After the 2016 election when Hillary won the popular vote by some 3 million votes but still lost the election, I suggested to one of my students that it would be helpful if we moved busloads of progressives to the Midwest because the problem that afflicts our nation is segregation.
Throughout history people have segregated themselves by a shared sense of who they are. In 2018, Americans continue to live segregated lives. We separate ourselves by ethnicity, religion, wealth, and political world views. Our children attend schools where most of the children resemble one another in ethnicity and level of economic wealth. For the most part, we live in neighborhoods with people of similar ethnic or economic backgrounds. We congregate in churches where people who share the same religious beliefs are largely segregated ethnically.
This didn’t happen by accident. Human beings are instinctively tribal. We cling to the comfortable and familiar only venturing beyond our comfort zones when we feel safe. We favor those whom we believe to be most like ourselves. However, it is not uncommon to be black or brown and to favor white people over black or brown because our racist history has taught us that white is safe, smart and preferred. This internalized bias against black and brown skin can be flipped on its head as people interact in a deep way with black and brown people. Obama showed himself to be safe and smart enough to be acceptable to many whites and he easily won over blacks. But the majority of whites still didn’t vote for him, and too many of them didn’t vote for him because of his skin color. There is a fear of “them” taking over. That’s what the Trump election was all about, particularly in the Midwest and places that lack much diversity.
There are simply not enough people of color, immigrants, gay people and progressives living in these ultra conservative states to change perceptions. People who appreciate the richness of multicultural living tend to remain in these multicultural progressive pockets in the west and east. And the fear of the ultra conservatives is that people they don’t know might change American culture into something they don’t recognize. Their fear of the unknown makes them oppose immigration, gay rights, and leads them to support any wrongheaded legislation that suppresses the minority vote, puts people of color in prison for longer periods of time, and limits access to opportunities.
I’ve been fortunate to have had a multicultural upbringing in Southern California. The first neighborhood we moved to was black, then we moved to a predominately Mexican neighborhood, then briefly back to a black neighborhood again. I became completely comfortable around both and then my circle grew.
In the forth grade, my parents moved us into a predominately white and Japanese affluent neighborhood in Los Angeles. For those few formative years, I got to know affluent white and Japanese children up close and personal and they got to know me and my brothers. When people interact on equal footing across differences, we learn about and come to appreciate other cultures, but we also abandon our prejudices. I saw the humanity of white and Japanese people in general through my daily interactions with the kids in my neighborhood and I believe that they also saw mine. We spent time in each others homes as we played together and ate each others foods. To this day I love rice crackers and seaweed. The first part of junior high was spent at a school that was primarily Jewish and the second part was predominately black because we moved again. Although the new neighborhood was white, I got to choose which middle school I would attend: majority white or majority black. I chose black because I had never gone to school with kids who looked like me. At that point in my life, I only saw black people in church and at family gatherings. This time I would learn about socio- economic difference.
These black kids were lower on the economic ladder than the blacks I had known. Many of them had a different attitude about education and their rules for engagement were different from how I had been raised. It was eye-opening. I began to see the world and the opportunity structures that determine people’s choices a lot differently. Although the school was predominately black, it was segregated. The few white students and academically talented black students were in classes together. I made friends among the few black students who were also enrolled in the mostly white classes. We were there because the white teaching staff recognized our talent and allowed us in. That experience was surreal. I saw smart black kids literally locked out of the best educational opportunities at that school because they lacked a white sponsor or an advocate parent like mine.
The summer before high school, I was again presented with the choice to attend a poor black school or a middle class white high school. I chose the white high school because I understood that whites were in power and that they needed exposure to black people like me in order to change their perceptions of blackness if we were ever to gain access to opportunities. I thought that knowing me would make them less fearful of people who looked like me. At this school, I made friends with academically inclined white students (several were Jewish) and with the few black students on campus, just because they were black like me. The not so surprising thing is that my mother had to present documentation proving that I was identified by the state as “gifted” to be enrolled in college preparatory classes at that school. I know that wasn’t the case for my white classmates.
In closing, what I know is this: humans are tribal. We seek out and find people who share our values and are most like us economically, ethnically, and now politically. I heard a statistic the other day on a news broadcast that 63% of Americans would be upset if their child married someone of a different political party. The commentator said that was how people used to feel about interracial marriage a few years ago. If the new tribalism is around value driven politics, then progressives need to do a whole lot more mixing by moving into ultra conservative states where there is too little exposure to political difference.