'Black and White Thinking': A Dangerous American Habit
Letter from America - January 2024
French society is more polarized than ever, declared Bruno Jeanbart, vice-president of the polling institute OpinionWay, in Le Parisien at the beginning of January.
The same can be said on this side of the Atlantic.
Issues have become increasingly contentious, both politically and ideologically: concerns about the legitimacy of the 2020 elections; immigration; the ecological transition; gun regulation; purchasing power; or even the wearing of masks and vaccinations during the COVID-19 pandemic—resulting, in this case, in the avoidable death of hundreds of thousands of people.
When faced with unprecedented levels of uncertainty about our present and future, we tend to divide the world into two opposing categories: good and evil, virtue and vice, truth and falsehood, fact and conspiracy.
This phenomenon of "black-and-white thinking" has become increasingly prevalent in the U.S. since the rise of social media as a primary vehicle of information. Polarization has spread across many areas, from politics to culture, religion, and science. People form ideological tribes, reinforcing each other’s beliefs and rejecting those who disagree. Families no longer gather for Thanksgiving or Christmas celebrations because dialogue has become impossible, complexity intolerable, and ambivalence perceived as weakness.
While this binary worldview simplifies reality—giving Americans a sense of belonging and superiority—recognizing the complexity and nuance that characterize most human issues opens the door to dialogue, learning, and change, rather than trapping us in certainties that isolate us from other perspectives.
When politicians and activists divide society and listen only to the extremes, they lose—and in turn make us lose touch with reality. For years in the United States, before the repeal of Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed women the right to control their bodies since 1973, many Republicans did not identify as staunch opponents of abortion. In 2021, about a third of them stated that abortion should be legal if a woman wanted it, for any reason. But since then, eager to win over the ultraconservative electorate, they have changed their stance.
On another crucial issue—gun regulation—many politicians, eager for the vast sums of money injected by the powerful NRA into election campaigns, simply offer prayers each time a mass shooting occurs. In 2023 alone, more than six hundred such shootings took place in the U.S.
"Divide and Conquer" has reached its peak; those who believe that belonging to a camp and refusing to listen to the other side is the best way to secure their freedom or protect their ideal society are instead facilitating the erosion of democracies. They are paving the way for autocrats and dictators who promise them a better life—something history repeatedly proves to be an illusion.
But polarization is not inevitable. Journalists, in particular, have a role to play in helping us realize this by interviewing people who are not entrenched in their certainties, who do not fit neatly into a single camp, and who have managed to change their minds. Doubt is a virtue because multiple truths can coexist, because we do not fit into neatly defined categories—despite constant efforts to classify us.
Learning to think with more nuance, recognizing that there are often more than two possible perspectives, that situations change with time and context, and seeking to understand different viewpoints without judging or dismissing them outright, allows us to develop tolerance, curiosity, and empathy—essential qualities for living freely in this complex and diverse world.