In this episode of the “Collage” podcast, Rev. F. Willis Johnson and Rev. Gregory Kendrick explore the profound intersections of faith, history and preservation. They delve into the power of sacred spaces and how maintaining and honoring these place can be a form of advocacy.
A woman evacuating from Pokrovsk, Ukraine, in August looks out from a train car to say goodbye.
Kilaberia is an assistant professor at New York University’s Silver School of Social Work and a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project.
We know the toll that war has on youth, but older adults are suffering displacement, too.
We have talked about age-friendly cities, age-friendly health care systems, age-friendly universities, age-friendly workplaces dementia-friendly communities. We are not talking about age-friendly or dementia-friendly humanitarian responses.
Tomorrow is Ageism Awareness Day and it offers us the opportunity to draw attention to the impact of ageism, particularly in the many war zones around the world.
The United Nations and its partners set up play centers for children transitioning from place to place while fleeing Ukraine, for respite and a little joy. Volunteers left baby carriages, prams and strollers for fleeing Ukrainian mothers at the border. But I did not come across news about a respite center for older people fleeing. Or volunteers leaving walkers, canes and wheelchairs for older refugees at the border — at least not as ubiquitously as for youth.
Before Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, there were Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. And other wars before that. In all of them, older people were displaced.
Larissa Andreeva, 76, fled Ukraine with her family but then got separated, ending up in a village in Moldova. From there, she was forced to move to a transitional refugee shelter in the capital. Alone and isolated, she did not always share a language with other refugees who came and went. After seeking permission from the shelter director, Andreeva cordoned off her bed with fabric dividers for some “privacy” as weeks turned into months and months into one and a half years during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Dementia did not make things easier: One day, Andreeva walked out of the refugee shelter, got lost and was not able to say who she was or where she lived when asked. She was safely brought back and did not dare venture out again. Then the refugee shelter closed. She was moved to what seemed like a group home. Younger residents there shunned her because she was old and confused.
In 2024, a family friend helped her relocate to Georgia (the country) where her own family, temporarily living in the Czech Republic, was able to place her in a nursing home. Andreeva had already been an internally displaced person in Georgia three decades prior, suffering bodily harm and lifelong health consequences.
Risks from displacement can be cumulative. Older people in the United States have shared that they feel invisible in stores, restaurants, theaters and elsewhere in peacetime. Public health professionals may recall the decision-making around catastrophe medicine in Italy during the pandemic that prioritizes saving younger people over older people based on limited resources. Ageism is potent in its power to obscure the intersectionality of old age and refugeehood in wartime.
Forced displacement increases risk of abuse and neglect, especially of older women, persons with disabilities and older LGBTI persons, according to the UN Refugee Agency.
A cab driver taking Andreeva to the refugee shelter overcharged her manyfold, and what she had in her purse was all that she had in the world. She worked as a yard hand in the Moldovan village where she was first sheltered to earn her keep. Nobody may have made physical labor an explicit condition of her stay, but nobody told her she did not need to work.
I am not old, but I lived in a retirement community as a young person, and learned about older people directly from them. I am safe now, but I was displaced in an armed conflict in Georgia and suffered the loss of family and friends who were murdered. I not only grew up with displaced older people, I’ve worked with older refugees in a refugee resettlement program. I have focused on age-friendly health systems and elder mistreatment in my work.
Somehow, the neglect of older refugees seems flagrantly age-unfriendly, and translates to elder abuse, except there is no clear agent perpetrating the abuse. It’s the war. It’s the politicians and their decision-making. It’s the separation from the family. It’s the refugee shelter that closed.
Older refugees with dementia and other health issues are no less vulnerable than children. As women’s rights advocate and social worker Ollie Randall noted six decades ago, “old persons in need of help are not apt to be naturally appealing, as is a helpless child … In the field of social action, we have tended to place our hopes—and our dollars—on youth.”
People 65 or older are expected to rise to 17 percent of the world population by 2050. Given internal and cross-border displacements in past, ongoing and likely future regional wars, older refugees should be everyone’s concern.
