I’ve just finished a book that leaves me troubled over the future of civic engagement in the United States — and puzzled over whether it’s even worth worrying about.
Bill Bishop’s book The Big Sort: How the Clustering of Like-minded America is Tearing Us Apart (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008) has one central thesis: since the mid-1970s, Americans have been voluntarily sorting themselves, physically and socially, into like-minded communities. Members of these communities have an increasingly difficult time reaching any consensus or common understanding with those of different opinion, and it has rendered our politics ever more rancorous and ineffective.
Exhibit “A” for Bishop is a pair of electoral maps, from 1976 and 2004, that break down the presidential popular votes for those years by county. But, instead of two categories (Republican and Democrat), he uses three: (1) Republican landslide victory (20 or more percentage points), (2) Democratic landslide victory, and (3) competitive race (within 20 points).
On a national level, the popular vote was very evenly split in both elections. But the big difference is that, in 1976, the United States was full of competitive counties. In 2004, competitive counties were few and far between: almost every county was a place where the electorate was overwhelmingly of one opinion or another.
Not only that, but 2004 saw far fewer places with Democratic landslides than with Republican landslides. Since the races were close on a national level, that means that those few places with Democratic landslides had a tremendous concentration of population. Democrats, largely, have moved to the cities, while Republicans have moved to the suburbs, exurbs, and farmland. (The pattern is ubiquitous, but not universal: in some places, Democrats prefer the suburbs.)
Bishop finds that we have segregated ourselves not only by counties, but by cities and even by neighborhoods. And not only by place, but by churches and other civic organizations. If we are, say, Methodists, we no longer simply attend our local Methodist church; instead, we drive to the gay-friendly (or gun-friendly) Methodist church across town, where we feel at home because the people are just like us. Rather than belong to broad-based civic groups like the Loyal Order of Moose, we are far more likely to join issue-specific groups like the NRA or the ACLU — where we can find easy consensus and be uncompromising in our goals.
One positive side of this is that, among our groups of sameness, we’re much better able to agree on goals and work together to meet them. With such a high degree of comfort, we’re able to make more strong connections with people. The down side of this, of course, is that so many of the decisions our society has to make — on a city, county, state, or national level — involve working with groups not like us, and, if “they” are just as polarized and uncompromising on their principles as “we” are, then the lot of us will have not only a hard time agreeing on what actions to take, but a hard time just agreeing on what the basic issues are.
As Bishop points out, we usually don’t cluster ourselves this way out of some conscious desire to eliminate difference from our lives. We do it because the community we’re considering moving to just “feels right” — maybe we like the wide, open spaces between people’s houses, or the bustle of activity in the downtown, or the availability of public transit, or the friendly people we meet. It just turns out that, when we select a place for a good “feel”, we’re unconsciously selecting it for its politics.
I don’t know what to think about this. On one hand, it saddens me, because it signals a collapse in the potential of civic discourse. It heralds the extinction of a sense of the common good. And that means, ultimately, a loss of cohesion in our states and in our country.
On the other hand, I want to live in a community where buses and light rail are valued, where people appreciate public space and civic art, and the vision of the good life includes meeting your neighbors regularly on the street. As much as I love Fairbanks, I get tired of feeling like some kind of pervert for thinking private goods should carry a high premium when they infringe on public goods. I get tired of the emotional struggle: God, do I have to tell these people again why the Steese-Johansen shopping complex is a civic monstrosity? I yearn to go someplace where they’ve already come around, where it’s easy — don’t we all?
Well, since Americans are so mobile, most of us really have that chance. And what should stop us? The sense of some abstract “greater good”? That seems like a 300-million-player game of the prisoner’s dilemma: Maybe society will be better off if we all stay put and work out our differences, but, since everybody else is relocating, wouldn’t I be a sucker not to do the same?
Against the backdrop of mass migration and communities of increasing like-mindedness, what possible argument could you make to keep people where they are? Why should they?
