Confrontational tactics can lead to heated debates between opposing sides of a protest. Jay Childers, assistant professor of communications studies, said that a willingness to accept other viewpoints can lead to better discussion.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
On a balmy September afternoon, Tammy Cooke stood outside Strong Hall, telling passersby about Justice For All, an anti-abortion group for which she is a spokeswoman. Standing beneath an 18-foot wall of graphic images of fetuses, she stressed the organization’s value of an “even-handed exploration of ideas.”
“Our goal here today is to get people to come and talk to us about this issue,” Cooke said. “We are interested in having respectful and constructive dialogue.”
Photo illustration by Chance Dibben
Confrontational tactics can lead to heated debates between opposing sides of a protest. Jay Childers, assistant professor of communications studies, said that a willingness to accept other viewpoints can lead to better discussion.
But not everyone cooperated. Justice For All surrounded the display with “free speech boards,” which were white boards for people to write their reactions. The boards showed a range of reactions to the scene, from “Get the fuck off our campus” to concerns about overpopulation and Pokemon references.
Behind Cooke, a student leaned his elbow against the exhibit’s barricade as if he were a bar patron waiting for a beer. He scoffed at the exhibit and talked about its reflection on modern debate to two girls who had also walked over to the exhibit. It was sad, he explained to them, how no one could just debate issues anymore. Everything has to be a show, he said.
According to Alesha Doan, assistant professor of political science who specializes in reproductive policy, such approaches to this subject are nothing new. Doan said protesters have carried on in this vein for about a decade. This is also as long as Justice For All has been operating on college campuses across the country.
Doan said she was skeptical of the group’s approach.
“What they’re doing is having a heated moral debate,” Doan said. “That’s not engendering any larger debate about reproductive policy or why women would be needing abortions, and why that should or should not be an option in society.”
Jay Childers, assistant professor of communications studies who specializes in political rhetoric, said he thought debates such as these originated long before abortion became an issue.
“The argument that gets made a lot right now is that there is a lot of arguing at one another rather than with one another, which is often tied to the increases in partisanship in the past 20 years,” Childers said. “I don’t know that it’s particularly valid. People have argued poorly ever since they’ve been arguing, especially in politics. After that first moment of the founding fathers, everything else sort of devolves into political propaganda.”
In the 1820s, a representative from Buncombe County, N.C., named Felix Walker attempted to give a speech so inane that “Buncombe,” or “bunk” for short, became synonymous with nonsense.
Today the media catches flak for focusing on the bunk, or the loudest of voices on issues. Childers said he recognized the desire people had for an even-handed exploration of ideas, but said he also saw how successful the media that focused on the largest commotion were. The Fox News program “The O’Reilly Factor,” which often features heated debate, was the most viewed cable television show in 2008, according to mediabistro.com.
“The American people always say that they don’t want to hear any more of this, that they want real people sitting down to argue and debate,” Childers said. “But those shows do so poorly in the ratings. And then you’ve got Olbermann and O’Reilly making millions of dollars. Who’s going to win that fight in a business?”
One response to the problem of overheated debate, as Childers explained, is a movement known as deliberative democracy, a term originally conceived in 1980 by Joseph Bessette. It is an attempt to remove all emotion from debate and to rely entirely on reason and logic. Childers said he wasn’t sold on this tactic either.
“Cognitive scientists have begun showing repeatedly that we think with emotion,” he said. “So to take emotion and passion out of our reasoning brings into question our ability to reason. We need passion.”
The key, Childers said, is to balance the influence of the heart and the mind. He said the ability to listen to another side with understanding was equally important.
“We have to find a way to acknowledge that our beliefs are our beliefs and that we live in a pluralistic society and that we have to be willing to accept others’ arguments,” Childers said.
When groups feel their voices aren’t being heard, they resort to more confrontation strategies, Scott Harris, assistant specialist in communications studies and the coach of the KU debate team, said. Harris said the same kind of strategies were also used by attendees of this summer’s volatile town hall meetings around the nation.
“Generally confrontational strategies are ones that are limited for those situations where there are no other options — where no one else will hear your voice,” Harris said.
The town hall meetings were misuses of confrontational rhetoric, he said.
“Frequently it’s the inability to make an effective argument that makes people resort to shouting and screaming,” Harris said. “Either people can’t express themselves or others won’t listen.”
Patrick Kennedy, Leawood sophomore and member of the debate team, said he saw flaws in Justice For All’s method.
“It’s a little graphic,” Kennedy said. “I don’t think it’s a very effective long-term persuasive strategy. If you’re going to make an argument I think it should be a little less polarizing.”
Tammy Cooke said the posters were not deliberately polarizing. She said the displays were large so that people could see them from far away and so that the fetuses were magnified to a noticeable level.
Once people saw the pictures and came to the display, Cooke said, Justice For All was willing to listen. And all they wanted was the same willingness.
— — Edited by Nick Gerik
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Comments
RTBatKU (anonymous) says...
To Prof. Childers: I found your analysis to be thoughtful and measured. Thank you for the points you raised.
To Prof. Alesha Doan: your skepticism of Justice for All’s approach is unimpressive. Perhaps your points would have some legitimacy if you simply took issue with their tactics – say, with their displaying of large and graphic images of unborn children who’ve been killed.
Instead, you complain that they’re “having a heated moral debate . . . [t]hat’s not engendering any larger debate about reproductive policy or why women would be needing abortions, and why that should or should not be an option in society.” Do you really believe that? It seems to me they’re specifically contributing to the larger debate by raising an enormous factor - the welfare of unborn children – which predictably supports the view that perhaps abortion “should not be an option in society.”
Whereas a debate should incorporate multiple voices, with each voice promoting a unique interest, we shouldn’t denounce one of the voices for not promoting all of the interests. Justice For All shouldn’t have to promote the issues you’re sympathetic with in order to contribute to the “larger debate.”
And finally, when I read of the student who “scoffed at the exhibit,” I was reminded of the dismissive critics of William Wilberforce, the famous British politician and abolitionist. Wilberforce reportedly maneuvered a party-boat containing social elites up to a slave ship docked in a harbor. There, they had to endure the nauseating smell coming from the ship – the smell of human cargo that died before arriving. Wilberforce was certainly trying to contribute to the “larger debate” about slavery. Perhaps a critic then used the exact same words that this flippant student used today; namely that it “was sad . . . how no one could just debate issues anymore. Everything has to be a show . . . .”
September 29, 2009 at 12:21 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
georgekaplan (anonymous) says...
Your slip is showing...
And who is ever impressed by skepticism?
September 29, 2009 at 2:13 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
glenjamin (anonymous) says...
Harsh realities provoke emotional responses. Surprise!
Don't pretend that the debate is soiled by "a show" when in reality you're made uncomfortable by natural pangs of conscience.
September 29, 2009 at 3:15 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )