CASE STUDY: MULTI OR CENTERED CULTURE

To remind the reader, this blog is currently focusing on the polarization that has befallen the body politic of the nation.  There are various sources feeding this situation and the last posting presented one such source:  the incubation of problems the body politic had not addressed over extended periods of time. 

The point was made that such a condition did not necessarily arise from incompetence but can be the product of competent people doing competent things, at least as competency is defined by a given people at a given place.  This posting addresses an example of incubation.  This example refers to how the nation views and accommodates immigration or, stated another way, how Americans of different cultural backgrounds interact with each other. 

This issue is further divisive in that it addresses the lack of accommodation among people from different races.  How Americans see this issue has evolved and this posting seeks to take a historical view.  That is, how did the national debate over public policies to address the disruptions caused by the steady stream of immigrating groups whether they be groups of various nationalities, ethnicities, and/or races, develop? 

The history of how Americans have dealt with the upheavals associated with this amalgamation of lifestyles, language challenges, and other diverse cultural traits is one of evolution.  And reactions to that continuing aspect of the American story has also been varied – many Hollywood storylines have been based on those challenges.

For example, there has been those who take a nationalist view that to varying degrees seeks to maintain the “American way” of life that they associate with the Anglo-Saxon base.  Of course, that base was initially established when British colonists brought over their culture and were naturally able to establish it as dominant during the early days of colonization. 

The nation’s culture has remained colorized by that cultural strain but has drifted away from its purer version.  But to the extent it has maintained any dominance, those who adhere to it have been blind to any dissention that exists among those who promote a more diverse culture.  They are attracted by a singular sense to such calls as “Make America Great Again,” again to an earlier time in which their culture held sway.

To varying degrees, these right of center ideologues believe in immigration restraints and the immigration they would allow would predominantly come from Western European nations.  They also do not recognize that minorities, be they of other nationalities, ethnicities, or races, suffer from undue discriminatory practices.  For example, the current Black Lives Matter movement is judged to be unjustified since they do not see systemic prejudice among the nation’s police forces.

Those who think that way populate the right or conservative side of the polarized divide.  But there is another side and this posting focuses on a short historical account of how the left side finds itself where it is in terms of the current national divide.  Its current development provides a revelatory example of what the last two postings call polarization and why it exists.

The left side of the polar landscape fought against itself between those who argued for assimilation (centered pluralism) and those who advocated multiculturalism (diverse or individual pluralism).  This posting and others to follow will flesh out the differences between these two positions. 

Under the more polarized environment of today, these differences within each side have been downplayed since the current alliances within each side call for overlooking such fissures.  Indicating that these amalgamations exist but are currently ignored is the fact that this writer, in his preparation for this posting, could not find a published work on this issue – multiculturalism – of a recent date.  The most recent citation is from the year, 2012. 

That citation is an article that describes what it calls critical multiculturalism – a multiculturalism based on critical theory.  It states, in part:

In some ways Critical multiculturalism is leaning towards the original idea of popularist education as a tool of emancipation for the economically downtrodden, but it goes much further, [it] is much wider in scope and is rooted in critical theory.  Critical multiculturalism is an enabling form of education that instils in its students the ability to bring about social change, it has been described by Neoliberal thinkers as a “Political education” because it exposes issues relating to why students are in the economic situation they [are] in, why streaming exists, in effect it exposes the mechanisms of inequality to those who are themselves victims of inequality. 

Politically critical Multiculturalism leans toward Anarchism, Marxist and Feminist thought.  It is able to expose the system that enslaves them by looking through the lens of critical theory.  Critical theory is a critique of our society and the culture that emanates from it, this critique draws from a broad and varied spectrum of ideas from social science and humanities.  By employing critical theory students learn how to be both critical and analytical; these tools enable the autonomy of the student to come to fruition.[1]

Today, critical theorists and neoliberals need each other since the opposition is not each other but the alliance of all right-wing groups; that’s the reality of the nation’s polarized political arena.

          But as a historical case study, one that might shed light on how incubation of a problem manifests itself among limited numbers, the fight over multiculturalism can be helpful in understanding how things get out of hand.  How this concern over varied cultural groups in the 1980s and 1990s, with the inability to coalesce into a single political position, made solutions more elusive.  By understanding this, one gains insight into why polarization exists and helps one deal with it. 