Former President Donald Trump recently said Vice President Kamala Harris is mentally impaired.
Schmidt is a columnist and editorial board member with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Ableism, the social prejudice and discrimination of people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior, is just plain wrong and it is also un-American.
At a recent campaign rally in Prairie du Chien, Wis., former President Donald Trump disparaged Vice President Kamala Harris, suggesting she was mentally disabled and called her “a very dumb person.”
Trump told the crowd: “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way. She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.”
Maria Town, CEO and president of the American Association of People with Disabilities, gave a statement to The Washington Post. “Trump holds the ableist, false belief that if a person has a disability, they are less human and less worthy of dignity,” she said. “These perceptions are incorrect, and are harmful to people with disabilities.”
As a mother of a child who was born mentally disabled, just reading Trump’s statements brought tears to my eyes. Since the former president has a history of mocking people with disabilities, I was not surprised. But it broke my heart to read that the crowd responded in cheers.
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Trump insinuated that having a mental disability makes a person incapable of being a good steward. He couldn’t be more wrong.
Here is a list of the qualities and attributes that my daughter brings to the table and why, judging on character alone, she is more of a leader than Trump will ever be.
My daughter loves this country and thinks it is already exceptional. She is always the first to stand for the national anthem when we attend a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game and enthusiastically enjoys celebrating America during our patriotic holidays.
Hardly a day goes by when Trump doesn’t diminish America by calling it a “chaotic hellscape,” a failing nation or a nation in decline — and that only he can “Make America Great Again.” Trump called Americans who died in war “losers” and “suckers.”
My daughter admits when she has done something wrong and apologizes for it. She has never spoken a bad word about anyone. Her heart is filled with love and empathy. She cares about her community and spends her time volunteering.
Back in 2023 a jury found Trump liable for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll. A separate jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million to Carroll over defamatory remarks he made about her while he was president. He continues to make defamatory remarks against Carroll to this day.
My daughter follows the rules and has never broken the law.
Trump became the first former U.S. president convicted of felony crimes. He was found guilty of business fraud and is awaiting sentencing after the election. He remains under state and federal indictment for election interference in the 2020 election. Trump was also under federal indictment on classified documents charges in Florida until Trump-appointed Judge Eileen Cannon dismissed the case in July.
My daughter understands that if she has only one dollar, she can only spend one dollar. That said, she prefers to save her money.
Although Trump has never filed for personal bankruptcy, his businesses declared bankruptcy six times between 1991 and 2009. During his presidency, Trump added approximately $8 trillion to the national debt.
My daughter delivers cookies to our local firehouse every year on the anniversary of Sept. 11 as a way of saying thank you to our first responders.
Approximately 140 police officers were assaulted on Jan. 6, 2021. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died right after Jan. 6 and four law enforcement officers who worked at the Capitol that day died by suicide in the months that followed. The House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack report detailed that Trump remained inactive for 187 minutes before posting a video on Twitter telling his supporters that they should leave the Capital. The committee also found that it was Vice President Mike Pence who attempted to order National Guard troops to quell the violence.
To my knowledge, my daughter has not once lied.
The Washington Post Fact Checker clocked Trump making 30,573 false or misleading claims over the course of his four years in office.
Respect for individuals with intellectual disabilities can be bipartisan, as can the understanding that ableist language has no place in this country.
In early 2024, Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) introduced the Words Matter Act, which would update the U.S. code by eliminating the words “mentally retarded” and replacing it with language that better respects the dignity of individuals with disabilities.
Casey said of the bill: “We have an obligation to uplift people with disabilities and ensure they are treated with dignity and respect.” Moran added. “Individuals with disabilities deserve to be respected and valued,”
Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican or an independent, let us agree to not denigrate any Americans, especially those with intellectual or physical disabilities, or elect people who do.
Heavily Hispanic areas near Chicago are home to environmental racism.
Sharp is chief financial officer at Environmental Litigation Group, P.C., a law firm based in Birmingham, Ala., that assists individuals and communities injured by toxic exposure.
