This past week has been one of the saddest and most tragic weeks in recent years. First we had two African Americans shot and killed by police when they appeared to be posing absolutely no threat. Then we saw a lone gunman in Dallas shoot 12 innocent police officers, five of them fatally. Something is seriously wrong. Our system is more fragile than it has been at any time during our lifetimes. Unfortunately, we have become a very divided people. Prominent and longtime pollsters, both conservative and liberal, have said that they are seeing the most serious divisions in our population in their 40-plus-year careers.
If you are concerned about the disproportionate number of young African Americans killed by police and support some version of the Black Lives Matter movement, does that mean you are anti-police? And if you believe that the vast majority of police are trying to do their best in a very difficult and dangerous job, does that mean you in any way condone these police shootings of young black men by some outlier police officers? Unfortunately, too many of our fellow Americans think the answer to those questions is yes, and this is only one of the big divisions in our society. The real question facing us is the existential question: How can we survive as a society or country if these divisions continue to grow as they have in the past 10 years?
We don’t think that things are going to change by the simple passage of some new law or the election of any particular person. Things need to change on two levels. We need to bring individuals together to begin to talk to each other and to begin to understand that there is not a particular group of people who is the problem. There are good and bad individuals in all groups, but if you can sit down and truly get to know individuals from different groups—whether it is race, religion, ethnic origin, class, sexual orientation, urban/suburban/rural to name just a few—you quickly realize that people are basically good and desire the same things, like having a safe and secure environment where they can make a living and raise a family. Secondly, we need to make the world fairer for minorities of all kinds and for the less-educated white working class. The Great Recession, which according to economists ended in 2009, is still having a heavy impact on the majority of the American people. At the same time, the richest one tenth of 1% have done very well. That is not a sustainable economic model. We flourish as a country when we have a large and strong middle class.
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What can we do now in Milwaukee? Our societal problems are very serious and daunting, and it is easy to throw up our hands and give up. That, however, does not fix a problem, and this is not a problem that will go away by itself. Realistically, we can only do what we can do so you start there. We can start by trying to build local models to develop understanding and thereby empathy with groups of people very different from us. It is not easy, since we have all kinds of notions of what these other folks are like, but we need to get beyond that if we want to heal our country. Places of worship can be leaders in this by simply organizing a picnic or some social event with a very different place of worship. Community organizations can invite members of other communities with a very different demographic to participate in some shared activity, especially one that has a social benefit, like cleaning up a riverbank or doing minor home repairs for frail elderly people struggling to stay in their homes. Cities have very successful Sister City programs with cities with very different cultures; likewise, communities could have sister community programs.
If the Milwaukee area would set its mind to trying to become a national model in understanding, we could have an impact much beyond our metropolitan area. We in Milwaukee are not afraid of hard work, but we are afraid to get out of our comfort zone. It is not easy. It will be very uncomfortable at first. There will need to be much discussion with various group leaders so people ease into these activities. Talk to co-workers who are very different from you and brainstorm on how your communities can build better communication. If you want a very easy first step, simply go to an ethnic restaurant that is foreign to you and talk with the owner as he or she recommends their favorite foods. This can be a comfortable and easy starting point of what might slowly develop into a friendship.
Finally, if readers have better ideas, let us know and the Shepherd would be very interested in promoting them. The Shepherd would be happy to highlight any current local efforts or programs that are working to build greater understanding among our very insulated communities. It’s time that Milwaukee becomes a national leader again. Too often, when Milwaukee makes the national news, it is not for something positive. Let’s change that and let’s start locally, where we have the ability to make some real change and be a national model. No one is stopping us from doing our small share.