Sadly, it’s not just physically, but intellectually as well. Perhaps they feed off of each other. Check out my review of the book True Enough at http://alaskanlibrarian.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/book-review-true-enough/.
But there might be relief if people start to realize that this sorting process is truly happening. After all, the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one.
Perhaps part of the answer to the question “Why Stay?” is twofold – 1) Thanks to the internet, like-minded people can connect across communities and share information and strategies. One doesn’t have to be alone and 2) Once you start looking for them, there may be a surprising number of people who believe like you do near you. They’re just not speaking up because of fear/despair against a perceived majority. Before 2004, I wouldn’t have thought to look for antiwar protesters in Anchorage or Fairbanks, but active groups exist in both.
But maybe I’m a pollyanna. After all, I do live in Juneau and hope for sun.
Thanks for bringing this growing “self-sorting” process to more people’s attention. The main factor that makes it possible is probably having enough money to move somewhere that you feel is more desirable. In a less wealthy country there is probably less of this clustering. Still, there have always been rich neighborhoods and poor ones, middle-class neighborhoods and mixed ones, so the tendency to associate with like people has always been there. Our history of social, economic and physical mobility has given strength to our democracy, but those factors also make it easier for self-sorting to take place — and that may create forces that run counter to democracy.
The process you identify is very disturbing, but at the same time it seems very natural. Perhaps a counterbalance is to encourage people to cultivate transcendent concerns and interests that reach far beyond their local group. Easier said than done.
It is a difficult problem to surmount, especially since it is reasonable for people to associate with like-minded persons. It is especially difficult to maintain that people ought to live in areas where local government and other social institutions adhere to inimical values systems. Having said that, such political inbreeding can only lead to a six-fingered and cross-eyed electorate. We need to engage the other, if only to strengthen our own belief systems by having them challenged.
The Liberal Family Goldberg are definitely outliers in our rural community. In 2004, Culpeper County was a GOP landslide community, and of the results was that I promptly packed up and moved to New York City. Family matters necessitated a return in December 2007, and I have found it somewhat difficult to adjust. As a secular progressive, I am definitely the kid in the Electric Company segment who is not like the others, and one of these things just does not belong. As such, I shall probably be moving to an urban community sometime in the foreseeable future, like as not Richmond, Virginia.
I am aware that contact with persons, if not institutions, who sharply disagree with my values is a valuable endeavour. Witness our neighbors, who are wonderful people, kind and thoughtful, and who did not want to vote for a leftwing liberal like John McCain. Needless to say, they loved Sarah Palin and could not understand that we did not. Neither family has moved closer to the center on account of our dealings with the other, but we have tempered the worst excesses of our rhetoric, and certainly, our world’s are larger for having known people who are unlike anyone we have ever included in our respective social milieu. Surely, this is a good thing. The problem, and I offer no suggestions on how to solve it, is how does one replicate it on a larger scale?
Thank you for your thought provoking blog.
I don’t necessarily agree with your premis that we should attempt to create homogeous communities. The problem with that idea is that in practice a few dominant people end up making the decisions and the rest of us are forced to go along.
The Fairbanks borough bus system is an example. Advocates for the system say that it is a valuable service, but they aren’t willing to pay the full cost of the system. They compell every one to pay for the system though local property tax and grants that are paid through income tax. This strikes me as unjust.
Mike Prax
Mike Prax has submitted some thought-provoking comments. They provoke the following ones:
1. Paul is not arguing in favor of homogeneous communities (formed by the self-sorting process he writes about), he is opposing them.
2. Fairbanks is not a homogeneous community. How can it be your example of the processes in one?
3. Apparently you want users to pay for the full cost of the bus system and not have it supported in part by taxes. At what point would you stop your “user pay” plan?
a. schools?
b. street and highway construction?
c. street and highway use?
d. airport operations and maintenance?
e. etc. etc.
Get serious. Taxes have always provided unequal support to certain groups of people.
Frank Cox