          So, what did multiculturalists argue?  A recurring theme in their literature was to attack the dominant culture’s institutions.  These institutions are described as oppressive on various groups including immigrant groups or people in general who do not belong to the dominant Anglo-Saxon cultural group.  One institution of concern is that of education.

          More specifically, a lot of their ire was aimed at public schools – it should be remembered that a lot of this writing took place before “choice” options became a serious challenge to the very existence of public schools.  In those days, public schools were seen, at least by critical theorists, as part of the overall exploiting superstructure that held back disadvantaged groups in the population.

          The next posting will pick up this topic and further explain the makeup of this case of incubating a political problem.

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[1] Michael, “Exploring Models of Education:  Critical Multiculturalism, Permanent Culture Now, May 22, 2012, accessed July 16, 2020, https://www.permanentculturenow.com/exploring-models-of-education-critical-multiculturalism/ .  Apparently, this posting is by an anarchist organization.  This article can be described as a fairly objective report.  It contains British spelling.

POLARIZATION BEGETS POLARIZATION

The last posting made an observation.  That was that successfully run enterprises – either public or private – can, because of their competencies, land up committing serious blunders that lead to extremely costly even terminal results for that entity.  The posting cites a social scientist that has pointed out this possibility; that being Sidney Dekker with the assistance of Shawn Pruchnicki.[1]  If the reader has not read that posting, he/she is encouraged to do so.

But for those who do not or those who need a bit of a reminder, here are the reasons these two writers give for their overall conclusion:

·       Larger, successful organizations usually operate in environments of pressures due to (1) scarcity of resources and competition against other entities, (2) an imposed lack of transparency with sprawling, complex structures, (3) information being pre-formatted in a developed style or language, and (4) the usual incremental pacing of decision-making becoming more incremental over time. 

·       Accepted ways and beliefs that develop to protect the organization (e.g., risk assessment or risk management strategies and personnel) encourage false confidence in them and serve to obstruct seeing what “is not known.”

·       Structural elements that seek the “unknown” have counter forces, i.e., costs involved with uncertain technologies and un or underdeveloped knowledge and technologies associated with change.  These potential costs tend to be compared to the incremental nature of incubating problems. 

·       If needed, transformational change (calling for changes in beliefs, attitudes, and/or values) is judged against the pressures of scarcity and competition, making needed change appear to be impossible – even when they are not – or just too expensive. 

·       And

Organisations incubate accident not because they are doing all kinds of things wrong, but because they are doing most things right.  And what they measure, count, record, tabulate and learn, even inside of their own safety management system, regulatory approval, auditing systems or loss prevention systems, might suggest nothing to the contrary.[2]

These are the conditions that lead to problems developing and going unnoticed.  Dekker and Pruchnicki call the time in which those problems are not detected as incubation. 

That posting makes the further claim that all this has to do with the creation and maintenance of the current state of polarization the nation is suffering from in its politics.  The posting left the reader with the promise that this posting will indicate what the connection between “incubation” and polarization is.  The journalist Ezra Klein makes that connection.[3] 

The national set of problems, the ones over which the populous is more and more divided, has mushroomed because of their link to one another.  Two webs of problems have resulted in short order but after a long-lasting incubation had taken place.  The issues range from race to taxes to religion to abortion to firearms, etc.  And these are only the ones that come readily to this writer’s mind.

Outside of the people who had been affected directly by each of these problems, they, individually, were mostly ignored for decades; they grew and were linked to more and more adjacent or related problems.  But they are now more than visible, they are riotously blaring on people’s consciousness.  They are visible and measured as being of such magnitude and complexity they elude single targeted “solutions.”  They have burrowed themselves into such depths that they have become systemic.  And as such, are immune to reductionist study or reductionist solutions.

In part, that is so because the whole complex of problems has become so intermingled that one does not derive a position in one without finding oneself taking sides in a multitude of issues.  As Klein states,

[T]he story … is the logic of polarization.  That logic, put simply, is this:  to appeal to a more polarized public, political institutions and political actors behave in more polarized ways.  As political institutions and actors become more polarized, they further polarize the public.  This sets off a feedback cycle to appeal to a yet more polarized public, institutions must polarize further; when faced with yet more polarized institutions, the public polarizes further, and so on.

          Understanding that we exist in relationship with our political institutions, that they are changed by us and we are changed by them, is the key to this story.  We don’t just use politics for our own ends.  Politics uses us for its own ends.[4]

As Dekker and Pruchnicki point out, the systemic ways hinder or obstruct the entity, be it a person, an organization, or a nation, from seeing what is.  In the case of polarization, the systemic way is its politics or political mode of behavior and thinking. 

