After the Shootings and the Riots: Now What?

Sep
4
2020
by
Lynne McTaggart
/
5
Comments

I watch with despair at what’s going on in America right now: the riots, the police shootings, which instigate more riots and more shootings, and so it goes in a terrible spiral. And the shooting of Jake Baker hit closer to home, as he is a good friend of the son of a dear friend of mine.

How to break this stalemate and yet move the situation forward? Perhaps we can take a suggestion from the work of Gordon Allport. A towering figure in psychology — one of the founders of personality psychology, Allport believed that managed contact between members of different groups is the best means of reducing prejudice. His theories influenced the Supreme Court in its landmark decision ending school desegregation (Brown vs the Board of Education).
Allport specified four specific conditions for ensuring that contact between different groups works: equal group status in the situation; intergroup cooperation; the support of authority figures; and finally, and most important, a common, overarching goal.
Psychologists call this a superordinate goal – a goal only achieved by large cooperative teamwork of two or more people. Engaging in sharing and teamwork tends to transcend differences, because it emphasizes the very heart of humanity — we are all in this together. And if we are all in this together, we are no longer competing for scarce resources.
Although criticized in some quarters as resting on the underlying assumption that all people are fundamentally similar, the contact hypothesis has been tested in a variety of settings, and found to be a powerful tool to lessen discrimination against many groups, from Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland to homosexuals at universities.
Sports teams, management teams, schools with new members, and even prisons make use of this idea of working toward superordinate goals to alleviate rivalry and encourage a team spirit.
In 2006, a review of 525 studies of the contact hypothesis in action confirmed that contact between different groups of any variety successfully reduces intergroup prejudice and increases cooperation, particularly when Allport’s four conditions are met.
Don Beck used the lessons of Robbers Cave to create superordinate goals as a means of ending political conflict. It was Beck who first came up with the idea of using South Africa’s entry into the World Cup rugby play-offs in 1995, depicted in the film Invictus, as a means of creating nation-building euphoria, in order to unify a country emerging from apartheid.
Beck had a special fascination with the psychology of premier-league games, and through his experiences working with the Dallas Cowboys and the New Orleans Saints, he had developed a belief in the power of sports as a peacemaker.
This was a bold idea, given that the Springboks, the South African rugby team, were the very symbol of apartheid. Rugby was considered a white man’s sport.
Virtually all players were Afrikaners, the white pro-apartheid minority; rugby coaches even shouted out plays in Afrikaans. English-speaking or black players seldom made the team, and consequently, the black population in South Africa actively boycotted the sport.
In 1995, Beck presented Kitch Christie, the Springboks coach, with a paper entitled Six Games to Glory, which detailed a series of psychological strategies that would help transform the team from underdog to world-class contender in the games leading up to the World Cup.
Besides the strategies for winning the game, Beck’s paper included ways that the Springboks could stand as a focal point of pride for the fledgling country and connect the township blacks with the Afrikaners.
Beck’s document offers many strategies that can be used to create superordinate goals in other areas. He suggested that the Springboks adopt a collaborative or common identity — the green and gold colors of the team shirts, and a sports crowd song, with a Zulu drum to lead the team and arouse the crowd.
He advised Christie to have the team sit together and watch films such as Hoosier and Chariots of Fire to help establish the sense of a “mystical brotherhood” – the sense that the team stands together as one family, with a blood bond greater than their loyalty to themselves, and a cause to fight for.
Beck arranged for the team to visit Mandela’s tiny prison cell at Robben Island, in order to emphasize their larger role in their country’s destiny. Above all, his exercises were to help develop a sense that each member of the team faced a life-defining moment requiring that they pull together as one.
As the games progressed, Beck’s superordinate goal began to infect the country; young blacks from the township tore down anti-rugby signs and hung photos of their Springbok heroes.
During the World Cup, which the Springboks went on to win, Mandela was persuaded to appear in a Springbok green and gold shirt —  the colors that had always symbolized his oppressors — as a tangible sign of unity and forgiveness.
To Beck, creating a superordinate goal is one of the best ways to achieve peace in areas of political conflict. In his work, Beck often meets with both sides in an area of conflict and shows them a positive vision of future possibility, but one that requires that both sides work together and use their common geography and resources to create a solution for all who live there.
Beck likes to talk in sports metaphors. “You focus on relentless pragmatism,” he says in a heavy Texas drawl, “the progress that can be made to move the game forward.”
It’s time for us to move this game forward. America desperately needs its own superordinate goal to end what is its own shameful apartheid.

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Lynne McTaggart

Lynne McTaggart is an award-winning journalist and the author of seven books, including the worldwide international bestsellers The Power of Eight, The Field, The Intention Experiment and The Bond, all considered seminal books of the New Science and now translated into some 30 languages.

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5 comments on “After the Shootings and the Riots: Now What?”

  1. Congratulations on a thoughtful piece of writing that could have a powerful impact on all manner of situations, from personal through to international.

  2. With every problem there is a solution. Focus on a solution & not the problem & the solution will present. This idea is ethical, logical & with loving guidance America & the world will come to peace, love of self, kindness & joy. Keeping people away from intangible fear is key.

  3. As an Australian, watching Invictus was fraught with conflict for me - I wanted both sides to win! Maybe that proves your point.
    Also, I remember reading a comment from Mahatma Gandhi along the lines of encouraging Hindus to adopt Muslim orphans and to raise them as Muslims. Can see the cross religious/cultural benefits arising from that.

  4. I found these resources very helpful to deal with the terrible divide we are in and bringing understanding about differences of ideas.
    1-Beyond tribalism : how mindfulness can save the world. Tricycle online courses by Robert Wright .
    2-Non violent communication, a language of life by marshal B Rosenberg.

  5. Hi Lynne - While I agree that this is powerful and can affect change, without systemic change we won't really get the change we want/need (and without acknowledging our US history of slave and Native American genocide). Robert Gass, who founded Rockwood Leadership Institute, created the Wheel of Change, which states that to have real change in organizations, people, communities, etc. you need to change hearts/minds; behaviors; and systems and structures. For example, in Brown V Board of Education, after that ruling, the effect was that thousands of teachers of color lost their jobs because the integration chose white teachers. There should have been some other system to help with that transition and not displace those teachers of color (which then affected them economically). And those white teachers who were now teaching Black and Brown children still had their biases, etc. which affected those children (needing change of hearts and minds). Thank you for listening.

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