Convincing Conservatives that Black Lives Matter

When I think about everything that’s happened the past week in Dallas, Minneapolis, and Baton Rouge, my mind comes back to the idea of impact. What is the end goal that the protesters are going for? Is it the prosecution of the police officers involved in the shootings? Is it a change in laws in terms of how the investigations of such incidents are carried out? Is it a change in how police departments are run? Is it just everything that’s listed on Campaign Zero’s website (highly recommended). I honestly think it’s something much bolder than any of those things: The protesters want to fundamentally reshape the race conversation in America. I presume that their view is that it is only in redefining that debate that we can actually accomplish the things that are on Campaign Zero’s site. It’s nothing if not bold (assuming I’m correct).

So how do you achieve impact in terms of changing minds? There’s poll data to show that American views on race relations have shifted in the past couple of years, but that there are huge gulfs between African Americans and Whites in terms of the underlying causes. When I look at the data below, what I see is that the Black Lives Matter movement has been successful at convincing liberals and moderate liberals that their agenda is real and valid, but that they have not been as successful with general moderates and moderate conservatives.

At an old job, someone once told me that in any political argument there are usually three groups of people: people that already agree with you, people that will never agree with you, and people who haven’t made up their minds yet. Whenever you’re in a political fight, the audience you target with most of your energy isn’t the base, but the rational middle, who will be the difference between getting 48% and 52% of a vote.

So while I agree with the work being done by #blacklivesmatter and will support at every chance I get, I’d like to make a slightly different contribution. People that know me know that while I was raised in a liberal family, during college I started studying economics and became fairly interested in libertarianism. While I’d now consider myself a moderate who doesn’t really affiliate with a party, I’d like to believe that I have a slight understanding of the political values that drive liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. Having interacted with and having close friends in each of these three groups, I can say that the policy solutions one recommends are not nearly as important as the narrative and messaging that surround those recommendations. Politics is not about policy, it’s about tribes, affiliations, and values. Each of these groups has certain things they value and effective arguments (by which I mean persuasive) will take this into account. Which is why reading this article…

made me think about this article…

Here’s the punchline:

When trying to convince a political opponent to support a particular position, the secret is to appeal to their own moral values — rather than trying to persuade them using yours…

The researchers then conducted a series of tests to see whether liberals and conservatives would be persuaded by arguments when they were based on their own moral beliefs (purity and patriotism for conservatives, and fairness and equality for liberals). They found that:

- Conservatives were more likely to support universal health care when they read an argument said more uninsured people led to “more unclean, infected, and diseased Americans.”

- Liberals were more likely to support high levels of military spending when they were told that the military improves equality by allowing disadvantaged people to overcome poverty.

- Conservatives were more convinced by a pro same-sex marriage article when the argument pointed out that same-sex couple are proud, patriotic Americans.

- Liberals were more persuaded by arguments for making English the official language of the United States when they read that this would lead to better lives for immigrants and help them overcome discrimination.

Essentially, what these researchers are suggesting is that you need to be able to pass an ideological turing test. You need to be able to understand the arguments and view on the world as as your opponents do. If you can do that, you’re more likely, in my opinion (and theirs), to be able to understand the values that drive their thinking and design arguments that appeal to those values. Neerav Kingsland did a nice job attempting it on education reform.

So what would a conservative argument for #blacklivesmatter look like? There’s already been some interesting pieces by conservatives here and here. While each piece is good, only the RedState piece touches on the idea of values and what they mean in the context of conservatives.

As the child of white parents who grew up in the rural panhandle of Texas, I was taught that police were there to help, any time I had a problem I should go to them. I should always follow their orders and show them the utmost respect. No one is more important and helpful to your community than the police.

Now imagine, for a minute, that your parents instead grew up as black people in the 50s or 60s in one of the many areas where police were often the agents of — let’s call it what it was — white oppression. How might that have changed, for understandable reasons, the way not only those people but also their children and their children’s children interact with the police? More importantly, how might it impact the belief that police will ever be held accountable for abuses of their power?

This is a good start, but it doesn’t address those core values of purity and patriotism that the study above identified. So what would that look like? Here’s a couple ideas (copying off the work they did):

• Purity: Once African Americans are arrested for minor crimes and have served prison time, it makes it extremely hard for them to get jobs. This ensures that they, as well as their children, are more likely to remain on welfare and other public services, in addition to being more likely to reoffend and reenter the criminal justice system. It’s in our interest to not bring people into the criminal justice system for non-violent minor crimes.
• Patriotism: African Americans are proud, patriotic, Americans who have been overrepresented in the American military and have served in every American war. They deserve fair treatment by our police forces.

I know that was a long build up to what may seem like two simple and not very helpful ideas, but I’d suggest that this is far more important than we think. Politics and political movements are about stories. The stories we tell about why we need change in the American system are how we convince people who have little incentive to care about something that doesn’t affect them on a daily basis. Making sure those stories appeal to the audience they need to is important and worth the time and energy we’d need to put into it. I don’t think activists from #blacklivesmatter should change their messaging, but conservatives and moderates like the ones above would do well to think about how to make their own messages to conservatives as compelling as possible. Good luck to all.