The healing we need

As the full dimension of the Trump victory became apparent, a veteran strategist remarked, “My crystal ball has been shattered…Tonight data died.” After a sleepless night, I struggled like many others to come to terms with the shocking turn of events. How was it possible that someone so unqualified for the presidency could defeat the most qualified candidate in decades?

Trump owes much to the moral collapse of the Republican leadership who abandoned principles for political expediency, and to the arrogance of Democrats who took their base for granted and failed to reach beyond it. There should be serious soul-searching among the media giants who profited hugely from Trump’s ascent. He in turn received billions in free promotion through disproportionate coverage. Media gave virtually no consideration to matters of policy. They grossly underreported the underlying concerns of voters and relied heavily on polls and punditry.  

The biggest take-away from the election is that much of America lives in parallel universes. The mindset and daily realities of those on the east and west coasts are worlds apart from those in America’s heartland. And while the thriving and increasingly diverse major metropolitan regions across the country are largely Democratic strongholds, the vast rural areas and numerous small towns, many of which face declining economies and opportunities, are less diverse and strongly Republican. 

  

Much has been made of “working class” support for Trump. He won significant support in the rust-belt where the effects of globalization are felt most keenly. But the median income of Trump voters in the primaries was $72,000 while Clinton’s was around $61,000. Issues related to culture, values and identity were greater contributing factors. After all, if Trump was truly leading a working class movement, why did an overwhelming majority of African Americans and two-thirds of Latinos vote for Clinton?  

   

Racial anxiety, or, as a Pew Research Center survey found, concern that “the growing number of newcomers from other countries threatens US values,” appear to be the most common indicators of Trump support. White nationalism is a more accurate description of the movement. From the outset of Obama’s presidency, the backlash against the first black man to occupy the White House was vicious and sustained. Put in the context of similar backlashes in Europe, what we may be seeing is reaction to the end of 500 years of white colonial domination.

Our young people are experiencing the deepest and most lasting wounds. The memory of this brutal campaign will not be easily erased. A Muslim friend says that for months before the election her children were reporting racial taunts from white kids in affluent county suburbs. A Latino leader whose son attends a Jesuit school in affluent Silicon Valley told me that a boy came into class this week chanting, "Build that wall, deport them all!" Children who have grown up with Obama as a role model are confused and traumatized. Across the country thousands of young people who feel betrayed have taken to the streets in protest. 

Besides race, Trump tapped into a deep-seated male chauvinism and misogyny. Had Clinton behaved as crudely towards men as Trump did towards women she would not have survived a day in the primaries let alone in the presidential campaign.

But despite all this, we must also recognize that many white Americans do feel genuinely bewildered, lost and left behind in a rapidly changing world. Cultural, social and demographic changes as well as economic stress cause anxiety and a crisis of identity. Middle-aged white males are getting sicker and dying in greater numbers compared to every other group.   

   

Liberals, particularly the college-educated elite, must share blame for the deep polarization. As one commentator observed, they failed to foresee the political shockwave and have virtually no understanding of the worldview of Trump supporters. Within the white community the gulf between so-called “educated” and “working class” voters is as great as the racial divide. Charles Camosy writes in the Washington Post about the “monolithic, insulated political culture” in most of our colleges and universities. 

Liberals have often been guilty of bigotry against conservative religion and against rural and poor whites. Conservatives are not wrong when they resist what they see as a decline in moral values and family life and the crudeness of our entertainment industry. Democrats have been reluctant to recognize that many Christian evangelicals who may differ with secular liberals on issues such as abortion could be strong allies on racial justice issues. America is a vast and complex country and defies easy stereotyping.

  

Supporters of Trump and of Bernie Sanders are rightly in revolt against the corruption of Wall Street and Washington, DC. Above all, millions of Americans want their voices to be heard. The election result was more a shout against the establishment than a vote for Trump. Democrats and Republicans would do well to listen carefully.

There is much talk now of the need for “healing.” Clinton’s concession statement in which she pledged to help Trump be a good president was a model of graciousness. Democrats should follow her lead. Trump praised Clinton and says he wants to be a president for all the people. After his attacks on Muslims and immigrants he has work to do, and those Republican leaders who first denounced and then supported him must hold the new president accountable.

