Shortly after I arrived in Washington, my friend had a few people over; it was a party. I was young and new to the team and most of my friends were a group of interns to whom I was closer in age to my full-time peers. In this particular case, I brought a lot of Rolling Rock beer. I drank it too quickly, and my body reacted accordingly. I subsequently spent some time in the single bathroom in the apartment vomiting violently. While my friends were sympathetic to my predicament, my friend eventually threatened to pee on my head. I collected myself and cleared out of that single bathroom.
This isn’t a story about substance abuse or the fact that the vomit burned as it flew through my nostrils; this is a story about the collective social contract. This manifested itself in a number of ways. First, I understood that I should not vomit in the middle of the living room; I should confine that as much as possible. Second, my friends were gracious enough to give me time in order to get it out of my system. Third, the guests understood that while they needed to pee, they should not alleviate themselves in the sink or outside around the bushes. Finally, once I was granted an appropriate amount of time, I was asked to clear out and complied. This all occurred without friction and without hassles.
Social contracts morph over time
This will date me, but I’ll mention it to illustrate the point. Before the days of smartphones and internet, we communicated over the phone; it would not be unusual to talk to friends for hours. Initially, if you called a phone number while it was in use, you’d get a distinctive tone that indicated that the line was busy. Eventually, they allowed a call to come through with a feature named ‘call waiting’; it was initially intended for people who needed to get through.
As more people got his feature, it became pretty disruptive; anyone could get through. Some even called it ‘rude waiting’. So here are the interesting questions. First, if you’re on the phone with someone, and they have an incoming call, do you feel slighted if they answer? Second, if you’re that third party calling someone and they’re on the phone, do you feel slighted if they don’t answer? What ended up happening is that the standards changed over time. As more people acquired ‘call waiting’ (it even became standard with some services), we collectively got used to it. The social standards have changed. These days we rarely talk on the phone for hours at a time.
The rise in hate crimes
I first watched in both horror and fascination a man on a beach berates a Muslim family and screams “I’m a righteous Christian” and “Donald Trump will stop you!”; perhaps this was just one incident. I then watched as an Asian family endures racist rants like “fucking Asian piece of shit” and “Trump is going to fuck you.”; these were still outliers or so I thought. We generally want to believe that we’re safe, that we can safely step out the door and not be subjected to this. We’d like to think that these are isolated, though documented, corner cases. Are they?
They are not. Hate crimes are rising. It is tragic and angers me. These are the cold hard numbers for Asian incidents; they are beyond contestation:
This national report covers the 9,081 incident reports to Stop AAPI Hate from March 19, 2020 to June 30, 2021.1 The number of hate incidents reported to our center increased from 6,603 to 9,081 during April—June 2021. Of all incident reports, 4,548 hate incidents occurred in 2020 and 4,533 of hate incidents occurred in 2021.
For the time where we measured in 2020, we averaged 15.85 incidents per day. For the time we measured in 2021, we averaged 25.18 incidents per day. That’s 158% of what it was last year. We’re not even measuring the difference between 2019 and 2020, which I imagine also demonstrates an increase. Our country is becoming an increasingly hateful place.
Do we know why this is happening? Are there more racists than before? Not really. Two things are certainly happening. First, racists who were quiet before do not now suppress their inclination to behave this way. Second, people who are not really racists, are committing hate crimes. The question on both of these instances is why?
The change in social contract
What occurred is a change in social contract. Allow me to illustrate with something very measurable, speed limits. Suppose the posted speed limit on a particular road is 50 mph; it is unambiguous.
Let’s imagine that the average vehicle drives down this road at 55 mph. Is there going to be the occasional motorist that speeds down this road going 90 mph? Naturally, but this count is going to be modest. That motorist will need to travel 35 mph over the remaining traffic on the road.
Let’s imagine that instead the average vehicle drives down this road at 75 mph. Are there going to be more motorists zipping down the road at 90 mph? Absolutely, there may not be many, but they’re going to be more than with the 55-mph average. That car traveling at 90 mph is only going 15 mph over other traffic. Again, the posted legal speed limit hasn’t changed in either case; it’s still 50 mph.
As people feel emboldened to drive faster, it escalates everyone’s behavior. In this case, the people who drive at 90 mph are the equivalent of the people who went on racist rants on the above videos: fewer before but now greater in number and worse in severity.
Though what really enabled this to happen are the people who started driving at 75 mph. These are the people who do the occasional racist thing even if unintentional… Like pointing out that there’s a suspicious black person walking through the neighborhood, when a white stranger doing precisely the same thing is innocuous. Many more people now fall into this group, which consequently catapulted the other group.
We moved the goal posts
Our country moved the goal posts which enabled these types of events to occur. It happened slowly over time, but they kept pushing that boundary persistently. It’s like that one person sitting next to you in a cramped airplane seat that continues to push their elbow and slowly takes over the armrest.
Instead of making the debate that ‘this is not that bad when you consider that‘ (90 mph is not that much faster than 75 mph), let’s reset the origin to (0,0,0). Forget what everyone else does; speeding through at 90 mph is still 40 mph over the speed limit. Consider this behavior:
- Calling another country… any country a ‘shithole’ country. And that non-shithole country (Norway) is predominantly white?
- Using the term ‘China Virus’ or ‘Kung-Flu’, especially since we changed the standard… over six years ago. Yes, we used to do it; we also used the n-word.
- Mimicking a person with disabilities.
- Refer to members of our military as ‘losers’ or ‘suckers’.
- Attaching the labels ‘Sleepy’, ‘Crooked’, ‘Nervous’, ‘Pocahontas’ or ‘Monster’ to anyone.
Before you defend this behavior, consider this… would you tolerate this behavior from your child or grandchild? If you don’t think it is appropriate for a child, why is it permissible for an adult, much less the president?
You can’t deny Meryl Streep’s words in this speech:
This instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life because it kind of gives permission… for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence.
You can love our country and be a Republican and still say, “This is not who I am; this is not who we are.” And say it out loud, because decency demands it.
How do we restore it?
I’m not suggesting that you should move mountains; I am suggesting that you should keep your yard clean. It affects your life too; you’re allowed to set healthy boundaries.
Months ago, I sent mail to a loved one who continued to use the term ‘China Virus’ and asked them to stop because it was important to me and she did, at least with me. She understood that it’s not okay.
Decades ago, I spoke on the phone with my mom. She mentioned a rumor on how so-and-so’s child did something. I don’t know what it was about that day, but I stopped her mid-sentence. I explained to her how I detested being the topic of gossip. While I understood that I could not control what others did, I still would not hypocritically participate in gossip, not even with her. We would need to find something else to talk about.
I think that she respected me for setting that boundary; it helped us develop an adult relationship. She said she would try to honor those boundaries. It’s a promise which she kept for years, until her death. I never told her how much I loved her for doing that.
To put it bluntly and make a reference to the beginning, the first person who really needs to pee decides that they’re going to urinate in the kitchen sink, and then other people follow suit. It’s not okay for anyone to pee in the kitchen sink. It doesn’t matter if you were first or last; let’s make it stop.
Dr. Brené Brown explains, “Brave leaders are never silent about hard things. Our job is to excavate the unsaid. What is the thing that is not being said. And that requires courage and vulnerability.” Let’s choose courage over comfort.