The most important problem facing Americans today is the pervasive ideology of white settler colonialism. By this I mean that we live with a way of thinking brought over to America that goes back as far as the English Reformation in the 16th century — the belief that God has ordained a select group of white people to claim land — regardless of who might already have been on it — as a God-given right.
Photo credit: Courtesy Chandler School of Theology at Emory
By Elizabeth CorrieWednesday August 29, 2018 08:53 AM EDT
Elizabeth Corrie is associate professor in the Practice of Youth Education and Peace Building; director of the Religious Education Program; and director of the Youth Theological Initiative at Candler School of Theology, Emory University.
Elizabeth Corrie: The most important problem facing Americans today is the pervasive ideology of white settler colonialism. By this I mean that we live with a way of thinking brought over to America that goes back as far as the English Reformation in the 16th century — the belief that God has ordained a select group of white people to claim land — regardless of who might already have been on it — as a God-given right. It started with a particular strain of Christianity that reinterpreted the Bible to mean that white people are the “chosen ones” and the New World is the “promised land.” It is an ideology that justifies taking land and resources from non-whites, and using Africans for slave labor. This sounds abstract and long past, but if you consider the current crisis in housing in Atlanta, including the patterns of gentrification, the historical waves of white neighborhoods springing up to displace black ones, you can see its influence even today. Our problem nationally, and locally, is race, but not just race — the displacement of peoples as a result of taking land from communities of color.
Elizabeth Corrie: From a policy perspective, Atlanta needs a coordinated, strategic plan for affordable housing in the region that takes seriously the dynamics of race and the impact of our ever-increasing wealth gap. Atlanta will soon become unlivable for anyone other than the wealthiest among us. Nationally, we need to establish policies that address wealth inequality. From a community perspective, we need to find ways to break out of our echo chambers and engage people across race, class, and geographic lines. This is more than learning to “tolerate” the other — although even that, today, is a low bar we seem unable to reach — but rather this should be engagement that allows you to be changed. I know I live in a particular bubble and can live quite comfortably surrounding myself with people who think just like I do. That insularity distorts my understanding not only of others, but of myself. We have got to deliberately place ourselves in conversations with people who think differently from us.
Elizabeth Corrie: I am a firm believer in nonviolent strategies for change and believe they can be effective. However, such strategies have to be truly challenging to the power structures we want to change. I think there is a place for big rallies and marches — it helps to find allies and be reminded that you are not isolated — but our current system has made room for symbolic protests and co-opted their power to make real change. It is not for everyone, but some people will need to take greater risks, including arrests and injury to themselves, in order to force those in power to change and to dramatize to the rest of the world how serious the problems of race, violence, and theft of resources are. I also believe that multiple strategies need to be operating at the same time. While some folks are taking resistance to the next level, others need to be consistently applying pressure through the electoral process, staying in contact with their representatives and working to vote out people who are not responsive, or even running for office themselves. Still others can be working on the person-to-person or community-to-community level. When it comes to dismantling racism and fighting gentrification, it is going to take people making change on the structural level while others are working to change individual hearts and minds, so that there are more and more people ready to support those structural changes. To me, that is what grassroots activism is — action for change bubbling up in all sorts of places through all sorts of people in different ways at the same time.
Elizabeth Corrie: Because at this point most of us have such heavily pruned social networks of people who already agree with us, I think social media is best used for education and information to help people know what to do and where to go. I think it can be a great tool for preparing for action, but at the end of the day, we have to get offline and place our bodies into public spaces to make change.
Elizabeth Corrie: If you are white, explore Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ-Atlanta) or another organization that seeks to address whiteness and trains white folks for engaging in activism. It is very important to spend time working on understanding how you as a white person can most effectively engage race without creating further harm. A lot of well-meaning white folks show up to actions or to organizations working for change and try to “help” by essentially taking over, or by making the group a place to work through their guilt or anger. We as white folks can’t effectively say no to hate until we are able to see all the little ways we contribute to that hate, sometimes without realizing it.
For all of us, do whatever you can to ensure that young people and people of color are fully enfranchised as voters. We must do everything we can to make sure that their rights as citizens are not denied. While our problems as a country are much deeper and more pervasive than who is running our federal government, there is no denying that leadership at the top is encouraging hate. We must elect leaders who are working to appeal to our better angels, and giving us a vision of a country that looks towards a future of greater inclusion and equity, rather than one that clings to a mythical past rooted in fear and hate.
One of the most important problems facing Americans today is our loss of focus on living together as one nation. Because we are more divided in many ways, we are losing ground in the global landscape and will not be able to compete on a global scale if we don’t figure out how to work in accordance with one another.
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There are so many problems we’re facing, it’s overwhelming: systemic racism, sexism, ageism, inequity, homelessness, marginalization, immigration policy, school shootings/gun violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, climate change … this is an incomplete list, and I feel sick to my stomach thinking about it. Much of it stems from hatred and fear of “the other.” It feels like we’ve lost a basic sense of human decency.