The predominantly Hispanic populations in Rosemont, Schiller Park and Bensenville, near Chicago, have long been exposed to toxic chemicals known as PFAS originating from the neighboring O'Hare Air Reserve Station, which was closed in 1999. The phenomenon of environmental racism is not new to Chicago. Sites and facilities hazardous to the environment and human health have been placed near communities predominantly populated by Hispanic and Black people in the city for years.
Environmental racism and injustice have a long history in the United States, and it stems from racial inequalities, discriminatory land-use policies, and spatial segregation. Polluting industrial sites, landfills, highways, airports, and military facilities are commonly established in the proximity of communities of color. A report published by Princeton University states that although African Americans make up 13,6 percent of the U.S. population, they are 75 percent more likely than white people to live in areas near facilities that produce noise, odor and traffic, and 68 percent live near coal-fired power plants. Another study has shown that African American and Hispanic communities have twice as many oil and gas wells in their neighborhoods than white communities.
Contamination of the environment and ecosystems with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), affecting more than 90 percent of Americans, has been declared a national crisis. However, PFAS exposure in communities of color is not well examined yet, and it is something we need to acknowledge and know more about.
In May 2023, Harvard University's School of Public Health published a groundbreaking study that focused on drinking water contamination by PFAS in certain communities of color. The researchers looked at the connection between the level of contamination and the proximity of PFAS pollution sites to the watersheds serving such communities. The scientists concluded that communities with higher rates of Black and Hispanic individuals are more likely to be exposed to higher levels of PFAS — between 10 percent and 108 percent, depending on the type of PFAS — than other communities.
PFAS are thousands of synthetic chemicals used in a wide range of products since the 1950s, such as firefighting foam, food packaging, heat-resistant and non-stick household products, water-repellent clothing, cosmetics and many more. They make their way into the soil, air, ground- and surface water. The highest levels of PFAS are found in drinking water sources.
One of the main issues with PFAS is that they are extraordinarily persistent and resistant. With time, they build up in the bodies of people who are regularly exposed to PFAS, primarily through drinking water, and cause adverse health conditions. The two most widespread types of PFAS — known as PFOA and PFOS — are carcinogenic and have been linked to breast, ovarian, prostate, thyroid, and kidney cancers.
The Environmental Protection Agency introduced its first-ever recommendation for the maximum contamination levels of the various types of PFAS in drinking water in March 2023. For PFOA and PFOS, the EPA established four parts per trillion, meaning there is no safe exposure level for these chemicals.
Rosemont, Schiller Park, and Bensenville villages are near Chicago's most prominent PFAS hot spot, O’Hare International Airport. In 2020, the PFOA and PFOS detected in the airport were 13,800 ppt from the extensive use of the PFAS-based firefighting foam, used since the 1960s to suppress fuel fires. PFAS originating from military installations contaminate private and public drinking water sources of communities living in their proximity, as in this case. In 2022, 45.8 percent of the people in Rosemont were Hispanic. In Schiller Park, the estimated percentage of the Hispanic population in 2023 was 32,6 percent, while in Bensenville, it was 47 percent. These numbers clearly show how environmental racism and PFAS contamination go hand in hand in the villages in question.
The PFAS problem adds to the long list of environmental injustices Chicago’s communities of color, who make up 67,3 percnet of the city’s residents, endure. The southeast and west sides of the city, where most people of color live, are the so-called “sacrifice zones." In those areas, polluted air and water, illegal dumping and inappropriate storage of hazardous waste put people's health and well-being at a higher risk, with more people having cancer, asthma, respiratory issues and cardiovascular diseases than in the "white neighborhoods."
Communities of color exposed to life-threatening PFAS are more likely to develop severe illnesses, even if PFAS pollution affects them to a similar extent as it does other groups. This is because they often have less access to medical care or safer drinking water alternatives, and their voices are often neglected.
