Are We Better Off Divided? It’s Complicated.

Credit: Clay Banks (IG: @clay.banks)

For the past few weeks, and frankly, for the past few years, I have been sitting with variations of the question, are we better off divided? Our heightened partisanship, polarization, and political violence in America makes this question a hard one to ignore, and I cannot help but see it as evidence that some Americans believe that we are, in fact, better off divided. Versions of this question frequently come up in conversations I share with colleagues, friends, and family members. It seems to be on many people’s minds, and it’s a sobering one. Is America actually better off divided?

The answer? It’s complicated.

I found space to consider this question and live in its complexity when CEP (Center for Effective Philanthropy) and PACE (Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement) launched a series, appropriately titled Complicating the Narrative on Bridging and Division. Over the course of nine weeks, the teams engaged leaders with diverse vantages points and life experiences to ask their views on bridging — what it can do, what it can’t, and what we need to do to move forward together.

I gained incredible insight from Kristen Cambell of PACE, who kicked-off the series by setting the stage on what division in America looks like today; drawing the through-line between unity, tolerance, forbearance, and inclusion as necessary conditions in a civil society; providing context on why there has been skepticism about “bridging work” in philanthropy; and challenging us to consider “there is risk to bridging and risk to not bridging — who decides what risks are appropriate to take? And whose work is it to do?”

Wendy Feliz of the Center for Inclusion and Belonging at the American Immigration Council deepened my understanding of Kristen’s points through her piece. Wendy outlines how zero-sum thinking is fueling our division and a major part of coming together as a country will be breaking ourselves free — as individuals and as a culture — from the idea that someone has to lose for someone else to gain. She advocates for a radical shift in mindset achieved through civic engagement that works to intentionally connect people across dividing lines and the rejection of false binaries. As Wendy contends: “A society where justice and unity are understood as co-dependent will do better than a society that chooses one over the other.”

I learned a lot by watching Andy Hanauer of One America Movement and Kristen discuss the “polarization industrial complex” and the ways in which groups benefit from our division. Andy also shared his definition of bridging as “reducing the toxicity.” He elaborates: “Bridging doesn’t mean believing that everyone…is going to agree on everything. They don’t, they absolutely don’t. But it means getting rid of the toxicity involved in what’s keeping them apart — and that toxicity includes misinformation, it includes misperceptions about who the other group is and what they believe, it includes the false belief that they don’t have anything they can work together on, or they don’t have anything in common.”

Claudia Cummings of Indiana Philanthropy Alliance was bold in her analysis of what it really means to live in “a nation built on ideas, and the divergent viewpoints of the many can be a challenge in our endeavor to maintain our one civil society.” I found her piece to be helpful in considering the deep relationship (and inherent tension) our democracy stands up between “one” and “many” and to understand the importance of listening — truly listening — for bridging to be effective.

In the last two pieces of the series, leaders directly addressed philanthropy’s role in the complicated landscape of bridging and division. David Eisner of the Convergence Center for Policy Resolution warned that “thinking that polarization is ‘as bad as it can get’ constitutes a failure of imagination. America is likely only at the beginning of this journey.” He shared that he detects a misalignment between the concern of funders around division and their level of investment and engagement in bridging and other solutions to combat it. This led him to share five considerations for funders thinking through their role in moving America forward and posed this question at the end: “Are you ready to bridge? Ask yourself deeply and honestly, what is the alternative?” Eric Ward of Western States Center wrapped up the series making a provocative case to philanthropy for investment in leisure. He clarifies: “By leisure I don’t mean time off (though that’s important). I mean space within our organizations and movements to build authentic relationships with those outside our organizations and movements. I mean time and space for the sectors that make up civil society to get to know each other in new ways; to rebuild governance from the ground up.”