The case is that polarization in this issue or that one began to be chained together.  The natural tendency is to make alliances unless one has enormous resources (then the opposite happens – those actors seek isolation).  But if the numbers get so big, enormity loses its relative meaning – all are in need of allies because no one is facing a single opponent or competitor.

          This politicization finds, therefore, a person falling in one side of the divide or the other.  Therefore, one finds Evangelicals teaming with police associations and with large corporate heads that seek tax reductions.  Or one has Black Lives Matter advocates teaming with socialists seeking socialized medicine and with those who simply want to raise the minimum wage. 

And the thing is, this characterization has grown to such a magnitude, that all politically active actors find it necessary to fall within one of the two grand alliances – polarization leads to more polarization.  And to an advocate of a federated citizenry, this becomes a political landscape of enormous challenge (or is it a political nightmare?).

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[1] Sidney Dekker and Shawn Pruchnicki, “Drifting into Failure:  Theorising the Dynamics of Disaster Incubation,” Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 2013, accessed 7/8/2020, https://safetydifferently.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/SDDriftPaper.pdf , 1-11.

[2] Ibid., 8 (Australian spelling).

[3] Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized (New York, NY:  Avid Reader Press).

[4] Ibid., xix.

HERE A PROBLEM, THERE A PROBLEM

One of the problems with most scientific thinking as applied to political science, what this blog has pointed out as the incorporation of the political systems model during the 1950s, is its tendency to frame a point of interest as a definite set of variables.  Usually, the question that scientific analysis asks:  what happens to factor Y when factor X varies? 

If enough cases are looked at and a pattern is detected, a relationship is proposed.  For example, if people with more education (factor X) vote (factor Y) more often than people with less education, then one can establish a relationship between education and voting.  It even suggests a cause and effect between the two. 

Theoretically, one can say there is something about education that, at least, encourages people to go out and cast their votes on election day.  This is never stated as a fact, but a theoretical relationship.  Other factors can be affecting this correlation.  Perhaps higher educated people have jobs that allow them the time to vote and that’s what is really causing the uptick in voting.  That mystery will not be solved here but it is cited to illustrate a point.

          The point is that this sort of scientific investigation tends to narrow one’s gaze to very narrow factors or variables.  As such, something is sacrificed.  That is, by having a narrow view one misses the wholistic realities that inhabit the various landscapes and environments that social scientists investigate.  And this is not just a matter of social scientists being deprived of important information, but in turn, it also affects all those professional managers that depend on the work of those scientists to make their managerial decisions.

          This narrow perspective has a name – reductionism.  Earlier in this blog, David Brooks was cited over this concern.  To repeat, here is what Brooks writes:

This way of thinking [reductionism] induces people to think they can understand a problem by dissecting it into its various parts.  They can understand a person’s personality if they just tease out and investigate his genetic or environmental traits.  This deductive mode is the specialty of conscious cognition – the sort of cognition that is linear and logical.

The problem with this approach is that it has trouble explaining dynamic complexity, the essential feature of a human being, a culture, or a society.  So recently there has been a greater appreciation of the structure of emergent systems.  Emergent systems exist when different elements come together and produce something that is greater than the sum of their parts.  Or, to put it differently, the pieces of a system interact, and out of their interaction something entirely new emerges.[1]

Another expert, the social scientist Sydney Dekker, delves into this problem of narrow viewing, and brings out some patterns and ironies that his observations reveal.

In an article, “Drifting into Failure:  Theorising the Dynamics of Disaster Incubation,”[2] Sidney Dekker and Shawn Pruchnicki begin by citing a historical event that they feel makes their overall point.  That event was the initial attacks – by an Arab coalition – that ignited the Yom Kippur war.  Given the very competent intelligence capabilities the Israelis enjoy(ed), they were caught off guard by the onset of the hostilities.  No, one cannot say the needed information was not available or did not exist.  It existed and it was available to their intelligence apparatus.

The intuitive bias is for people to believe such “screw ups” happen to less competent people or organizations.  They might happen to them, but they also happen to the gifted or skilled-laden entities.  As a matter of course, their very skills and competencies can facilitate the actuality of such unfortunate results.  They can even lead to systems collapsing.

