Lumpers and splitters

Some people see similarities and unities.  Other people see distinctions.   Lumpers and splitters. Democrats need to be lumpers again.

We encounter lumpers and splitters in academic life.   

Lumpers see large unifying themes and splitters see particulars.  In American history a lumper might see the New Deal era as starting in 1933 and continuing into the Truman presidency, perceiving him as a continuation of FDR's policies.  A splitter would see the New Deal in multiple phases and decisively ending with the beginning of World War Two in midterm FDR, and seeing little similarity between Truman and FDR.

2004:  Unifier

Democrats have become splitters on issues of identity and grievance.  They need to become lumpers again. 

Barrack Obama voiced it oratorically with his breakout speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. "The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states--red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats.  But I've got news for them, too.  We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red sates.  We coach Little League in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states."    

It was actually in a later speech that he refined the idea and used that uplifting phrase we we remember as the high point of his talk: "Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.  We are, and always will be, the United States of America."

Note that Obama addressed directly markers of the culture war, not political differences: Democrats worship God, Republicans want free speech, Democrats do family activities like Little League, Republicans know gays.   He was observing similarity despite supposed typecasting.

Obama was lumping, not dividing.

This blog got vigorous negative feedback via Facebook when it advised Democrats to refocus on the unifying message of economic justice and access to the middle class and to turn away from identity politics.   Steve Bannon was chortling that Democrats could easily be goaded into keeping the race issue front and center, and that it was a big loser for Democrats.

I agree that it is a loser for Democrats. It backfires.  It doesn't please the beneficiaries and it actively displeases those accused of privilege and prejudice.  

And yet, simultaneously, racial injustice and discrimination are real and pervasive and Democrats have an obligation to address it.  What to do?  

Democrats need to accept that the only politically viable path toward the goal of equal justice is through relentless lumping, not particularizing grievances.  It is not to deny particular grievances, but it is to recognize that a political focus on grievance creates enemies and does more damage and gain.   It is not complicated: people do not like being accused of being deplorable racists.  Whether there is any truth in the accusation is irrelevant.  Minds of the accused are hardened.

Daniel Sage

Democrats can learn, if they allow themselves.  

I cite a lesson from my uncle, the late Daniel Sage.  He had a long distinguished career as an educator of children with special needs, both in the trenches of direct service early in his career, and then for decades as a university professor of education, specializing on special education.  He said that the first half of his career was spent attempting to diagnose, describe, isolate, and treat the various forms of disability that required special education.  Then, he said, he spent the second half of his career trying to undo the damage he and others like him caused by focusing on diagnosis, description and particularizing of disability.  Instead, mainstream kids he said.  Treat them as much as possible like everyone else. Don't look at what makes them different; just focus on what makes them the same. The best strategy in an imperfect world is to lump them in with everyone else in the same classroom.

This is--or should be--a period of reflection for Democrats.  Republicans control the government because they won elections.   It is OK for Democrats to decide some of their policies were wrong.  There is no shame in changing.  

Democrats, particularly in the 2016 campaign under Hillary, particularized racial, ethnic, religious, gender, sexual orientation grievance.  Democrats can accept that the grievance is real--acknowledge and affirm it-- and then assert a new way to mitigate and end it, by refocusing not on the grievance but on the unity of both the offended and offender.  The offenders aren't deplorable.  They are fellow Americans.  

People resist being scolded but the culture can change via unifying institutions and reminders of shared interests and values.  Cultural change will be slow, but will go faster under calls to unity, Democrats coaching Little League, Republicans with gay friends.

Equality is a national value, celebrated sometimes more than observed, but still a value memorized by schoolchildren.  The Democratic goal has the weight of law and tradition, and Lincoln's addition of equality as a central, unifying principle, that we are a people dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 

Lincoln did not particularize the grievance or assert that only one side was right.  He called for a shared and unifying goal.  Democrats today need to do the same.  Lump.