Individuals, Not Groups

Last week, I shared this article on my Facebook page. I highly encourage you to read it, but in brief, it’s a powerful commentary by Army Major Danny Sjursen decrying the tendency to invoke the sacrifices made by U.S. service members either to support or condemn NFL players kneeling during the national anthem. He argues persuasively that displays of patriotism before sporting events are out of place, and that using his or anyone else’s military service as a rhetorical sledgehammer is “distasteful,” and, worse, “eradicates nuance.”

I was thinking of Maj. Sjursen’s piece as I read about Michelle Obama’s recent remarks in Boston, as well as the backlash they garnered. As you might recall, Ms. Obama commented that women who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton in the last election “voted against their own voice,” and implied that those women who voted for Donald Trump only did so because someone (presumably a man) told them to do so. (You can read the full quote in this Washington Post article.) While there are a number of good reasons for women not to support Mr. Trump, Ms. Obama went several steps further by suggesting that women owed Ms. Clinton their votes, and that they only way they could have voted for anyone else (there were, after all, more than two candidates in the race) would be if they were too stupid to see what was good for them. Whether it was out of support for Mr. Trump’s policy proposals or distaste for Ms. Clinton, the fact that some women chose freely to support someone besides her preferred candidate is anathema to Ms. Obama.

These two cases I’ve cited are really two sides of the same coin, in that they both assume that every member of a certain group must necessarily think or act a certain way. Granted, there are some instances in which that would be the case – for example, the idea of a self-proclaimed vegetarian who eats chicken or a professed Christian who denies that Christ rose from the dead is absurd. Most situations, however, don’t involve such self-contradictions, and a mature viewpoint would allow room for nuance in thoughts and actions. Groups, after all, are made up of individuals, each with their own values and experiences that shape the way they look at things.

So rather than assume that all members of a certain group feel a certain way on an issue (as the people Maj. Sjursen is criticizing do) or get upset when they don’t (as Ms. Obama did), why not be thankful that each and every one of us has the gift of independent thought and reasoning, and that we live in a society that allows us to use those gifts? Accept that they might respond to something in a way other than the one you think is right, and be gentle in trying to get them to see things from your point of view. To be fair, that’s probably wishful thinking, but it certainly would go a long way toward healing even the worst of our divisions.