The Environmental Justice Act of Illinois acknowledges that some segments of the population disproportionately suffer from environmental hazards because the state permitted some facilities to pollute. Acknowledgment is a critical first step, but meaningful policy change and action are urgently needed. Decades of irresponsible and unjust PFAS use threaten the health of already disadvantaged Hispanic communities around Chicago, and we still do not know enough about the level and dangers of it.
Environmental justice organizations based in Chicago have been successfully fighting against environmental racism. The PFAS contamination problem should be added to their agenda. More and more people are joining multidistrict lawsuits against manufacturers responsible for PFAS pollution, hoping to receive some financial support and relief from their suffering. This confirms how impairing exposure to these chemicals is.
Mexican Independence Day celebration in Chicago
Marín is the co-creator and community advocate at BECOME. Rodríguez is the co-executive director of Enlace Chicago.
The Welcoming Neighborhood Listening Initiative delves into the dynamic social landscape of Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, exploring resident perspectives on the influx of new neighbors seeking asylum. The study moves beyond traditional data collection to activate community members as leaders in driving transformative solutions. Ultimately, the report emphasizes the importance of culturally responsive training and community dialogues to foster understanding, bridge cultural divides and build a more inclusive Little Village for all.
Chicago just marked Mexican Independence Day with a reinstated celebration of El Grito in downtown and an annual parade in La Villita, a primarily Mexican neighborhood also known as Little Village. These festivities kicked off Hispanic Heritage Month, which celebrates the independence of Mexico along with Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Chile.
The period from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15 also acknowledges the many compatriots of Latin America who now live in the United States, wanting greater opportunity for themselves and their families. “I believe that everyone deserves an opportunity to have a better life,” said a resident of La Villita.
The theme of arriving and working towards a better life touches all immigrant groups, and it unifies Latinos across the country.
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However, we are facing moments of enormous division. Over 48,000 people, mainly Venezuelans, have arrived in the city’s Latino neighborhoods since Texas began bussing people arriving at the Texas border to various cities across the United States. Little Village in Chicago has been a main placement destination for new residents. Spanish is the primary language, and the culture is familiar. However, in La Villita, as well as in other communities in Chicago, tensions have risen as established residents and new neighbors have scrambled for food pantry items, space to work as street vendors, affordable rents and available housing units.
To further understand this tension from the perspective of residents, BECOMEpartnered with Enlace Chicago, one of the primary community organizations and service providers in Little Village, to produce the Welcoming Neighborhood Listening Initiative. Eight long-term residents of La Villita were trained as community researchers to conduct interviews with their family members, neighbors, shopkeepers, teachers and others throughout their neighborhood. The responses captured many emotions: fear, resentment and struggle, along with hope, welcome and solidarity. In addition, new neighbors were also interviewed, along with community leaders and elected officials. “We have to understand that [our new neighbors] came to this country to make their lives better,” expressed the same La Villita resident.
In Chicago’s City Hall, the Latino and Black caucuses have clashed over the distribution of taxpayer funds to support new arrivals instead of investing in majority Black communities that have been systemically ignored. In La Villita, Mexicans and Venezuelans have clashed over cultural differences and access to resources. “It’s as if a kind of racism is being created between us Latinos, even though it’s not their fault,” said another Little Village resident about the influx of new residents from Venezuela and other parts of Latin America.
The presidential election and our political divisions are now dominating the national stage. Some appeals to Latino voters try to pit us against one another based on immigration status, how long we’ve lived in the United States and our national origins. Non-Latino immigrants are also being demonized with fear-mongering tactics. We can do better!
The wisdom of those eight community researchers of Little Village resonates at this moment. They bravely went through their own neighborhood, asking people how they felt about their new neighbors and if they believed they were part of a welcoming community. Most community members — 68 percent — said yes. As residents themselves, the researchers held back their own opinions of their changing neighborhood. As one shared, “I learned to listen and not judge. I learned to ask questions openly and not be afraid to do so.” We would do well to follow her lead.
