No Safe Spaces For Echo Chambers

“So the election,” my openly conservative professor remarked during class, “Did all of your friends go to their safe spaces and participate in their protests? They’re totally wasting their time, by the way. Thank God USC isn’t like one of those schools, I can’t stand it.”

I had to take a few deep breaths.

My community involvement often places me in touch with ethnic and activist communities,  and so I hear the word “safe space” get thrown around a lot, usually when addressing topics that could be “triggering” to certain people. The base idea of having a safe space is for someone to be able to voice their opinions, find comfort and support and rest from triggering environments that could take a toll on a person’s mental health.

As a women of color who is a friend to members of various marginalized groups, I absolutely believe that safe spaces ought to exist. They are places where people find support they wouldn’t find anywhere else, support might be vital to a person’s well-being. At the same time, my views on safe spaces come with an asterisk.

And that asterisk is that for the sake of having open discussions across the political spectrum, the protection of safe spaces cannot be taken too far. Last year student reporter Tim Tai at the University of Missouri was harrassed by protesters who were calling for the resignation of now former President Timothy M. Wolfe. To them, having a member of the press record photographs of where they set their base camps was a violation of their safe space, since to them “it’s typically white media who don’t understand the importance of respecting black spaces." 

But the fact that the reporter was also a person of color didn't matter as activists yelled and physically pushed him in his attempt to do his job.

Just a few months before the incident, President Obama already put his two cents on college safe spaces:

I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view. I think you should be able to — anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with ‘em. But you shouldn’t silence them by saying, "You can’t come because I'm too sensitive to hear what you have to say." That’s not the way we learn either.

I'm inclined to disagree that the true point of safe spaces is to coddle people, but I do agree with Obama in the sense that people need to learn from each other through debate and open conversation. But perhaps that one extreme incident at Mizzou was a taste of the political polizarization and close-mindedness often seen in this election. Zealous people who take safe spaces to the extreme are dangerous because they encourage an environment that causes people to be rooted in their opinions. In the end, they will not bother to listen to differing opinions.

As author and Youtuber John Green said in a video after the election results, "I'm sorry that we've let our echo chambers become so sealed off that it is as unfathomable to me why someone would support Donald Trump for president as it is for many Trump supporters why I would support Hillary Clinton."

As members of marginalized groups reach out to their safe spaces in light of Trump’s presidency to mourn and to figure out how to cope with the future it is important that people don’t get too preoccupied with only people who reaffirm their viewpoints.

In order to prevent Trump’s administration and the upcoming Congress from setting the country back 50 years, people NEED to be able to talk to people with other viewpoints and be willing to acknowledge one’s biases and even flaws in their own arguments. As I scrolled through my feeds post-election, my heart hurt for people whom I felt have more to fear from a Trump presidency than I do right now. At the same time, I also felt fear reading posts from friends who refuse to have any association with a Trump supporter “because you clearly have no regard for my well-being and for the issues I stand for.”

There is a time and place for support, but it’s important to remember that echo chambers go both ways. The election reavealed that the country is politically polarized enough. Safe spaces should not be a safe space for close-mindedness.

Eulogy For The 2016 Election Coverage

As the country erupts in Internet flame wars (and sometimes actual flames on a pinata), people wait in dread as the day to Donald Trump’s inauguration counts down. But as mainstream news organizations use new storytelling techniques to cover the aftermath of the election--such as using Facebook Live to stream protest rallies and marches--this writer cannot help but mourn the election results for another reason.

Trump’s election indicates that the mainstream media lost much of its sway over the public.

Many of the major outlets endorsed Clinton which may have been proof to Trump supporters that the mainstream was inherently against their candidate, which doesn’t help when nearly every other headline mentions something about Trump and his supporters to the point where the public is desensitized. In this regard, the best aspect of the Internet is also its most crippling fault, that thing being the wealth of information available. 

It’s in a society’s best interest, after all, to have a marketplace of ideas. By encouraging a mass exchange of different information, opinion and arguments, the best ideas can shine through to guide decision-making that ranges from whom to put on the school board to whether the country should take military action. 

But as the country becomes more politically polarized, yet politically desensitized, the media and commentators struggled between objectively informing the country as per journalistic duty but also emphasizing the dangers of a Trump administration. Seeing how much effort the media put towards running negative headlines about Trump from the mid-primaries onward, it’s frightening how little impact it now seems to have had over those who voted for Trump.