This blogger believes that success (the product of being skillful and competent) leads to complexity in that success usually leads to expansion.  In turn, success and expansion lead to systems thinking which includes the development of protocols, chains of authority, established theoretical allegiances, modes of deference, norms, and other mental constructs that define how one entity – a company, a governmental agency, a government – “sees” things and, in turn, determines how it behaves or should behave. 

And this includes factors such as organizational values, attitudes, dispositions, and shared (what is taken to be) knowledge.  All this leads to a problem; that is, in that complexity, certain problems exist and they, due to the set of lenses shared by that organization’s personnel, are hidden.  This reminds one of what Donald Rumsfeld pointed out:  “The things we don’t know we don’t know.”  And since they are unknown – twice over – they just fester and grow, i.e., they become malignancies. 

In short, they incubate.  Somehow, the common thinking that says find the broken part and fix it, just does not lead to discovering and addressing a malignancy that is growing and causing not just problems but undermining the very legitimacy of the system.  There are various reasons for this “blindness.”

Here is how Dekker and Pruchnicki conclude their analysis:

·       Larger, successful organizations usually operate in environments of pressures due to (1) scarcity of resources and competition against other entities, (2) an imposed lack of transparency with sprawling, complex structures, (3) information being pre-formatted in developed styles or language, and (4) the usual incremental pacing of decision-making which becomes more incremental over time. 

·       Accepted ways and beliefs that develop to protect the organization (e.g., risk assessment or risk management strategies and personnel) encourages false confidence in them and serves to obstruct seeing what “is not known.”

·       Structural elements that seek the “unknown” have counter forces, i.e., costs involved with uncertain technologies and un or underdeveloped knowledge and technologies that change promises to entail.  These potential costs tend to be considered next to the incremental nature of incubating problems. 

·       If needed, transformational change (calling for changes in beliefs, attitudes, and/or values) is judged against the pressures of scarcity and competition, making needed change appear to be impossible – even when they are not – or just too expensive. 

·       And

Organisations incubate accident not because they are doing all kinds of things wrong, but because they are doing most things right.  And what they measure, count, record, tabulate and learn, even inside of their own safety management system, regulatory approval, auditing systems or loss prevention systems, might suggest nothing to the contrary.[3]

These are the terms in which problems develop and go unnoticed for meaningful extensions of time; what Dekker and Pruchnicki describe as incubation.  This results in disconnects between the organization’s goals and assessments and the decisions their staffs make.  The temptation is to “kick it down the road” or simply ignore what might result in extraordinary, unforeseen events.

Incubation occurs not because of incompetence, but because the organization is doing things correctly by the “book” of success.  The problem is the “book” doesn’t address the problem incubating under everyone’s nose.  So, what does all that have to do with polarization, the current concern of this blog?  The answer is found in the next posting.

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[1] David Brooks, The Social Animal:  The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (New York, NY:  Random House, 2011), 108-109.

[2] Sidney Dekker and Shawn Pruchnicki, Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 2013, accessed 7/8/2020, https://safetydifferently.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/SDDriftPaper.pdf , 1-11.

[3] Ibid., 8 (Australian spelling).

PENDING BALKINIZATION?

An issue this blog will visit at some future point is whether people due to their nature hold a bias for their group.  That could be their race, their nationality or ethnicity, their locality, their age, their religion, even their gender.  And if that sense of belonging exists, to what extent does it exist?  How much does it trump other motivations, such as personal interests? 

Professional team sports count on people having a strong enough sense of loyalty to one’s locality to sell expensive tickets to witness their encounters with the representatives of other localities or to buy paraphernalia they can wear or otherwise exhibit.  All that is fine as long as it is considered a source of harmless fun. 

Yes, at times it has led to fisticuffs or strains within families, but for the most part, it is just a way to pass what would otherwise be boring interludes within one’s life.  This writer, in his past and when he lived in a more urbanized area, partook in such expenditures – he shared season tickets in baseball, basketball, and even football.  Plus, at times, he drove long hours to attend football games at his alma mater.  These days, though, all that has been abandoned and he follows only golf, a non-locality-based fandom.

