The Value of a Good Argument

What I appreciate most about Deborah Mower's perspective on civility in politics and education is her emphasis on the idea that being civil does not mean suppressing disagreements.  Instead, it's all about pursuing them in thoughtful, serious ways.  As we discussed in the interview, people too often think that challenging someone else's ideas is inherently rude, and so we shy away from argument. The key is, rather, to learn how to argue well, to construct an argument and defend a position on the basis of evidence and ideas, rather than on personal attacks, insinuations, and gut responses.

The difficulty, I think, is navigating between the ideal of a society in which people disagree in thoughtful, productive ways, and the reality of a culture that has come to rely heavily on exaggeration, character assassination, and digging in our heels.  The book she edited with Wade L. Robison, Civility in Politics and Education, presents a number of philosophical views on this, though as Mower acknowledges, philosophers often examine ideals of how people should think and behave.  In a culture of political attack ads and clearly divided news media, we often don't live up to those ideals.  Too many of us don't take our own responsibilities -- not only participants in arguments but also as audiences for political and civic debates -- seriously.  

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Actually, as Tom Finnerty explains in this week's Lincoln Avenue, the truth about all those statistical reports on Youngstown's economy is not as bad as that famous old Mark Twain line.  It's not that they're lying.  It's that when an organization like the Brookings Institution reports a finding, the details about the statistics get buried.  The Vindicator had a story about this on their front page this week, about how the unemployment rate is down but that the size of the local labor force has shrunk.  To make sense of that, you have to understand how the unemployment rate is calculated.  And as Finnerty points out, you have to pay attention to what is being measures, and where.  does poverty mean the total number of poor people, or the level of concentration of poverty in poor neighborhoods (that was an issue with the Brookings report from this past fall).  Does "Youngstown" mean the city, or the Youngstown metro area?  As citizens and readers, we have to pay attention, or we can be easily misled.

Finnerty is Associate Director of YSU's Center for Urban and Regional Studies, and it's a great resource for information on the local and regional economy.  The CURS website has links to dozens of reports and maps, on everything from crime rates to the needs of the elderly, dating back to the 1980s and up to 2011.  You could learn a lot by digging into their archives -- just remember to pay attention to the basis for the data.

On the Agenda

Given all the battles in the 2011 Ohio legislature, and the way fights like the one over SB 5 spilled over to engage citizens almost all year, it's hard to understand how Senate Minority Leader Capri Cafaro can be so calm and even upbeat about her job.  But she is.  She speaks with conviction about the value of politics and the possibility of collaboration between Democrats and Republicans, which these days seems rare.

Cafaro should have some interesting opportunities to represent our area's interests this term.  The legislature will almost certainly have to address the oil and gas industry, as she notes in our interview, but earthquakes and ongoing hearings make that complex territory.  Education funding, abortion, and other issues will also surface.  You can keep an eye on what's going on by following the Senate calendar, and you can use the Senate website to stay in touch with your Senator.  As we learned last year, our voices matter. 

Imagining Community Downtown

If you're looking for something to do next Saturday night, I have a suggestion: begin the evening at the McDonough Museum of Art on the YSU campus and help preserve, and maybe even help make, some Youngstown history.  On January 21, from 6-8 pm, the McDonough will host a public reception for the Paramount Project.  Anita Lin explains the project in this week's Lincoln Avenue, including the development of the exhibit that opened this week at the museum, featuring photos, artifacts, and interviews reflecting the history of the Paramount theater and ideas about how the renovated facade and open air multi-use space behind it that Lin and her colleagues are imagining will change downtown.

Much of that is about community.  Over the past five years, downtown Youngstown has attracted a number of large festivals and smaller-scale public programs, like the farmer's market and Friday concerts.  Restaurants and bars have become meeting places, too.  Lin argues that a covered open-air, non-commercial space could serve many functions, most importantly expanding the opportunities for people to gather downtown.  It's an intriguing model for how to preserve and repurpose a significant structure, but turning that imagined community space into reality will take time and money.  If you're interested in helping make that happen, next Saturday's reception is a good place to begin.

