Starting a New Dialogue | The Differential

The past week in our country’s politics has left many of us stunned. Whatever our personal opinions, there had been a pretty clear idea of what we thought the two Americas were ever since the 2000 election permanently colored us red or blue. However, within these two, it seems that we have fractured into 320 million different Americas. Anyone who has dared to look at their social media or news sites recently has seen an incessant flood of clickbait headlines, prophecies of the future of our government, and, perhaps most of all, a lot of blame for how we got to this point. Those of you who know me know that my political positions are not a secret, but that is not exactly what I want to talk about here. Rather, I would like to ask all of us first to turn our attention to that minority of headlines that focus on the forgotten rural working class.

We could see it on past election nights once newscasters zoomed in on one state on their magical electoral maps: tiny blue islands floating in a sea of red. Yet somehow it took Wisconsin and Pennsylvania turning red this year for us urbanites to seriously question whether we had missed something. It has always been easy for us to dismiss small, predominantly white rural towns as backwards, full of gun-toting uneducated racist misogynistic homophobic bigots, images encouraged by what we see in our urban-centric media. While there may be some truth to the prevalence of these intolerant viewpoints and real risks that lie with them, dismissing entire populations with these types of labels also dismisses the very real struggles they have and prevents us from understanding how they may see the world. We do not get to define what someone else finds hurtful, and throwing labels back and forth only serves to further alienate us from one another.

None of us gets to choose what we look like, where we were born, or what our predecessors did. These factors and more shape our small piece of the world and how our minds see it, leaving the rest to our own ignorance. We do not know what we do not know. One of my half-Asian-American friends told me once of when she visited her mother’s rural hometown in Taiwan with both of her parents. Her relatives told her that seeing her white father come to town was like seeing a panda come down from the mountain (FYI, Taiwan is an island with no native pandas). Now imagine a small racially homogeneous town in our own country where their exposure to certain minorities may be limited to what they see on the internet and on TV. These minorities can probably get as much attention as dragons, zombies, and sentient robots, and the presentation is heavily scripted or biased towards actors, musicians, and athletes. Yes, the truth is that bigotry played an unsavory role in this election, but remember that we all tend to put ourselves and our loved ones first. In some people’s lives, minorities simply play little to no open role. Another truth is that many parts of our country continue to suffer financially even as the overall economy improves, and the rural portion has not been able to hold our attention until now. One of the symptoms we often see after decades of economic struggle and discontent is extremism. We can try to tear down each other’s idols, but it does not address why these idols were so appealing in the first place. How much have our higher education, technology, movies, fashion, food, and fast talking benefited them? We could choose to embrace these labels of urban elitism and arrogance and to polarize ourselves, or we could learn how to better serve each other.

We know, however, that these ideological differences are not split simply between urban and rural. They can be split within each of these areas as well as within every other group you can think to define. Even within our own social circles or our own families, it can be a struggle to discuss topics such as equity and civil rights. Then imagine talking to them about mixed economies, healthcare, and foreign affairs, and you have found the perfect way to ruin Thanksgiving dinner next week. But these are all important issues to think about, and simply attacking someone from any side as close-minded or naïve does not help us to learn from each other. My own views have changed significantly over time, and those of some of my friends have changed even more drastically. We did not achieve this by cutting out people with whom we disagreed from our lives but rather by continuing the dialogue. Are we turning into 320 million different Americas, or is this a wake-up call where we can learn to be one America? One country on one tiny planet with everything to win or everything to lose.

Sophie Sun

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Sophie Sun is a medical student at The University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix, class of 2018. She completed her undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley and earned a PhD in chemical biology from The Scripps Research Institute, where she focused on unnatural amino acid incorporation and antibody engineering. Some of her current academic interests include student-run free clinics, vaccine compliance, and accountability in research. However, she might sound more excited when talking to you about classic American cinema, urban compost collection, and French dessert recipes. She is currently pursuing a career as a Med-Peds physician.

Sophie Sun

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