Musings of a citizen psychologist
I recently listened to a podcast where the host was interviewing a woman who had devoted her life to working with immigrants. With all the strife, division, and violence in our country around the question of immigration and other important issues, this was a timely interview. It didn’t take long for the host to ask his guest what she found to be the best way to disabuse people of the widespread prejudice that immigrants are undesirables at best, dangerous criminals at worst. She answered with a story about inviting a vocal critic to tour the facility where she was working and to join her in a conversation with an immigrant family.
The interview proved to be a powerful moment of insight for the critic. As soon as it was over, she commended the worker for what she was doing for people she was beginning to see only now with eyes suddenly free of distortion and bias. In reply to this vignette, the host of the podcast responded with something he had learned in his professional studies, “Arguments close minds, stories open them.”
I am sure it takes more than one conversation with a feared and possibly hated other to correct misconceptions that have been instilled in us through a lifetime of exposure to biases rooted in the very fabric of our society, but we must start somewhere.
Stories are a good place to start because they give us a window into the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of the teller and that window often lets in a light that illuminates similar internal states of our own. Stories nurture empathy and empathy can build bridges over the broadest divides.
We humans have an irrational fear of anyone who is different from us. The same people who looked disparagingly at the DPs or displaced persons who moved into the town where I grew up after World War II had immigrated decades or sometimes only a few years earlier from some of the same European countries.
Our naturalized Americans from Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia saw themselves as superior to the newcomers who still spoke with accents and had yet to become full-fledged citizens. And so it continued over the decades with Puerto Ricans following the DPs and Asians settling in next.
In New England, where I have lived for more than half a century, it was the Irish and Italians who moved into the precincts of the English Brahmins, and everywhere the newcomers were the feared and hated others.
Today we are seeing an upsurge of anti-immigrant feeling spilling into the streets of our cities where armed and masked agents of the federal government are pulling immigrants from their homes and places of work and shooting neighbors who have come to protest the violence.
The killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minneapolis demonstrates the tragic extremes to which government can go in the name of keeping our country safe from the irrationally feared and hated other. The killing of Good and Pretti also shows just how far the designation of other can be extended from immigrants themselves to neighbors sympathetic to their situation and opposed to the violent tactics being used to enforce compliance with immigration laws.
We have these laws to give new arrivals in our country a legal and clear path to citizenship. While there will always be people who enter the United States illegally, we need humane ways to bring them to a just hearing and a fair resolution of their cases.
And we need a government willing to do the work of making that happen. Some Americans believe we have such a government while others believe we have deviated sharply from our nation’s highest principles enshrined in our Constitution. Immigration is but one of many important political, social, and cultural issues on which our country is divided, and the division has grown so deep as to endanger our health and wellbeing.
According to the most recent Harris poll reported by Susan Gonsalves in the February issue of NEPSY, 62% of Americans consider societal division to be a major stressor and that stress is linked to feelings of loneliness and struggles with mental and physical health.
In keeping with the American Psychological Association’s stance of neutrality on political issues, psychologists are encouraged to research and understand the causes of the divisions between us, to treat people with mental health issues arising from these divisions, and to be guided by the findings of psychological science to identify and use respectful and effective ways of discussing hot button issues across the divide.
As a psychologist, I understand the reasons for neutrality. As a citizen, I can’t help wondering if we should be doing more. Is there a point, I wonder, where our guild should abandon its stance of strict political neutrality? Have we reached that point with our government’s actions in Minneapolis or in other situations that demonstrate a disregard for the human dignity of those labeled as the other?
Like the podcast host who reminded his listeners that arguments close minds while stories open them, we can and should share the stories of who we are and why we believe what we do. By doing this, we may find that we have more in common than we think and that it is possible to imagine us becoming allies instead of others, not on all, but at least on some of the most important of issues of our time.
To renounce violence and to treat people with the respect befitting our common human dignity is a good place to start.
Sharing stories is a habit of conversation that can be built into a way of life. It is not an emergency solution to a critical situation. The psychologist in me will continue to tell my stories and listen to yours, and the citizen will vote for leaders who embody the values and demonstrate the skills that will bring our nation together.