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I want very badly to name the issues of poverty, wealth inequality, and class oppression, but all of these are intertwined with, and compounded by, the problem of race, difference, and grappling honestly with America’s history and identity. I have a metaphor for this process, it is a cracked egg with the yoke running long.
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Healthcare is a human right. That means ensuring that every person doesn’t just have access to health care, but has the ability to afford health care.
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Apathy towards injustice is toxic. We have become so entangled in conversational clouds on social media that we honestly feel that ‘shares’ and ‘likes’ are making a direct impact. This helps to a certain degree, but it does not solve the problems plaguing our nation today.
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The biggest problem facing Americans today is the stark difference between where we have made progress in this country under the Obama Administration and where the Trump Administration is going. With regards to the Trump Administration right now on immigration and voting rights, we believe they are moving in a direction against the values of most Americans.
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I believe that racial discord remains the most divisive issue facing Americans. It continues to suppress wages for all and promotes anger that leads to violence within the oppressed communities. Remove racist symbolism and implement long-term remedies to counter the long-term legacies of discrimination.
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Of all the global issues facing us, including biggies like climate change and nuclear war, what troubles me currently is the rise of fascism in governments around the world. This is what also troubles me about America. People are emboldened to openly discriminate and hate because our elected officials represent values of hate.
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The most important problem facing Americans today is partisan politics that removes empathy from the conversation toward compromise on the real issues that are affecting everyday Americans. Everything is viewed through the lens of tribal political division, when the solutions to most problems facing the nation can be solved through bipartisan collaboration.
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There are so many things that need to be fixed but somehow we need to stop the OTHER mentality. Trying to embrace difference — and understanding that our differences are what make us stronger — will lead to a better unity within our populations. We spend so much time hating and singling out those that are different. If we used that energy to come together we could make a better life for all of us.
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Atlanta and America have never participated in reparations for its genocide, land theft, and displacement of indigenous peoples, its kidnapping and enslavement of African peoples, or its destabilization, colonization and assassinations in other nations. So, in 2018, what we are still faced with is the displacement, incarceration, and murder of black and brown people in this city, this country, and this globe.
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The most important problem facing all of us is our increasing inability to work with and get along with those who don’t share our views. I know it’s a cliché, but “United we stand, divided we fall.”
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The most serious issue for all Americans is the very real risk of our democracy being taken away, which is happening on a daily basis. There are so many issues: racism, human rights, climate change denial, guns, income equality, lack of a universal heathcare system, police brutality, tearing refugee families apart and putting them in interment camps, our status in the world and how we interact with other nations, and a government party in charge that refuses to act in the best interest of the American people.
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The greatest problem facing USA citizens today, is how to become a global citizen without having an imperialist or colonial mentality. The greatest problem facing Atlanta today is how to move from the white and black mentality to become a multicultural city in action and not in words only.
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Greed. The only consistent measure of success is wealth. If you’re so good, so smart, so talented, why aren’t you rich? Why should anybody listen to you? You’re accomplished, but if you’re poor, you haven’t “succeeded.” Rich, therefore smart. Rich, therefore good. There’s a paucity of everything, so you’d better have dough. If you’re needy, it’s because that’s what you deserve. Loss of wealth is loss of power, loss of status.
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The most important problem is the denial of the problem. Most white people have been lulled into the myth of a “post-racial” America. Research on implicit bias and the persistence of numerous forms of institutional racism, including in the criminal justice system, demonstrate the reality of racism in 2018. A much greater threat than hate crimes and organized white supremacists is our inability to address core issues like white privilege and internalized white supremacy. We cannot progress until we have that honest reckoning. Atlanta paints itself as the city “too busy to hate,” but it’s been too busy to do the real work to begin to heal the very old wounds of its racist history.
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The most important problem facing Americans today is the pervasive ideology of white settler colonialism. By this I mean that we live with a way of thinking brought over to America that goes back as far as the English Reformation in the 16th century — the belief that God has ordained a select group of white people to claim land — regardless of who might already have been on it — as a God-given right.
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“The most important problem facing Americans today” is that we have so many problems that rotate in and out of first place that we cannot choose and therefore cannot answer the question. The second part of the question is easier (for me). Atlanta’s most important problem is a subset of a national problem.
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A decline in trust. We’re losing opportunities to get to know each other. We spend all kinds of time and money creating our own private, secluded spaces, both in the physical world and online, where we don’t have to encounter people who look or think differently than we do.
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The most urgent problem facing not just Atlanta, but all of humanity, is the fact the U.S. is now ruled by a fascist regime (Trump/Pence) set on reshaping society in a way that will be catastrophic for humanity and the planet.
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One of the most important problems facing America is the widening income inequality/economic mobility gap. For many, the “American Dream” is just that, a dream they will never realize. Many of the social and political challenges we are dealing with today stem from this problem.
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The list is long and it’s all really important. But most of the things on that list have a root cause, and I think it’s greed. People’s desire for power and wealth outweighs their humanity and their ability to see humanity in others.
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