René H. Levy's Blog

On May 31 2020, CNN published an editorial research piece listing three decades of “controversial police encounters that have prompted protests” beginning with the Rodney King case in 1991 and ending with the tragic killing of George Floyd. 

I kept on re-reading the list because of my disbelief that no progress in race relations has been achieved in the last thirty years. I felt not just sadness and outrage but shame as I recalled the words of Zak Cheney-Rice :

“How, besides protesting, can we actually make sure no more black people are killed, beaten or tortured by the police? And how can we promote justice and equity in law enforcement more generally? There's a strong case that the problem with policing isn't actually the police, but us — the police are merely enforcing our democratic will.” 

I fully agree with Zak Cheney-Rice that the police are “us” because of our social contract of interdependence and mutual responsibility.* But I also agree with Trevor Noah that it is time for white America to stop ignoring and start grasping what happens daily to the thousands of “George Floyds who don’t die” but experience injustice, discrimination and yes, “looting”.

To begin that journey, let’s consider a few stats on perception gaps between blacks and whites and between white Republicans and Democrats, taken from two Pew Surveys from 2016 and 2019 .

84% of blacks versus 50% of whites say that blacks are treated less than fairly in dealing with the police; 75% of blacks versus 43% of whites say that blacks are treated less than fairly in the courts; and 64% of blacks versus 22% of whites say that blacks are treated less than fairly in the workplace.

40% of blacks versus 19% of whites say that discrimination against black people is built into laws and institutions (rather than linked only to individual prejudice). 

70% of blacks versus 36% of whites say that discrimination is a major reason that blacks have a harder time getting ahead than whites.

78% of blacks versus 37% of whites say that our country hasn’t gone far enough in giving blacks equal rights with whites.

Now, let’s turn our attention to differences of opinion between white Democrats and Republicans.

59% of Republicans versus 21% of Democrats say too much attention is paid to race relations (and conversely, 11% of Republicans versus 49% of Democrats say too little attention is paid to race relations) 

78% of Democrats versus 36% of Republicans say the country needs to continue making changes to achieve racial equality between whites and blacks

78% of Democrats versus 22% of Republicans say the bigger problem for the country is not seeing discrimination where it really does exist (and conversely, 22% of Democrats versus 77% of Republicans say the bigger problem for the country is seeing discrimination where it really does not exist).

Finally, 55% of Democrats versus 5% of Republicans believe that President Obama made progress in improving race relations.

These facts require little commentary.

Let’s stop asking ourselves “what can white individuals like myself do to enhance progress in race relations?”

We must start without any delay to build two new and distinct bridges, one between races and another between white political partisans.* Since the work of Gordon Allport 70 years ago, social psychologists have taught that individuals have an important role in decreasing the harmful effects of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination. **

So please, let’s do it for George Floyd, for his family, and for a self-healing America.

Source Notes:

* Rene H Levy: “Mending America’s Political Divide: People Over Partisan Politics,” 2020 (Chapter 11).

** S. Keene Journal of Law Enforcement/volume 1, number 3 (2010)

I have two distinct reactions to the May 21 CNN Opinion by Van Jones and David Kamenetzky.

The first is to applaud them for coming together to issue a “call to conscience” to avert the “potential pandemic of hatred against a variety of vulnerable groups” resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. They point out that this pandemic has “triggered enormous insecurity” and “a growing sense of powerlessness” which make individuals and nations alike vulnerable to hate. The Opinion includes also suggestions to “detect and eliminate hate speech” namely, that people should speak up, document the hatred, react through social media, create artificial intelligence tools, and teach children. I thank them because my April 7 blog on “political partisanship in post COVID-19 America” focused on the “high level of social responsibility among Americans of all ages” and that “we are all in this together,” but I missed the pandemic of hatred that they highlight so well.  

 

My second reaction is that any serious attempt at tackling hatred in our society must be based on a scientific understanding of this human emotion. Speaking of hatred is like speaking of an infection. Just like there are many types of infections, there are many types of hatred: cool, cold, hot, boiling, simmering, seething, and burning. Inter-individual hatred is different from group hatred and political and ethnic hatreds are subcategories of group hatred. In 1944, the Nobel Prize French philosopher Albert Camus warned that using an inadequate designation can bring about sorrow and misery in the world. His warning is highly pertinent to hatred. The word hatred or hate has served us well to convey notions of hostility, aversion, or loathing, but it comes short when the goal is to curb or uproot this emotion in our society. As pointed out in my two books on this subject (“Baseless Hatred: What It Is and What We Can Do About It” and “Mending America’s Political Divide: People Over Partisan Politics”), a national conversation on hatred is long overdue, especially since Van Jones and David Kamenetzky consider that hatred “is a systemic problem in the United States.”

