This post initially appeared on Medium on June 30, 2020.
This June many Americans were poised to take a collective sigh as some states discussed plans for reopening and lifting Stay at Home Orders. Americans struggled with lingering anxiety of COVID-19, while also facing economic devastation, social isolation, and extreme stress. In unrelated incidents, the deaths of criminal suspects George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks while in police custody and resulting aftermath poured fuel on the fire, igniting an explosion of collective fear and anger. Multiple stories in media began covering the dueling epidemics of COVID-19 and allegations of systemic racism.
Stepping away from the panic and animosity, common themes emerged in how the media and the public approached and responded to both issues. But what if we could see ways in how the truth is much more complex? How can we infuse reason, civility, and respect back into public discourse?
1. Respond instead of react.
Our instinctual reaction to events like communicable disease that terrify us is to react in fear because we want to wrest back control. Activating fear translates to a narrow laser focus: how deadly is the disease, how we can stop it, let’s respond right now. But fear does not stop to ask questions about context, balancing different risks, or alternative plans. It barrels ahead, destroying anything that challenges this survival instinct.
Mobile technology has dramatically expanded being able to witness the human condition through near constant recording of events around us. We should rightly feel deep distress for watching the death of George Floyd, or any person, that is recorded on camera: this should be both wrenching and haunting. But some political commentators and activists reacted by pouncing on these tragic incidents to launch heated allegations, and in some locations initiate violent riots across the U.S.
2. Notice the narrative.
Invisible to the naked eye, communicable disease creates a perception of threat lingering around us. Health officials and the WHO characterized COVID-19 as a deadly disease while scientists started providing terrifying projections for how many people could die. Reports on high death rates from locations in Italy and spikes in cases from cities that started to reopen in June solidified the terror. Health officials and politicians issued increasing stringent measures: social distancing to flatten the curve, confident assertions that short term closures through Stay at Home Orders were necessary, to extended Stay at Home orders, to exhortations that business will never be back to usual: we must incorporate masks and social distancing for safety. The message is this: follow these measures, and we will keep you safe because this is the scientific approach that will protect public health.
Activists, media, and politicians rapidly classified deaths of suspects in police custody including George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks as murder. Health policy scholars in the New England Journal of Medicine labeled the tragic Floyd case an “extrajudicial death sentence.” Several stories invoked comparisons to brutal racial violence in our nation’s history, such as the story of Emmett Till, a black teen boy who allegedly flirted with a white woman who was violently beaten and killed in retaliation. These cases morphed; reaching far back into historical racial animosity and injustice, wrapping together a litany of stories about suspect after suspect who died while in police custody to invoke assertions of ongoing police brutality, systemic racism, and pervasive oppression.
Harvard philosopher and scholar Cornel West denounced society’s “hatred, greed, and corruption,” condemning the “repressive apparatus” of the police force. As one Minnesota teacher and writer eloquently characterized, “rioting is the language of grief.”
3. Choose your words wisely.
Adopting specialized vocabulary can induce a sense of cultural capital: we all want to understand the news around us and be socially aware. But controlling the narrative also extends to strategically distorting the definition of words; this muddles the truth behind the power current pushing, molding, and shaping the popular narrative. Words can provoke, inflame, induce sympathy, or fuel a desired reaction.
As the pandemic swept through the media, so too did terms normally confined to the laboratories and hallways of public health: flattening the curve, fatality rate, isolation, and quarantine. Adopting the new words gave us a sense of understanding and control during a chaotic time. Except many fear based stories discussed terrifying death rates: How many people died who were admitted to the hospital? Rather, we should look at the infection fatality rates: How many people will be infected, many of whom never enter a hospital, and how many will die? We learned this number is much, much lower.
Stay at Home Orders confined everyone’s actions relating to work, school, and movement — we called this quarantine. Except quarantine by definition only refers to a brief period to monitor people who have been exposed to a communicable disease. Distorting the term, we transformed a specific action against one person or identifiable location for a short time into a presumptive and broad policy solution. We also heard the refrain that this epidemic was unprecedented. Epidemiologists have been studying and controlling communicable disease outbreaks and epidemics throughout history: the plague, SARS, MERS, Ebola, Lyme Disease, and pandemic influenza. Our global reaction to the disease shutting down broad sectors of society for lengthy time periods, though, was indeed unprecedented.
Story after story in the news referred to riots across the U.S. in headline and description as protests. Some demonstrations were peaceful protests; some were not. In some cities, demonstrators congregated, smashed bottles, ignited buildings, vandalized property, destroyed and looted businesses, and torched the Minneapolis police headquarters. Protests by definition refer to words: a declaration of dissent, nonverbal presence, a sign, an arm band as a signifier. Protests can be a constructive and powerful mechanism to spur public discourse and encourage debate, which is essential for democracy. But dictionaries and criminal law define riots, on the other hand, as inciting violence. They are active, they are aggressive, they destroy. Criminal law also offers a more accurate definition for using violence to coerce civilians or influence government policy by bringing a geographic location to its knees: domestic terrorism.
