The arc of the moral universe: Where are we on the path toward justice?

#5.2024.3.14

Jean recently penned her thoughts in three blog posts for Black History Month. This is a summary for LinkedIn on the path toward justice. Links to all three blog posts are in the comments.

How did we get here?

I remember my shock in 2020 when repeated protests after George Floyd’s gruesome murder played to an international audience. What shocked – and delighted me, as I wrote in a blog post – was seeing how many White people turned out in support of racial and social justice.?

I had no idea that their concerns about racial divides had been simmering beneath the surface, waiting for ignition.

Retrenchment

And now, it’s 2024, and what I had anticipated 4 years ago is now happening: The post-George Floyd era, widely spoken of as the time of racial reckoning, is now on the wane.?

Retrenchment is setting in across the country. The Supreme Court has all but banned affirmative action. Corporations that greatly expanded their diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are cutting back. Friends across the country are calling and texting me that they are so discouraged, and one or two are considering leaving the U.S.

Again and again, I’ve been asked: how do I maintain hope in such a retrograde environment?

I have an advantage that many don’t. I am looking at what has happened across decades -- actually centuries -- so I know the march toward greater social justice is continuous, punctuated by periods of backlash and disillusionment.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., famously declared, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

This is not my first rodeo. I have lived through several setbacks and retrenchments. I was raised on stories of my ancestors and what they had to go through to develop livable futures for themselves, their children, and grandchildren, which now includes me and mine.

What caused the backlash?

How to understand today’s backlash: It helps me to look at the trajectory of racial progress the way traders view stocks. They track the market into two trends: a bear market (stocks trending downward, retrenchment) or a bull market (stocks going up, progressive). The pendulum swings between the two.

Day traders who look at minute by minute or even day by day fluctuations die a thousand deaths as stocks fluctuate wildly. The smart money goes to those who look at longer term trends.

Similarly, I look at the period of time since slavery as either trending upward toward racial and social justice (emphasis on public interests, structural opportunities for advancement) or trending downward (emphasis on private interests and individual responsibility). The pendulum swings here, too.

The public was outraged

Public outrage laid the groundwork for the widespread protests against segregation and racial oppression in the late 1950s and early 1960s, culminating in several?civil rights laws?ending legal segregation and supporting voter rights, among other progressive acts.

The pendulum began swinging in the opposite direction as Supreme Court decisions gradually eroded affirmative action and again emphasized private interests, individualism, and disregard for systemic factors.

People were viewed as solely the cause of their circumstances: The “just say no” campaign to allegedly end drug use?was built on the premise that weak-minded people allowed themselves to get hooked. The “welfare queen” and other mythologies propagated the belief that the poor were lazy, manipulative takers who were exploitative of government handouts. The federal government was widely demonized as the problem.

The pendulum shifts, racial reckoning, and then back again

And now, the backlash is setting in yet again.

Let’s just compare Reconstruction after slavery and today’s racial reckoning. What are the commonalities??

Both periods featured a heightened attention to racial issues and particularly systemic racism, resulting in a widespread public discourse about what could be done.

Both periods spawned policy changes and initiatives. The question in the 1860s was how to address the legacy of slavery and promote economic opportunity for the newly freed slaves. The question today is about how to address systemic inequalities and promote racial justice.

Both periods called for facing the truth of our past and taking steps toward reconciliation to heal historical injustices and promote racial healing.

Both periods were followed by challenges and backlash. Policy changes that had been promised were contested and slow to materialize.

If you’ve been following me, by now you know that I believe we need to look squarely at our own culpability if we are to make changes and create the society we want to have.

Yes, we have faced recalcitrance since the slave trade began. But focusing solely on what others are?not?doing removes our agency. As controversial as some might see it, I believe we do have agency, we can make a difference, all is not lost.

What can we do?

Is there anything we can do? Do we need to wait for another gruesome murder to go viral and catch public attention?