 

“Braver Angels is a citizens’ organization uniting red and blue Americans in a working alliance to depolarize America:

We try to understand the other side’s point of view, even if we don’t agree with it

We engage those we disagree with, looking for common ground and ways to work together

We support principles that bring us together rather than divide us”

Visit their website here.

Following the previous blog on putting aside partisanship during the troubled times of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was asked “what will happen to political partisanship in a post-COVID-19 America?” My answer was “it depends on how each one of us responds to this pandemic.” But after a few weeks of coronavirus lockdown, I can say that the American response provides some reasons for optimism.

         Millions of Americans of all political persuasions pulled together to protect the lives of the most vulnerable among us. Health care workers risked their lives to save infected patients’ lives. Average Americans provided care and comfort to the elderly and to those who had lost their incomes overnight. Volunteers delivered free meals from fast food restaurants. Students received free storage and Wi-Fi. Many companies joined the war on the coronavirus to increase our testing capacity, manufacture protective equipment, sanitizers, disinfectants, respirators and ventilators. Pharmaceutical and biotech companies launched short-term and long-term research programs to develop drug treatments and vaccines. Most importantly, 150 million Americans complied with stay-at-home orders staying apart from their families and friends to save the lives of fellow Americans and do what’s best for their country. This behavior reveals the existence of a high level of social responsibility among Americans of all ages.

         This response is inspirational because just two years ago, civil leaders like Robert B Reich (former Secretary of Labor) warned that we are losing our national identity because we are losing our sense of the common good. I agreed with his assessment that irresponsible individualism resulted in a loss of social trust. And that’s why I proposed the People-Over-Politics Action Plan which recommends the institution of curricula to teach young Americans the notions of interdependence, social responsibility, and mutual responsibility. I trust that the COVID-19 experience will occupy several chapters in those curricula.

         Will the spirit that “we are all in this together” survive after the coronavirus threat has dissipated? We can’t be sure but we do know that this pandemic has changed the way we interact with each other and it appears to be for the good.

  

“This is the first time that the entire world has been at risk from the same enemy. No rockets or bombs can do the damage of this virus. It makes all hatred and warmongering quite irrelevant and absurd. This is the shock that all humanity needed, to realize just how precious and tenuous life actually is. Hopefully it will result in an understanding of what is actually of value and worthy of pursuing.  Wasting energy on hatred and destruction of others is beyond insanity.” 

Click here to read the full article.

 

Even before the World Health Organization publicly characterized the coronavirus disease 2019 (“COVID-19”) as a pandemic, a New York Times article (3/1/20) warned that “a growing public health crisis has turned into one more arena for bitter political battle.” [1] Allowing our individual political bias to impact our personal behavior during this pandemic is more than unfortunate—it could be deadly to thousands in our area and millions across our country.

The ‘science’ behind our response to this critical situation will work, whether one believes in science or not. Because we do not have antiviral medications nor vaccines to attack, cure, and prevent COVID-19, we must rely on interventions that reduce infectious contacts between persons such as “social distancing” [2] which has been recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to slow the spread and transmission of COVID-19. 

The decision to undertake social distancing was based on analyzing data from the 1918 influenza pandemic when there were 500,000–675,000 deaths in the U.S. and 50–100 million deaths worldwide. On September 28, 1918 Philadelphia, PA held a previously planned parade to celebrate the end of WWI. Over 200,000 attended. By October 12 of that year 4,500 people had died. By the end of the pandemic, 16,000 people died in that city. St Louis, on the other hand, canceled public gatherings in churches, schools, and theaters and had one of the lowest death rates over the course of the pandemic with only 1703 deaths [3]. Social distancing is one of the few weapons we have in our pandemic prevention arsenal, along with washing hands and disinfecting commonly touched surfaces. And it can work.

But social distancing is a challenge because it disrupts many aspects of our daily lives including participating in fundamental economic necessities, such as traveling to work, perhaps on public transportation, and spending time in proximity to other employees and/or customers. Social aspects of everyday life are also severely impacted and canceling highly anticipated events such as sporting events, vacations, birthday parties or weddings will be disappointing but can save lives. Those activities which make life worth living like going to the gym, visiting elderly family members, eating out at restaurants, going to nightclubs and bars, participating in community activities such as fund-raisers or book clubs also must be curbed—temporarily.