Obama displayed class and dignity by reminding America – and the world – that the peaceful transfer of power by the ballot and not the bullet is a hallmark of this nation. His remarkable welcome to Trump at the White House prompted the president-elect to call him “a very good man” and to add that he would seek Obama’s counsel.

Healing will not be easy. Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine, could play a key bridgebuilding role in the Senate. He is well-liked and trusted by members of both parties, and he combines a strong faith with a passion for racial justice. As a representative of an increasingly diverse southern state, he understands the importance of history and tradition as well as the reality of changing demographics.   

   

The trustbuilding work of Initiatives of Change USA with its focus on race, reconciliation and responsibility has never been more relevant. The core principles of its manifesto issued in 1996 as a Call to Community could form a basis for the healing that America so desperately needs. They include a commitment to listening carefully and respectfully to one another and the whole community; honoring each person, appealing to the best qualities and refusing to stereotype; building lasting relationships outside our comfort zone; and holding ourselves, our  communities and institutions accountable in areas where change is needed.

Initiatives of Change is partnering with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and more than 130 other organizations to develop a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation process for the United States. Perhaps the shock of the election will jolt Americans enough to take a fresh look at our assumptions, prejudices and insularity. We might take a break from social media and talk with our neighbors. Perhaps we are more ready for honest conversation than we realize.  

Addressing poverty from the inside out

Mother Teresa once remarked that the “greatest disease in the West…is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for.” She went on to say that the poverty in the West is poverty of loneliness, but also of spirituality. 

Physical poverty is real in America. In a city like Richmond nearly 40% of our children experience it every day. And 15 million children across the nation live in families below the poverty line. It is America’s shame and a topic that scarcely surfaced in the presidential campaign. But Mother Teresa was pointing to a deeper truth. 

In a sobering column, Growing Up Poor in America, the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof describes the home of a 13-year-old boy in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, who has three televisions in his room, but there is no food and no books in the house. “The home, filthy and chaotic with a broken front door, reeks of marijuana.” 

Harvard professor Robert Putnam’s latest book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, documents the different experiences of families navigating changing economic times in his home town of Port Clinton, Ohio. In Putnam’s youth, kids of different income levels played sports and interacted socially together; “civic engagement and solidarity were high; and opportunities for kids born in the lower echelon to scale the socioeconomic ladder were abundant.” Today Port Clinton is “a split-screen American nightmare in which kids from the wrong side of the tracks that dissect the town can barely imagine the future that awaits kids from the right side of the tracks.” 

Putnam writes that “an unexpected consensus has begun to crystallize across ideological lines that the collapse of the working-class family is a central contributor to the growing opportunity gap.” A child with a mother in the bottom educational quartile is almost twice as likely to live with a single mother as a child whose mother is in the top quartile. Putnam’s carefully documented case studies track the experiences of children from well-educated middle-class families and contrasts them with the challenges facing kids whose parents have a high school education or less and are struggling economically. 

Putnam acknowledges that changes in the economy are important contributing factors in the weakening of family structures. Unemployment, underemployment and poor economic prospects discourage marriage and stable relationships. But he also notes that gender and sexual norms have changed: “For poor men, the disappearance of the stigma associated with premarital sex and nonmarital birth, and the evaporation of the norm of shotgun marriages, broke the link between procreation and marriage. For educated women, the combination of birth control and greatly enhanced professional opportunity made delayed childbearing both more possible and desirable.” 

President Obama, in a thoughtful review of “unfinished business” for the Economist, highlights the need to address rising inequality. While most economists focus on technology, education, globalization, declining unions and falling minimum wages, he believes that “changes in culture and values have played a major role” in widening the gap. He notes that in previous decades “differences in pay between corporate executives and their workers were constrained by a greater degree of social interaction between employees at all levels – at church, at their children’s schools, in civic organizations.” 

As a society we are communicating very mixed messages to our children. This is particularly evident on college campuses where students enter what one professor calls “a culture of moral, emotional and social chaos.” The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism estimates that alcohol is a factor in 97,000 cases of sexual assaults annually among college-age students. A drunken fray by Michigan students caused more than $400,000 in damage to their vacation hotel rooms. Harvard - one of the world's most privileged institutions - cancelled the the rest of the season of the men's soccer team following revelations of a so-called scouting report that rated the sexual appeal of their female counterparts. Is it any surprise that graduates from our universities display selfish and irresponsible behavior when they get to Wall Street? 