If it was all about what regressive forces have or have not done, then the only choice would be to wait. But I think we can be more proactive than that if we can look fearlessly at what we as progressives did to feed into the backlash narratives.

The turnaround from public back to private interests

Let’s take a look at three historical periods where those advocating private interests saw themselves as good guys saving the traditional order from radical extremists:

First instance was post slavery: In the former slaveowners’ reasoning, the carpetbaggers ruined it for the South by corrupting the newly freed slaves, who were ill-equipped for self-governance, much less citizenship.

Then in the 1970s, when sentiment swung away from public interest programs like the War on Poverty and affirmative action, blame was fixed on Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and similar advocacy groups. Their confrontational approach toward addressing systemic issues like police brutality, economic inequality, and social injustice was deemed offensive — and dangerous.

And now, in this period of retrenchment against DEI initiatives, we see progressives being labelled as “woke police” who advocate a cancel culture, violating the right to free speech and promoting reverse racism. In the eyes of our private interest-oriented accusers, progressives are portrayed as deliberately seeking to make White people — especially White children — feel guilty about a distant past that has no relevance today.

Note that in all three periods, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation given for the retrenchment.?This is known as “motivated reasoning,” where people find a reasonable-sounding argument to justify preconceived motives or beliefs. In other words, they find a reason to believe what they want to believe.

So what can be done?

Standard arguments are to fight back: Take to the streets! Call out everyone perpetuating covert or overt racism! Demand our rights!

As a former street-level, door-knocking activist, I agree these tactics work when the Zeitgeist supports it.?I don’t think the Zeitgeist supports a similar radical upheaval at this time. In the three periods that I cited, the country had been entrenched in private interests for a time and was ripe for a catalyst to move it back toward public interests again.??

We are just in the beginning of the swing from public to private interests. People are weary and cynical about calls for change. Fighting back with protests and threats is not likely to work.?

This is the time for a slow build of consciousness-raising to win hearts and minds.

How can we bring people leaning toward private interests (favoring their own identity group) into a greater awareness of how they benefit from supporting public interests (including other identity groups)?

Fortunately, practitioners and behavioral scientists are working on two approaches that show considerable promise:

1. Truth, redress, and reform (TRR) commissions aimed at promoting the truth of our past, racial healing, and reparations. Also known as transitional justice.
2. The race, class, and narrative action (RCN) approach based on work by Heather McGhee (The Sum of Us), which emphasizes messaging that attracts, rather than repels, those we are trying to reach.

Could it work in the United States?

In the United States, various jurisdictions and entities are engaging in efforts related to transitional justice. These initiatives aim to address systemic injustices, reconcile historical wrongs, and transform societal relationships.?

Some examples:

1. Apologies and truth-seeking
2. Local restitution efforts
3. Reparations and structural reforms

Race Class Narrative

The second possible solution is based on the ground-breaking work by Heather McGhee in her book The Sum of Us (see blog #89, link in comments).

As she explained – and so many people know – what keeps us entrapped in divisiveness is how one group is pitted against another under the assumption of a fixed pie. Those stuck in zero sum thinking believe that if second-generation Mexican Dreamers get something, there is less for Appalachians. If a Black woman is promoted, there is one less job available for a White man.?

People who talk only about racial divides automatically stir up zero sum-based resentments by those who see themselves as victimized by class biases.?

The solution, then, is to talk about both race and class

What does this mean for us?

At the start, I said we don’t have to throw up our hands and declare that there is nothing we can do during this period of retrenchment. We have agency. Information is available to guide us.

I am heartened that so much is going on about transitional justice now in this country, and even more heartened by the RCN framework.

What’s required is our commitment to learn how to language what we are saying to those whose opinion we want to win over. Just “telling it like it is” can’t match disciplined, empirically based word choices that have been demonstrated to produce the results we are seeking.

How to stay optimistic

I began this writing with the question: what can we do to keep ourselves optimistic??