Murder, too, is a word charged with grief and sympathy for the victim. But murder is allegation that a jury will interpret against a set of facts. In the context of policing, alleging a police officer “murdered” a suspect is especially fraught based on power imbalances and always tied to complicated factual context that cannot be neatly packaged into short news articles.
Usually the wheels of justice grind slowly. We want a thorough investigation by law enforcement and the justice system of what really happened and why. Short videos eclipse the temporal context of what really happened. Ironically, by rushing to label recent deaths as murder the media and the public presumes law enforcement officers’ guilt — this upends the very purpose of an investigation, trial, and the burden in proof underlying our justice system for any person in the defense seat.
4. Recognize how moral righteousness, guilt, and shame shape your reaction.
These issues induced a pressure cooker into society, prompting dramatically polarized opinions on the right assessment of the situation, what constitutes the problem, and how to address it. Both issues operate with the currency of moral righteousness, playing on our desire to be a good person. Those who dissent face punishment on the public altar: their disagreement undermines the fabric of our socially cohesive contract.
For COVID-19, some articles and social media posts relayed the message that forgoing a mask in public was irresponsible, dangerous, and recklessly selfish conduct. Wearing a mask signals care, willingness to abide health authorities’ recommendations for the current social order, and falls on the side of righteousness. Those who do not comply are subjected to public shaming: in Staten Island, an aggressive chorus of shoppers in a grocery store surrounded a lone woman who was not wearing a mask, screaming condemnation based on their perception of a socially harmful transgression.
But how do we know why other people choose not to wear a mask? Why have we normalized, and in some cases, nodded approval at such contempt?
So, too, we see massive division in public opinion about whether states should have enacted Stay at Home Orders, whether states should have enacted them more quickly, or on the other hand, whether they should remain in place. When the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down the state’s Stay at Home Order, one article sneered at customers flocking to bars as they reopened, mocking that patrons wanted to exercise their “inalienable right to illness and death.” Moral righteousness fuels those who assert there are few legitimate reasons to leave one’s home — because they believe evidence shows this constitutes a highly risky proposition that endangers others.
Memes circulated poking fun at protesters holding signs they wanted salons reopened — this seemed so vain and frivolous in the context of a deadly disease. In Texas, a judge chastised a salon owner who committed a crime by defying an order to close her business. Declaring in court her actions were “selfish,” the judge commanded the salon owner to admit to such and apologize to avoid jail time. The salon owner refused. She informed the court she defied the order based on economic necessity for her family and her employees’ families.
By trivializing the motivations behind people’s actions, we miss understanding that these actions constitute a proxy for much large issues: the strain of economic sustainability and our inherent need for real, in person human connection to sustain mental wellness. These too, are necessary for our survival.
After the deaths of Floyd and Brooks, multiple stakeholders issued public statements, swiftly apologized for a history of racism, ongoing systematic oppression, police brutality, and vowed to remediate each issue. Universities, corporations, and city officials displayed contagious guilt, pledging allegiance to ameliorating egregious race based injustice. In Congress, House Speaker Pelosi and members of Congress genuflected for nine minutes before introducing a police reform bill in honor of Floyd — photos captured the sight of Congress on their knees begging absolution for their sins.
Stanford University’s Hoover Institution Fellow and author Shelby Steele has perhaps best described this phenomenon: “Race indeed remains a source of white shame, the goal of these provocations is to put whites, no matter how indirectly in touch with this collective guilt…these provocations are power moves…that try to freeze the enemy in self-consciousness. They gratify and inflate the provocateur.”
Good and morally righteous people believe in justice and equality. Activist groups such as Black Lives Matter took center stage, packaging this message: if you are a good and righteous person, you must also believe we don’t have equality in our society, affirm your acknowledgement of systemic racism, police injustice, and how society devalues black lives. These are the problems that plague society, but you can remedy them by adopting our demands.
Berklee College jumped on the guilt bandwagon, apologizing for letting police officers use college restrooms during their shift monitoring protests and riots in the area. Berklee College President vowed “never again” would he contribute to such “oppression, silence, and shaming” by giving access to police to use campus restrooms. But this very action of banning sectors of the society from using restrooms already has a place in history: decades ago such rules were enforced based on skin color rather than color of a uniform.
5. Observe when discussion devolves into taking hostages.
By dealing in guilt, shame, and coercion voices from each group take the public hostage, tethering their grip onto our desire to create a right and just society. Issuing commands and foreclosing discussion operates through a perpetual power dynamic that struggles for domination and control. This model cannot co-exist with productive, respectful, and solution oriented dialogue.
Sociologist Howard Becker refers to certain action groups as “moral entrepreneurs.” Upset that officials have not taken sufficient action, they organize their response for what they believe serves the public good.
Moral entrepreneurs may say, states responded too slowly enacting Stay at Home Orders and are lifting them too quickly, endangering the public. The New York Times published a piece with the provocative title “Restarting America Means More People Will Die. So When Should We Do It?” A classic example of a leading statement, this tactic puts the audience on the defensive to explain and justify their bad deeds. Implicit in such a headline: if you want to open society, you are responsible for making people die. Another article presented a false binary of two pernicious choices: a desire to lift Stay at Home Orders must emanate from either ignorance or “ruthless self-interest.”
