Building community feels harder to accomplish these days. It’s more than just listening to one another. It’s the multiple forces vying for people’s ears and eyes and which messages land.
The United States reached an apex during the 2020 uprisings because ideas of eliminating institutional harm toward a shared humanity replaced the status quo. Now, and in retaliation, we’re inundated with anti-heroes not only repeating nonsense about people they despise but parading unapologetic dispositions in the worst ways.
The repetition is working well for too many of our neighbors. Educators at the school level have tried to sound the alarms, but those calls have fallen on ignorant ears.
We can discuss the role of social media, but the videos and memes fill holes in logic that society hasn’t filled. Our students watch videos that engage them in ways that the rest of us don’t. International reporters and testimonials explain ongoing inhumanity here and abroad to some.
Evangelists also explain alpha and beta men and the connections between Christ and the incoming president. Conspiracy theories of varying degrees abound. Students turn to their phones because their in-person community isn’t pouring back into them.
We watch adults struggle with facts and beliefs even more so. Some pundits have repeated lies that teachers specialize in gender-affirming care, the latest attack on public education. Behind the scenes, some powerful people have sought to concretize this caste system. Few have sought to stop the calamity.
So many variables contribute to the isolation and polarization conversation. But it isn’t just people isolating and polarizing themselves. It’s people in power doing the isolating and polarizing.
But as an educator, I believe providing spaces for people to feel whole creates permission to feel like they belong. Right now, we’re getting signals that belonging to a larger, empathetic community doesn’t matter. People are writing inclusive histories further out of our textbooks.
People are passing laws to further marginalize folks based on who they love, how they were born, and what part of their being they’d like to control. We’re already seeing large corporations, philanthropists and politicians scale back some of the commitments they made only four years ago toward a shared humanity.
But I’m a believer that giving in to the whims of people trying to shove already marginalized people doesn’t help us get any closer to a loving community. This is a good time to look around to build and aspire to a community outside of our comforts.
Forcing folks to silence crucial parts of themselves keeps us further away as well. There’s a difference between community and audience, too. An audience is one-directional, and there’s room for that. But we need community to help more of us step up to the moment.
Luckily, I have a few communities I’m a part of that consistently step up and out (including one I helped build 10 years ago when I had none like it). I, and so many others, are working towards a world where our different gifts can come together in authentic unison. We get to be both ourselves and together with others in our expressions.
As human beings, all of us crave that level of community, but we can’t get it if we don’t even recognize the same notes. Let’s get to work.
José Luis Vilson is a veteran educator, writer, speaker, and activist in New York City. He is the author of “This Is Not A Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education.” He’s a National Board Certified Teacher, a Math for America Master Teacher, and the executive director of EduColor, an organization dedicated to race and social justice issues in education.