Those movements and orators and millions will come back in their own time. Meanwhile, our job is to prepare the ground for the new growth to take root. This means committing to building a culture where our everyday lives support progressive ideals, and everyone has an opportunity to flourish.?

Let’s look at ourselves. How ready are we to blame others when they aren’t acting as we think they should? What example are we setting for the type of culture we want to create for all of us??

Let’s take stock and choose to be the change we want to see – creating a ripple effect so when our part of the stream flows into the river that flows into the lake that flows into the ocean, we know we have done our part well.

If we can pull that off, we will have made a difference. If we take a stand to be the change we want to see within our sphere of influence, no matter how small, we can know we have done our part to make a positive contribution to the vastness of the ocean.

Doing the work requires understanding how change occurs – how to induce it in ourselves and in others. If we aspire to be the change we want to see, a corollary is to gain a good grasp of how we might induce change back toward public interests and away from private interests, where individualism is glorified and government and organizational policies have no role in leveling the playing field.

The possibility of a win/win

I was in my doctoral program when I first heard about the possibility of a win/win and learned to distinguish between win/win, win/lose, and lose/lose.

In Heather McGhee’s book,?The Sum of Us, one of her major points is how racism and the desire for dominance can lead White government leaders to engage in lose/lose strategies to the detriment of all.

McGhee explores how the zero-sum game – the win/lose belief that progress for some must come at the expense of others – has detrimental effects on society as a whole. She challenges the misconception that gains for people of color are losses for Whites, emphasizing that racial inequality is detrimental to the entire economy and leads to a loss of productive wealth and harm to communities.

In essence,?The Sum of Us?advocates for rejecting the zero-sum game narrative and promoting collective action across racial lines to achieve shared prosperity and address systemic issues related to racism and inequality.

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Paving the way for Conscious Change

In each of these change principles, there’s so much going on whenever anyone tries to influence another that there is always another variable to be looked at.?

Based on my experiences and research, I know that people are predisposed to react in a protective way when they don’t know what else to do, when they are fearful because of a real threat or a zero-sum mindset.

Knowing this, I was highly motivated to identify the skills that people could use when they are stuck in doing the same thing over and over again for the same dismal results. What are the skills that can actually foster positive relationships, promote influence, and initiate change? How does a person learn to change themselves so that they induce the change in others that they are desperately seeking to implement?

My coauthor V. Jean Ramsey and I wrote our first book during a period of retrenchment (Reframing Change: How to Deal with Workplace Dynamics, Influence Others, and Bring People Together to Initiate Positive Change). We wrote it knowing people were facing uphill battles in trying to bridge differences and promote change in a polarized society. Our first book sought to address this dilemma through developing what are now the 6 principles and 36 skill sets.

I will soon start talking about the upcoming release of our new book,?Conscious Change, How to Navigate Differences and Foster Inclusion in Everyday Relationships [preorder link in comments].

Taste of this week’s reading

The learning questions posed to our clients by this blog, The arc of the moral universe, were:

1.????? Think of a recent disagreement at work or home. How was it framed in terms of win/loss? How would you do it differently now that you know better?

2.???? What is your view of the vast gulf between the two extremes in the US now? Can you reframe it to make room for hope, learning, and change?

In all our online leadership development programs, including Pathfinders and ChangeMakers, reading is a key aspect of our program. We write original blog content every two weeks, and we hope you are enjoying it!

Hire Jean to speak Dr. Latting has 20+ years of consulting and teaching experience for private and public sector organizations and is an experienced speaker and workshop host. She is available to speak virtually to groups including executives, managers, individual contributors, and community leaders to widen their multicultural awareness. Book Dr. Jean

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Link to full blog in comments

Our new book, Conscious Change: How to Navigate Differences and Foster Inclusion in Everyday Relationships, will be published in July. We encourage you to pre-order through our website, bookshop .org, or Amazon, links in comments.