As the weeks progress toward the election, we will be bombarded with more messages about our differences. What community members found, however, is that they are more alike than not. Regardless of national origin, how we arrived in the United States, what dialect or language we speak or what neighborhood we live in, our similarities bind us. As we celebrate this month of Latine unity and Hispanic heritage, we have an opportunity to extend that welcoming to all those who seem so different. One Little Village resident reminds us, “One change is to start from within so that we can also accept ourselves and accept other people.”
Berman is a distinguished fellow of practice at The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, co-editor of Vital City, and co-author of "Gradual: The Case for Incremental Change in a Radical Age." This is the 10th in a series of interviews titled "The Polarization Project."
National elections in the United States tend to spark talk of “red” and “blue” America — two parallel nations divided by geography and politics, with rural and central states trending Republican and coastal and urban areas voting for Democrats.
This shorthand obscures as much as it reveals, of course. There are many blue voters in red states, and vice versa. Indeed, there is some research to suggest that the very creation of red- and blue-colored voting maps leads people to overestimate the extent of American political polarization.
Monica Harris, the author of “The Illusion of Division,” agrees that “Americans are profoundly divided by partisan politics, race, gender identity, vaccination status, and an assortment of labels that keep us fixated on our differences.” But Harris believes these divisions are illusory: “The media and political establishment amplify this division by focusing on fringe voices on the right and the left, ignoring the vast majority of sensible Americans in the center who agree on ‘big picture’ problems and solutions.”
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Harris has been seeking to bridge the divides in American life through her writing and by leading the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism. FAIR was founded as a critique of the anti-racism curricula introduced into many American schools in the aftermath of the slaying of George Floyd. Instead of focusing on racial differences, FAIR seeks to advance “pro-human” values by promoting open discourse and advocating on behalf of free speech.
I spoke with Harris about how she came to lead FAIR, what’s really dividing us, and why race relations in the United States have gotten off track. This transcript of our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Greg Berman: You wrote a book about the illusion of division in this country. What's the argument?
Monica Harris: Let me start by backing up. I’m someone who's Black and female and gay. I grew up in Southern California. Someone who looks like me, that kind of person is typically, I think, branded as progressive, especially in California. I graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law in the ’80s and early ’90s. So that further solidified my identity. And after I graduated, I went into entertainment law. For the lion's share of my adult career, I worked in Hollywood for various networks, from Walt Disney to Viacom. I was the quintessential progressive for many years.
But to make a long story short, about 14 years ago I had an epiphany that prompted me to make a radical lifestyle change. I took a trip with my family to Montana and we stayed in a little town, just outside of Yellowstone.
We were there for about a week — no Wi-Fi reception, just my partner and our extended family. I didn't think about anything except being present and absorbing the natural beauty and interacting with my family and friends. And it was just such a nourishing experience. On the way home, I told my partner, "God, we've never really seen Montana. Let's explore the rest of it."
And so here we are, an interracial family with our biracial child, and we're driving through Montana and we stop in all of these little towns. I was expecting, given my identity, to be treated a certain way as a Black person, as a gay woman, when I went into these towns that were 99 percent white. And what blew me away is that I connected with these people. They were treating me like I wasn't different at all.
I left that trip thinking not only did I feel comfortable there, but I could actually imagine myself living there. About a year and a half later, my partner and I decided to move to Montana. We sold everything and we bought a 20-acre ranch at the foot of the Continental Divide.
GB: What kind of reaction did you get from your friends back in California?
MH: A lot of people were kind of stunned: "Montana, what are you thinking? That’s not your tribe. I mean, you know they vote mostly Republican. You know they have guns there. Montana's not friendly to gay people.”
That reaction — that’s what I call the illusion of division. There's this idea that people who don't vote the way we do, who don't look the way we do, who don't share our lifestyle … that they're people we can't communicate with. They're people we can't exchange ideas with. They're people who don't share our values in any respect. That's the illusion.
After my time living here as a classically blue person transported to a red state, I've come to realize that even though we are different in so many ways, what we're ignoring are the ways in which we are so similar, our common values and interests. What we have in common is far more important than what separates us. We just don't realize it because our media constantly reminds us of how we’re different and because the people we elect constantly remind us how we're different.
