New Yorker Letter: Thinking Fast and Slow in Ferguson

I recently had a letter published in The New Yorker (here it is).  Here's the story of how I came to write the letter (which, in my opinion, is more interesting than the letter itself)....

I have been reading Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking Fast and Slow, which is about the way our minds work - specifically, biases in how we consider things.  As the recent events in Ferguson unfolded, I was struck by the ways in which the book connected with the conversations about race that Ferguson was triggering - and how unproductive those conversations seemed to be.  I wrote the following essay with some of those thoughts...

--> One thing observers of the ongoing drama in Ferguson seem to agree on is that there is a need for frank conversations about race and criminal justice.  However, discussions about the decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson and the resulting riots in Ferguson have been largely unproductive.  It seems at times that people are not even talking about the same event.  The disconnect between the various perspectives – and the impact that disconnect has on our ability to honestly address the situation with the seriousness it deserves – reminded me of an experiment from the Nobel economist Daniel Kahneman’s book about our minds, Thinking Fast and Slow.
 
Try the experiment yourself.  Begin at the top of a sheet of paper and draw a vertical line without using a ruler down to the point you think is 2 ½ inches from the bottom of the page.  Next, without looking at the line you’ve already drawn, start at the bottom of the page and draw a line going up 2 ½ inches - you are aiming for the same point on the page, just starting from the opposite direction.  If you are like most people, you did not stop at the same place in these two attempts.  Most likely, you stopped too early in both cases, leaving a gap between your two lines.  That gap can be called the zone of uncertainty.  You have a general sense of where 2 ½ inches from the bottom of the page would be, but your tendency is to go no further once you get the feeling you are in the ballpark.  When you are coming from two different directions, the lines do not meet.
 
What does the zone of uncertainty have to do with Ferguson?  Think of the top and bottom of the page as stereotypes that may be at play in a situation where a police officer interacts with a black male: racist police officers and dangerous black males.  Stereotypes like these are certainly not pretty, but they are part of how our minds work – pretending they do not exist or wishing them away only muddles an already difficult dialogue.  How you evaluate any particular interaction between a police officer and a black male depends in large part on which stereotype you begin from.
 
Saying that you begin from a “racist police officer” stereotype does not mean that you actually think police officers are racist – rather, it means that if you are given no facts other than that a police officer interacted with a black male, your initial reaction (your bias) would be to take the side of the black male.  You would have no facts upon which to make such an initial judgment, but you would make the judgment regardless.  Fortunately, as new facts are provided, you would be able to move off of your initial reaction to evaluate a particular case more fairly.  However, where the “true” answer is unable to be definitively ascertained, your movement is likely to stop at the edge of the zone of uncertainty closest to the side you began from.  The same thing is happening for those who begin from the dangerous black male stereotype.  The two types of people are thus stopping at opposite edges of the zone of uncertainty and their lines never meet.
 
Unfortunately, from what may be a small zone of uncertainty, a much larger chasm opens up as we grow increasingly frustrated that others aren’t seeing things as we do.  Feeling that we have reached our own conclusion absent bias cleanses our own perspective and sullies disagreement as prejudiced.  Rather than accept the zone of uncertainty, we instead form a negative opinion of those with whom we disagree and begin to harden our own beliefs – asserting them even more strongly than we initially felt them.
 
This, of course, is not a path to a constructive conversation about race.  A first step toward a productive Ferguson conversation is acknowledging that there may be a zone of uncertainty between how this story is being experienced by different people.  By accepting that we come to the conversation with some bias, we can unlock useful discussions about the undercurrents making a situation like Ferguson possible – and so explosive.  We can even address how troublesome stereotypes like racist police officers and dangerous black males are formed.  Those undercurrents run deep into our national history and have been persistent trouble spots in our evolution into a more perfect union. 
 
Engaging with these topics – getting to that point 2 ½ inches from the bottom of the page – requires an open mind, an honest assessment of one’s own biases, and a willingness to accept that others may see things differently.  Even though such conversations seem to be what many of us want, our fast thinking might be making that engagement slow to come by.
I submitted that essay to various places, but received no responses.  Then, I saw the cover of the December 8, 2014, issue of the New Yorker.  I was struck by how much it reflected the idea of the zone of uncertainty described in my essay...


...so I wrote a condensed version of the essay and sent it along.  The relevant portion of the letter, as published is:

Perhaps the break in Staake’s arch is not a break at all but a reflection of the fact that people approach these discussions from different perspectives. As we move toward meaningful engagement, we are likely to stop at the edge of our own uncertainty. Connecting the arch requires an open mind, an honest assessment of one’s biases, and a willingness to accept that others may see things differently.

Book Review - Enrique's Journey

There are 10 million undocumented immigrants in the United States today, give or take a couple million. That’s 10 million stories of individual human beings fleeing their homes, often leaving families behind, for the chance of a better life, even a life lived in constant fear of deportation, in the United States.

The American immigration debate can be overwhelming, but the individuals most affected by immigration policy are largely invisible – undocumented immigrants are, by definition, absent from public forums. In the absence of tangible people that represent the complexities of immigration to the United States, many of us are left with a very impersonal sense of what is a very personal issue.

Enrique’s Journey makes the impersonal personal. Author and journalist Sonia Nazario, spurred by a surprising conversation with her nanny, set out to shed light on the individuals at the center of American immigration debates. What follows is a book that tells the story of immigration in 21^st century America in a way that illuminates the motivations and struggles of immigrants and the impact their decisions to come to America have both on our country and on the countries and families they leave behind.

Enrique is a Honduran teenager whose mother left for the United States when he was 6, promising to return within a year or two after making enough money to build a moderately prosperous life in Honduras. After years of promises that his mother will soon return, Enrique tires of waiting and sets out on a dangerous journey through Mexico, often atop freight trains and never more than one wrong decision away from deportation or death.

The journey itself is certainly mythic, but Nazario is careful not to mythologize her characters. Enrique and his mother are both human (and by human, I mean imperfect) and are attempting to struggle through a life that has presented them with difficult circumstances. In Honduras, they are poor. Enrique’s parents are separated and the Honduran economy provides little opportunity for women older than 25. Faced with the likelihood of an impossible life, Enrique’s mother opts to flee to the land of opportunity. From the United States, she is able to send money to her family that helps provide an education for Enrique and his sister, clothes, and food that would be impossible to afford otherwise. But the land of opportunity has its limits. Her savings are never enough to return to Honduras. When Enrique decides to attempt to follow his mother to America, it is clear that she has given up on returning.

It is incredible the lengths people go to reach our country for even the small opportunities Enrique’s mother is afforded. That millions of people flee their homes, often leaving family behind, for those opportunities says a great deal both about the allure of the American dream and the desperation felt by the impoverished in their home countries. These are not easy decisions and the life of an undocumented immigrant is consumed with the ambiguities and consequences of such decisions – consequences that affect families and nations alike.

Would Enrique’s family have been better off had his mother remained in Honduras or is the economic benefit they receive worth a life without a mother? This is not just a question for Enrique’s family. Immigrants send $30 billion a year back home – a not insubstantial portion of home country’s economies. Yet, in Honduras, huge numbers of parentless children, like Enrique, have fueled rampant growth in juvenile delinquency and gangs. These are impossible choices.

And obviously, undocumented immigrants make an impact on the United States as well. There is certainly room for debate on immigration policy and I don’t intend to tackle that here. However, in considering the questions raised by the presence of large numbers of undocumented immigrants, Enrique’s Journey provides readers with one family’s story, warts and all, to make that debate more personal. Even if Nazario didn’t provide a fascinating narrative (which she does), that humanization of the invisible makes the book worthwhile.

The Trouble with Diversty - Book Review

I have written several times (here, here and here) about the Supreme Court case in which the Court considered the constitutionality of school assignment plans in Louisville and Seattle that used race as a factor in maintaining diverse student populations in public schools. I criticized the Court for ignoring the almost-inevitable consequence of rejecting these plans – the resegregation of schools. However, in a book I’ve recently finished – The Trouble with Diversity, by Walter Benn Michaels – I found myself wondering about that resegregation: so what?

The Trouble with Diversity makes the argument that the focus on diversity as a goal has served as a distraction from increasing inequality in our society. Michaels is not so much against diversity – he is simply troubled by the way in which a room full of millionaires who happen to be of different races is praised as a diverse gathering. The fact that there are millionaires of all races, Michaels argues, makes it difficult to see that there are many more Americans of all races living in poverty with long odds of improving their lot. (Of course, the fact that a disproportionate number of those in poverty are African American only further complicates the balance between diversity and equality)

Michaels makes a compelling case that the focus on ethnic diversity in everything from university admissions to corporate boards has only hidden a system that favors the already-wealthy (regardless of race) at every turn. The danger is that it is hidden in a way that makes us (and by “us,” he means the educated and relatively well off who may be able to do something about the situation) feel better about ourselves: “A world of people who are different from us looks a lot more appealing than a world of people who are poorer than us.”

There is much to admire in The Trouble with Diversity – Michaels’ clarity of thought and writing, and his obsession with a society that is truly (as opposed to merely rhetorically) one of equal opportunity. However, in dismissing the quest for diversity as almost an intentional distraction from the quest for equality, Michaels goes too far.

