Between Hope and a Hard Place
Many Europeans have difficulties wrapping their heads around the American tension between lived experience and aspiration. A year in the US has changed how I think about race, ideology, and authenticity.
One of the most common pieces of advice during my first year in the United States has been to avoid discussing politics and religion in social situations. I have failed big time. It has been close to impossible to avoid an ideological conversation when people ask you what you do for work. I work on the future of public services.
I moved to Baltimore in January 2022 for a two-year university fellowship. I have met extraordinary people making a difference in Anaheim, Boston, Charlotte, Detroit, Durham, Kansas City, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Memphis, Mobile, New York City, Ojai, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. On my research visits and in private gatherings, I have witnessed committed and hardworking people in urban contexts infested with centuries of structural injustice and places without a single worry in the world.
“A distinctive American innovation is to insist on believing even as our fantasies and dreams drift further out of reach.” — Shadi Hamid (2021): America Without God. The Atlantic April 2021 Issue.
The best way to describe the ethos I have experienced in research interviews, dinner parties, branch libraries, or on the backseat of an Uber, is an insistence to carve one’s own path and liberate oneself from conventions. The spirit coined already in the Declaration of Independence is an active promise of opportunity, not a promise of delivery: life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
Many Europeans have difficulty wrapping their heads around the tension between the lived experience of many and the American aspiration. But As Carlos Lozada wrote in The New York Times on 8 January 2023, the tension between myth and reality does not undermine America — it defines it. This year has demonstrated that the American dream is alive and kicking in US cities. The pursuit is what keeps many people going — and coming here. According to Shadi Hamid, this is exactly why Catholic philosopher Michael Novak describes America as “almost a religion”.
The idea of America I’ve witnessed in cities is about aspiration and movement.
My convention-breaking, often exciting and at times tense exchanges on what The Government is, should — or should not — be doing have forced me to re-evaluate how I think about race, value differences, and what it means to be authentic.
On Race
First, the year has taught me more about race than the 44 years before it — and I am still a novice. I have started to understand how race is ingrained in all areas of the American experiment. I have come to understand that to be a professional researcher or a public servant in American cities, you need to keep educating yourself on how the systems have historically been set up so that black, brown, and Native American people have not been able to build intergenerational wealth or receive justice — and how that legacy plays out in today’s society. Talking about effort, opportunity — or that American ideal of the pursuit of happiness — without recognizing the centuries of structural injustice is a sign of ignorance.
There has not been a single day where race has not played out — or I have not benefited from being white. Race plays a role in everything from finding housing, quality, and access to public spaces, asking for help from neighbors, customer service, safety on the street, or what is considered work-appropriate attire, too much noise, or aggressiveness.
It is in no way an exaggeration that every single policy decision from high-level urban planning to putting together a panel discussion either upholds and grows inequalities or reduces them. It does not mean that every issue is only about race but ignoring race as a factor would be a sign of incompetence.
This year has made me convinced that racial equity should be addressed in the workplace as a question of professional behavior. This is what I am seeing in front-running and successful US organizations. If racial equity is framed as a question of personal values or preference, it undermines the fact that an employer has both the right and responsibility to set standards for workplace culture, talent development, performance evaluation, customer engagement, or product development. When racial equity is formalized through legislation and organizational decisions as a feature of professional behavior, the employer has an obligation to ensure that the issue is discussed, understood, resourced, managed, and measured.
Value Differences
Second, I have come to realize how the Europeans hold a bias that every sensible person in the United States thinks like “us”. If we conclude that all good people think like us, the logical conclusion is that the rest are either ignorant or evil.
I am proudly a product of a Nordic welfare state, an institutionalist, a bureaucrat from a big government country, and an advocate for fair and functioning institutions. I believe that only institutions can create the freedom from worry on a grand scale, the freedom to spend our brain capacity and time on issues that create value in our lives. But I am starting to recognize the prejudices that I carry as a highly educated, liberal person and how those play out in engagements with people.
Just before moving, I had a conversation with a Finnish friend who has done a successful career in an American corporation. He said that it took him a lot of time and humility to shake off the idea that underneath it all we all have the same values, not just the mechanisms to live out our values. That we might have different values.
I understand now what he was talking about. There have been numerous situations where I found myself assuming that when people are fun and interesting, their ideology must align with mine. I have met kind, hardworking, engaging, and well-informed Americans whose life and politics are driven to different ideological paths by family, faith, and entrepreneurship. I have met innovative and resilient entrepreneurs who are skeptical about the government’s influence on their businesses.
I have come to think that a lot of Europeans might get one thing wrong about the United States. The insistence on freedom is not (always) an individualistic position. For many, it is a family-oriented position. It is kindness on my terms, taking care of my kin, and choosing my community. It is giving the shirt off my back to people next to me while feeling skeptical about the IRS. Often it comes with personal or family background of injustice and oppression, either in the US or in a country of origin.
I have intentionally tried to focus on, using the terminology of Anne-Marie Slaughter, calling people in rather than calling them out. According to Les Back and Shamser Sinha, a central skill in a diverse society is developing “an aversion to the pleasures of hating”. Calling people in is not turning a blind eye, sitting still, or ignoring abuse or brutality. It is not hiding my values or family. A more effective and ethical strategy is behaving according to your own values, respecting others, creating room for corrective behavior and apology, and expecting kindness from strangers. Using a notion from Brené Brown, humiliation seldom works as a tool for social justice. You are not going to change someone’s mind in a public setting where they are the outlier, but you might get an understanding of your views — and learn from them — in a private discussion.
Authenticity
This brings me to my third and last realization of what it means to be authentic. I have written a diary from every day in the US. In my remarks, I find myself expressing frustration over “the performative elements” of American professional and urban life. A constant need to step up your game, show interest, chit-chat, and bring good vibes. Coming from the Finnish culture that emphasizes authenticity, this has been overwhelming even for a person considered too chatty in the Finnish culture. I’ve frequently felt too melancholic, serious, quiet, critical, or moody.
This personal experience of struggling to fit in has informed my professional focus. I am curious about the capability to get along — conviviality — as an active state and a question of skill in the complexity and super-diversity of today’s cities. While most of us would agree on its importance, it is important to emphasize that conviviality can be scary, frustrating, and difficult. It is a never-ending learning path.
That is why we need the support of our institutions. I will spend the second year of my fellowship on understanding how institutions can enable conviviality — peaceful rubbing together. I am hoping to turn Professor Pablo Páramo’s notion of responsible urban behavior, defined as “a set of rules present in public space that incentivizes respect, and are conducive to positive outcomes for all participants”, into design principles, staff training, and institutional practices for public organizations. My hypothesis is that public spaces like libraries and parks are optimal places for learning how to “rub along”.
On a personal note, I am starting to comprehend that being authentic is not “this is who I am, take it or leave it”. The need to calibrate our behavior to difference while holding onto our own values — conviviality skills — is the price we pay for the many benefits of diversity.
I am starting to understand that taking the room's pulse through small talk and saying hello to people in an elevator is not a striving for consensus or friendship. It is a tactical response for moving further, getting things done, making others feel comfortable, and avoiding conflict in a complex, unjust and messy reality.
