Public Conversations, Public Impasse

Among the most important work done by not-for-profits is the sparking of and support for dialogue across difference. In a world rent by animosities between groups, nurturing the wellbeing of society requires helping people see that those unlike themselves are fully human and worthy at least of toleration. Toward this end, there are organizations offering dialogue workshops to leaders in the social, economic, religious, and political arenas. Similar programs are offered to citizens at large. Such efforts attempt to bring the individual into touch with her authentic desires and abilities, and to teach her to interact with other persons in an open, respectful manner. Promoters of this work rightly see it as an invaluable engine for social and political healing. Respecting the other—or at least not trying to silence or harm him—lays the foundation for bridges of cooperation. This work can equip leaders and those they influence to repair the nation’s torn social and political fabric.

Dialogue building is guided by two values that frequently inform nonprofits: pluralism and inclusivity. The people who do this work believe that as wide an array of voices as possible ought to be elicited, heard, and honored. To listen to the other is potentially to engage multiple perspectives. Whenever an institution, public or private, makes space for a range of personal histories and allegiances, it becomes more widely relevant, legitimate, and influential. Dialogue building based on pluralism and inclusivity aims to loosen the gridlock that impairs our society and polity. If we conclude that people different from us are worth engaging, then we can create institutions able perhaps to improve social conditions and even heal the world.

In and around my adopted hometown of Seattle, Washington, there are a handful of adventurous organizations attempting just this sort of dialogue building. Nowhere is more important work being done than in these organizations. Standing out among the values championed by them are pluralism and inclusivity, along with a related value, equality. These groups assume that, when included in discussion, individuals lacking power can attain voice, self-respect, and influence on parties more powerful than themselves. The sorts of people who don’t normally sway public policy or manage private enterprise might thereby acquire power. Institutions might perhaps begin to hear and respond to their voices.

One such Seattle-area organization insists that the “inclusion of all voices, especially those most often marginalized, is vital to creating healthy and just communities.” This group intends its work to diminish “power differences of role and position.” Another group declares that “the capacity to welcome and make space for diverse voices and multiple perspectives is critical . . . to the healing and wholeness needed in our world.” Citizens must learn “how to evoke and challenge each other without being judgmental, directive or invasive.” At workshops put on by a third organization, participants are encouraged “to humanize the ‘other,’” thereby “cut[ting] through barriers of defense and mistrust, enabling both those listened to and those listening to hear what they think, to change their opinions, and to make more informed decisions.” Still yet another group seeks to “make space at the table and engage people across all differences in the spirit of being better together.” 

All of these programs draw on lessons learned in the 1960s and 1970s. Emboldened by the Civil Rights Movement, “identity groups” began to exert cultural and social influence. Women, Latinos, the disabled, and eventually gays and lesbians would champion “diversity”—a cause that took hold in academia, the arts, religion, and public education. Affirmative action plans, anti-discrimination statutes, and bilingual education programs reinforced this trend. The purposes behind it were twofold: to empower socially disadvantaged groups, and to broaden the composition of public and private institutions so that they more closely resembled America’s polyglot society.

The movement to increase diversity, or multiculturalism, falls short of its potential in an important way. For all the attention given to race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and physical ability, relatively little is given to ideology. The reality is that how people see the world largely determines how people identify themselves. Many people spend time and build community only with fellow liberals or conservatives; many surround themselves entirely with fellow conservative Christians or New Age spiritualists. Ideology shapes people’s conceptions of where they fit within society and polity. It cannot be ignored. An institution looking to be broadly representative of society as a whole must consider varying ideologies.

It isn’t surprising that the call to inclusivity rarely takes worldview into account. For one thing, the call is not sounded by religious or political conservatives nearly as often as by progressives. The right generally looks down on dialogue building as soft and mushy; it disparages pluralism as anathema to preserving theological and social order. This disdain for multiculturalism confirms for the left that the right is nothing other than an obstacle. Ironically, conservatives tend to oppose the sorts of dialogue building that could offer them opportunities to be heard within social sectors that they consider inhospitable to them.

Moreover, progressives generally see conservatives as a privileged group hardly needing or deserving the benefits of diversification. Correctly or not, progressives rarely perceive conservatives as socially or politically marginalized. To advocates of multiculturalism, conservatives’ place in society and polity in no way resembles the situation of those identity groups in whose name multiculturalism is typically evoked.

Still another factor helps account for the relative under-appreciation of worldview as a dimension within social identity. As cognitive linguist George Lakoff demonstrates, worldview comprises the framework inside which initiatives and programs are evaluated. Worldview is the unseen context. It is difficult for a person to grasp ideology when one can grasp it only within her own ideology. And, when it is acknowledged, it is generally considered a kind of intelligence that one either possesses or lacks. For conservatives and liberals alike, this intelligence is so crucial to their own and their friends’ analysis of the world—so primary—that they dare not problematize it. To unpack it and examine its impact, they fear, would only paralyze actors and thus obstruct meaningful change. It therefore remains outside the multicultural project. Worldview falls victim to its own importance.

All that I have seen, heard, and inferred suggests that even the best dialogue-fostering organizations underemphasize ideology as a dimension of identity. This is understandable. (Indeed, as a progressive myself, I consider the valuation of equality and pluralism as an intelligence needed to act effectively in the world.) But this is also lamentable. To repair America’s frayed civic fabric, we must afford conservatives buy-in to the process. The alternatives are enthusiastic political gridlock and social animosity.

If our goal truly is to help each citizen see the full humanity of the other, then we must not underemphasize worldview as a dimension of identity. Discourse cannot be broad if it does not reach across lines of political and religious worldview. Inclusive public conversation must welcome in all citizens, especially those who believe themselves marginalized or unpopular. Conservatives may appear to most scholars, teachers, activists, and reformers to be well connected and powerful, but what matters is how each of us experiences society and where we place ourselves within it. Conservatives, along with all other identity groups, remain relevant to dialogue building and peacemaking. Conservative worldview does not destroy one’s ability to contribute positively to grassroots democracy. 

In his slim, inspiring volume Twelve Steps toward Political Revelation, novelist Walter Mosley contends that efforts at true democratization require citizens to see past their differences. Mosley urges Americans to construct

an underground system of democracy against the surface lies of the special-interest [political] parties. . . . This will allow the black nationalist and the white supremacist to vote together for the rights of poor children to have medical care; the anti-abortionist and the pro-choice advocate to unite against the [Iraq] war. We have more in common than we are against each other. . . .

This is not a left or right question. Democracy is for all of us; for the voter, the child, the lonely prisoner, and those who live here without the benefit of citizenship; it is for black and white, young and old, educated and uneducated, lovers and haters. We must support a system based on our participation no matter where that participation leads.

For us to expand on grassroots efforts addressing our most intractable, life-threatening problems—proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, poisoning of the natural environment, denial of health-care services to much of our population—we must get people to see beyond their clashing cultural commitments and to locate their points of commonality. The reality is that few people treasure poverty, few love war, and few wish that medical services not be widely available. Support for free enterprise no more renders a person insensitive than support for the welfare state renders a person foolish. Conversations between the ideologically dissentient are difficult—and desperately important.

Repairing society and polity requires scrutinizing our particular worldview, not taking it for granted as a precondition for intelligent public participation.