Transcriber: Sieun Park Reviewer: DK Kim
Josie and I live in Los Angeles.
A city so democratically blue
that the sidewalks are painted with rainbow pride flags
even outside the confinements of jail.
A city where seeing bumper stickers and supportive movements
like March for our Lives, and Black Lives Matters common.
A city where it is acceptable for a sign at a school to read,
smash the patriarchy, not your food into the carpet.
For me, the moment I recognize the echo chamber that I just see them
was a school day after the 2016 election.
A day like no other teachers held somber discussions,
instead of our usual lessons.
Malevolent insults to the newly elected president
were tossed around and even watched
that some of my fellow classmates broke out in tears.
And how could we, as mere 12 and 13-year-olds,
have felt so much hatred towards a single person,
a person we never even met.
The truth is, I, along with many of my classmates,
have been taught to see MAGA hat symbols of hate.
The newly elected president himself is the enemy
and his supporters, uneducated and bigoted.
The people we talked to, the things we learned in school,
and even you do read merely reinforced our beliefs.
When COVID 19 hit and when I watched,
as politicians, adults and our own peers wrestled more deeply with their beliefs.
We watched people took to the streets to protest for their rights.
We watch COVID deaths skyrocketed and we watch history in the making
with an unprecedented presidential election.
Amid this chaotic year, we saw people begin to villainize those
with different beliefs to the point where civil discourse seemed impossible.
It was then in April 2020,
when we decided to create Teens Five Middle Ground,
a non-profit organization dedicated to cultivating empathy and understanding,
regardless of race, class or party.
The political discourse with teens from across the aisle.
Through this organization, we moderate bi-weekly discussions
with teenagers from across the country and world
with the hope of finding common ground.
Our discussion soon became a place for unlikely friendships
and lasting bonds like this one.
During discussions about gun control,
reproductive rights, the election and more,
we saw two participants who kept coming back.
One was a conservative from Texas
and the other was a liberal from Massachusetts,
and they were both 17 years old.
They disagreed, often during discussions.
Sometimes they'd get so invested they'd bring factsheets to prove their points,
though over time they began having small talk with one another,
regardless of what happened during the discussions.
The participants would come early and talk about sports
as if they were friends from school.
We saw, as the discussions tangibly broadened their perspectives
as phrases like I actually agree with you on that or
I see where you're coming from became more common in their vocabulary.
Though they remained in their respective political parties.
Above all, the conversations put a face to the other side.
They allowed participants to view the other side as humans
rather than usernames in a discourse group chat,
all encompassing labels like the Democrats and the Republicans,
or nameless Twitter handles.
Furthermore, the discussions allowed us to see
the diversity of thought that exists within individual political parties.
For example, during a reproductive rights discussion,
there was one participant who is pro-life but also a Bernie Sanders supporter.
To her, being pro-life meant also being anti ice against the death penalty,
pro-gun reform and anti-abortion,
which rejects the traditional stance of the pro-choice left.
Another example was a staunch conservative who was pro-Second Amendment
and on multiple guns, but who was also in favor of universal background checks
and a mandatory waiting period before purchasing firearms.
Their belief challenges the typical stance of conservatives
advocating for their ardent fringe checking amendment rights.
Participants like these helped us understand that people cannot be expected
to agree with every policy of a party or as a part of a homogenous ideology.
However, most importantly,
our discussion taught us that it is not controversial politicians
and partisan media propagating this divide,
but our very life experiences influences by different than geography,
socioeconomic pressures, race, religion, everyday interactions, etc.
These are what prevents someone from our Los Angeles like us from
understanding the belief system from someone from rural Wyoming.
The aim of these discussions is not to change anyone's opinions,
but to help teenagers become effectively motivated to weigh competing arguments
on its merits rather than pre-existing stereotypes.
Luckily for us, political scientists have been studying
the benefits of political discourse for many years and have constructed
a type of democracy that takes into account political polarization.
