Posted at 2018.10.17 Category : 未分類
「部族」主義がはびこっていると言われるアメリカ。次の記事は具体的なエピソードからお互い歩み寄ることが難しいことを感じることができます。
2018年10月13日 Texts by 長野宏美
分断の広がるトランプ大統領の米国で、頻繁に耳にするようになった言葉がある。一つはｐｏｌａｒｉｚｅ（分裂する、二極化する）で、もう一つはｔｒｉｂａｌ（部族の）だ。後者に関連し、ｔｒｉｂｅ（部族）やｔｒｉｂａｌｉｓｍ（部族主義）という単語もよく聞く。まるで部族対立のように異なる考えを持つグループを許容できない米国社会の分裂ぶりを表す時に使う。「反トランプ」か「親トランプ」か。異なる「部族」に属することで、家族や友人を失ったという話も珍しくない。そんな部族化する分裂社会に嘆き、動揺している人も多いと感じる。中間選挙を１１月に控えて党派対立がさらに深まる中、米国人はどう感じているのか。彼らの声を紹介する。
タイガーマムで有名になったAmy Chuaは今年Political Tribes - Group Instinct and the Fate of Nationsという本を出していますが、今月のAtlanticの特集Is Democracy Dying?にも寄稿していました。
The Constitution once united a diverse country under a banner of ideas. But partisanship has turned Americans against one another—and against the principles enshrined in our founding document.
AMY CHUA AND JED RUBENFELD OCTOBER 2018 ISSUE
先鋭化している例として、建国の父の一人であるトーマス・ジェファーソンの奴隷所有を問題にして“The people vowing to protect the Constitution are vowing to protect white supremacy and genocide.”と黒人の運動家が主張するまでになっているというのです。公民権運動の時ではそんなことはなかったようです。
In recent years, however, the American left has become more and more influenced by identity politics, a force that has changed the way many progressives view the Constitution. For some on the left, the document is irredeemably stained by the sins of the Founding Fathers, who preached liberty while holding people in chains. Days after the 2016 election, the president of the University of Virginia quoted Thomas Jefferson, the school’s founder, in an email to students. In response, 469 students and faculty signed an open letter declaring that they were “deeply offended” at the use of Jefferson as a “moral compass.” Speaking to students at the University of Missouri in 2016, a Black Lives Matter co-founder went further: “The people vowing to protect the Constitution are vowing to protect white supremacy and genocide.”
Just a few decades ago, the cause of racial justice in America was articulated in constitutional language. “Black activists from Martin Luther King, Jr., to the Black Panthers,” wrote the law professor Dorothy E. Roberts in 1997, “framed their demands in terms of constitutional rights.” Today, the Constitution itself is in the crosshairs.
彼女はフランシス・フクヤマのように合衆国憲法の精神を重要視しています。Irish-AmericanやChinese-Americanのように民族的であることを国民であることが矛盾せずに両立できるのはアメリカだけで、他の国で民族が中心になるのでChinese-Japaneseのようなことは成り立たないというのです。
America is not an ethnic nation. Its citizens don’t have to choose between a national identity and multiculturalism. Americans can have both. But the key is constitutional patriotism. We have to remain united by and through the Constitution, regardless of our ideological disagreements.
There are lessons here for both the left and the right. The right needs to recognize that making good on the Constitution’s promises requires much more than flag-waving. If millions of people believe that, because of their skin color or religion, they are not treated equally, how can they be expected to see the Constitution’s resounding principles as anything but hollow?
For its part, the left needs to rethink its scorched-earth approach to American history and ideals. Exposing injustice, past and present, is important, but there’s a world of difference between saying that America has repeatedly failed to live up to its constitutional principles and saying that those principles are lies or smoke screens for oppression. Washington and Jefferson were slave owners. They were also political visionaries who helped give birth to what would become the most inclusive form of governance in world history.
またNew YorkerのサイトではTribalismによる分断の現状がよく分かる報告書を紹介してくれていました。まあ何もトランプだけでなく振り返ってみるとここ20年は政治分断の時期でしたね。
By George PackerOctober 12, 2018
One side has moved steadily leftward over the past decade, and many progressives are feverish with their own vision of tribal righteousness: identity politics. The escalation requires both sides to feed and perpetuate it. But only one side has turned a major political party over to an unapologetic leader who knows no limits. I could draw a pretty straight line from Newt Gingrich’s radicalism and the government shutdowns of the nineteen-nineties to the opportunistic majority opinion of Bush v. Gore, in 2000; the unstoppable rightward lurch from Jesse Helms to Jim DeMint to Ted Cruz; the nomination of Sarah Palin, in 2008; Mitch McConnell’s vow, in early 2009, to derail the Obama Presidency; the Senate Republicans’ abuse of the filibuster to block all Democratic legislation and appointments; the unleashing of dark money with Citizens United; the extreme gerrymandering and attempted voter suppression in Republican state houses, after the 2010 midterms; the stonewalling of Merrick Garland, in 2016; Republican leaders’ refusal to acknowledge Russian interference in that year’s Presidential election; and the final takeover of the Party by Trump.
