Can it Happen Here? Is it Happening Here?

As an urban scholar of foreign conflict, for nearly 30 years, I have studied the dynamics of political conflict, fragmentation, and division in the cities of Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, and former Yugoslavia. These countries have been traumatized by deep ethnic and nationalistic inter-group conflict, sustained political violence, and a dissolution or decay of legitimacy of central government powers. Students and colleagues have typically asked me, “Can it happen here?” With the George Floyd protests engulfing American cities, they are now asking me, “Is it happening here?

There are disturbing similarities between the politically polarized areas of my focus and the dynamics of American political and social life today. However, there are also assuring qualities of our system that make us different from these extreme cases. Yet, even my assurances may not be fully reassuring to you.

Here are the similarities:

Us versus them. Each side — the multicultural left and the far-right wing — portrays the other side of our political divide as not only different, but wrong. We are resembling the “values-based disputes” of foreign examples, where each side has a dismissive and demeaning lack of respect for the values of the other side. Each side views themselves as absolute and right, the other as inherently…