Alpine Institute’s 2018 #TheStateofRace Symposium

The Aspen Institute had their annual State of Race Symposium last week. Journalist Juan Williams moderated two panels: one about politics and a second about hate speech. As Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer Comcast Corporation, David Cohen suggested in his opening remarks, the symposium aimed to ignite discussion about race in America today.

The Findings

While social media journalists, including myself, documented the remarks on Twitter, overall the remarks highlighted the tension in our nation. We are a nation formed through racial strife, and these roots crack the very firmament of our contemporary society. Discussants to various degrees discussed the current President in relation to white supremacy. Normalcy has been transformed with the white supremacy becoming a public norm, rather than an open secret. The acceptance/ visibility of white supremacy can be seen as a result of other transformations in society, namely stagnating job opportunities and the diversification of the knowledge production and the rise of social media.

The remarks of the symposium painted a picture of American Society in 2018 as a churning cultural clash between the youngest generation of voters and the oldest one. These two groups are drastically different, coming of age in oppositional eras. The oldest sector of our society is the baby boomers, born in a period of unprecedented prosperity. The youngest voters were raised in the greatest period of insecurity in nearly a century. While the oldest sector of society might have earned a lifestyle that they hope to maintain, the youngest voters do not even imagine or hope to live that way.

The response to this cultural tumult has been multifold, according to the Aspen Institute speakers. Older voters were fueled by fire to vote against diversity, globalism, and tolerance. A small sector of the population, say less than 2000 people, decided to generate an enormous about of hate online, according to the Twitter, diversity officer. Women came out to fix the government, standing up to run for office in unprecedented numbers. Asians are expressing their political rights and highlighting the heterogeneity of the community. People of color and marginalized people are fighting tooth and nail to get into the rooms that matter, in every arena, and some are succeeding. Overall, marginalized people are pushing  to make a change while the traditional seats of power are attempting to defend the status quo.

Extrapolating from the Symposium

Chuck Rocha, Strategist and President of Solidarity Strategies, pointed out an important divergence in media and knowledge consumption amongst the oldest and youngest voters. Older people still get their news by watching television. Older people use the platform to help determine the value of the speaker. The youngest voters are indiscriminate in their knowledge conduits but very discriminating in the sources. Young voters value the speaker, not the platform.

Rocha’s observation is huge for all knowledge producers (media, education, politicians alike.) Solely sharing that information over traditional channels will garner a small, aging, but important and wealthy, demographic.  Therefore, knowledge needs to be produced and disseminated in old ways AND new ones. Knowledge needs to be shared by valued “experts” as well as by influencers.

I was struck how America, as described by the presenters at #stateofrace, was very much in line with the comments from Culture Track describing the cultural habits of Americans. According to Culture Track, younger adults are brand-agnostic, experience seekers, looking for peer-nominated experts, unlike older adults who build relationships with institutions often based on perceived expertise.

In other words, be it government, politics, or culture, older people are more often tied to traditional institutions and reticent to/ ignorant of change. Younger adults offer fealty to few institutions, if not outright seeking the overturn of said institutions.

What does this mean for the State of Race and Culture?  

Race means something very different for older voters. These voters believed that they stamped out racism by holding protest signs in the 1960s and quoting MLK on their Facebook pages. These same voters understood that race is something to avoid discussing for fear of exposing the ugly truths that they feel. The oldest voters startle when they hear the phrase “white supremacist” but also feel uncomfortable saying the word “black.” The oldest voters were raised in an America of assimilation and as such do not have the skills to notice or handle their inherent bias.

The youngest voters see race, as well as gender for that matter, as a complicated spectrum. Diversity, inclusion, and access are familiar words, though the concepts are not always easy for them to put into action. Race is hard to discuss, not for lack of skills, but due to the disconnect between their understanding and the way race is expressed in conventional sources.

Understandings of race are so drastically divergent, and the oldest voters are maintaining control of many traditional sources. For example, the Alpine Institute State of Race symposium had no speaker that represented the youngest voters (likely no speaker under 35).

Conclusion

In reflecting on the symposium, I kept imagining two planets currently moving at different trajectories in fairly independent orbits, just at the moment before the collision. We are at that moment when the atmospheres and moons are crashing into each other, with the previous calmness being pierced by a shocking, surprising racket that is a harbinger of greater problems. In this scenario, both planets could be destroyed, one could survive, or both could survive (one as a subservient moon).

Similarly, the deep-seated differences in our culture between age groups, expressed in race and every other facet of society, might be undoing of us, bring our demise. Or, and ideally, we will find a completely different configuration of how we do things. Conversations like the State of Race symposium are the only way for our society to chart a successful course towards a better society and avoid catastrophic options.

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