Being Nice Is Not Enough

Peace Without Challenge Is Soft. Challenge Without Reconciliation Is Toxic.

I’ll never forget the first time my wife explained to me the difference between anger and contempt. This was in the early days of our courtship (which is a funny word to use, but I’m going with it!), before we had experienced anything remotely approaching either emotion toward each other. But she knew. Marriages, she said, can survive anger. Anger means you want the other person to be better. But contempt . . . that’s different.

In 2016, I watched as my Facebook feed began dripping with contempt. It was a smooth transition overall, because the contempt replaced anger that was directed largely at invisible others. Those people. When you are angry at people you’ve never met, the key thing that makes anger constructive is missing. It’s hard to really want them to do better. You don’t even know them. 

Out of the ashes of this contempt, an entire “industry” was born. It was once described snarkily as the “getting people to talk to each other industrial complex.” But I was surprised to find outright opposition, too. Organizations like the one I lead (the One America Movement) sprang up all over the place, funded at first largely by a grant program called “the Helping People Get Along Better Fund.”

Not surprisingly, our fledgling industry was met by skepticism (“You’re going to bridge the divide between me and those people? Good luck!”). But I was surprised to find outright opposition, too. A lot of people seemed to feel that bridging divides wasn’t necessarily a good thing, that it was the sort of thing that the “moderate” white people of Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail would do. That it was an effort to paper over the real stuff in the hope of just getting along.