GB: You have said that we are living in a culture of outrage. What's driving this culture?
MH: This is not a news flash, but I think our media are driving the culture of outrage. In my book, I write about a “Hidden Brain” podcast episode that I was listening to. A woman was talking about how she had seen a video of a Native American gentleman who was being taunted by these young white kids on the mall in Washington, D.C. And she tweeted out a comment that was something like, "White supremacy on display again, this is horrible what they're doing to this poor indigenous man." And she got a lot of likes and that made her feel good.
But then her son brought to her attention, “Hey, Mom, I don't think you've seen the full video.” And as it turns out, when she saw the unedited version, there was much more backstory. These kids had been taunted by another group, I think it was the Black Israelites, and they had been harassed, and the Native American man was trying to break it up, and they lashed out at him for getting involved. Anyway, the point was that the initial video was totally taken out of context. And the woman in the interview instantly felt ashamed. But when she tried to post this on social media to explain what really happened, people weren't welcoming. Actually, the response was more along the lines of, "How dare you give comfort to the enemy? Why are you backing down? Why are you giving racists an excuse to be racist by giving some insight on the context of this encounter?"
All of that is an example of the culture of outrage. Not only are we compelled tribally to support outrage, but when we even attempt to bring ourselves back from outrage, we're discouraged from doing it. Others won't let us retreat. Nowadays, we can express ourselves any way we want on social media. And if we're wrong, like this woman in “Hidden Brain” was wrong in her assessment, there's no cost. There's no penalty. I think that's a big reason why the culture of outrage has flourished.
GB: Let’s talk a little bit about race, which has always been a fault line in American society. I recently saw some polling data from Gallup that showed, for many years, fairly stable and positive views among both Black and white survey respondents about the quality of race relations in the United States. And then it just goes off a cliff around 2015. Today, the majority of both Black and white Americans have a negative view of race relations.
MH: I don't think the timing is coincidental. That was literally the year before Donald Trump was elected. And I think anyone paying attention to that presidential campaign could see that Trump, rightly or wrongly, was being labeled a white supremacist and a racist. Which is somewhat ironic since, as far as I've seen, most of Trump’s racist comments were directed towards immigrants. His comments really weren't directed towards Black people, but it was Black people who expressed the greatest outrage.
Trump tapped into a sense of historical outrage stemming back to the legacy of slavery. That's a wound that we as Black people have had for centuries that has never truly healed, for obvious reasons. During those years when it seemed like race relations were progressing, the wound was healing, but like with any wound, it doesn't take much to make it bleed again. I think that's what happened in 2015 — there were very opportunistic parties that started scratching at that wound. And it didn't take long for blood to flow.
As a member of Gen X, I was part of the first generation that reaped the benefits of integration. I didn't go to school accompanied by the National Guard like people in my mother's generation. I was able to mingle with my white peers, other students. I studied beside them, and it felt organic to us. There was still racism that I experienced, but it was nothing like what my parents experienced.
I think we do ourselves a disservice when we continue to remind Black people that we're still struggling with systemic racism and that America is inherently racist. Black Americans in 2024 have really made profound strides since 1964 when the civil rights movement was in full swing. We are not where we need to be, but we are getting closer. I think the pitfall that people often succumb to these days is that we're not appreciating our progress. We're focusing on our failures.
GB: Speaking of generational divides, you wrote in Quillette that there is a generational schism in terms of how people think about diversity. What are the millennials and the Gen Zers getting wrong and what are they getting right when it comes to diversity?
MH: The millennials, and Gen Z as well, have not only come to take integration for granted, but I think they also have also embraced a very distorted form of diversity. As a Gen Xer, I was raised in a climate in which diversity wasn't just race and sex and gender. It also contemplated class. It also contemplated political perspective and geographic diversity. All of these were forms of diversity that contributed to, particularly on campuses, a very textured way of looking at people as individuals and interacting with them and learning from each other.