The elevation of tolerance as a primary virtue can leave people adrift without any guidelines for personal conduct and public action. If there are no objective moral benchmarks, how can anyone claim that one value is superior to another? We see a growing social consciousness on issues such as women’s rights, and the need to protect the environment and to fight corruption; but relativism can end up actually being in conflict with widely acknowledged values of respect, equality, and honesty.  

To return to the starting point for this blog: poverty is a moral challenge for the richest nation on earth. Liberals and conservatives should find common cause in addressing it. But as Kristof writes, “Liberals too often are reluctant to acknowledge that struggling, despairing people sometimes compound their misfortune by self-medicating or engaging in irresponsible, self-destructive behavior. And conservatives too often want to stop the conversation there, without acknowledging our society’s irresponsible self-destructive refusal to help children who are otherwise programmed for failure.” 

We must work at structural change and “inner” change at the same time. We need just policies and personal responsibility. One without the other is unlikely to be effective. We must hold ourselves, communities and institutions accountable in areas where change is needed. 

Snapshots of the America I know and love

It is just 10 am but the mercury has already climbed to 85°F as we arrive at our favorite little beach where the York River estuary spills into the Chesapeake Bay. On a grassy park area, Latino boys are playing soccer. Under the few big shade trees large family groups – Latino, African American and Asian – prepare the mid-day meals. Tempting aromas waft from grills. 

As we relax in our beach chairs after a swim, members of an African American Pentecostal church conduct a baptism, wading into the warm waters, while high school seniors in bikinis stroll by. A few yards away, an older white man is fishing. A black army veteran with a yoga mat stops to say hi. It all seems far removed from the picture of a country seething with anger and fear conjured up by Donald Trump.

I have spent the past three decades engaged in efforts for racial healing and equity. I am acutely aware of the injustices that continue to deny too many people of color – as well as white folks – the opportunity to thrive, and I am angry that a society as wealthy as ours still allows so many hard working Americans to live in poverty. I have written extensively about these things. But this blog is about the hopeful side of this country, the America I know and love. 

While deep divisions do exist, most of America is not about to erupt in riots. At our annual neighborhood National Night Out picnic, people of all races and ages mingle happily with officers from the city sheriff's office. In a contrast to images from Ferguson and Baltimore, the newspaper reports that in the days since the Dallas shootings community groups and individuals in predominantly minority communities have delivered pizza and cookies as well as thank-you cards to Richmond police. Richmond is not alone in this regard.    

Despite the partisan gridlock in DC, surveys show that the vast majority of Americans actually agree on major issues such as the reality of climate change, the need to address inequality and to establish sensible gun controls, as well as to properly fund education. There is an overwhelming desire to limit the power of money and corporations in politics. 

According to a 2013 poll, 87% of all Americans (including 84% of whites) now approve of interracial marriage. In 1958, when the question was asked only to whites, it was 4%. Many commentators have remarked on the diversity of America’s Olympians, particularly the black, white, Latina and Jewish female gymnastics team. 

In another hopeful sign of growing awareness, in a polling analysis conducted by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in conjunction with the Northeastern University School of Journalism, a majority of whites acknowledge that racism still exists, and that it creates bias in structures such as the criminal justice system. Also, in a poll last year, 53 percent of whites said more changes need to be made to give blacks equal rights with whites, up from just 39 percent a year earlier. 

I think back to the early 80s soon after we arrived in Richmond. We were attending a city-sponsored July 4th concert in our park, accompanied by a young black friend in what was an almost entirely white audience. To our shock, the conductor returned after the interval decked out in a Confederate uniform and as the band stroke up “Dixie” the entire crowd leaped to its feet shouting and cheering hysterically. We remained seated; I could feel the fear in our friend. Such a scenario is unthinkable in Richmond today. A typical July 4th concert crowd is notable for its diversity.  

Two final snapshots: 

Susan and I are taking our usual early morning walk around the park. A vehicle carrying a young black couple pulls up alongside and the driver rolls down the window. 
“Are you guys brother and sister?” he asks.  
“No, actually we are married,” I replied. 
“Looking good!” he smiles, and drives off.  
The fact that a young black man – a complete stranger – feels comfortable to interact like this with a white couple is testament to a growing comfort and confidence across racial lines.