          Yes, aging takes one through exotic turns.  But through all that, he agrees with the late Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.  That historian writes:

Most Americans, it is true, continue to see themselves primarily as individuals and only secondarily and trivially as adherents of a group.  Nor is harm done when ethnic groups display pride in their historic past or in their contributions to the American present.  But the division of society into fixed ethnicities nourishes a culture of victimization and a contagion of inflammable sensitivities.  And when a vocal and visible minority pledges primary allegiance to their groups, whether ethnic, sexual, religious, or, rare cases (communist, fascist), political, it presents a threat to the brittle bonds of national  identity that holds this diverse and fractious society together.[1]

One can almost hear the reaction to citing this concern.  The problem does not lie with individuals of one group being able to exert themselves in dominating others but of attempting to protect themselves – in terms of political power and/or economic standing – against those with power.  For example, the “Black Lives Matter” reaction to case police abuse goes beyond mere racial pride or promotion. 

To the extent they are legitimate protests of unjust treatment by government personnel, these need not be acts that undermine an otherwise unified nation.  Instead, they can be viewed as expressions of what minimally this nation needs to sustain to allow such a diverse nation to survive.  Therefore, as with most of reality, this topic is somewhat nuanced.

In that light, what Schlesinger has to say can be useful in finding a workable solution to what this blog is currently addressing; that is polarization.  Not only is this topic subject to nuanced realities, but it also plunges one into ironies that defy simple ideations or policy resolves over related problems.  The main irony is that a pathological adherence to group identity undermines the very individual motivation that spurs it into existence and maintenance.

While the motivation emanates from one’s natural proclivities, its manifestation undermines that individuality.  As Schlesinger points out, one loses him/herself, one’s identity, into the identity of a group.  In turn, the ideas, perceived interests, and other aims and goals of the group become inviolable and beyond questioning.  To the extent this is true, it adds to those forces sustaining the nation’s current malady of polarization. 

Again, ironically, how these problematic allegiances develop, even those that reflect racial/ethnic divides, has participants of such dueling to fall in line with one or the other of the grand national groupings – the progressive one or the conservative one.  Unfortunately, the current political landscape has Black Lives Matter “team up” on the progressive side and the white supremist group on the conservative side.  This is a shaky arrangement, but the realities of the current politics fall in line with such a division and they add to the general polarization.

And one is invited to guess over such developments:  is the nation the midst of a social collapse?  Has this descending digression taken on a life of its own?  “The contemporary sanctification of the group puts the old idea of a coherent society at stake.  Multicultural zealots reject as hegemonic the notion of a shared commitment to common ideals.”[2]

As that historian points out, what has sustained this nation – a nation without a common ethnic origin – has been an allegiance to ideals.  And those ideals include a commitment to democracy and human rights.  The nation’s constitution – admittedly needing some interpretation – spells out what that means.  It speaks of union and even striving to be perfect in that union.  Yet, in an age of natural rights, this basic sense comes into question – go figure.

And that historian points out another historical factor.  To be allegiant to the prevailing culture, by the historical setting in which it exists, does call for one to acknowledge the society’s Anglo-Saxon colorization.  The term “colorization” includes the notion that it has by natural evolutionary developments shifted to incorporate the influences of the various immigrant groups that have affected what Americans are culturally today.

Does the acknowledgment preclude the existence of a Little Italy or a Little Havana?  A China or German town?  Of course not.  These communities exist as transition spaces – both in terms of physical location and time.  Their ongoing existence even creates tourist destinations.  Why?  Because it’s a cheaper way to get exposed to another culture while still being able to speak English and be under the legal and political structures of the US.  Win-win!  And concerns over these communities underestimate the attraction of the overall American culture.

This writer can personally attest to this latter factor.  He can remember that in the fifties, living in a Latino home and wanting to be American and for all the efforts of multiculturalists, this attraction still exists.  What youngsters under that situation learn is that there is a way of being at home and a way of being beyond home and the neighborhood.  Most of these concerns turn out to be aesthetic in nature.

This gets solidified as the young person attains higher levels of education.  For the few that insist on holding on to the immigrant culture, fine.  The system can accommodate these exceptions, it has broad shoulder as long as the basic sense and administration of rights – individually and those of groups – are respected.

This blogger of late was entertained by watching a film from 1939 – the same year that produced Gone with the Wind.[3]  That other film, produced in a federated influenced society, portrays the values of that other construct.  The film, Let Freedom Ring,[4] is a story about the railroad extending into the West and its agents engaging in exploitive practices. 

While the film is a venue for Nelson Eddy (without Jeanette MacDonald[5]) to exhibit his “pipes,” it does illustrate how moneyed interests rode roughshod over disadvantaged groups including small farmers, immigrant workers (from various nationalities such as Italians and Germans), and modest townspeople.

