Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Living a Diverse Life

Professionally, I spend a lot of time working with data, mostly from physical events like pipe inspections.  There's a machine learning technique called clustering that identifies groupings of observations, finding those that are along multiple variables more similar to each other than to the rest of the population. Usually the data I look at does not lend itself to neat clusters.  Most data contains variables along a continuum without clear demarcations. It might look something like this:
Applying a clustering algorithm like I did essentially draws an arbitrary border through a mass of points. The spots near the center could really be in any of the clusters.

Our society however, is not shaped like that.  If each dot represented a person, and we clustered based on socioeconomic variables, interests and how people spent their time, we might be able to plot something like this:


The clusters are quite distinct. If you know which cluster a point is in and where it lies on the x-axis, you can reasonably guess where it lies among the y-axis. Only a smattering of points are not in clear clusters.

Many aspects of the physical world are messy. It's not easy to tell which part of a pipeline will rust and which part won't, necessitating the collection of tons of data points and the use of sophisticated algorithms. But in our society, we humans routinely and subconsciously guess people's background, such as religion or economic standing, based on a handful of attributes including name and appearance.

The more of the world I experience, the more I notice the clustered nature of our world.  "Clustered" can be replaced by "segregated." This word has strong racial connotations, intentionally, but is not limited to that. We are segregated by socioeconomic status, by geography, by ideology, by language, by vocabulary, by common cultural and knowledge bases. Technology, which can overcome or deepen this segregation, lately seems to be doing more of the latter. We have folks absorbing different news sources, getting targeted different advertisements, and seeking out those within their own cluster with more precision than ever.

This has perhaps always been true in the history of civilization. Ancient Rome was so class divided that there were essentially two separate languages. The educated folks spoke and wrote in the Latin we study now, and the common folk's language was called Vulgar Latin, from which modern day Romance languages descend. 

What's changed in 2020 includes the globalization bringing many disparate peoples into the same towns.  Additionally, technology allows us to form social circles that span great distances, rendering geographic proximity less relevant than ever. Thus even if one's surroundings are "diverse", one's social circle might not be. Thirdly, many of us are now inundated with so many more opinions from social media. We react, often emotionally, to opinions and often have our beliefs crystallized and strengthened through many iterations of catered social media views. When two people have widely different social media experiences and engage in discussion, it can feel like they are starting from page 500 of two different books.

How often are our clustered existences the source of conflict in our society? How many of our problems stem from people not understanding those in other clusters? It's the reason dumb niche ideas like the Juicero are conceived and funded, the reason why people write tweets that they don't realize are offensive and get fired, and a reason why white cops arrest and kill innocent black people at disproportionate numbers.  Sure, some people do bad things because they are rotten in their core, but most people who disagree with you do so because all the evidence they gather in their very different life experience leads to forming a very different opinion.

Exacerbating this is how separate are lives are. Again historically, the urban - rural divide has always been massive.  Everything from housing sizes, means of transportation, job opportunities to demographic makeups are dramatically different between cities and the countryside.  In addition, our world is structured to literally divide us with borders. Even between countries of similar language and culture, these borders are real. Anecdotally, I know more people who move from Boston to Seattle or from Montreal to Vancouver than between Boston and Montreal. We are perhaps even evolutionary disposed to cluster, to stick to our tribes for safety. Our world is not set up for us to experience a cross-section of society.

I think it's easy for people of color in America to underestimate the degree of difficulty for their fellow white citizens. People of color must learn a lot about white people just to survive in this country. There is a system incentivizing the understanding of the culture, history and mannerisms of the white majority. They, being the majority, lack this incentive. There's no boost to your college application for being woke, no additional points to your credit score for having black friends. And yes, it is natural for people of color to feel infuriated at this imbalance, and bitterly mutter well they should put in the effort, and yes, they should. But it's still worth examining how a white person growing up in a white environment, without much social or economic incentive to truly understand the minorities in their country, may not really know how to learn. Yes, there's plenty of anti-racist literature available to read, plenty of inspiring speeches on YouTube, but those aren't necessarily enough to empathize with the daily reality of someone familiar. They might not necessarily be enough to give someone confidence to ask the right questions or even have standing to get involved in racial justice issues.

I don't want to come off as a white people apologist. I'm angry too. I wish it were mandatory that everyone learn how to pronounce pinyin, or know that Hong Kong is not in Japan, or at least not accuse COVID-19 of being concocted by the CCP. But I do know that it's hard for anyone to live a diverse life, and particularly hard for those in the majority in their societies. It's not an excuse, but it should be recognized. And if we truly are all in this together, then we need to start bringing in people together. We need to deliberately seek out new perspectives, including in dramatic ways such as living in neighborhoods of a different ethnic background, learning a completely unrelated language, or volunteering at a charity that doesn't directly help your cluster. It goes for everyone - even the wokest people do make ignorant comments about situations they're not familiar with.

I know there are those who will instinctively resist this viewpoint. I've heard black people express the frustrations of being integrators/explainers their whole lives and a desire to just be left alone. I happen to love being an integrator, but I get it, maybe I wouldn't if I had 10x the explanations demand. It's true, there should be plenty of safe spaces where people can just live their best life. But unfortunately, we also can't make progress without the majority and those with access to power on board, and some of them might need some handholding on the ramp.

Being an Asian American male has allowed me to play different cards sometimes.  I'm definitely not white, and face a lot of minority-specific issues, but there are many issues I don't need to worry about including being killed by the police. Many Asians here are able to tap into white societal power structures while rarely getting called out for perpetuating them. Being a minority provides a useful defense when facing an accusation of racism, but being a minority does not mean you too don't need to do the work of living a more diverse life.  I myself strive for this goal, but it's been a difficult one to attain alongside the many other goals I have in life. Almost by definition, the neighborhood that would most shake up my world is not the best neighborhood for me to get to my job or hang out with my friends. And it's never been a good idea to seek out friends because of the color of their skin. But I try to be self-aware of my place in the world, and my understanding of it. I try to be intentional about what I absorb, where I travel, what I support. I find this to be a virtuous cycle - when you learn about new domains, you are usually able to connect with more people, who then introduce you to more new domains. There's no "diversity target" - this is a guidance for life.

Lastly, while we may be firmly defined within our clusters, we generally still have weak connections to people outside them.  Technology also allows us to glimpse into these other clusters, without supplementing the context that comes with true familiarity. We see videos or tweets espousing views we find radical and have to make assumptions as to what led to these views. It's a toxic environment of billboard communication that results in each cluster just flipping more pages along their disparate books.

So in the wake of the racial justice protests that engaged so much of America in June 2020, I hear a common question being asked, "What next?" In addition to entering politics, reading up on anti-blackness, donating, volunteering, leading further protests etc., I would posit one further: Live a more diverse life. I doubt that there's anyone who couldn't find some way to expose themselves to new viewpoints. Watch more Bollywood movies. Listen to a podcast by transgender hosts. Read more books from before the 20th centuries. Spend more time in places without a cell phone signal. Without running water. There is no person who cannot have their ideas challenged through a new perspective and continue to grow. 

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