So, I was reading an interesting book last week. And by “reading” I mean listening to it on tape while I drove to New York for Thanksgiving, and by “interesting book” I mean the newest Grisham legal thriller and by “thriller” I mean an intriguing the story that is not the least bit thrilling.
But that’s beside the point.
In this book, there was a judge who was a conservative / pro-business kind of guy who had been elected to the court on a platform of keeping juries from winning massive settlements from corporations. Then through a series of literary machinations he finds himself being the victim of a corporate wrong doer and his perspective starts to change.
Now, in general, it is probably not wise to draw too many grand sociological conclusions from a legal thriller, but it did start me thinking. Basically, this judge changed his perspective because he was now experiencing what other people who had gone through some difficult and tragic experience had experienced and he was almost instantly changed from being someone who dismissed those who were suffering to someone who deeply empathized with them.
It’s a simple literary device, used hundreds of times before and in some ways it seems like the most obvious thing in the world: once you’ve experienced hardship, you are more sympathetic to those who experience it on a daily basis.
This is not a significant revelation. I’m sure we’ve all come across this thought before and I certainly have dwelled on it at times in my life, but recently I began to think about it more in terms of our nations political divide and how that plays out in a geographical basis.
Ok, let me explain.
What is the generally accepted stereotype about political leanings in this country and its connection with where people live?
Basically that atheistic, commie loving, homosexual liberals all live in the urban areas and that the gun molesting, racist, right wing religious nutjobs all live in the country and suburbs
Ok, that’s a bit of an over-simplification, but you know what I’m saying.
Obviously, this is not entirely true. To paraphrase Obama’s 2004 Democratic Convention Speech, “There are people who love commies in the red states and there are people molesting guns in the blue states.”
But in general there’s a lot more truth to the conservatives live in rural areas and liberals live in urban areas mythos than not.
But why? What is it that makes people who live amongst farming equipment one way and people who live amongst starbucks another?
Well, you would have to be a total moron to suggest that there was a single reason. There are clearly lots and lots of reasons, but let me suggest one narrow hypothesis.
I believe that there is a lot of truth to that Grisham story about the judge. This guy lived in a little middle class bubble most of his life. He never had to struggle financially and he spent his entire career amongst people similar to himself - people of a similar race, economic status, sexual orientation and political persuasion. That is until he ended up on the wrong end of a life changing catastrophe.
I grew up in a rural area that also happens to be one of the most consistently conservative regions in the country. Many of the friends I went to high school with who still live there still fit into that somewhat conservative mold. They spend their days amongst the same people they grew up with and those people are, invariably, very similar to them in almost every way.
Conversely, many of my friends who moved away from the area have grown more liberal over the years.
Now, there is an obvious argument that those who were conservative were comfortable and stayed put, whereas those who were more liberal decided to move to places to be with other like minded people and there is a lot of truth to this, but I think it is more complicated than that.
I think that the people who moved to the cities or colleges out of the area were instantly surrounded by people who were very different from themselves. I know I was.
They spent lots of time with people of different races, economic backgrounds, religions, sexual orientations, political persuasions etc. They got to know these needs individuals as people first and then as stereotypes and categories second.
It is one thing to believe that homosexuality is wrong, but it is harder to believe that after you have met a really nice person who you find out happens to be homosexual. You begin to wonder if maybe homosexuality isn’t wrong, but rather, simply different.
In fact, a recent pew research poll found that people who had a friend or relative who was gay were twice as likely to support gay rights issues than those who did not.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/485/friends-who-are-gay
Of course, this isn’t entirely true, if the only gay person you’ve met is a total jerk then I suspect this doesn’t work. If Perez Hilton or Andy Dick showed up at your birthday party, then you’re probably not changing your mind about anything except who put together the guest list. That being said, Our family’s best friends happen to be a lesbian couple with two small children. Kim and Anna are perhaps the nicest, most interesting people in the world and it is hard for me to imagine anyone who has met them walking away feeling the same way about homosexuals as they did before.
Familiarity breeds tolerance.
I suspect that this holds true for issues outside of sexual identity. I suspect that people who have a friend or relative who is black are far more sympathetic to issues facing the black community and that people who have spent time living among or working with the poor are far more likely to support issues that affect the impoverished.
If you had met some of the third graders I taught in Mississippi such as Aloysius and Jessie who live with us now, and if you heard their stories of friends and family members who had died from lack of medical care, it’s hard for me to believe you wouldn’t better understand the need for health care reform.