The provocations and reflections from these thoughtful leaders provided excellent priming when I attended a virtual panel discussion at the end of April, aptly named “Are We Better Off Divided? Philanthropy’s Role in Moving America Forward.” It was part of CEP’s 20th Anniversary Virtual Learning Sessions and featured musician and activist Daryl Davis, Citizen University Co-Founder and CEO Eric Liu, Heinz Endowments President Grant Oliphant, Nord Family Foundation Executive Director Anthony Richardson, Walton Family Foundation Executive Director Caryl Stern, and PACE Executive Director Kristen Cambell. The conversation took all of the themes and points that have been raised on this topic in philanthropy — especially in the preceding series — and explored what philanthropy can do about bridging and division. I was really inspired by Eric’s description of “cohesion capital” and a clear articulation of all the ways philanthropy can be building cohesion beyond its financial capital. I thought Caryl’s call for philanthropy to be a voice in shifting focus from common ground to common solutions was insightful; as she says “It’s not about having to agree on what got us here, it’s really on what we’re going to do about it.” As an example of this, Anthony shared observations that a focus on issues, like gun violence, can bridge otherwise divides in pursuit of a common aim. For me, the conversation culminated in Grant asking the panel to make the case for why foundations, regardless of their interest or focus, should care about and invest in this work. I was left reflecting on Kristen’s response: “We tie bridging to social cohesion, which is one of the pillars of a strong democracy. And I often say, democracy is not a piece of the pie that sits along the other issues you care about; it’s the pan the pie sits in. It’s the mechanism that holds together everything else that we care about. Until we have a strong foundation of representative, participatory democracy, we will not make meaningful progress on any other issues we care about.”

The series and the panel gave me a lot of food for thought as I continued my journey of wading into the complexity of bridging and division. With a little time to reflect, here are the biggest takeaways I am left with:

• We often misunderstand bridging. I’ve been thinking about this in two ways. First, bridging can often be conflated with agreement or full consensus, but a few pieces in the series illuminate the value of understanding bridging as something more akin to turning down the temperature on toxicity. It’s not realistic to think all 330 million Americans will be on the same page about most things. And even if we are on the same page about nothing, can we still work together with respect, dignity, and civic love? Second, bridging can often be confused with restoring or asserting one perspective or worldview, but as the conversation highlighted in the panel, bridging can also be about creating an entirely new civic life that has never existed before. I hear a lot about the vulnerability of bridging — meaning, it’s a pretty vulnerable act to engage with someone very different from us. But bridging also requires creative vulnerability; the vulnerability of entering a space with people and having no idea what the outcome will be. That takes courage in a very different way, and this series helped me understand that.
• Philanthropy can make it worse if we’re not careful. In his remarks on the panel, Eric Liu shared that he believes we have two assets in this moment of division that we didn’t have in other highly polarized times in American history: self-awareness of the moment and the philanthropic sector. For sure, philanthropy has tremendous power and potential to help mitigate the division we feel rising in our politics and communities. But how we fund matters. Whose views, ideas, and solutions we emphasize matters. Are they ours or the community’s? And who in the community do they come from? Do funders care about “means” as much as we care about “ends?” These are the questions we want to spend more time thinking through, and Eric Ward’s call for leisure and Wendy Feliz’s reminder about process feel like necessary prerequisites.
• Incentives for breaking and dividing are a lot stronger than incentives to come together. We heard in a few pieces throughout the series how we are probably “not as divided as those who profit off our division want us to believe.” While getting clear about who profits from our division is an area for further exploration and discussion, we can also grapple with the incentive structures — financial, reputational, etc. — that are now part of our way of life. What structures could we build to incentivize us coming together?
• Solutions (and hope) exist. It seemed like uncanny timing that in the moments of this series when I felt despair that our polarization had gotten too big to combat, someone would pipe in with a tangible solution of what is working. Whether it was Wendy’s tips on how to engage people in bridging activities or Andy’s exercise in humility (Close your eyes and say out loud “Everything I believe about the world is correct. I am the smartest, most right person of all 7 billion people on earth.”) or Eric Ward’s 32 hour work week to allow for the leisure necessary to form bonds of trust or Eric Liu’s Civic Saturdays — each gave me hope that the issue is not beyond us and we have rays of light peeking through.

So, after I read, listened, and reflected, I went back to my question: are we better off divided? This series and panel helped me see the complexity behind that question, but sometimes it takes complicating the narrative to see it for its simplicity: we are better off together.