There is one scene, toward the end in which all of these oppressed groups congregate – a social event – and become convinced that their group interests are aligned; and that commonly, they needed to unite to check the power of the railroads.  This mirrors the basic strategy E. E. Schattschneider in his book, The Semi-Sovereign People,[6] reports.

The main relevant message Schattschneider offers is that the disadvantaged need to unite to challenge and possibly win over the power machinations of the advantaged.  Divisions based on artificial factors – artificial in terms of what is at stake – such as ethnicity, race, religion, and other non-affectual factors interfere with this type of leaguing.  They lead to dysfunctional alliances or dysfunctional affiliations.  Of course, at times it is one of these attributes that is at stake, as with the Black Lives Matter movement.

This posting leaves the reader with a prophetic insight Schlesinger shares:

The republic embodies ideals that transcend ethnic, religious, and political lines. … But the experiment can continue to succeed only so long as Americans continue to believe in the goal.  If the republic now turns away from Washington’s old goal of “one people,” what is its future? – disintegration of the national community, apartheid, Balkinization, tribalization?[7]

The current state of polarization seems to verify this historian’s concern and to how it challenges the nation.  And, as such, it is a concern civics teachers should be addressing in their classrooms.

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[1] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America:  Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1992), 112-113.

[2] Ibid., 117.

[3] Victor Fleming (director), Gone with the Wind (Selznick International Pictures, 1939).

[4] Jack Conway (director), Let Freedom Ring (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayor, 1939).

[5] For the younger readers, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald were a duo who appeared in many popular films and were noted for their singing prowess.

[6] E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People:  A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (New York, NY:  Hole, Rinehart and Winston, 1960).

[7] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America, 118.

THE PARTY DIVIDE

As the last posting stated, this blog is now concerned with the current polarization of the national political landscape.  The divides facing the citizenry can be detected on many fronts.  Regularly, Americans have been divided, to varying degrees of intensity, along political party lines.  Political parties can be traced back to the origins of the government.  Then the split was between the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans.  Currently, the popular musical, Hamilton, can give the reader an overview of that division.

          But, as the last posting indicated, the division today seems significantly more intense, one in which socializing with those of the other side has become an issue.  Political party division is but one factor or area upon which one can find polarization taking place.  One research group that has looked into this arena has been the Pew Research Center.  The reader is encouraged to look up their various reports concerning this and other issues that the Center has investigated.  It basically conducts survey research projects into these contemporary issues.

          This posting, in reporting the writer’s research into polarization, shares one such report.[1]  That report was issued just the other day, June 25.  It looks at one example of this divide, how Democrats and Republicans view various aspects of the coronavirus pandemic.  This posting will share a sample of Pew’s findings in relation to six more specific issues – how do members of each party feel about how those issues should be considered or treated by government or the people?

          First, here are some of the particulars of the study.  Pew conducted a national survey from June 16-25.  The survey questioned 4,708 adults through the Center’s American Trends Panel.  Here, the study gives the reader an indication of how the citizenship is divided in one area of concern.  Guiding this posting’s effort is to see if the writer can garner information as to the nature of the reputed polarization many have reported and is but one attempt to garner a better understanding at what is causing Americans to be so at odds. 

The last posting introduced the reader to a journalist, Ezra Klein, and his recently published book that offers a comprehensive overview of the divide.[2]  With this posting, the writer is sharing with the reader a “progress report” of the writer’s efforts to research this topic.  What follows is arranged in relation to six “issues” that the Pew report identifies.  The Pew findings are merely listed without much commentary by this blogger.

Issue 1:  Has the COVID 19 crisis turned the corner, allowing for more normal times?

·       61% of Republicans and Republican leaning independents believe the “worse is behind us” and 38% believe “the worse is still to come” (56% believed this latter opinion in April);

·       23% of Democrats and Democratic leaning independents believe the “worse is behind us” and 76% believe it is “still to come” (87% believed this latter opinion in April).

Issue 2:  General Concern over Coronavirus – how has the spreading of the disease taken place?

·       62% of Americans are fearful of having been instrumental in spreading the disease (30% very concerned); 51% are concerned they will get the disease and require hospitalization (24% very concerned).

·       45% of Republicans are concerned about unknowingly spreading the disease or contracting it; 35% of Republicans worry about contracting it and needing hospitalization; in April, 58% worried about unknowingly spreading the disease and 47% worried about contracting it.

