by Dan Morrice for Bridges for Communities
Once in a blue moon, Britain goes big on protests. The keep calm and carry-on mentality that we’re supposedly known for goes out the window, and people take their passion to the streets. We have a rich history of peaceful protests, from the Bristol bus boycott in the 1960’s to the community in Glasgow who quietly and successfully resisted the immigration raids in May 2021.
Sadly though, there are times when demonstrations turn sinister and spill into violence. We saw this in the London riots of 2011, here in Bristol with the Kill The Bill conflicts of 2021, and sadly this summer with the violence that occurred around hotels housing asylum seekers – events that endangered many of the families we work with.
In the heat of battle though, there are the brave who bring good from these challenging times – communities coming together to protect each other, building bridges (metaphorically), and rebuilding walls (literally). There was the reassuring sight of Imam Adam Kelwick in Liverpool, giving homemade food to people outside his mosque, asking questions and starting the conversation. Scenes like this show that another narrative is possible. In the rather practical words of Daryl Davis,
‘Keep in mind, when two enemies are talking, they’re not fighting, they’re talking.’
More from Davis later. As the dust settles, and the protests smoulder out, we stand at a crossroads. Moments like this have the potential to cement prejudice even further, if conversations don’t happen, if attitudes are funneled through age-old prejudices, and if social media algorithms designed to promote provocative (and profitable) click-bait throw petrol on the fires of misinformation.
But they also create the opportunity to go beyond protest, to tackle some of the trauma and divisions in society and to make space for productive conversations to happen. That won’t be easy, but a valuable task rarely is.
Challenge accepted.
Getting Connected
At Bridges for Communities, we’ve always believed that the first step is connecting people. From anger to anxiety, misinformation to mayhem – it all thrives in isolation. When people make space to sit down with someone who represents a challenge to them, for whatever reason, the potential for change is possible. Suddenly an identity projected onto someone by quick judgement is replaced by a real-life encounter with a real-life person with shared hopes and dreams (such as a safer life for their children).
But notice we say ‘the potential for change,’ not the guarantee. The environment matters. If people come with red-hot rage, unleash their fury and walk away without stopping to listen, the problems only get worse. It has to be a safe space, there has to be the opportunity for everyone to be heard and there has to be room for empathy. That’s why careful, curated, real-life spaces are better than social media as platforms for discussion.
Listening Spaces is Bridges’ contribution to the moment. We launch our first meeting in the Chapter House of Bristol Cathedral on the subject of ‘Recent Divisions and Tensions Around Migration.’ Participants will share their views and have the chance to hear from others with different perspectives. Everyone signs up to key guidelines of respect in advance, and everyone will have the opportunity to reshape their narrative of ‘goodies and baddies’.
Beyond Goodies and Baddies
Supposed ‘bad guys’ exist in every societal framework. In Britain, James Bond films have always provided a good litmus test of the cultural narrative, especially the older flicks, where Sean Connery or Roger Moore bravely saved the world from an evil villain. Unsurprisingly, this bad guy was usually a gaunt, bald man with a cliché scar, a Russian or French accent and a weird squint. The goodie was James Bond and anyone else with a British accent who looked like a Marks and Spencers’ model.
The world is, of course, more complex than that.
Every culture has its version of goodies and baddies, reinforced through a thousand subtle messages in print and pixels with such quiet frequency, that it’s almost impossible to notice the narratives that are mentally updating in the background.
Some stories are pure fiction (like James Bond films), others are messages manipulated from real events. The issue is not necessarily the stories themselves, but the way the echo chambers in our digital and social world, and the confirmation bias in our mental world organise those stories into misleading frameworks. When someone from a ‘good place’ or ‘good group’ does something bad, we dismiss them as an exception to the rule, but when someone from a perceived ‘bad group’ or ‘bad group’ does something unpleasant, we say, ‘Ah, you see, they’re all like that!’
When Dr Harold Shipman was found to have killed countless innocent patients, few people said, ‘That’s doctors for you.’ There were no riots outside GP surgeries. Why? Because we trust doctors, they’re good, kind people who make us better. He was just a tragic exception to the rule. Unfortunately, the same logic isn’t applied to people from less trustworthy professions than doctors (or with less English names than Harold).
Pride and Prejudice
What do we do with our tendency towards prejudice?
The first thing to remember is that everyone has prejudice, including you, and especially us. It’s impossible to live life in a social vacuum, we’re constantly exposed to subtle messages and formative experiences which shape the way we think. Recognising that is the first step to addressing it.
The second step is understanding. When people reserve judgment and really listen to someone share their story, they discover that they’re not too dissimilar. With the conversation around immigration, the thing almost everyone has in common is a desire for their children to be safe. It’s the reason parents carry their beloved for thousands of miles through mountains and oceans in search of safety, and it’s also the reason the death of three little girls in Southport triggered such a wave of anger (even if it was fuelled by misinformation). We all want a safe future for our children.
