"Contact hypothesis": People fundamentally change--on an emotional level--when they mix with and get to know people who are different from them. They become more compassionate, basically--and that's something we desperately need in this era of siloed lives. Personally, I'd like to see a lot more of us voting with others in mind and supporting policies that benefit others. And in my mind, this is the best way to get us there.

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My guest today is Amanda Abrams, a freelance writer currently living in Durham, NC.

Joan Brunwasser: Welcome to OpEdNews, Amanda. I read your recent article in Yes!: How to Meet People Who Are Different from You. Why did you write it, and why now?

Amanda Abrams: I've been thinking about this for a long time. Above all, I've noticed how limited my own circles are--how so many of my friends and acquaintances are roughly my age and are, like me, middle class and white. In 2016, after the election, I realized I didn't personally know a single soul who'd voted for Donald Trump--and that felt like a problem, because I couldn't understand those voters and they felt very alien to me. So I brainstormed ways to change that and broaden my network, but I couldn't come up with any strategies that felt significant or had the potential to be permanent.

I think knowing a range of people and having a sense of their experience is always important, but especially now, because there's increasing ugliness around politics; and a big part of it, I believe, comes from not being familiar with one another in a personal way. And of course all the Black Lives Matter protests have brought home the point that we're still, as a society, way too segregated in the way we live our daily lives.

JB: The beauty of the old and familiar is that it makes us feel safe and cocooned like nothing else. The downside is that we rarely pause to consider what comprises that comfort zone - whether it's a cozy corner or a cluster of friends and like-minded neighbors - and if we are satisfied with what it says about us. So, moving beyond it is hard. Especially in a pandemic, when everything we do, everywhere we go or don't go, every decision we make is fraught with scary, potential consequences. It's tempting to pull up the drawbridge, stay home, in our pajamas, eating carbs and watching mind-numbing shows or shopping online. Tell us about your move to Durham and what you had hoped to accomplish, with your choice of neighborhood and schools.

AA: Yes, I agree, this isn't necessarily the best time to think about expanding one's world and contacts, but unfortunately it's a time when we desperately need to be considering it and figuring out how to do it. As I said, this has been on my mind for a while. I used to live in a gentrifying neighborhood in Washington, DC, and I was massively struck there by how neighbors--particularly longtime African American residents and newer young professionals--rarely interacted. They'd literally pass each other on the street without looking at one another, or would live next door to each other without ever really talking. I eventually wrote articles about it and tried to write a book about it; the latter ultimately didn't work out, in part because it's hard to base a narrative around people's lack of interaction. But the upside for me was that I got to know tons of people in that community and became comfortable hanging out with all kinds of races, ages, and classes. That's the upside of gentrifying neighborhoods: the opportunity to meet different kinds of people is right there.

When my family and I moved to North Carolina, where I grew up, we originally rented a house in another gentrifying neighborhood and really enjoyed it, for those same reasons. But when we were looking to buy, we found a house in a neighborhood that was mostly white, but whose neighborhood school was very mixed. For lots of reasons, including the mixed nature of the school, we bought that house and moved there, and that's where we live now. As I wrote in the article, we hoped that sending our son to that kind of school would result in him being open minded, unentitled, and comfortable with a wide range of people. And we simultaneously assumed we'd also get to know a diverse group of parents--but that hasn't happened, because we've managed to self-segregate within the school, initially without even being conscious of it.

JB: Your account of self-segregating, despite a conscious attempt to choose differently, struck a chord with me. Often, good intentions are just not enough. Let's dig deeper into why, in this case, they weren't.

AA: There are so many reasons we often tend to self-segregate, and that my husband and I did in this case. In general, we all tend to go with what feels familiar and comfortable--and white people tend to be less tolerant of that kind of discomfort because we encounter it far less often. So all other things being equal--let's say you're at a conference, and can choose from any number of people to talk to--many of us will pick people who look and seem like us.

But all other things usually aren't equal, and often the self-segregating is also the result of economics. So in our case, a subset of students would hang out after school and frolic in the schoolyard while their parents talked to one another. Our son was one of them, and it was one of the things we liked best about the school. Naturally, talking day after day led to closeness among us parents, and those people became the folks we'd contact if we were going to be late or needed help with something. But, like us, most of those families lived close enough to the school to walk or bike there, in a neighborhood whose home values are higher than average for the city. Also, they had flexible enough work schedules--or no work at all, in the case of some of the stay-at-home parents--that they could pick up their kids at 3:45.

Both of those are based in economics, and that's often the biggest reason we wind up becoming friends with people like us. Socioeconomic status drives a lot of our choices and habits, and can keep us apart. It can affect our schedules, where we live, how we communicate, what we enjoy doing in our free time, and many other elements of our lives. So we can have great hopes of meeting people who are different from ourselves, but if that difference involves a socioeconomic gap, we may simply not have much exposure or opportunity. As a result, we have to be far more intentional about the choices we make, and have to find ways to step out of our personal patterns, if we really do want to diversify our circle.