If you live in or have spent time in a city or urban area, you are far more likely to have met someone who is gay, or poor or of a different race than if you have lived your whole life in a largely rural homogenous area. I think this goes a long way to explaining these geographical / political distinctions.
I would even take this a step farther, beyond the boundaries of pure geography.
Have you ever wondered why all of those Hollywood types are such liberals?
I have.
I mean come on, someone who lives in a gated community in a California mansion, flies on a private jet and makes millions of dollars simply for memorizing something off a sheet of paper ought to be crazy conservative. They only spend time with the ultra-rich. They’re never around people different from them. They should be voting for whoever will institute the lowest taxes and that’s it.
But they don’t. Again, the stereotype is that all of those Hollywood actor types are a bunch of wacky liberals.
Why is that?
Here’s my theory and it’s a little nutty, but stay with me. Partly I think it’s because almost nobody in the world of acting started off making a lot of money. Most started off dirt poor sleeping on the floor of a one room efficiency with fivez other people and waiting tables. They remember what it’s like to struggle.
But I also think that acting is a field that requires you to empathize. If you are going to play a homeless person, or a single mother, or someone struggling to get by, then you have to spend some time emotionally identifying with that person. And that identification is essentially the same thing that happens when you become friends or acquaintances with someone.
I know that, again, this is a gross oversimplification of the world, but I don’t think someone could possibly act one of the roles in “A Raisin in the Sun” without coming to empathize with people who live those kinds of struggles on a daily basis.
You see, once you become an “other” it becomes awfully easy to identify with all the “others.” But if you grow up as part of a dominant community then it can be very difficult to see the world through any other perspective.
Why are Jews, as a whole, more liberal? I think it is largely because they know firsthand what it is like to be oppressed - to be part of a minority. I think this makes it much easier to understand the plight of other minority groups and of others who are suffering. It makes you much more inclined to support policies that will help people, even if those policies aren’t necessarily going to benefit yourself.
This is, of course, not a universal truth. The black community, for a variety of reasons, has been very hesitant to support issues dealing with homosexuality even though there are large black populations in cities where there are large gay communities. And although there are many rural areas in the South that have large black and white populations, there is often not support in the white community for policies that would help the black community. Again, it takes more than geography. In these situations, even though the communities are geographically close, they are still deeply separated by economics or cultural divides that can be hard to bridge.
But it is still my belief that in situations where someone knows someone of a different group, or has been in a situation where they have been forced to identify with the plight of someone else, that this changes their perspective.
Yes, this is nothing more than the old “walk a mile in a man’s moccasins” logic, but I think it holds true. And as our nation grows and changes, I believe it will continue to hold true. As diversity of all kinds begins to spread out of the cities and into the rural landscape and as more and more young people leave the rural areas for education, or jobs in areas that are more diverse, I believe we will see a country that becomes more and more tolerant.
In some ways.
Race and sexual orientation will become less and less important over time as geography and the natural movement of people around the country and the world changes, but I fear this is not necessarily the case for issues of poverty.
People born middle class tend to stay middle class. People born wealthy stay wealthy and people born poor tend to remain so. And not only that, but we tend to segregate our lives so that we are only around people of similar economic backgrounds. By our choice of home, schools, restaurants, jobs and neighborhoods, we self segregate by economics. Race and gender and sexual orientation are diversifying more and more up and down the economic spectrum, but that economic spectrum itself is not diversifying much.
But when it does, it is powerful.
There are very few people teaching in impoverished schools that don’t see the need for economic policies that support the poor. There are very few people who have ever worked in the Peace Corps who don’t come back believing strongly that our foreign policies need to be more compassionate and supportive of developing nations. There are very few people who have ever worked as a community organizer in a poor neighborhood in Chicago who don’t grow up to believe strongly that health care reform is a political necessity.
So, am I suggesting that if we sent a really nice homosexual, a poor person and an ethnic and religious minority to live in the home of every conservative that they would all become a bunch of liberals?
Am I suggesting that the only thing stopping this nation from turning into Sweden is some kind of multicultural exchange program?
Do I really believe that the reason people oppose gay rights and health care reform and increased funding for schools is purely a matter of people not having met Kim and Anna or Aloysius and Jessie?
No, I don’t think it’s that simple.
But I also know that, like me, your life would be forever changed if you met Kim and Anna or Aloysius and Jessie.
And maybe it’s just as simple as that.