The details matter. When it comes to immigration, people have strong opinions, including those with strong opinions that differ from ours. But whether we like it or not, there are often good reasons for those opinions.
For people in communities that have been overlooked and underfunded for decades, the idea that a family from Afghanistan who arrived only a year ago are getting the best housing, schooling and medical care, the hurt is understandable.
When it’s discovered that this Afghan family aren’t getting the best schooling and medical care or any housing for that matter, opinions can shift. When it emerges that the reason for coming to the UK was because they were fighting the Taliban and helping British troops at great risk to their own safety, then the story seems very different.
What matters is the opportunity to listen.
That takes time.
First impressions are made in a split-second, understanding takes hours.
We always encourage people to engage their imagination when they’re listening, to try and picture themselves in the other person’s shoes. When you lose yourself in someone else’s world, you can ask yourself, ‘If I had grown up in your family, in your neighbourhood, in your situation, would I think the same as you?’ It’s impossible to know, but the process itself is one of the most valuable things we can do.
Accidental Courtesy
One of the most radical advocates of the power of listening is the African-American jazz musician, Daryl Davis. Born in Chicago but raised in Ghana, Ethiopia and Senegal by parents who worked for the US Foreign Service, he grew up attending international schools. He got used to having classmates from every corner of the Earth. There was camaraderie across every culture and friends from every tribe and tongue. Naturally, he had zero understanding that people could discriminate against one another due to race.
When he moved back to the US at the age of 10, he was in for a rude awakening. Imagine not even knowing racism exists, and then trying to work out why someone is throwing rocks and bottles at you at a Scout parade. How does a parent explain to their son what the KKK is all about? As he emerged into adulthood, he took a calculated and creative decision. Rather than fight fire with fire, he played a smarter game. In his own words,
“I decided to go around the country and sit down with Klan leaders and Klan members to find out: How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?”
Not everyone wanted to meet, and not everyone who did was willing to listen, but many found themselves changed irreversibly. Dozens of white supremacists left the Klan, repented of their past lives and began a different life, all because Daryl engaged them in a conversation. In advice forged on the coalface of experience, he summed up his mission with words reminiscent of Martin Luther-King,
‘You cannot hate the hate out of a person. You cannot beat the hate out of a person. But you can love it out of a person.’
You can see more of his story in the Netflix documentary, ‘Accidental Courtesy,’ or get the deep dive in his book, ‘Klan-destine Relationships’ [2]. Of course, there are important differences between Davis’ example and Britain’s cultural moment. Not everyone calling for a reform to the asylum system is a far-right activist, some simply want the government to control immigration while protecting the genuinely vulnerable. Those rioting outside hotels clearly aren’t interested in protecting the vulnerable so the violent few shouldn’t get to define the narrative for everyone else.
It also shouldn’t fall on the victims of oppression to lead the way in reconciliation. Davis’ leadership is a wake-up call to those in power, not those fighting for justice. Communities failed by the state are often pitted against each other in the media, but a dysfunctional asylum system, a willful neglect of geographically peripheral regions, and a lack of social housing are issues created by failures at the top, rather than fractures in communities. Unfortunately though, it’s our communities though who feel the pinch and our communities are where the protests got out of hand.
Power to the People
Fortunately, we believe our communities can also provide solutions, we’ve seen that in countless acts of solidarity as ordinary people connect over coffee, or round the dinner table. It all starts with listening. If Davis can pioneer dialogue with people so extremely opposed to him, surely we can create a space to hear from each other in ‘sensible old Britain’.
At Bridges for Communities, we’re a long way from achieving what Davis has, but it helps to know what you’re aiming for. We’re not out to win everyone over to a certain point of view, but what we are out to do, is to get people talking, listening, learning from and even loving one another across every cultural boundary.
If we can do that, coming in the opposite spirit to the fear and hatred we’ve seen on our screens, and finding common ground where we least expect it, that might be the greatest protest. In words that would seem painfully naïve if they hadn’t come from Davis’ own lived experience,
‘If you spend five minutes with your worst enemy – it doesn’t have to be about race, it could be about anything… you will find that you both have something in common. As you build upon those commonalities, you’re forming a relationship and as you build about that relationship, you’re forming a friendship.’
If we want to transform our communities, to change how we work through important issues together, to live well with difference, we first need to take the time to listen and build understanding.
Take the time to listen and be heard
Next Event: Recent Divisions and Tensions Around Migration. Chapter House, Bristol Cathedral. 29th Aug, 3rd Sep
To find out more about our Listening Spaces programme, check out https://www.bridgesforcommunities.com/programmes/listening-spaces/
[1] Image courtesy of Daniel Pearl World Music Days. Daryl Davis and Itay Pearl at the Be’er Sheva Fringe Theater, November 7th, 2017
[2] To discover more of Davis’ story, you can read ‘Klan-destine Relationships‘ (New Horizon PR, 2005) or watch, ‘Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America‘ (2016)