At the same time, it can be difficult to persuade a person to overcome certain judgments and fears, to the point where one’s logic and reasoning is more often used to confirm biases rather than actively looking for evidence contradicting a person’s initial beliefs. A person, therefore, can claim to have spent hours researching and reading information on the Internet, but it’s not any good if the person is only receiving information from one source, or from a few sources that politically lean a certain way.

The danger of the Internet is that in the modern marketplace of ideas, social media feeds and selective Google searches make it easier for a person to receive information that leans one way or another. We are living in an era where a person’s media literacy is great if they receive news from a liberal outlet and a conservative outlet, let alone actively trying to critically and objectively analyze the messages of either one. This era of weakened trust in mainstream outlets and in poor media literacy is troubling considering that Balkan teenagers can run pro-Trump websites full of inaccurate or misleading information that nevertheless generates hundreds of thousands of engagements on social media.

As the country protests and braces itself for a Trump presidency, so too should mainstream media. Not only has the election highlighted the people’s distrust, but also shown that a polarized electorate is steadfast to sources that align with their own biases, regardless of reliability. The fourth estate is meant to be an institution that stands between politicians and the greater interest of the public. But as we watch live-streams of protests around the country, however, we witness what happens when the fourth estate fails to engage the majority of the electorate.

Some Post-Debate Season Thoughts

I wrote last week of potential for people to hold on to biases even in the face of logic, and while I’m still sure there are women who will continue to vote for Trump, allow me to submit that Clinton has stood out as a better candidate for president in comparison. In each debate, there was a moment when Trump seemed angry and on edge.

For those whose rider is decently in control of their elephant (reasoning able to overcome one’s biases rather than search for ways to validate it), they would have to admit that this last debate wasn’t the performance needed to get his campaign out of the dumps, one notable reason:

Wallace: But, sir, there is a tradition in this country, in fact, one of the prides of this country is the peaceful transition of power and no matter how hard fought a campaign is that at the end of the campaign, that the loser concedes to the winner. Not saying you're necessarily going to be the loser or the winner, but that the loser concedes to the winner and the country comes together in part for the good of the country. Are you saying you're not prepared now to commit to that principle?
Trump: What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time. I'll keep you in suspense, okay?

And Trump kept voters in suspense for a day before announcing that he won't accept the results. But casting that tidbit aside, the fact that he refused to honor the results if he didn't win isn't something that should surprise people. He did the exact same thing when he refused to say that he wouldn't run as a third party candidate if he lost the primaries. But as the moderator said, one of the most important aspects of this country is continuing its stability through a peaceful transition of power. Trump's refusal to adhere to that transition on national television made him seem petty.

As for Clinton’s performances during the debates, I don’t entirely buy this Huffington Post headline that suggested #IamaNastyWoman became a call of solidarity for Hillary. Yes, to many women that moment might have made Clinton seem relatable. But given the virality of hashtags, participation usually means that people were inclined to support her or bash Trump in the first place. Clinton’s poll rise seems more about the actions of her opponent than of Clinton herself--not only did he cause the two hashtags of the previous debate, but also made himself appear defensive for the past few weeks.

Vox’s Ezra Klein, who is one of their chief writers covering the election, says that Clinton’s success in the debates was largely due to her ability to exploit and attack Trump based on his weaknesses and knock him off-balance:

Klein made a valid point about Clinton’s preparation to set the Alicia Machado trap. That much is evidenced by the press tour and the way Clinton drives much of her attacks on Trump about how he treats women. At the same time, however, I wouldn’t give Clinton’s debate performance all the credit for her rise in the polls.

From his meltdown on Twitter following the first debate and onwards from that moment, Trump had been reeling to widen the poll gap between him and Clinton. And once left off-balance, it was hard to get back to his numbers before the debates. When he used the women’s panel before the second debate, for instance, it was a sign that he was desperate to improve his image, so much so that he didn’t seem to have spent a lot of time to prepare for the debate.

By the time of the third debate Trump had, perhaps, acknowledged defeat in his own way. Once spinning the narrative of Crooked Hillary wasn’t giving him the campaign punch he needed, Trump began to sell another narrative--the election is rigged. In this narrative, the establishment GOP and Dems are out to get him for exposing issues within their own parties. Crooked Hillary is actually terrible to women, but her supporters will resort to ballot stuffing. The media doesn’t like him because he calls things as he sees them without regard for political correctness. Trump doesn’t like playing by anyone’s rules, and he’ll suffer for it because everyone is against him.

