Minority Voice

 

 

One manifestation of the closed-minded divisiveness that pervades contemporary discourse is that people will do the following things all the time without realizing the contradiction:

1. When at a public meeting and my position is overwhelmingly the sentiment in the room, I scream at the top of my lungs things like "the people have spoken!"

2. When at a public meeting and my position is overwhelmingly in the minority, I tell my friends afterwards "I felt so threatened!"

Perhaps it is a combination of privilege, stupidity, and courage on my part, but I do try to be intentional in such settings:

 1. When I am in the majority, I am reminded that while most people in the room agree with me, some do not. And, in some cases, it is quite possible that most people in the world disagree with me, meaning that "the room" is not a representative sample of society writ large. So some humility is in order. It may feel good that the majority of the people I am in the presence of stand with me, but we may not necessarily have the whole story and we may have it completely wrong. And, even if we have it right, those who disagree with us do not deserve to feel intimidated into silence or assent.

2. When I am in the minority, I try to stand up for myself and others who might agree with me, not necessarily to win over the room but to assert that how we see things has some validity and deserves to be heard and not shouted down. Perhaps in not backing down, others who disagree with me will learn something, and others who agree with me will not feel so alone or uncomfortable.

Clearly, there are absolutes. There is a reason "both sidesing" can be annoying or enraging. But I think that's the problem. The world is incredibly complex. When we automatically conclude, on our own or emboldened by the agreement of others in the room, that this is a straightforward matter in which there is a right side that has all the answers and a wrong side that is evil, we cut ourselves off from digging into the nuance and context that is so often required to truly understand let alone solve a vexing societal challenge.

I hope you will summon the fortitude to be the minority voice when the situation calls for it. And that when you are in the majority in a room, you give room for all, who may be outnumbered in a particular gathering but may have the numbers elsewhere, and even if they don't probably have a few good points to contribute to the solution.