The success of this practice will ultimately depend on how we respond as individuals. It is up to each one of us to do our utmost to set aside our political predilections and respond responsibly to this directive. [LB1]  The threat is serious. And we must respond with seriousness to this situation. If we fail, by April 7, 2020, the lives of hundreds of individuals could be jeopardized right here in King and Snohomish counties [chart in the Seattle Times of 03/12/20 from the Institute for Disease Modeling, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center] [4].

To overcome this pandemic, we must put people over politics and strengthen our individual commitment to “civic guidelines” that have sustained American democracy in the past. These guidelines include the notion of mutual responsibility, which was a previously accepted societal norm that dictates that each citizen has a responsibility to do what’s best for each other and the country as a whole. Mutual responsibility rests on an awareness of our interdependence: in the span of 24 hours, the average American’s life is entrusted to more than 2,000 different people who are complete strangers.

Mutual responsibility has been championed by several civic leaders. Nine years ago, in their book “Gardens of Democracy”, Seattle-based Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer wrote: “…every problem the society faces is everyone’s problem…we are bound up in each other’s choices…we are not separate...we are deeply, irretrievably interdependent... true self-interest is mutual interest.” [5]

In the July 14, 2019 issue of The Seattle Times, Basil Hero deciphered the nature of “The Right Stuff,” referring to the courage and bravery of the first astronauts who walked on the moon. According to Hero, “The Right Stuff” revolves around two virtues, “the common good” and “believing in something greater than oneself.” Hero also quoted Alan Bean, the fourth man to walk on the moon, “People today need to think more about serving the common good instead of their own selfish needs.”

What is this “common good”? For that we turn to Robert Reich (Professor at UC Berkeley, former Secretary of Labor) who said, “The Common Good consists of our shared values about what we owe one another as citizens who are bound together in the same society—the norms we voluntarily abide by, and the ideals we seek to achieve.”

Although being liberal or conservative has become a form of social identity, the pandemic nature of COVID-19 attacks without asking for one’s political affiliation first. This reality should compel us to put aside our politics to protect not only our lives, but the lives of the most vulnerable among us. As elegantly stated by Dr. Manya Arond-Thomas, “If we seize the moment, we have not only the opportunity to create a new story but an opportunity for healing at individual, group, and collective levels.” [6]

We have limited time to slow the spread of COVID-19 and it will require the cooperation of every citizen here in our community and across the country to practice social distancing. The life you save may be your own—or it may be the life of a fellow citizen that you don’t even know or agree with politically. But hopefully, you will agree with this. We must all take responsibility for the “common good” by accepting the challenge to participate in the practice of social distancing to mitigate the impact of this pandemic. Putting people over politics is the only way to save us all.

2.  PNAS, vol. 104 (18) 7582-87; May 1, 2007.

5.   Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer, The Gardens of Democracy (Seattle, Sasquatch Books, 2011). 

“It is a conversational model developed by dialogue experts in order to facilitate connection between people despite their differences, and even identify areas of common ground and shared understanding.

Within this model, we have developed nearly 100 conversation guides on all sorts of topics that can otherwise be tense to talk about with friends, strangers, and even loved ones of differing backgrounds and political persuasions.”

Visit their website here.

“NO LABELS IS A GROUNDBREAKING MOVEMENT LED BY AMERICANS WHO EMBRACE THE NEW POLITICS OF PROBLEM SOLVING AND ARE COLLABORATING TO FIND COMMONSENSE, NONPARTISAN SOLUTIONS TO OUR TOUGHEST CHALLENGES.”

“No Labels brings leaders to the middle where problems get solved; work gets done for you; solutions are turned on. We are not a third party, but rather a third bloc – a coalition of real people from every neighborhood in America determined to forge solutions on the issues we are facing, from the economy to health care, jobs to climate change, gun safety to immigration, infrastructure, the national debt, and beyond.

We are not beholden to either party or any special interests. We are beholden to you, alone, and to ensuring practical solutions that have a lasting impact. We don’t care where the policy ideas come from, so long as they are good ones that make America stronger, more prosperous and more united.”

Click here to visit their website.

“Some scholars consider hate crimes to be akin to an infectious disease, spreading from person to person, community to community. A New York University study suggests how hate is spread with violent impact. This study examined 532 million tweets from 100 American cities and found that the more race-based hate speech there was on Twitter, the higher were the rates of actual hate crime. This study was conducted five years before the Trump presidency began; it's patently clear we should be even more concerned about similar mechanisms driving the rising hate crime today.”

Click here to read the full article.

“Politics is causing more and more Americans to perceive people on the other side as the enemy...and as less intelligent, less kind, less human. Extreme political polarization has been used as a tool to justify unthinkable atrocities throughout history. We must own our responsibility for our division and change our course.”

Click here to read the full article.