The Persistence of Racism

Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness explains how the war on drugs has not only targeted young black men, putting more African-Americans in jail today than were enslaved in the 1850s, and demonstrates how going to prison is just the first step in what then becomes a lifelong pattern of absolutely legal discrimination.  Her arguments and evidence are compelling and thorough, and I hope her analysis will contribute to the development of exactly the kind of mass social movement against inequities in the criminal justice system and our obsession with an inaccurate understanding of drug-related crime.

But what I find most compelling about the book is its clear portrait of the persistence of racism despite decades of efforts to educate and persuade Americans to reject their deeply-held prejudices.  As Alexander suggests, we've all learned that we're not supposed to be racist, and few of us would acknowledge that we treat others differently if they look different from us.  She cites studies that show clear patterns of racial bias, even in people who are sure they're colorblind.  (You can try the tests for yourself online.) As Alexander rightly points out, no one is really colorblind, nor should we aim to be.  Difference matters, and overcoming our habit of making assumptions based on race is incredibly difficult.  Doing so on the level of a whole culture is even more challenging. 

As someone who's been teaching college courses on multicultural literature for more than 20 years, and who has long believed that doing so would make some kind of difference, I found this book at once validating (yes, discrimination is real and significant) and depressing (if racism has simply gone into hiding behind seemingly neutral concepts like the war on drugs).  More than anything, I think it's important.  At a time when many Americans are entering discussions about inequality, the ideas Alexander lays out need to be part of the conversation.

Why Stories Matter

I believe in stories.  That's hardly surprising -- I'm an English professor, after all.  But my faith in stories, and in the act of storytelling, isn't just about Literature with a capital L.  Whether in research, spiritual life, relationships, or simply sorting out my own experiences, stories are rich, complex material.  We use stories to give meaning to what happens to us.  By translating experience into story, we connect individual lives with context and ideas.

So I was interested in the work Lee and Johanna Slivinske have done with stories as a tool in therapy with children.  In a way, the value of stories in therapy (with anyone, not just kids) seems obvious.  What's most interesting about the Slivinske's book, Storytelling and Other Activities for Children in Therapy (Wiley, 2011) is the variety of techniques and examples it offers.  They provide an explanation for why stories are useful and how they can be incorporated into therapy, but then they have pages and pages of examples, geared to a wide range of issues. 

Even for those of us who don't work as therapists, this concept seems useful.  Storytelling happens more or less naturally in most of our lives, but I wonder how often we use it deliberately, as a tool?  I tell stories in the classroom all the time, though I can't say that I've been especially thoughtful or intentional about it.  How does storytelling fit into your work?  Into your life?

Religion: The Ties that Bind?

The argument that David Campbell and his co-author Robert Putnam make in American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us seems contradictory.  On the one hand, they tell us, we see a sharp split between those for whom religion is a central and often politicized issue and those who have abandoned organized religion entirely, largely because they see it as too closely tied to conservative politics.  That part of the argument fits what seems to be a broader pattern of strong and in many ways uncrossable divides in American culture today.  We see a similar attitude toward politics, I think, as many younger people reject electoral politics because they see it as dysfunctional. On the other hand, they argue that religion unites us -- not because we agree about it.  Rather, they say, even those who remain committed to organized religion interact regularly, often intimately, with people from other religious backgrounds. 

In this sense, religion may parallel what has happened with race.  Racial divisions remain strong, and racism remains deeply embedded in American law and other social institutions (for more on that, come hear Michelle Alexander speak about "the new Jim Crow" on Tuesday evening).  Yet interracial marriage has become widely accepted, increasing numbers of Americans define themselves as mixed race, and many of us live and work in racially integrated communities.  As with race, the continuing significance and diversity of religion has become -- some would say it has always been -- a defining element of American culture. 

I'm not as optimistic as they are about what our interpersonal relationships will mean for religious tolerance in America.  For too many, the certainty that their beliefs are the only right and true way -- and that their views should determine American law and public policy -- remains far too powerful.