March 26, 2019 | Read Time: 6 minutes
Polarization is arguably our country’s biggest challenge, and all signs suggest that it is worsening every day. While many foundation leaders and other nonprofit executives fret about the vitriol in our debates, we need far more energy and investment in efforts that take action to help more Americans find common ground.
Until nonprofits and other influential players in society do more to help people learn how to talk to one another about solutions, we cannot tackle our largest challenges — race, climate change, homelessness, education, health, and so much more.
To understand what is needed, we must all understand the difference between debate and dialogue. Steinar Bryn, a longtime scholar at the Nansen Academy and a six-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee for his work in the Balkans, very succinctly sums up the difference between dialogue and debate — and by implication the enormous work that lies ahead.
Debate’s goal is to win, while dialogue is to understand, he notes. Debate is about persuading, dialogue is about explaining. Debate is about arguing, dialogue is about listening. In debate, to change your opinion is a sign of weakness, while in dialogue it is a sign of maturity.
Organizations such as the Radical Empathy Education Foundation and Search for Common Ground and others have been working to promote these ideas in the United States. However, much more needs to be done to prevent polarization from worsening.
Below are a few proposals and programs that could start to install a culture of dialogue.
Promote more study-away options for college students to live elsewhere in the United States.
Going abroad as a university student has become a rite of passage for many young Americans, with the most popular destinations being Europe and Asia. But a stint in a different region of the United States could have the same perspective-broadening result. While it may be hard for Bay Area students to feel the draw of Tulsa or Kansas City, they’d be surprised by how much they would learn and discover by spending time in a different region of the country.
To be sure, it will probably take more than a suggestion to encourage students to treat domestic exchanges just like study abroad. That’s why colleges should make it easy to transfer academic credits earned during this type of exchange, and forward-thinking institutions should move now to lead the way.
It’s not just colleges, though, that can promote the idea. City leaders can take a page from what they do to attract businesses to locate there: promote livability.
Strong universities, good transport links, cheap housing, and a well-rounded menu of cultural offerings could entice students to experience different cultural and political geographies in the United States. Colleges are a great place to encourage more of these exchanges, but the same ideas would work with high-school students.
Spread the Sister Cities International effort to build bonds between American cities.
After World War II, President Eisenhower heavily promoted Sister Cities International whose mission is “to promote peace through mutual respect, understanding, and cooperation — one individual, one community at a time.”
These types of exchanges are crucial in fostering dialogue and have done much to bring the world closer together. There are good reasons to consider replicating the program nationally, to encourage cities and regions in the United States to start cooperating with each other.
Cultural exchanges, say between an artist in Missouri and an audience on the coast, would be very practical and significantly cheaper than the sporadic exchanges between a medium-size town in Arizona and its counterpart in Asia, typical of the international program.
One may argue that cultural exchanges do take place when musicians and theater groups tour the country, but sister cities in the United States could do so much more to build alliances that stretch across political and state boundaries and lead to deeper mutual understanding.
Create an Olympics-style competition for the 50 states.
Every four years, we see a hint of what a global community looks like when the Olympic Games and World Cup bring people from many countries to compete in the same sports.
That same model could be launched in the United States as a way to build unity across a common bond, with states competing against each other.
The thought of a South Dakotan David taking down a Californian Goliath in surfing would move me to think about the bigger picture. The Jamaican bobsled team in the 1988 Winter Olympic Games comes to mind. While the athletes failed in the competition, they won the hearts and minds of many who watched them.
What if a red state and a blue state combined forces for a bid to host the event somewhere in the geographical middle of the country? That would send the right message about how to work together and could be an economic boon to states, which must be constantly creative in developing their economies.
Promote dialogue in a cultural space.
My colleagues and I have been working to build the world’s first museum dedicated to the bridge — as both structure and concept. Our mission is to inspire future bridge builders and a vision of a more connected, less polarized society. We base much of our approach on Steinar Bryn’s work, and he serves on our advisory board.
The Bridge Museum takes the timeless metaphor of the bridge and transforms it into a mechanism to try to understand the “other” by promoting conversations that improve community relations. The launch of a six-month, 4,000-square-foot exhibition in Oakland, Calif., is scheduled for late 2019.
The museum will have three major sections: structural, symbolic, and conceptual. Structural themes will include environment, materials, and ingenuity, while the symbolic themes will highlight historical events on bridges, focusing in particular on race, ethnicity, superpower relations, and community. The conceptual section will explore ways to shape narratives and understanding among people with longstanding differences in views and background.
In addition, the Bridge Museum will be a place where children who lack sufficient access to science, art, and math studies can learn more about them and consider related career paths. Our goal is to teach and inspire the next generation of scientists to engineer the next century. For us, an empathetic child who understands what we build all around us brings enormous value to society.
These efforts — and many more — are needed because Americans are wasting billions of dollars and billions of hours talking past each other, in their communities, in society at large, and most certainly in Washington.
No problem will be solved if opposing sides cannot sit down, start a real dialogue, focus on our commonalities, and be ready to compromise for the greater good. We need a sustained full-court press to bring our nation together, starting immediately, with nonprofits and philanthropy playing their parts.
Richard R. Dion is executive director of the Bridge Museum.