The quest for diversity does not seek diversity for diversity’s sake. Rather, it is a direct response to discrimination. If personal biases are preventing otherwise qualified individuals from moving forward, then the clamor for more diversity can help take those personal biases out of the equation. Where Michaels fails is in minimizing the degree to which race still does matter to even the African American millionaire. Perhaps diversity proponents have gone too far, but that should not obscure the fact that racial and ethnic discrimination persists.

Ultimately, the debate Michaels weighs in on is a chicken-and-the-egg question. Michaels believes that if we can get to equal opportunity, then diversity will follow, whereas diversity proponents argue that if we have more diversity in our schools and professions, equality will follow. Which brings us back to the resegregating effects of the Supreme Court’s decision: Michaels would not be bothered by schools that are all-black or all-white so long as those schools provided equal educational opportunities (separate, but really, truly equal). Michaels would even go on to say that the litigation about the race-conscious assignment policies may in fact distract from and pull resources away from ever achieving schools that offer equal educational opportunities. In Michaels’ world, there is no inherent problem with the resegregation of schools.

And maybe there is no inherent problem with it. However, Michaels is no less guilty of ignoring reality than the Supreme Court. In our society, there is an unfortunate correlation between a school’s quality and its racial makeup. That correlation is not going to disappear as a result of abandoning effects at diversity – the more likely result is that the correlation with only strengthen. The race-conscious assignment plans that the Supreme Court rejected were designed to offer better educational opportunities (not to mention the social benefits of an ethnically diverse group of peers) to students who would otherwise be learning in racially-isolated schools subject to that unfortunate correlation.

So I have not totally converted to the conclusion that resegregation does not matter. But thanks to this book, I will be careful to keep the underlying goal of diverse schools or workplaces or neighborhoods in mind – opportunity that is not determined by the color of skin.

Is Everything Bad Really Good For You?

What if it turned out that playing video games didn’t rot your brain after all? What if all those hours rescuing princesses or dissecting NFL defenses actually made you smarter?

This is precisely the thesis put forth by Steven Johnson in Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making You Smarter. Johnson has developed what he calls the Sleeper Curve, by which despite the purposes for which we seek out popular culture – distraction, entertainment – the very act of absorbing that culture in the form of video games, television, movies, and the internet carries along hidden cognitive benefits.

Johnson attempts to distinguish content from cognition, insisting that it is not what we’re thinking as we immerse ourselves in pop culture, but how we are forced to think while doing it.

Take video games. Today’s increasingly complicated video games require traits that translate to the non-video game world – decision-making, persistence, creativity, flexibility. The hours of concentration and frustration required to master these games cultivate these cognitive skills even as gamers think they are having fun.

Johnson applies a similar argument to television, film, and the internet. He compares the plots of The Sopranos to Hill Street Blues, and Lord of the Rings to Star Wars, concluding that today’s viewers are forced to follow more characters, more settings, and more storylines – and that we are smarter for it.

I’m willing to accept Johnson’s premise that today’s pop culture is more complex and demands more attention and thought than pop culture of the past, but I’m not sold that this is a good thing.

First, looking only at the how of popular culture while ignoring the what makes for an incomplete evaluation. The most vocal critics of popular culture are not concerned that pop culture is making us dumber, but that it is making us immoral or violent. Johnson acknowledges as much: “Popular culture may not be showing us the righteous path. But it is making us smarter.” A full evaluation of whether pop culture is truly good for us would look at all its potential effects and determine if the good outweigh the bad. Johnson does no such weighing.

However, the largest gap in Johnson’s thesis is that he does not address the need for moderation. Although he acknowledges on the afterword’s penultimate page that his book should not be mistaken for an extended justification for gluing oneself to a screen, Johnson does little to drive this point home. Johnson admittedly would not endorse a regimen that included playing video games to the exclusion of all other activity – exercise, homework, social interaction, household chores – but you would not know it from his book.

In fact, the very characteristic Johnson champions in today’s pop culture – complexity – makes it less likely that we will be able to pull ourselves away. It is because so much thought is required to crack a video game that a player must spend hours upon hours playing. It is because following The Sopranos requires such a full understanding of the plot and characters that we must watch, then TiVo and rewatch each show, buy the DVD of previous seasons to catch up or refresh, and check internet chat sites to discuss the plot permutations and hidden jokes.

I’m not saying that video games, television, and the internet are bad for you. I like all three. But Johnson’s book provides an incomplete evaluation of their pros and cons before boldly declaring that they are good for us. After all, what good are sharper cognitive skills if they will only be used to better consume pop culture?