In this regard, I will concur with President Obama:

I will give this to Trump, though; at least he is actually comprehending that there’s a possibility for him to lose the election. It’s a tiny step up from how he used to act in the primaries. While I think Clinton appeared more composed in her answers in the debates, I’m not quite sure if I lean towards her because of how she performed during the debates...or because of how much better her performance looked in comparison to Trump in light of the past month.

At least one thing is certain: whether you’re a Nasty Woman or a Bad Hombre, people on the fence are turning from Trump as his campaign takes a nosedive, and Clinton is poised to take their votes.

Haidt, Trump Supporters and the Big Elephant

Early this morning I read this headline from a Washington Post newsletter: "Republican politicians fall back in line behind Trump after defecting"

My immediate reaction was to spit out my cereal.

As a person who believes in treating others with respect and dignity, I was mad (but not surprised) when I saw the video of Trump's crude statements on Friday. In this way I felt truly sorry for the GOP. I do not doubt for a minute that there are GOP and Democrat politicians who have said something just as crude once or twice (at least).  Yet in this year's race the Donald is the big elephant in the room, and it seems that the establishment GOP is sacrificing its face to longtime Republicans and progressives of the world by standing behind him (not that progressives tend to have a favorable view of the GOP in the first place anyway).

As the weekend went on I began to have hope--perhaps NOW people will see the light and look for other candidates to vote for besides Trump. That hope grew as--one by one--the big wigs of the GOP distanced themselves from trump.

The presidential debate gave me a little bit more hope; surely the American public would be weirded out by Trump lurking behind Clinton, which is strange considering he says that he isn't what all the columnists have pegged him out to be.

And yet. No.

If anyone is wondering why people still would support Trump, I would point them in the direction of The Righteous Mind: Why People are Divided By Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt, who looks at moral psychology in relation to politics.

One of the big ideas in the book is that the human mind can be likened to an elephant being controlled by a rider. The elephant represents our biases, tendencies, and intuitions. The rider is our logic and rationale.

To summarize his view, the mind's elephant is something that can be controlled, but it's also very hard to do (hence the elephant metaphor). Even when you try to use your logic and reasoning, he says, the rider will often go the way of the elephant. Confirmation bias is an example of this, because with the power of Google you can always find a study or an article that supports your point of view (and you can find a study or an article that contradicts what you find).

It's too simple to say that Trump's supporters want him to be president because their biases align with his proposed policies; that much is obvious. But let's take a look at one demographic: women voters. One would think that all women, at least, would defect from Trump after this weekend, right?

Nate Silver's map says otherwise:

I have a liberal-leaning elephant, so I was happy to see that women are forecasted to overall vote against Trump in the election, but what about those red states? Surely the mothers, daughters and wives in those states would feel indignant about Trump's comments, especially since women voters are liberal and vote democrat, right?

Turns out there's something else at work.

Before this semester I believed that all women were Democrats; I live in California, and the first openly Republican woman I ever met was my AP Government teacher from my senior year of high school (and even then, she grew up in Arizona) But after looking up some statistics I realized that it isn't the case. It seems that white women voters are a major group to appeal to; they consistently have the highest voter registration and voter turnout rates.

White women voters also vote Republican, and have voted for the Republican candidate in the presidential election for the past decades.

And based on Nate Silver's map, it seems that for women voters in conservative states (who are probably mostly white), it would take more than a lewd video filmed a decade ago for their elephants to be swayed towards Hillary Clinton's camp.

Since my elephant is only slightly more in control than my rider, my first impulse is to feel outraged that women would still want to vote Trump after literally everything  he said about women. But perhaps there's something more. By applying Haidt's so-called Moral Foundations Theory provides some explanations why some people might support Trump so strongly, but that will probably be a post for another day.

Until then, I invite readers to check out the Moral Foundations Theory website and think on this:

• There people who fear the notion of domestic terrorism more than they care about lewd comments made about married women who let Trump near them 10 years ago.
• There are people who care more about others who try to restrain their speech than they want to consider people's feelings on a controversial topic.
• There are people who are willing to listen to people who agree with them more than they want to listen to the mainstream that seems to distort the truth more and more each day.

If the above triggered your elephant against me in any way, good. Let's have more conversations on this. When it comes to thinking about who Trump's supporters are and why they support him, I don't think falling into old tropes (such as the uneducated go to Trump and the university graduates go to Hillary) is going to cut it for this race. 

There's something more at work here where the possibilities range from xenophobia to religious values; despite not being the biggest fan of the GOP I don't think the majority of its voters are utterly stupid. They know that Trump isn't the best candidate in the world. But what is it about Trump that moves their elephants towards him? Is it just that these voters hate Hillary that much? Or is there more than that?