The solution is called deliberative democracy,
a form of democracy in which discussion
and deliberation occur before any political decisions are made.
As Amy Gutmann states in her novel Why Deliberative Democracy,
most fundamentally deliberative democracy affirms
the need to justify decisions made by citizens and their representatives.
Both are expected to justify the laws they would impose on one another.
To better understand the importance of deliberative democracy,
we must first understand the psychological phenomenon of confirmation bias.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for,
interpret and recall information
in a manner that is consistent with what one already believes.
Let’s look more closely at this using the most pressing issue our country faces.
Abortion rights.
Let’s say Jane is ardently pro-choice,
and she decides to browse through the news.
Not only is she going to search for articles that affirm her beliefs,
but she's going to interpret any article,
even ones that disagree with her
in a manner that is consistent with her beliefs.
John, on the other hand, someone who’s ardently pro-life could
read the same exact article
and lead you completely different conclusion, based on his bias.
Confirmation bias also helps form and reaffirm stereotypes.
As Kathryn Anderson points out,
we are more likely to remember and recall information that
a stereotype consistent and to forget
and ignores information that stereotype inconsistent.
Given the pervasiveness of social media, Instagram, Facebook,
Twitter and Snapchat and the list goes on,
there are countless opportunities to be exposed to information
where to be aesthetics of a pastor infographic or clicking on
an inviting article headlined.
Yet how often do we take a step back and wonder
the way in which the information we're consuming?
Information that we're not even sure is true is shaping our belief system.
Here comes the intrinsic value of deliberative democracy.
The process of deliberating and explaining exact policies
and one's opinions on it inherently makes people move towards a center,
or at least helps them become more inclined to understand
the other side more thoroughly.
We saw this in our own experiences as the two.
The two more two participants had conversations in addition to researching
to formulate their own opinions,
the more they were able to take a step back
and reevaluate their previously indestructible beliefs.
The nuance that comes from deliberative democracy from a hearing
an individual's perspective and deliver democracy is far different from
the partisan and one sided nature of echo chambers,
which surely reinforce and cherry picks,
so when the existing opinion in a counterproductive nature.
But if you don't take our word for it,
maybe you’ll trust the center of delivered democracy at Stanford University.
In their own words,
the department is dedicated to research about democracy
and public opinion obtained through deliberative polling.
In 2019, the center of delivery of Democracy invited five hundred
and twenty six voters to resort outside of Dallas
to discuss America’s most pressing issues.
Over four days this ideologically,
racially and geographically diverse group of people debated
foreign policy, health care, the economy, immigration and the environment.
Political scientist James Fishkin and Larry Diamond argue that if you put
a diverse group of people in a room,
they're likely to mute their harshest views
and wrestle more deeply with rebuttals.
The benefits of the conference for months the event
a lot of pollsters to understand what individuals believed,
rather than hearing the repetition of soundbites for some news
or exact party platforms, nor at the University of Chicago conducted
a survey with the participants both before and after the conference.
The benefits and the results were clear.
The more discussion and deliberation that occurred,
the closer to the center the voters edged.
For example, Democratic support lessened for things like a $15 minimum wage
and Medicare for all and Republican support group for things like rejoining
the Paris Climate Agreement and protecting from deportation illegal
immigrants brought to the United States as children.
The fact that a four day conference had the ability to create
so much understanding and conversation across party lines shows just how vital
deliberative democracy is to the future of our nation.
However, this is not to say that delivery democracy is bulletproof.
Like everything, there are boundaries to a balanced, productive discussion.
Privilege like at privileges like access to technology, education,
even literacy makes it hard for deliberation to be consistently equal.
Thus, Jose and I are claiming to have
the golden key to end political polarization,
nor are we advocating for a nation composed of centrists who lack conviction
and passion when discussing issues.
But we are hoping that by sharing the power of conversation,
we can inspire you to go into the world.
Guards down. Eyes and ears open.
We're willing to learn and understand before making judgments.