On Wednesday, More in Common, a research organization based in Europe and the United States, released a report called “Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape.” It builds on the group’s prior work in France, Germany, and Italy—an effort to understand and counteract rising populism and fragmentation in the Western democracies. Throughout the past year, the report’s four authors surveyed eight thousand randomly chosen Americans, asking questions about “core beliefs”: moral values, attitudes toward parenting and personal responsibility, perceptions of threats, approaches to group identity. The authors then sorted people, based on their beliefs and values, into seven “tribes”: Progressive Activists, Traditional Liberals, Passive Liberals, Politically Disengaged, Moderates, Traditional Conservatives, Devoted Conservatives. Progressive Activists, as described by the report, tend to be “younger, highly engaged, secular, cosmopolitan, angry.” The Politically Disengaged are “young, low income, distrustful, detached, patriotic, conspiratorial.” Moderates are “engaged, civic-minded, middle-of-the-road, pessimistic, Protestant.” Devoted Conservatives are “white, retired, highly engaged, uncompromising, patriotic.”
上記部分でも触れていますが、報告書では7つのグループに分けて政治問題に対する態度を明らかにしています。リンク先の様々なグラフをみると驚くほどくっきり分かれています。
The segments have distinctive sets of characteristics; here listed in order from left to right on the ideological spectrum:
– Progressive Activists: younger, highly engaged, secular, cosmopolitan, angry.
– Traditional Liberals: older, retired, open to compromise, rational, cautious.
– Passive Liberals: unhappy, insecure, distrustful, disillusioned.
– Politically Disengaged: young, low income, distrustful, detached, patriotic,
conspiratorial.
– Moderates: engaged, civic-minded, middle-of-the-road, pessimistic, Protestant.
– Traditional Conservatives: religious, middle class, patriotic, moralistic.
– Devoted Conservatives: white, retired, highly engaged, uncompromising,
patriotic.
Yutaが興味を持ったのは、分断されているとはいえ、妥協を拒否してひたすら自分の陣営の主張をするのは両極のグループだけで、大多数はこの分断された政治状況にうんざりしているExhausted Majorityというのです。このExhausted Majorityは妥協も辞さないとしています。
The Majority of Americans Want Compromise
Desire for compromise split by Wings and Exhausted Majority
Differences in people’s underlying beliefs have always existed in healthy societies. Today, however, these differences are becoming more difficult to mediate. Liberals and conservatives are moving farther apart,1 and tribal tensions are boiling over more regularly in politics and media as well as in daily life.
The forces driving polarization have a variety of sources including economic insecurity, growing inequality, cultural and demographic change, and the weakening of local communities. Many people are feeling a loss of identity and belonging. Populists and extremists are exploiting these vulnerabilities by advancing us-versus-them narratives, often focusing on immigrants and refugees. Social media is heightening conflict in public debate and bringing extreme narratives into the mainstream.2
If we can better comprehend what lies behind our differences, we may prevent this polarization from spiraling out of control. Many Americans today suffer from deep injustices related to their race, sex, religion, sexuality and other facets of their identities. But productive national dialogue about these and other critical issues has reached an impasse, in large part due to the widening gap between the major ideological and partisan perspectives.
The goal of this report is to improve our understanding of this polarization and its underlying causes. It highlights the need to unite Americans of conflicting beliefs and values. These connections create empathy and put people’s opinions and beliefs into a more human context. This report tries to capture that human context by allowing Americans from every position on the political spectrum to speak for themselves.
Amy Chuaのように合衆国憲法の精神を尊重することは述べることはしていませんが、結論部分で共通の価値観を探る必要性を語るという点では一緒です。
Conclusions
Combating us-versus-them tribalism and polarization may be one of the greatest social and political challenges of the digital age. As much as building a just and democratic society requires thousands of initiatives large and small, so does defending one from these threats. It may well take a generation, but these efforts start with understanding how we can effectively counter this polarization.
This report is not intended to provide a blueprint for those efforts, but it shows how much such a blueprint is needed. We hope that by building on the insights in this report:
– Political candidates can speak to the values that unify the nation with a larger “we,” instead of mobilizing their base while polarizing the country.
– Activists and advocates can broaden their appeals to the underlying values of those they don’t usually reach.
– Philanthropists can invest creatively in the thousand points of light that can show us a way forward to counter polarization and develop robust evaluation measures to prove impact.
– Creative artists and media can spotlight the extraordinary ways in which Americans in local communities build bridges and not walls, every day.
– Technology companies can turn their vast resources and analytical tools to creating platforms and systems that help do the hard work of bringing people together, rather than the easy work of magnifying outrage in echo chambers and filter bubbles.
– Leaders in government, business and nonprofits can apply the lens of integration to every context where Americans are brought together - from schooling and town planning to office layouts and volunteer activities, creating spaces that connect people together across the lines of difference.
All these efforts, though small in their own way, are needed if we are to build stronger communities and a country more unified and more resilient to division. More in Common is one of many organizations that can help galvanize a much larger ecosystem of local and national solutions that can counter the forces of fragmentation and bring us together around all that we have in common.
まあ、それができれば苦労しないのでしょうけど。。。英語教育界の部族主義を見ているとお互い歩み寄るのが難しいのは痛いほどわかりますし。。。
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