I think what's different today is that Gen Y and Gen Z seem to view diversity through a very narrow lens of race, gender, sex and maybe ableism. But they seem to be completely disregarding some equally important aspects of diversity. And I personally believe that class is probably the most important issue today in America. I think it even supersedes race. A lot of Black people are struggling not because of their race, but because of the class they were born into. But I'm Black. I'm living in a state that's mostly white, and my standard of living is higher than the average white person in Montana. And that's solely based on my education and class.
Even if we got rid of racism overnight, even if tomorrow every one of us woke up and we were the same color and we couldn't distinguish between each other physically, we would still have an enormous problem in this country relating to class. There are generations of people who have been cut out of the American dream because they lack access to education and decent-paying jobs. Their families are being torn apart by drug addiction. That's something that we don't talk about nearly as much as we should. The fentanyl crisis is affecting white families more than Black families. And again, not wealthy white families. It's mostly middle-class and working-class families.
Gen Ys and Gen Zs are focused on the power and oppression model. The error, in my opinion, is that people are projecting this power and oppression model onto other groups of people who are also being oppressed. I think that's one of the big blind spots that the younger generation has now. They have a lot of legitimate anger towards the condition of society, but I think it's misdirected. Class is the elephant in the room. That's the kind of diversity that I think needs far more attention right now.
GB: Have you seen the book “White Rural Rage”? It basically argues that rural white people are a unique threat to American democracy. I’m wondering how much evidence of that rage you see as you go about your life in Montana?
MH: I do see white rural rage. But to be clear, that rage is against the machine, not against Black people. I almost fall prey to that rage myself sometimes. It's rage against the inequities in the system.
The source of white rural rage is class. It is becoming increasingly apparent to anyone who's paying attention that elite and corporate interests have dominated our government and are dominating our economy.
I actually think that rural white people were some of the first to pick up on what's happening because they were affected sooner than anyone else. For example, upper middle class white-collar workers didn't see the effects that NAFTA had on working- and middle-class Americans. They weren't working in factories, they weren't doing work with their hands. They weren't farmers. But white people in rural America — they felt those effects immediately. Their lifestyles changed. They took a huge drop down in socioeconomic status.
But I don’t think rage is confined to white rural America. My perception is that rage is spilling over into white suburban rage, white urban rage, Black urban rage. It's a general rage. Every day I meet more Black people who are just as outraged by inflation, who are just as outraged by the endless wars, who are just as outraged by our pharmaceutical industry. These people are waking up and they're angry. So yeah, I would say that I've seen white rural rage, but there's no way I would confine it to that environment. It is much broader.
GB: I want to talk a little bit about the Gaza protests on campus. What kind of long-term impact do you think they will have? On the one hand, I think that they have been incredibly divisive. On the other, I think that they have actually upset the apple cart in some interesting ways — for example, encouraging some people on the left who had previously been supportive of the idea of aggressively policing speech to see the value of free speech protections.
MH: Among people who are free speech purists like myself, I think there's some concern that this new tolerance of free speech may be opportunistic and driven more by convenience than out of a sincere belief in the principles of freedom of expression. I question how people on college campuses can on Oct. 6 insist that speech must be restricted — or compelled, in many ways, in terms of people being compelled to use pronouns in class — and then on Oct. 7, you do a 180 and you completely embrace free speech.
I think that a true commitment to free speech must encompass the people you don't agree with. And I think the jury is still out as to whether the kids on campus now who are supporting free speech are doing it only because it benefits them. I think we have yet to see whether that commitment will last once the Gaza protests are over. I have my doubts.
GB: In a similar vein, I wanted to ask about Donald Trump, who I think is a uniquely divisive figure. The current polling data suggests that Trump is going to outperform any Republican candidate in a long time with Black voters, and perhaps with other minority groups as well. So I think it is possible to make the case that Trump, in a weird way, is actually driving depolarization, at least in certain respects.