JB: That's a pretty sobering assessment, Amanda. Please share with us what it might look like to keep pushing to overcome all the hurdles that keep us self-segregated. We do still have options, even if they might not occur to us without some prodding and re-examination.

AA: There are most definitely ways to overcome those hurdles. Something I didn't mention in the article, by the way, is that my family is fostering a baby whom we may adopt. He's Black and we're white, and all the reading I've done highlights how important it is to raise a transracial adoptee or foster child among people of his or her own race. So we have a very real reason to take this seriously.

What it requires is repeatedly making conscious choices to step out of our patterns. For us, that means shopping at grocery stores in neighborhoods that are more diverse than ours; going to stores and libraries in other parts of town; committing to volunteer activities and hobbies that draw a wider range of participants. It also means trying hard to be aware of our unconscious habit of turning toward the familiar--that is, choosing to talk to someone who doesn't look or seem a lot like me in those cases where I might have options of who to talk to. Going with a Black babysitter rather than a white one. Picking the Black hair stylist rather than the white one. Reading books by Black authors.

This conversation and my article have focused largely on race because that's currently where the need is. But across the board, it's vital that we expand our networks to people who are different from us in a wide range of ways--in terms of religion, political affiliation, sexual orientation, age, physical ability, even body type. The narrower our circles are, the narrower our lives are, and the narrower our minds become. Research has borne that out repeatedly, but it's also apparent personally if you look closely enough at yourself.

JB: Agreed. Thanks for sharing this aspect of your personal life with us. I have to ask: in light of the way people, particularly men, of color continue to be treated by the police, are you fearful for your foster baby boy's safety and wellbeing? If so, how are you and your husband handling that?

AA: Oh, we're hoping it won't be a problem by the time he's a teenager. Ha, kidding. I'm assuming it will indeed still be a major issue, but we haven't gotten to the point of really thinking about that yet. It seems so far off. However, we're hoping to enlist someone, or several someones over the years, who can serve as a mentor to our foster son--a Black man who can teach him what it means to be a Black man in this society. Not that we're planning to outsource the task of teaching the boy what to expect, but I think the input of someone who's been there will be extremely valuable.

JB: Makes sense to me. What else would you like to talk about before we wrap this up?

AA: I'd like to simply underscore how powerful it can be when people from different backgrounds get to know each other. The "contact hypothesis" is one of the most well-established theories in social science; it shows that people fundamentally change--on an emotional level--when they mix with and get to know people who are different from them. They become more compassionate, basically--and that's something we desperately need in this era of siloed lives. Personally, I'd like to see a lot more of us voting with others in mind and supporting policies that benefit others. And in my mind, this is the best way to get us there.

JB: Simple but profound. Thanks so much for talking with me, Amanda. It's been a pleasure.

AA: Likewise!

***

From Amanda's website:

I'm a freelance writer based in Durham, NC. I write about gentrification, poverty, religion, communities, and the people who interest me for a range of local and national publications. I also help nonprofit organizations advance their missions with a variety of writing tasks...

I have a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of California at Berkeley and spent several years in my twenties working on farms and traveling around the world, sometimes on a bike. I still ride a bike everywhere and am an avid dancer and meditator, as well as the mom of a small boy.

The Yes! article I read that led me to Amanda

Authors Website: http://www.opednews.com/author/author79.html

Authors Bio:

Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of transparency and the ability to accurately check and authenticate the vote cast, these systems can alter election results and therefore are simply antithetical to democratic principles and functioning.



Since the pivotal 2004 Presidential election, Joan has come to see the connection between a broken election system, a dysfunctional, corporate media and a total lack of campaign finance reform. This has led her to enlarge the parameters of her writing to include interviews with whistle-blowers and articulate others who give a view quite different from that presented by the mainstream media. She also turns the spotlight on activists and ordinary folks who are striving to make a difference, to clean up and improve their corner of the world. By focusing on these intrepid individuals, she gives hope and inspiration to those who might otherwise be turned off and alienated. She also interviews people in the arts in all their variations - authors, journalists, filmmakers, actors, playwrights, and artists. Why? The bottom line: without art and inspiration, we lose one of the best parts of ourselves. And we're all in this together. If Joan can keep even one of her fellow citizens going another day, she considers her job well done.


When Joan hit one million page views, OEN Managing Editor, Meryl Ann Butler interviewed her, turning interviewer briefly into interviewee. Read the interview here.

While the news is often quite depressing, Joan nevertheless strives to maintain her mantra: "Grab life now in an exuberant embrace!"


Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Her articles also appear at Huffington Post, RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.