Our Differences

Carol Gorelick, a lifelong educator, shares a powerful story of a painful disagreement with a South African colleague that reshaped her understanding of race and societal dynamics. Reflecting on the complexities of identity and inequality, she emphasizes the need to accept our differences, advocating for one-on-one conversations to bridge societal divides. 

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Michael Lee: [00:00:00] When we disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. How might we have better public arguments about important issues that impact us All. The answer has everything to do with how we talk to each other or more accurately. How we should talk to each other.

Michael Lee: Some writers envision an ideal public sphere where citizens engage in critical and rational debate. This isn't just any sort of chatter. It's a space where people would thoughtfully deliberate on public issues, free from manipulation, and the imbalances of our relative social power. Think of it like a town square, maybe even a virtual town square, where ideas are exchanged and challenged and refined.

Michael Lee: And the goal to arrive at a reason consensus that benefits us all Historically, philosophers and historians who have spent time with this idea point to a few [00:01:00] models of this kind of square, 18th century coffee houses and the like. People from diverse backgrounds would discuss politics and literature and philosophy freely.

Michael Lee: While these spaces were far from perfect, they excluded women, the working class, and many other groups of people. The concept still holds weight. Today, our digital world could theoretically offer even greater access to this kind of public discourse. But as anyone who scrolled through the comment section knows, not all debates are rooted in reason.

Michael Lee: These political ideas are personally relevant as well. Consider how we navigate conflicts and personal relationships. Imagine a disagreement with a coworker, for instance. A rational critical approach means you both express your preferences for X, Y, or Z, offer reasons, and listen with a relatively open mind by weighing the emotional, financial, and logistical factors together, maybe you could work toward a mutual decision, but if the conversation devolves into personal attacks and [00:02:00] stonewalling, well, then suddenly it's no longer a fair or rational debate.

Michael Lee: This breakdown mirrors what often happens in the public's sphere. When emotional manipulation or misinformation hijack the conversation, genuine dialogue is about choosing conversation over confrontation, listening instead of shouting and pursuing understanding rather than dominance. In short, the way we argue matters and it matters for us all.

Michael Lee: I'm Michael Lee, professor of Communication, and the director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. Our guest today on When We Disagree is Carol Gorelick. Carol is a lifelong educator and she also worked in it for quite some time. Her friends say that she is caring, curious, and connecting.

Michael Lee: Carol, tell us an argument story. 

Carol Gorelick: My story is very deep and poignant for me. Many, many, many years later, I'm gonna [00:03:00] tell an incident in 2009 between myself and a South African black colleague. We'd known each other for almost a decade as family and friends, and we were getting the opportunity to work together on a project in a school in South Africa and a school in Detroit.

Michael Lee: Mm-hmm.

Carol Gorelick: She was using the project to get credit towards her master's degree, and I would expand on the work that I was doing on a multi-year project in South Africa, improving schools through community engagement. 

Michael Lee: Gotcha. 

Carol Gorelick: The, they were primarily black schools in both South Africa and Detroit. I've been working in this project for more than two years and was very [00:04:00] comfortable and accepted by all the people who I worked with.

Carol Gorelick: It was a labor of love and a very committed piece of work for me, and this woman had been, um, an observer and an occasional participant. Throughout the whole project. So we were very close friends. Um, we met for lunch to work on the design 

Michael Lee: uhhuh, 

Carol Gorelick: and here's the di disagreement. After catching up on each other's lives, I began the serious work conversation for the purpose of the project and said, let's set the stage.

Carol Gorelick: Let's make sure that we're both on the same page and we're both coming from the black perspective as equals 

Michael Lee: uhhuh, 

Carol Gorelick: the conversation stopped [00:05:00] immediately. I was shocked and it was obvious that my colleague and friend was angry and very hurt. 

Michael Lee: How did that anger and hurt get expressed? 

Carol Gorelick: You could see it in her face.

Carol Gorelick: It was pain, visceral pain, and I didn't know quite what to do. I had not expected it. It was clearly inadvertent and unintentional, but. I had crossed a line. 

Michael Lee: What exactly was your colleague responding to? 

Carol Gorelick: What she was responding to was her lifelong battle, um, with racism, [00:06:00] apartheid South Africa, during apartheid South Africa, where people were entirely separated.

Carol Gorelick: She ended up through her professional role facilitating white judges, accepting black judges into the new institutional norms of the country. And here she was with a close personal friends having the same reaction. You don't get it. This will never be resolved in terms of you seeing yourself as an equal.

Carol Gorelick: You can never be equal. We are different and we didn't talk about it. I'm answering your question. I [00:07:00] found out later how deeply this affected her. And

Carol Gorelick: it took a while. We did our work. We were collegial, we were family friends, and one day I received a text from her and she said she had really been contemplating this for a long time. It had been painful, and she needed to forgive. Her text said, I can't help you with whatever confusion or ambiguity you have around my reaction, but from where I sit, it is neither simple or irrelevant.

Carol Gorelick: I've lived through the South Africa Democratic elections, trained white judges to accept black judges, and realized it's not my work to teach white people how to act and relate to black people.[00:08:00] 

Carol Gorelick: That changed my. Life in a very profound way. 

Michael Lee: That sentiment did. 

Carol Gorelick: That whole incidence. Mm-hmm. And her making it so clear. And this was in 2009. Between then and now, this has become a universal conversation and there've been many books written about white privilege. And I'm very, very sensitive to that. I can't say I've never had a similar experience.

Carol Gorelick: I've had a couple of others since then. Um, but this was the turning point. 

Michael Lee: What is white privilege to you?

