Students:Whether you candidate won or lost,
use this election as peacebuilding opportunity
Note: I plan to email this to all of my students as soon as we have a presidential winner.
Nov. 4, 2020
Dear Peace Studies and Peace Journalism students:
Despite the divisions and angst it has generated, the presidential
election nonetheless offers us the opportunity as peacebuilders to put our
craft into practice. This is true regardless of which candidate you supported.
If you supported the winner, congratulations. As a
peacebuilder, I would hope that you would accept the results graciously and
with humility, and not celebrate by using inflammatory language that might
deepen partisan, racial, and cultural divides. Further, as a supporter of the
winner, I believe it is your responsibility to reach out to those who supported
the other candidate to build bridges, in the parlance of peace studies and
peace journalism. During these discussions, begin with listening, and with
showing empathy for the emotional impact from the election results. Let them
know that your vote was cast with the best intentions, for the leader and
policies you feel will be most beneficial for the country, and was not a ballot
cast against the supporters on the losing side.
This difficult discussion is not optional. The father of
peace studies, Dr. Johan Galtung, wrote this week on Twitter that failure to
conduct these demanding conversations will lead almost inevitably to violent
conflict. As a “winner,” you are uniquely positioned to demonstrate your
humility by initiating these discussions.
If you supported the losing candidate, I’m sorry. Keep in
mind that during your life, you will assuredly win and lose some electorally.
Politics are cyclical.
Even though the results seem very personal, I believe that
they are not. Sure, there are obnoxious forces on both sides who do vote with
malice in their heart—racists, xenophobes, homophobes, haters of Christians and
rural Americans, elitists, etc. But I believe that 99% of us vote with the best
intentions, not intending to personally harm anyone. Some of these good intentions
arise out of ignorance and social and geographical isolation, and offer an
opportunity to you as a peacemaker to educate those around you about our
diverse society. This is a chance for you to build bridges as well. Begin by
listening carefully, and don’t be argumentative or pedantic.
Regardless of how your candidate performed, you can harness your
anger and disappointment, or energy and enthusiasm, to build peace. Begin
by looking around to find the impediments to positive peace in our society.
Positive peace, as theorized by Dr. Galtung, is the attitudes, institutions, and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies. Positive peace is sustainable and built upon a
foundation of justice and opportunity for everyone. Make it your mission to
seek out and combat impediments to positive peace, be they structural (laws,
policies, procedures) or cultural (ideology, language, traditional attitudes). Your
peace activism might, for example, battle sexism or racism, or seek to
expand and protect religious and free speech rights. You could also monitor and
call out news media that distort and fuel the divides in our society.
In short, what will you do as a peacebuilder to plant the
seeds for a sustainable, lasting peace?
We can do better—better at communicating with and respecting
one another, and better at fostering positive peace. We’ll never get rid of
partisanship, but perhaps we as peacebuilders can help build a society where
the nastiness and bitterness accompanying our elections becomes a relic of the
past.
Peace,
Professor Youngblood
No comments:
Post a Comment