Returning to the US from an overseas trip, the officer greeting us at the immigration desk may be of any race, religion or ethnicity. He or she may have come to this country even more recently than I. 
“Where have you been?” the officer inquires.
“Europe, attending a conference and also visiting family.”
“Family is good. Welcome home.”  

We have a long way to go to make this country truly a home for all of its people. But I am with President Obama when he says, “I’ve also seen, more than anything, what is right with America.” 

The hard work of democracy

Susan and I landed at London’s Heathrow airport the morning after the Brexit referendum. Back in the US, Democrats were conducting a sit-in on the House floor in an effort to shame their GOP colleagues into allowing a vote on a measure to reduce gun violence. On both sides of the Atlantic, the political elites seem paralyzed and out of touch with key sectors of the electorate. Large numbers of Americans and Brits feel they are not being heard. There is anger and frustration with elected leaders who are self-serving, unresponsive to real needs and (in the case of the US) controlled by lobbyists and moneyed interests.      

Yet, paradoxically, on both sides of the Atlantic, constituents often vote against their own self-interest. In Sunderland in northeast England, the “Leave” campaign won 61% percent of the vote despite the fact that the region is a large recipient of European money and is home to Britain’s largest car factory from where Nissan exports duty-free to the continent. In the US, since the days of Reagan, the GOP has succeeded in winning the support of many white blue collar workers even while Republican policies have helped to widen the rich-poor gap.  

Healthy democracies depend on a well-informed public. Electorates in the US and the UK have been very poorly served by media obsessed with ratings and sensationalism. Responsible media might have exposed Trump as a fraud much earlier. But recent events demonstrate that humans are often influenced more by emotion that by rational argument. We may ignore data but we will resonate with stories; indeed our brains are wired for story. Stories are what make us human. They give meaning to life. They form our identity. 

Stories of course can distort how we remember history. After the American Civil War, the humiliated Southern states developed myths depicting a heroic past and erected monuments to the Lost Cause. It is a universal trait among people with an uncertain future. As Eqbal Ahmad, the Pakistani political scientist and journalist observed, they “affect distorted engagements with the past. They eschew lived history, shut out its lessons, shun critical inquiry into the past…but at the same time invent an imagined past – shining and glorious, upon which are superimposed the prejudices and hatreds of our own times.”   

Listening to post-referendum radio interviews with UK voters, I was struck by the many references to sacrifices in two World Wars and to pride in Britain’s past by those who support leaving the EU. America reflects a similar pattern where older working class whites seem to long for a return to the good old days. Those good old days, of course, were better for some Americans than for others. In the 1950s, a white middle class (many of whom started from humble beginnings) grew rapidly and built unprecedented wealth as a result of the GI bill which enabled them to become homeowners, but blacks were largely excluded by discriminatory bank lending policies. Federally financed highways allowed whites to escape to the suburbs, while minorities were trapped in the inner cities. School segregation continued for decades even after the 1954 Supreme Court decision. 

Current demographic trends show that Americans in increasing numbers are choosing to live in areas populated by people who share their political and cultural views. And we rely on media sources that reinforce our biases and prejudices. In both America and Europe, cultural and generational divides are becoming more evident.   

What can be done to address the growing threats to responsible democracy in Europe and the US? Joyce McMillan wrote in The Scotsman newspaper a few days before the referendum result, “Only a move towards a modern form of social democracy can find the answers we need."  While few of us may be in positions to affect policy directly, there are steps that any of us can take. Here are a few for starters: 

We must all get involved in the exercising of democracy. At the most basic level this means voting at the local, state or county and national level. While 75% of 18 to 24 year-old Britons favored staying in the EU, only 36% actually bothered to vote. Democracy is hard work and requires more than debates on social media. As Bernie Sanders discovered, “momentum” is not enough.    

We can consciously choose to put ourselves in places where we hear the stories of people of varied life experiences and views. We don’t all have to agree but we can all learn something from people who think differently. Instead of contributing to the fragmentation of society we can choose lifestyles that tend to build community. Try actually talking to our neighbors and spend less time on Facebook or Twitter.    