MH: Wow, I had never thought of it that way. But I think you're right. I think what Trump may be doing, unwittingly even, is that he's taking the white rural rage that fueled his election in 2016, and he's expanding it. Weirdly enough, he’s making a lot of Americans, across the socioeconomic and political spectrum, aware of their common frustrations. I think that's very threatening to powerful interests.
I didn't vote for Donald Trump. I'm an independent, but there's a part of me that wonders if the greatest opposition to Donald Trump is not because he's sexist or racist or whatever else, but because he is one of the few candidates in modern history to actually focus on the most important issue in this country today, which is class. Now, Donald Trump doesn't specifically call out class. I don't think he's articulate enough to even express that. But I think he's paying attention to something that, unfortunately, I don't think Joe Biden and the Democrats are really looking at. They just aren't.
GB: Lots of people are now saying that we need to scrap DEI. Just to put my cards on the table, it's hard for me to imagine that we're going to step away from the concept of diversity. That seems like a fundamental thing that we should want to hold on to. Is there a way to do DEI programming that makes sense and that doesn’t engender enormous backlash?
MH: At FAIR, we believe the country was driving along with the car doing pretty well with a certain set of wheels. We took these wheels off and we put DEI wheels on. All we need to do is take these DEI wheels off and put on the wheels we had before.
For the past 20 to 30 years, corporate America had diversity trainings. They weren't DEI trainings — they were simply called diversity trainings. We were brought into rooms, and we were instructed, "All right, this is how you deal with someone who may come from a different ethnic background, from a religious background, someone who's handicapped, someone who's Republican. Someone who may have grown up in a super, super small town and doesn't have the same values you do having grown up in New York. We all have to work together, and we can do it."
The old-school diversity training was more about bridge-building, whereas DEI seems more about wall-building. So I think we just need to get back to the kind of diversity initiatives that we once had.
The greatest danger I see is that the DEI branding threatens to undermine all diversity. And diversity is the lifeblood of this country. I mean, we are a nation founded on immigration. We benefit from that immigration. It makes us, I think, the most special country in the world. I think it's enabled so much innovation, culturally and technologically. It is our blessing and our curse. Because when you're a heterogeneous country, it's also hard to remember what you have in common.
But to your point, we can't get rid of diversity. We at FAIR believe we simply need to return to a more authentic and holistic form of diversity and inclusion. The biggest problem that we at FAIR have with DEI is the equity component. I think “equity,” in a vacuum, means justice and fairness. But the way it's being construed now is a very distorted interpretation of equity that essentially means that in order for some people to have more, or in order for some people to succeed, others must be brought down. It's a sort of leveling, of bringing people down to the lowest common denominator. And it doesn't allow for excellence. And it doesn't reward the ambitious. And I think that those are part and parcel of the American experience.
So equity to me is antithetical to everything America stands for. There's a reason that DEI isn't called diversity, equality and inclusion. Equality is what we at FAIR support — equality of opportunity. We are not guaranteed success. Life is not guaranteed to be fair. And our government can't guarantee that it will be fair in all respects. The only thing that we can and should be assured of is equal treatment and equal opportunity. So we support diversity, we support equality, we support inclusion, but not DEI in its current form.
GB: FAIR is a fairly new organization that has already been through some ups and downs. How is FAIR doing, and what role do you see it playing going forward?
MH: I became executive director of the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism last October. The reason I was attracted to this organization is that it's nonpartisan, and it's dedicated to protecting and defending civil liberties on multiple fronts through legal channels.
We're similar to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, but where FIRE protects the First Amendment, we protect the First and the 14th mmendments, that's free speech and equal protection. So that's the niche that FAIR fills. I like to say we're what the ACLU was intended to be, and once was, but no longer is. Our mission at FAIR is helping people understand and appreciate our common culture, interests, and values as Americans.
I think that FAIR's future is bright because there’s a real need for the work we're doing around depolarization and advancing and defending civil liberties when they're under fire. I think realizing that we are all human, and that our biggest challenges are ones that affect all of us, is the key to moving forward and to reversing a lot of the damage that's been done in this country.
This article originally appeared on HFG.org and has been republished with permission.
