Winning over the Other Side (Part 1 of 3)

Do you think there something wrong with me? I not only read the New York Times  and listen to NPR and Democracy Now, but I also tune into to Rush Limbaugh, check  Breitbart’s website, and, gasp!, actually follow Donald Trump’s Twitter feed. 

You might diagnose masochism but I’ve long forced myself to listen to the other side. Yes, Rush Limbaugh has helped me understand why it is so hard to counter demonization of gang members in court.  

Of course I’ve found the obvious: tens of millions of people in our country live in radically different worlds.  Within these separate bubbles, people choose their media outlets, e.g. CNN, Democracy Now, Breitbart or Fox, to reinforce their pre-existing views. We are witnessing what psychologists call confirmation bias on a grand scale. While we convince ourselves we are using reason, Benferado says “really our minds are bending the facts, sawing off inconvenient corners, and tossing away contradictory information so that everything can be fit into ready-made boxes.” Not just them, us too. And unfortunately that is also how juries work.

If you encounter a fierce partisan from “the other side” on social media or in real life, you might realize it is virtually impossible to have a rational disagreement.  Sooner of later you conclude “they must be crazy,” and if you haven’t figured it out, they think the same about you.  They look only within their frame and you look only within yours.  

What is a frame? “Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world”, social psychologist George Lakoff says. Think of a picture frame when you focus on what is inside and pretty much ignore what is outside of it. It is what mass media do routinely, pointing your attention to one aspect to what is a more complex picture.  Lakoff (2004, 115) argues that “frames trump facts.”  He claims you cannot win an argument with facts alone, a sober realization that also applies in the courtroom. 

Frames are psychological cousins of the “social construction of reality,” a concept introduced by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman.  In 1967 they asked philosophically (p 13), “What is real? How is one to know?” Their sociology of knowledge explains how reality becomes “institutionalized” and legitimated through secondary socialization. Today that socialization is fueled by one’s media choice. The proliferation of alternative media has led us into polarized camps, each of us drinking different flavors of cultural Kool-Aid.  Does this mean there is no “objective” reality? No, only that reality is contested.

This, of course,  brings me back to gangs.  The reason I stopped running gang programs in Milwaukee in the early 1980s was that while I directed a successful diversion program, it had no effect on what politicians or the public thought about gangs. In short, gangs were framed as evil incarnate and what the people and public officials wanted most was more police and longer prison terms. 

My solution was to do research to “reframe” the problem.  My first study, which became People & Folks,  won a front page headline in the Dec. 12, 1986 Milwaukee Journal, reframing the gang problem as a lack of jobs.   Some good that did.  Thirty years later on August 13, 2016 in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood where I had done much my research,  gangs and other youth rioted because of lack of jobs  and persistent police brutality.  If anything has changed, it’s been for the worse. And in 2017 the mayor still wants to hire more police. I failed to change public opinion.

More recently President Trump said illegal immigrant gangs were the cause of most of the violence in Chicago. He has threatened to “bring in the feds” unless the city gets its gang problem under control.  Simply stating the facts,  like 3/4 of homicide victims and offenders are African American, not immigrants or Chicago’s homicide rate is considerably lower than the rate in Detroit or St. Louis,  is hardly persuasive.  Logic doesn’t change the beliefs of racists on the alt-right or divert Chicago’s violence-torn black community from fears of much-too-frequent violence.

This is the problem I’ve confronted in all of my gang related trials. In court, reality also has two sides: the prosecution insists the facts prove guilt; the defense says they do not.  In a trial, both the prosecution and the defense construct theories or frames that explain and dispute the facts.  Demonizing gangs and reinforcing stereotypes is a winning strategy for the prosecution, constructing frames so hard the facts will bounce off.  Thus my job as expert witness is to use research to combat stereotypes and try to reach a judge or jury.  But if disputing the facts is insufficient, what rational tools do we have to combat stereotypes?