Carol Gorelick: No matter where a white person is in Western society, [00:09:00] they. Are in a position of power and people of color or, um, different ethnic backgrounds feel, and probably rightly so, that no matter how equal they are in other things, education, um, social economic status. That they walk into a room and everybody recognizes that difference.

Carol Gorelick: That doesn't happen with white people. 

Michael Lee: Do you believe that that's permanent? 

Carol Gorelick: I sure hope not, but I'm not sure it'll be resolved in my lifetime. Mm-hmm. I'm hoping that the awareness that. People like I have and people I'm traveling with is going to be, um, [00:10:00] acting on. In how we bring up the next generation.

Carol Gorelick: That's my hope. 

Michael Lee: What for you are appropriate responses to making this recognition like you've made around white privilege and, and talk about that. Answer that on a few levels. One, appropriate responses individually, and then two appropriate responses socially and politically 

Carol Gorelick: on the personal level. I think we have to be humble and the only way for individuals to become aware of this is to create situations where they can see each other.

Carol Gorelick: I've been in those. Moments where people who have very rigid perspectives of othering, um, come out of a [00:11:00] conversation usually facilitated and say, um, I really didn't know that this person was just like me. So I think it's one person at a time, but in groups, um, if possible, I. I believe education, the school systems need, need to address this.

Carol Gorelick: And from a societal perspective, it it's obvious that this is one of the major, um, issues beyond climate change, diversity and equality beyond money that is. Deeply in the roots of the US because the statistics say we're going to not be a white majority population in a couple of decades. And it's an issue all over the world 

Michael Lee: in [00:12:00] an ideal world.

Michael Lee: And this issue of, uh, you know, consciousness about color, talks about white privilege. Diversity, equity, inclusion. To what extent that includes viewpoint diversity and to what point, to what extent. We talk about class-based diversity as well. It's obviously become such massive contentious issues, uh, let's say for 10 years.

Michael Lee: But certainly after 2016, one of the Absolutely, one of the big debates in that debate is what are we driving towards? In other words, if we could. Pick an ideal society and work our way backward. What would that ideal look like? You said earlier that you've encountered some rigid perspectives about othering That can hurt our ability to see other people as just like us.

Michael Lee: And then now there are increasing perspectives and criticisms [00:13:00] of language about white privilege. Some of the other kinds of pursuits that can become rigid in and of themselves as well. And so is it in your mind that we want to end up in a world where. Each of us sees another person as just like us. Or do you envision getting to a world where the best possible outcome is us to first recognize difference and then second, recognize common humanity?

Carol Gorelick: I think it's beyond recognize. I think it's accept. Accept that each individual. Is different from every other individual and not be open to dialogue and debate as opposed to coming with our own mental models. The immediate answer to your question that I had was a profound model that Barry [00:14:00] Johnson, who deals in polarities, um, taught me and I think.

Carol Gorelick: It's very, um, central to your question that we tend to live our lives looking at things in polarities as either or. And the goal is that it's both end in the polarity system. And what he says is the ideal world is sufficiency for all abundance for some, and I think that's a socioeconomic. Way of looking at it.

Carol Gorelick: Yeah. But I think it goes way beyond that. I think we want to at least accept the other, the, the commented question about the othering. We have to accept everybody. We don't have to embrace everybody. 

Michael Lee: What does accepting everybody look [00:15:00] like for you? Accepting who they are, accepting their difference, accepting that they have different beliefs, accepting, in other words, if you come across groups of people who, whose, whose very worldview denies your ability to exist in a world, how do you accept them?

Carol Gorelick: I accept that they have their worldview and can walk away, but I don't. It's a, it's a, a provocative question. Um, everybody isn't going to be in happy coexistence. That's unrealistic, but I'm not gonna do anything to harm them. 

Michael Lee: In terms of the polarities talk that you were talking about, what I'm fascinated by is I asked the questions, which is kind of a forced choice, is the precondition of what?

Michael Lee: A just cosmopolitan, multiethnic. Diversity based society is [00:16:00] the premise of that ideal society that human beings are just like one another. And we come up with all sorts of incredible ways to tribalized and pretend I'm different and I'm better. And many of the things that we do in order to tribalized are actually fictions and they're fictions that feel good to us.

Michael Lee: But there are narratives and fantasies that we hold. True. Like I live in a gated community and you don't, or I drive this kind of car. You don't. Or my, my kids are in middle school. And, and the numbers of things that you can create, these kinds of invisible striations and hierarchies in middle school seems to be relatively true amongst adults as well, frankly.

Carol Gorelick: Absolutely. 

Michael Lee: And then, and then secondarily, or do we start with the fact, the brutal fact of inevitable. Division across people, across races, across genders, across all categories of difference, and then start to work at a sense of commonality from the point of view of of division. You opted for the latter, and so I wanna [00:17:00] Absolutely.

Michael Lee: I wanna come at that for a second. Are you concerned then that it, the first part of that, which is the recognition of hard and fast and forever unbridgeable differences, negates the possibility of the second one. 

Carol Gorelick: Yes, uh, I'm very worried about that. And, 

Michael Lee: and what do we do in, as we pursue your, just your ideal of justice to make sure that the, a subpoint doesn't destroy the possibility of the B subpoint, which is coming together 

Carol Gorelick: may maybe very simplistically one person at a time.

Carol Gorelick: Um, I don't think there's a magic answer, but that's my hope is that it becomes natural for our children and our grandchildren, and so we don't have to. Teach it. Um. It's, it's a big hope. 

Michael Lee: Carol Gorelick, thank you so much for being on When We Disagree. 

Carol Gorelick: Thank you. It's an stimulating [00:18:00] conversation 

Michael Lee: when We Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee.

Michael Lee: I. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse k and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at When We disagree@gmail.com.