On both sides of the Atlantic we must acknowledge the hopes and the fears that are the natural response to rapidly changing social, economic, cultural and demographic realities. Globalization brings benefits while also demanding painful adjustments, but together we can build a shared vision for the future in which the contribution of everyone is welcomed and valued.

Leading with love

How can Initiatives of Change best contribute to healing the wounds of America’s history of racism? This legacy affects each one of us; it corrodes every aspect of our national life. The election season has revealed the depth of healing that is needed. According to a recent CNN/Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 49% of Americans believe that racism is “a big problem.”

I’ve just returned from Chicago where I spent two days with 30 racial healing practitioners convened by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. All of them lead organizations that do courageous healing and equity work in their cities across the country. This extraordinary group – African American, Asian American, Latino/a, Native American and European American – has come together periodically for six or seven years to facilitate healing sessions at the foundation’s annual America Healing conferences. It is a deeply moving and inspiring experience to be part of this team. We have become quite a close-knit family, with an unusual level of trust, honesty and vulnerability.

Over the past six months I have collaborated with Mike Wenger to collect highlights of the work of these practitioners as well as lessons from truth and reconciliation efforts in several US communities and in Australia and Canada. I first met Mike when he was deputy director of President Clinton’s One America initiative on race. Our survey and the Chicago meeting are part of the preparation for the launch of a national Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) process.

TRHT differs from many Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) in several ways. The emphasis is not on identifying victims and assigning blame. The goal is to understand and to overcome the false notion of a human hierarchy based on race. Its visionary leader, Dr. Gail Christopher, vice president for TRHT and a senior advisor at the Kellogg Foundation, says, “A lot of people want to focus on the consequences of racism but we want to go to the belief system. We want to keep focused on the desired outcome: the equal value of every human being.” There are so many experiences of oppression, but this is not the “oppression Olympics.” We must go beyond merely focusing on our own group.  

The TRHT vision is huge (as Bernie Sanders might say). It will be a multi-year effort that must include every sector. Already, more than 100 organizations and thought leaders have signed on. Vital for its success, it seems to me, will be the full engagement of those whose views have been shaped by very different life experiences. For example, it must welcome the contribution of more socially conservative Americans as well as business leaders.      

In a recent column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof cautions against “liberal arrogance – the implication that conservatives don’t have anything significant to add to the discussion.”  As a self-confessed liberal he writes, “We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.”

A more conservative columnist, Ross Douthat wrote of the current political scene: “On the one hand there are liberals determined to regard Trumpism as almost exclusively motivated by racial and cultural resentments, with few legitimate economic grievances complicating the morality play. From this perspective, the fact that Trump’s G.O.P. has finally consolidated, say, a once-Democratic area like Appalachia is almost a welcome relief: At last all the white racists are safely in the other party, and we don’t have to cater to them anymore.

“On the other hand, there are left-wingers who regard Trump’s support among erstwhile Democrats as a sign that liberalism has badly failed some of its natural constituents, and who fear that a Democratic coalition that easily crushes Trump without much white working-class support will simply write off their struggles as no more than the backward and bigoted deserve.”

However misguided or alarming its expression, the rise of populism in the US and in Europe reveals deep frustration and pain that political establishments have failed to address. As Douthat writes, liberals across the world see “a widening gulf between their increasingly cosmopolitan parties and an increasingly right-leaning native working class.”

The Trump phenomenon, while deplorable, highlights this reality. An effective TRHT process must speak a language that connects with groups who feel their voices are not being heard.

IofC is a partner in the TRHT process which will roll out publicly in 2017. Our pioneering work of honest conversation and racial healing in Richmond can be an important resource. Of particular interest is our track record of enabling communities to walk together through their shared history and to connect with unlikely allies across political, religious, class and racial divides.   

The group in Chicago recognized that the American story is complex and defies easy stereotyping. There are evils that must be confronted and acknowledged. But we should be cautious about seeking any one "truth." Truth does not belong exclusively to any one political or cultural viewpoint. We are all on a journey of discovery. In the words of the author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart.”

In this era of rapid demographic, cultural and economic change, anxiety is natural. And while much of this change is inevitable and may ultimately be positive, no change feels good to those who fear that they will be left behind. A TRHT process must show how the belief in human hierarchy hurts all Americans how all Americans will benefit from overcoming it. 

Above all, as Gail Christopher reminds us, “We must lead with love."