in fact do too rarely. Obama did not label and dismiss comments against affirmative action as racist, he understood where they came from. He is not a white man, but he saw things from that perspective instead of labeling and dismissing these comments as racist. While he is a black man, he was not raised in the culture of race and discrimination many African-Americans grew (and continue to grow) up in, but he understood where Wright was coming from.
(In fact, if you go back and read the transcriptof where Obama made the "bitter" comment, you'll see a similar nuanced understanding of why people in Appalachia may have trouble voting for someone like him - he may have chosen his words poorly, but he never debases them as 'racist' even when acknowledging that race may be a factor)
We hear a lot of labeling and dismissal. Wright gets dismissed as anti-american. Palin's supporters get labeled racist. Obama is declared a socialist for one out-of-context line when talking about taxes with a plumber. The point is that these labels are tools that promote dismissal. In stead of listening and understanding someone else's perspective, we label it in a certain way to tuck it into pre-defined categories, thereby giving us license to dismiss it.
Everyone has empathy. But Obama puts value on seeing things from others' perspectives, enough to have brought its lessons into his political campaigning. Judith Warner, on the other hand, says that its Republicans that are the ones that see things from the other side (drawing arguments from this guy's research). In reality, both democrats and republicans do it. The problem is on the fringe of both the left and the right, where people somehow exist in "cocoons"
Yet, some recent blog posts over at the Atlantic have been talking about the far-right cocoon (follow-up on the debate here and here). Its an interesting read, and something that I'm sure will resonate with everyone, whether you consider yourself in the cocoon or not. The gist in those links is that when people on the far right of the political spectrum get all their news from the same sources and have discussions with like-minded people, they're shocked when they find out what has been a 'fact' in their circle turns out not to be true.
This should come as no surprise to anyone, and of course its not limited to the far right-wing. You can see it on left wing blogs just as easily, and Daily Kos is no exception. Its being so convinced you're right that the only possible explanation for contradictory viewpoints that the other person is just wrong, or crazy.
The problem arises when we get all of our facts from only our side of the cocoon. As much as we should all be able to agree on what the facts are, if we only get our facts from one wing or the other, it is too easy to end up with a distorted version of reality. Think Bush or Palin, who don't read the news themselves but only get briefed by like-minded advisers.
I don't have the solutions, but I can't help but think we would be all better off if we could obliterate the cocoons. To get anywhere, we must agree on at least some facts. If we can't even agree on the facts, then there is no place to start when having discussions.
Read the Weekly Standard, read the New Republic, read the National Review, read the New Yorker, read the Economist - then make up your own mind.
As Obama said:
And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.