Voices in each group of moral entrepreneurs provide a list of requirements to achieve the desired end goal.
Black Lives Matters, for example, published a list of demands including calling for a ban of new jails, prohibiting the police from using the “stop and frisk” technique, and most radically — calling to “defund the police” as the pathway to achieving justice. In the 1960s, student led action groups and activist groups such as the Black Panther Party compiled similar demand lists, relying on militant techniques to force adoption.
Objective metrics and suggestions constitute a starting framework for discussion. But nonnegotiable directives prohibit interactive discussion when dissent from this stringent narrative triggers swift punishment.
Social psychologists Thomas Gilovich and Lee Ross call this objectivity bias: “People tend to think of their own take on events not as a ‘take’ but as a veridical assessment of what is taking place, anyone who tries to offer an even-handed account of the events will tend to be seen as biased and hostile.” People think others’ viewpoints stem from unsupported biases; while they believe their opinion is not only supported by evidence, but the morally correct solution.
What if, instead of sacrificing casualties for exerting a dissenting viewpoint, we listened?
6. Examine the evidence. All of it.
If we listen, really listen, we discover the complexities in each issue, conflicting evidence, and how conclusions of what appears to be the right action relies on implicit value judgments.
As additional scientists and physicians became chiming in, their collective voices demonstrated the difficulties in understanding COVID-19.
Many who took the time to dig deeper discovered a much more complicated story where many answers were simply unknown. Despite presuming diagnostic tests and antibody tests were accurate, both the FDA and the WHO warned in some cases they may not be. Industrious epidemiologists tracking the clues as times passed provided data to support the number of people who would die was magnitudes less than initial projections. The CDC estimated .26% of all people who contract the virus will die.
Surgeon General Adams described how COVID-19 opportunistically grabs hold of the most vulnerable members of our society: the elderly and those who already have multiple co-existing medical condition. But the vast majority of people (80%) who contract the virus, will experience no symptoms or only mild symptoms. Understanding this reality is not about blame or fairness: it permits health officials and policymakers to more effectively craft strategies to mitigate disease impact and marshal resources to the populations most in need.
Despite many officials presenting Stay at Home Orders as the only logical solution, some questioned this assumption. Public health experts like David Katz and Michael Osterholm began asking why we prioritized blunt aggressive attempts to reduce virus transmission by shutting down society without accounting for other sets of risks such as economic fallout, impact to educational systems, and social stability. They also pointed out the prediction that Stay at Home restrictions would reduce transmission and death was itself a presumption. Legal scholars from around the world started to point out the impact on civil rights and human rights.
While most agree that reducing harm from the virus constitutes the end goal, different assumptions and value judgments influence how we define that harm, and what mechanisms of intervention are justified and reasonable.
Similarly, many of us desperately want to remedy the precarious strain of interracial tensions and address disparities in education, economics, and health. Many of us want a system of law enforcement and criminal justice committed to impartial justice.
Tracing race relations from the 1960s to present day, Shelby Steele observes that focusing on racial tensions produces an interlocking dysfunctional power dynamic. Racial groups become tangled in a web of guilt, shame, appeasement, and domination. Focusing on what Stanford University Hoover Institution economist Thomas Sowell calls “prepackages grievances” perpetuates ongoing strife from feeling wronged that weakens societal bonds. Both Steele and Sowell observe that success becomes contingent — and thereby limited — by what the dominant group metes out rather than navigating one’s own path.
Delving deeper into reasons for social inequality and economic disparities, not all theories support the same causes. Steele and Sowell assert that among many factors, self-efficacy, cultural values that promote a strong work ethic, and prioritizing family stability constitute integral components.
Despite presumed bias in policing, research instead shows nuances here: Harvard University economist Roland Fryer showed police are not more likely to use deadly force on black suspects versus white suspects. Other studies confirm fatal shootings don’t correlate with the suspect’s race, but instead are more likely to occur in geographic areas with high rates of violent crime.
Author and public policy expert Heather Mac Donald documents how animosity toward police and cutting police funding places those who live in high crime neighborhoods at risk for more violence. Less policing, she shows, leads to an increase in violent crime rates. Most residents in high crime neighborhoods are law abiding citizens, she asserts, and want more police to protect them from the brutal crossfire of gun violence and drug related crime. NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea agrees: “The people of New York City, I believe, want to see cops. And they consistently ask me to see more cops, not less.”
7. Escape the grip to navigate a new path.
We can choose fear, anxiety, distrust, and anger. But they place heavy rocks around our necks. They weigh us down, limiting our movement through life. This perspective gives us pair of glasses that views everything through a foggy lens; always looking around the corner for the next panic or perceived slight, and always clinging to survival instincts.
Recognizing forces that stir agitation, create hysteria, and demand compliance constitutes the first step toward moving past being ensnared by this grip.
We can shift our narrative and presume the good in humanity. People want to feel safe, they want to feel secure, they want to feel heard. The mindset from which we approach the issue informs the progress we make. Let’s create a public dialogue that places a critical eye on the evidence while offering each other compassion and humility as we work toward productive solutions.