By Shelby Clark, Good Project Researcher
If anything, the 2020 U.S. election has illuminated the continued stark political divisions in our country. One study has found that “affective polarization”-- feeling more negatively towards an opposing political party-- has increased in the U.S. more rapidly over the past fifty years than in eight other similar democracies. Gallup has reported that the way liberals view President Trump versus the way conservatives view President Trump is the largest gap in approval ratings they have ever recorded. And such political divisions do not come without a cost; as the Greater Good Science Center has reported, our divisions have led to segregated communities, increased antagonism, judgement of one another’s morals, less family time, less prosociality, damages to physical health, higher stress, more deception, increased violence, and more. Where does this leave us as a nation then? Can we find common ground? If so, how?
One of my favorite books I read after the 2016 election was Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land. A UCLA-Berkeley, California sociologist, Hochschild describes her time speaking with and learning to empathize with the right-leaning,Tea Party residents of small town Lake Charles, Louisiana. As a long time liberal myself, I was struck by the nuance she brought to understanding the views of the residents of this small town-- views very different from both her and my own.
Yet, what has stuck with me most from this book is Hochschild’s description of “empathy walls.” She notes that she came to Louisiana:
with an interest in walls. Not visible, physical walls…. It was empathy walls that interested me. An empathy wall is an obstacle to deep understanding of another person, one that can make us feel indifferent or even hostile to those who hold different beliefs or whose childhood is rooted in different circumstances. In a period of political tumult, we grasp for quick certainties. We shoehorn new information into ways we already think…. But is it possible, without changing our beliefs, to know others from the inside, to see reality through their eyes, to understand the links between life, feeling, and politics; that is, to cross the empathy-wall? (p. 2).
As a white person holding a doctoral degree working at an Ivy league institution, I am highly aware that I am a member of the liberal elite. Given that numerous studies have found increasing political polarization in our country to pose a threat to our nation, I find myself in a position where I am eager to find ways to help jump over these empathy walls, particularly between liberals and conservatives, within my family, friends, community, and society as whole.
With Thanksgiving coming up in the U.S., it made the most sense for me to begin with my family members as I try to scale the empathy walls that exist between us. I’ve talked to my family members before about our Good Project Value Sort, so I wanted to find a new way that I could think about how our values and thoughts about Good Work might be aligned or misaligned with one another using The Good Project’s resources. Given that all of us have a role to play as a worker and as a citizen, coming together to discuss these topics seems a natural inroad over which to develop empathy for one another’s views.
To begin thinking about these topics, I adapted The Good Project activity entitled “What Do You Value?”. In this exercise participants are asked to map out their own beliefs and values that help them think about work and then to write out words and phrases that other people in one’s communities would use to describe one’s own beliefs and values. In the adaptation described below I first began by writing my own beliefs and values regarding work. Then, rather than writing how others in my family thought about my own beliefs and values, I wrote what I thought my family members beliefs were regarding similar types of beliefs and values.
As seen in the figure below, I identified four key beliefs and values in how I think about work: 1) I try to focus on issues of equity and how we can make education more fair and accessible to all; 2) truth comes from empirical research, meaning that we need observable, real-world data, whether quantitative or qualitative; 3) producing excellent, ethical, and engaging work requires perseverance and hard work; and 4) good work comes from curiosity and a desire for lifelong learning.
I then wanted to focus on what I thought my family might think about similar types of beliefs and values. But, as many families are, my own is varied in its beliefs. Some members of my family are far more liberal than myself, whereas others remain much further to the right (i.e. much more conservative). In thinking about how to jump over an empathy wall, in this exercise I wanted to focus on thinking about the beliefs of those members of my family who voted for Trump in the most recent election; as I’ve learned through many recent impassioned conversations about who we were voting for in the 2020 election, their political beliefs are farthest from my own.
Thinking about those family members and what they would think about my own work beliefs, I identified four beliefs of my conservative family members that both diverged and coincided with my own: 1) the belief in a more meritocratic rather than equitable system, 2) truth coming from consensus amongst people rather than empiricism,3) a similar valuing of hard work, and 4) a belief that social relationships can serve as a valuable source of learning. Again, it’s important to note that these are how I think my family members think about these issues, rather than any specific report of beliefs from my family members for this blog.
What to do with this information? How does it help me cross the empathy wall or have a better (virtual) Thanksgiving dinner? In truth, this exercise can only serve as the beginning in efforts for all of us to try and understand one another better. However, it does allow me to understand and be more mindful of where my family members potentially stand on issues. Perhaps we can meet each other in the middle--I might be able to actually inquire more about their beliefs and values regarding good work. For example, I can now go into a family dinner being cognizant of the fact that no matter our political differences, I believe that we all value hard work and perseverance and are trying to do our best every day at our jobs. Furthermore, until this exercise I had never thought much about the fact that these family members seem to value social relationships as an important source of knowledge and learning in their lives. Certainly a conversation about this could ensue over the “virtual” dinner table.
In the end, not all differences will necessarily be able to be civilly discussed at the Thanksgiving dinner table and not all empathy walls will be able to be, or necessarily should be, jumped. For more advice on how to engage with those of opposing views over the dinner table, see the following resources:
Teaching Tolerance: Let’s Talk! Facilitating Critical Conversations with Students.
How to Disagree Productively and Find Common Ground Ted Talk
Facing History: Fostering Civil Discourse: How Do We Talk About Issues That Matter?
Better Arguments Project: How to Talk Politics with Angry Loved Ones Who Disagree With You
Fig. 1 Author’s “What Do You Value” Activity Page