Room for Improvement

 

Over the holidays, I had the pleasure of catching up with a dear friend from high school who lives in Oakland. In addition to journeying together as Taiwanese-Americans, husbands, fathers, and Christians over the years, we have compared notes on our experiences living in diverse and very left-leaning cities. I can't say we found much resolution in our most recent discussion, but I wanted to share a few thoughts that have continued to linger after.

Our main lament was that it was difficult to approach let alone solve the plight of the growing lawlessness in some parts of our respective cities. It is not good, for cities and for the diverse inhabitants of those cities, when things like looting and gun violence and rampant homelessness are not only present but accommodated. These issues are intricate, nuanced, and engrained, and they involve people who deserve to be afforded a sense of shared humanity and common grace. We cannot not address these challenges. And it is hard enough to figure out how to do so, given their complexity and the scarcity of resources. It is understandable to want to cover our eyes and hope for the best, but we must resist that temptation.

What we cannot do is vilify people for bringing up the problem in the first place. I was horrified to follow a thread on social media last year when a young mother (a labor organizer and self-described socialist) expressed her dismay at so much smoking on the subway when she boarded with her infant child, only to be scolded by her own peers for demonizing certain people and behaviors. Forget about what is productive to addressing these issues; for many commenters, clearly it was more important to express ideological purity even at the risk of coming off rudely to their fellow sojourner. 

Societal issues have brought us to a boiling point, and I want to give wide berth for this truth and for the many reactions to it. Where people look down on protestors who clog up bridge traffic or pour paint on famous works of art, I want to give space to the possibility that outrageous acts may be justified to wake us up to the pain and injustice that is allowed to continue among us, where more polite expressions simply won't cut it. 

What I'm struggling to tolerate is a ferocity of purpose that gives no room to express discomfort about the consequences of this societal turmoil, even and especially when it is directed at those who are on the same ideological side of these issues. As my high school friend put it, in the cities where he and I live, it's less that there's two sides to an argument, it's that there's one side, but half of that side is outraged that the other half would dare say anything out of line.

This is not kind, nor is it productive, nor is it consistent with what many of us are fighting for. I admit I don't have a good resolution. Anger is an appropriate response, and the consequences of that anger are not always predictable or polite or clear or constructive. But to me, angrily shutting down complaints and cutting off solutions in the name of ideological purity lacks integrity, doesn't get us closer to progress, and leads me to believe some folks prefer their looking better to things getting better.