·       77% of Democrats are very or somewhat concerned they will spread disease and 64% of getting the disease.

·       From April until June, blacks’ concern about individually spreading the disease is up 8 points (from 64% to 72%).

·       During that time, whites’ concern about individually spreading the disease is down 8 points (from 65% to 56%).

Issue 3:  What is the impact of ordinary Americans’ behavior in spreading the disease?

·       87% of Americans believe actions of ordinary Americans have a great or fair impact on how the disease spreads;

·       59% believe that impact is great, 73% of Democrats believe this impact exists to a great degree; 44% of Republicans agree.

Issue 4:  To what degree do people feel comfortable with “opening” the economy?

·       44% of Americans feel comfortable eating out in a restaurant (22% in mid-March); 79% feel comfortable going to a hospital (57% in mid-March); currently, 65% of Republicans feel comfortable eating at a restaurant vs. 28% of Democrats (in mid-March:  29% of Republicans vs. 16% of Democrats felt that way).

·       18% of Americans feel comfortable attending a crowded party (that breaks down to 31% of Republican and 8% of Democrats); 23% feel comfortable attending indoor sporting event or concert.

·       53% of Americans feel comfortable at a hair salon or barber shop; 77% feel comfortable entertaining family and friends at home; 79% feel comfortable going the grocery store.  In each of these Republicans and Republican leaners feel comfortable at a higher rate than Democrats and Democrat leaners (widest span exists in terms of going to hair salons and barber shops) – actual percentage amount not listed.

Issue 5.  To what degree has the disease affected the economy?

·       General assessment of the economy in January was 57% believed it was excellent or good, in April and June this positive assessment was/is shared by 25% of those surveyed.  In these later surveys, 46% of Republicans find the economy excellent or good; only 9% of Democrats agree.

·       Republicans are much less likely to see the continuance of government stimulus is necessary as compared to April; Democrats continue to see a stimulus as necessary. 71% of Americans favor a new stimulus package is needed (beyond $2 trillion already enacted), down from 77% in April, the decrease has come entirely among Republicans; 51% of Republicans still say it will be necessary, 47% say it will not be needed (66% in April said it was needed). Democrats overwhelmingly continue to believe additional economic stimulus is needed (that’s 87%, unchanged since April).

Issue 6.  How do Americans feel about other government aid?

·       88% of Americans support helping homeowners, renters, and businesses.  This includes large numbers in both parties.

·       91% of Democrats support helping state and local government, 58% of Republicans agree; overall 58% support that assistance.

·       77% of Democrats favor extending unemployment benefits ($600/week), 39% of Republicans agree; overall, 60% of Americans support the extension.

·       53% of Americans (in both parties) favor temporary cut in workers’ Social Security and Medicare taxes to help in meeting problems associated with the coronavirus outbreak.

          Pew Research Center characterized these findings with the following summary statement:

In every case, the differences between Republicans’ and Democrats’ levels of comfort far exceeds other demographic and even geographic differences. Across all six items, the average partisan gap in levels of comfort is nearly twice as big as the gap between whites and nonwhites and is far larger than the gap between men and women, those living in urban and rural communities, and the gap between younger and older Americans.

Americans’ level of comfort with each of these activities has risen across the board since the middle of March, when many states began to implement stay-at-home orders and other measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus.[3]

As these words are written, the virus pandemic seems to have taken an even more dire projection.  As of this date, the national rate of infection has hit 50,000 per day and a reputable government expert warned that that number can reach 100,000 per day.  This increase is being experienced in many of the Western states generally considered “red” states.  Whether this trend will affect the responses of future surveys, time will tell.

          If party affiliation accounts for so much of how people feel, this tendency further politicizes how Americans face the challenges the disease poses on them.  One should remember, party identification is but shorthand for an array of feelings concerning issues the nation deals with at a given time and if divisions can be associated with that identity, divisions are further legitimized in the hearts of citizens.

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[1] “Republicans, Democrats Move Even Further Apart in Coronavirus Concerns,” Pew Research Center, June 25, 2020, accessed July 2, 2020, https://www.people-press.org/2020/06/25/republicans-democrats-move-even-further-apart-in-coronavirus-concerns/ .

[2] Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized (New York, NY:  Avid Reader Press).

[3] “Republicans, Democrats Move Even Further Apart in Coronavirus Concerns,” Pew Research Center.