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Next month, I’m speaking at the Council on Foundations annual conference: “Building Together: Leading Collaboratively Across Differences.” It should come as no surprise that I love that theme. But I was a bit taken aback to see the session I’m speaking at — “Bridging and Equity, Hand in Hand” — advertised on LinkedIn with this line: “Does building common ground stand in the way of equity and justice?”
What a curious way to frame the discussion. Shouldn’t we take for granted that a healthy democracy requires people of different identities to constructively work together on issues of collective concern and to find ways to learn from one another when they disagree? Isn’t bringing diverse people together on common ground critical to achieving, not impeding, social change? The alternative — identity groups at each other’s throats — is a nightmare scenario for any society.
But then I remembered how many times in the past few years people in the social change world have expressed surprise, even contempt, when I describe the nonprofit I lead, Interfaith America, as a bridge-building organization.
My typical response: “I’m not buying a brownie from the Nazi bake sale, but I’m looking to have a good relationship with just about everyone else.”
“Even people who vote Republican?” some ask me, aghast.
“You mean, roughly half the country?” I reply. “How does it advance any of the causes I care about — pluralism, equity, or justice — to self-righteously proclaim that 75 million people are my enemy? That marginalizes me, not them.”
No wonder the Council on Foundations feels compelled to acknowledge the “other side” of the bridge-building debate.
I need to stop being surprised by any of this. After all, today’s symbol of social change is the raised fist, not the extended hand. Many of today’s activists like to quote philosopher Frantz Fanon on the therapeutic benefits of violently overthrowing the oppressor. Few refer to Nelson Mandela on the importance of reconciliation between all sides.
Romanticizing Resistance
I think it’s high time to question the wisdom of romanticizing resistance approaches to social change. Consider, for example, the attention given to two critical events in the gay rights movement. The first, the Stonewall Inn uprising of 1969, set off a movement in the United States that ultimately led to the national decriminalization of homosexuality in 2003. The second, the behind-the-scenes work of Leo Abse, a member of the British Parliament, who wrote a bill ending the criminalization of gay people — and cooperated with others to pass it — achieved the same result in 1967, fully 36 years before the U.S.
As New York University Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah noted in a New York Times op-ed, everyone in social-change circles knows about Stonewall. Hardly anyone knows about Leo Abse.
Certainly, spirited uprisings are at times warranted. Stonewall was one of those moments, and so was the brutal murder of George Floyd.
But as a general rule, don’t we want a society where people work together to pass laws that secure the rights of all, rather than one where throwing bottles at police officers is the preferred way to create social change? Shouldn’t we spend at least as much effort telling stories about the people who cooperated to pass legislation despite their differences as we spend lionizing those who lead even well-justified violent revolts?
Creating social change is mostly about widening your coalition and increasing your friends, not narrowing your circles and multiplying your enemies. The “I’m right and you’re a racist” approach is unlikely to win many victories.
Listening and Learning
The most important benefit of seeking common ground is that it allows people with broadly similar aims but somewhat different methods to stand in proximity and learn from one another. By exchanging views, we come up with better ways to achieve goals such as equity and justice.
This ethos could have made a big difference during pandemic debates over school closings and the subsequent severe learning loss suffered by Black and Latino students — a situation University of California, Berkeley, philosopher Shamik Dasgupta calls “a moral catastrophe.”
How did this happen? One key reason is that the political leaders of blue cities and states, where many racial minorities live, kept public schools closed far longer than politicians in red states. They often did this in the name of racial equity, even though by fall 2020 compelling evidence showed that schools were not super-spreader environments, and were essential to most kids’ mental health and learning.
And yet, I witnessed several instances in my own blue city of Chicago where people who cited such evidence as justification for opening schools were basically called murderers of Black and brown children. Racial equity, they proclaimed, demanded that we keep schools closed.
The truth turned out to be quite different. Keeping schools closed in poor Black and Latino areas was the cause of “the largest increase in educational inequity in a generation,” according to Thomas Kane, a Harvard researcher.
Nothing is quite so tragic as an avoidable disaster. Had we built common ground and listened to different viewpoints rather than declaring some people representatives of righteousness and others the enemies of equity, Black and brown kids might be in a far better educational position today. Even Francis Collins, who as head of the National Institutes of Health during the pandemic advocated for restrictive closures, recently said he wished he’d listened to a wider range of voices on the matter.
A similar rethinking is taking place regarding the use of standardized tests in college admissions. Turns out that simply declaring the SAT racist and jettisoning the test, has hurt, rather than helped, some minority applicants.
Most issues, from crime to climate change, could benefit from listening to a wide range of viewpoints and collaborating with a diverse cross-section of people. That’s easier said than done of course. Cooperation across difference takes courage, knowledge, skills, and a community of support.
That brings us back to the Council on Foundations conference in Chicago next month, which will feature an impressive list of experts well versed in what it takes to achieve common ground. I’m looking forward to plenty of bridge building conversation from that group — and very little finger pointing. I hope you’ll join us.