In a trial, the defense goal is often to win over just one juror to not convict, which is much harder than it might seem. In the court of public opinion, we are looking for ways to win over millions of people who may be open to not getting on the Trump train or might want reasons to duck out.  My work in court exemplifies this problem of the limits of rationality. In my next two blogs I’d like to outline a few of my ideas on the power of stereotypes by applying concepts from the works of George Lakoff and Daniel Kahneman. Coming next week:  Two Opposed Ways of Thinking.

Benferado, Adam. 2015. Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice. New York: Crown Publishers.

Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckman. 1967. The Social Construction of Reality. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company Inc. Anchor Books.

Lakoff, George.  2004. Don't think of an elephant! : know your values and frame the debate : the essential guide for progressives. White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green Pub. Co.

Violence and Healing

I’ve had some thoughts on violence and healing. They are personal but also reflections on what has happened to my city this past month.

On August 2 while riding my bike I was hit by a car. Witnesses said I was hurled two car lengths and landed on the side of the road.  I was taken by flight for life helicopter to Froedtert hospital. I suffered a broken neck, brain injuries and three breaks in my right clavicle.  I had spinal fusion surgery August 5 and was released from the hospital August 22.

I’m not able to concentrate on much besides my rehab.  Walking, eating, and sleeping are all difficult and require my full attention. I’m now in a long, hard rehab process and am on medical leave from my university job. I’ve had to postpone or bow out of several important legal cases where I am an expert witness. 

It’s time for me to begin to heal. But watching the “unrest” in Sherman Park from my hospital bed it occurred to me that it is not yet time for healing in Milwaukee. Healing is what you do after surgery or after major interventions to change oppressive conditions. Healing means the patient is on the road to recovery. That is not the situation today in MIlwaukee. Now is time for action. Healing comes later.

In the early 1980s I lived in Sherman Park and this was where I began my work with gangs.  In my first book, People & Folks,  I pointed out that the desperation in Milwaukee’s ghetto guaranteed the gangs would not go away. And they haven’t. In the 1990s I wrote an article titled “Milwaukee I Do Mind Dying”  and argued that unless radical measures were taken Milwaukee’s future would look more like Detroit or East St.Louis than Minneapolis or Indianapolis. Twenty-five years later we are Detroit’s equal in poverty, even more segregated, and by some measures the nation’s worst city for black people to live in. Thousands of Milwaukee’s black youth are as desperate today as they were when gangs first formed. The busy construction in today’s downtown is a sign our city leaders have embraced a “city of spectacle” but continue to ignore the “city of desperation.” 

And now these same leaders and their media call for “healing” with no accompanying agenda to bring us the sweeping changes we so desperately need.  Weeks after the police shooting of Sylville Smith, the body cam video has still not been released.  We don’t need healing when each day the wounds of oppression are inflicted anew in the nation’s fourth poorest city.  To call for healing as oppression continues is to provide a cover for our city’s inexcusable inaction on jobs, unwillingness to control police, and persisting policies of mass incarceration. This is what is meant by the slogan,  “no justice, no peace.”

I am a Unitarian and my partner Mary Devitt has been among those leading an effort to mobilize Milwaukee's religious community to “stand on the side of love.” To me this does not mean “healing” it means empathy for those who continue to be oppressed. Empathy means demands for action to address the real needs of the black youth living in our city of desperation.  Long ago, Dr. King called for nothing less than “a radical reconstruction of society.”  We've heard the empty words of politicians for decades and these failed promises are why youth have been incited to riot.  These angry soldiers of the night need our empathy and understanding as we stand on the side of love.

In the 1980s I wrote that Milwaukee’s gangs were signs of rebellion  — much of it destructive, but still rebellion against desperate living conditions, police violence, and a one-sided policy of jails not jobs. Nearly 30 years later these remain the principle factors that sparked the “unrest” in  Sherman Park.   

I am physically healing but our city can begin to heal only after our leaders wake up and begin needed fundamental changes, This awakening starts with  a major jobs program and concrete measures for greater police accountability. We can't begin healing "until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”