Stand in solidarity, but also fix the systemic issues.

I saw a bunch of videos yesterday that have stayed with me. An old man went to give a helmet to the cops and was pushed into the ground. He had an instant skull fracture and the group of cops kept walking nonchalantly. In another scene, a lady stood between looters and a store. They shoved her to the ground and continued with the business of systematically emptying the store and burning it afterwards. In another part of the country, an upright career cop was killed by rioters while defending a pawn shop. These are scenes not from an impoverished country run by a militia, but from the world’s most prosperous and advanced country.  

The question reverberating through my mind was, “how did we get here?” Are we headed towards a nightmarish dystopia where the world descends into chaos with animal spirits of all human beings unleashed? 

And then I looked at the bigger picture. 

There is way too much goodness that has been achieved in the last 70 years since the end of World War II. We have conquered the space, connected all of humanity through the internet, built a global food supply chain to feed this planet, won the war over the most difficult diseases, developed artificial intelligence, and initiated action to tackle the environmental impact of rampant industrialization. Much of this has required co-operation within the society between members of all ethnicity, race and nationality. The US has been the undisputed leader on several fronts when we talk about these successes.  

Why then do we have this discordance? 

Income inequality has had a much bigger impact than we imagine. Certain sections of the society are stuck in a vicious cycle where moving up requires individual ingenuity or exceptional luck. This has been particularly hard on black citizens of this country who began their path to economic prosperity generations later than others due to historical injustices. A black child today is far more likely to grow up in a school district where the benefits are limited and chances of making it to an elite university are even lower. This results in them being exposed to the darker underbelly of our country and being disproportionately involved in run-ins with the law. Cops, being exposed regularly to crime, have a higher probability of showing explicit/implicit bias towards the black members of the society. They are most likely to form negative opinions about the intentions of even a slightly suspicious looking black person. With the empowerment that comes with the role of being law enforcement agent, they inflict irreversible damage to individuals and their families. The result is what we are seeing today in the graphic images around the country. 

 Social media has amplified the divisions to a point where large sections of the society live in parallel universes in terms of their political views. Mainstream media has also been influenced by this trend and their neutrality is openly questioned. On the other hand, the ubiquity of smartphones has ensured rapid amplification of isolated issues. The attention span has reduced to byte sized headline grabbing tweets. Unfortunately, this has meant a serious lack of thoughtful debate and willingness to engage in opposing points of view with respect, in order to explore a common ground. Campuses around the country have become increasingly non-tolerant of divergent views for fear of offending a certain section of the students. As a result, robust debates on complex issues have been replaced with avoidance of sensitive topics and continued bias towards the universities as they are increasingly boxed into partisan camps.   

The world has developed a collective amnesia about the perils of nationalistic and communist models of governance. Liberal democracy flourished when the memories of World War II were fresh, and the USA was held as a shining beacon of this model. However, in the recent years, with a large section of the society feeling left out, the faith in liberal democracy and capitalism has gradually declined. Nationalism is on the rise around the world and on the other hand, a dreamy version of socialism is gaining momentum at the same time. The two sides don’t see eye to eye and are competing in questioning and systematically weakening the foundations of American democracy that has sustained this country and brought much of the progress we see today. The American constitution was a brilliant innovation that allowed for the representation of diverse thoughts and ideas. It created proper balance of power between different branches of the government and designed mechanisms to address the evils of society from the lowest level to all the way at the top. Unfortunately, there has been a significant decline in interest amongst the younger generation to participate in the process by which this system was designed to operate. The result is a desire to lean towards a short cut in terms of questioning the system and calls to replace it with something drastically different. The protests in the last few days reflect this deeper suspicion of the form of governance currently in place and a desire to change it with something much more “fair and balanced”. There are two flaws with this thought - one is immediate where the genuine protests are overtaken by the shadier elements and replaced with looting/vandalism in places and the other is where they lead to a further loss of interest in current democratic institutions. While the first is somewhat isolated, the latter is a bigger danger where the hard work of not working out an alternative when dismantling the current leads to guaranteed chaos as we saw in the Middle East and several other places in the past decade. 

 So how do we solve this? 

All these issues are stuck in vicious cycles, to borrow a term from systems dynamics. The challenge with fixing systemic issues is that they require an active counterbalancing force that can break the cycle. This often comes from a strong leader at the top who can unite the country by recognizing diverse voices and bringing forth the merits in their respective arguments. It then translates into concrete actions that are taken by institutions, corporations, and government bodies.  

 Here are five ideas at the three levels as I see them. 

 Individuals 

1. Go out and vote. Pay attention to the local governing bodies. Hold elected officials accountable through your vote. 
2. Do not rely on social media to learn about the world. Professional publications are more neutral than you believe.  
3. Read history and become aware of the forms of governance and about the power of liberal democracy. 
4. Engage in community service and serve the underprivileged through donations of time and resources. 
5. Resort to protest only selectively and don’t allow it to be mis-utilized. 

Corporations: 

1. Initiate corporate social responsibility programs directed towards blacks and other under served communities. 
2. Build channels and programs that promote diversity in hiring and workplace treatment. 
3. Promote successful black leaders in marketing campaigns and raise awareness about their achievements. 
4. Encourage leaders to engage with black and underprivileged children to inspire them and help build role models. 
5. Offer direct scholarships to bright young black children and college students. 

Government:  

1. Take immediate actions where law is broken. 
2. Offer a message of hope and unity right from the top. 
3. Pass legislation to reform law enforcement agencies in terms of their training. 
4. Collaborate with tech companies to deploy solutions that reduce negative interactions and misunderstandings. 
5. Increase funding of schools in black districts.  

System Dynamics in action - Current vicious cycle and impact of proposed virtuous cycles. Read the loops in cyclical order e.g. increase in corporate efforts towards blacks leads to greater investments which leads to positive impact on black lives. That causes black executives to emerge and become role models which leads to further investment and attention to blacks. This is one balancing loop triggered by the original corporate effort.

We are living in strange times. Let’s unite together instead of sowing further divisions within the society through our actions. Peaceful protest to raise awareness about racial profiling is essential to drive immediate changes. However, it does not have to come at the expense of small business owners who are the worst sufferers when miscreants and opportunists piggyback on the protests.  

 Accepting status quo for blacks is not right.  

Dismissing progress by black Americans is irresponsible.  

Painting all cops with a single brush is dangerous.   

We have solved much more intractable problems. We can solve this one too if we stay united and put our heads together.  

 Let’s strengthen the system and not dismantle it. 

Disclaimer: The ideas above are completely my own and have no correlation to my current or past employers.

References:

1.      Black Lives: Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon

2.      Income Inequality: Capital in the 21st century by Thomas Piketty

3.      Campus Culture: The coddling of the American mind by Jonathan Haidt

4.      Systems Thinking: Systems Dynamics in Action by Prof. John Sterman

5.      Progress in the last 70 years: Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker