After my last newsletter on racial bias in the medical world and the action steps my organization and I are taking as part of a concrete anti-racism agenda, I received quite a few emails from readers that really inspired thought.
It was interesting to me to see the amount of pushback I received regarding what I thought was actually the least important part of the agenda - my decision to give money to Campaign Zero.
The critiques that I received came from people who had done a lot of reading on these issues who ultimately didn’t agree that the 8 Can’t Wait initiative was the right place to be focusing financial support or attention on.
I’m not writing this to delve into the most effective way to advocate or organize against police violence, and I’m starting from the assumption that I believe this is an important issue to address.
This isn’t going to be a debate the merits and drawbacks of Defund the Police, 8 to Abolition, 8 Can’t Wait, or any other organizations organizing for racial justice.
I wanted to delve into how I made the decision and how an individual might approach thinking about these complicated policy challenges, because this type of a decision tree is applicable to many other aspects of our lives.
Why I chose that organization
As I mentioned, I’m not an expert on police violence or solutions to tackle racial injustice. But I recognize that these are vitally important problems in our society that we need to fix.
I also have no plans to take a break from my career to work as a full time activist, but one of the ways that I can support activism I agree with in principle is by giving money.
I found Campaign Zero because I’m familiar with DeRay Mckesson. He hosts a podcast on Crooked Media and has been working on issues of police brutality for years.
My decision to donate to his campaign came after hearing him on the Bill Simmons Podcast recently, where I thought his values were sound, his approach was thoughtful, and his team had developed some experience through years of thinking about these issues and organizing to change them.
I also assumed that he was vetted by public figures whom I’ve followed and whose opinions and values I’ve come to trust, like Jon Lovett and Bill Simmons.
So I figured, alignment of values + experience on these issues + vetting by trusted sources = reasonable place to give money.
But there are real criticisms surrounding his activism as well as criticisms surrounding the effectiveness of 8 Can’t Wait that I wasn’t aware of. I didn’t even look into them. Essentially, I did basically no personal research on the most effective policies. I outsourced my vetting to others.
Was outsourcing on this just a sign of my intellectual laziness?
Maybe. It’s certainly a reasonable critique.
But I don’t think it’s that simple. Anyone who is an expert on an issue - whether it’s tax policy, coronary artery disease, police violence, you name it - recognizes that longstanding problems are longstanding for a reason.
If a problem was easy to solve in a straightforward way, we would have already solved it and it wouldn’t be a problem anymore.
When I think about how I diagnose and treat very common medical issues, things like hypertension, heart failure, angina, I recognize that my approach has changed quite a bit over the years as my knowledge of these issues has gained depth and nuance.
Patients come to me all the time having done their own research and formed an opinion about the best course of treatment. Generally, their knowledge of the topic at hand is superficial and their proposed solution hasn’t considered many important factors.
This isn’t to say patients who do their research are usually wrong - often they’re right! - but that the decision making process resulting from non-expert research misses things frequently.
Lack of experience means that you don’t know what you don’t know
Public policy has some similarities to medicine. The issues are complicated and there are downstream questions that need to be considered to understand the effects of change.
Every policy change has unintended consequences.
When I’m doing research on a topic for the first time, I suspect it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to have enough of a facility with the problem to even ask the right questions.
I’m pretty sure that having a strong opinion on an issue I haven’t studied in depth isn’t going to be a truly informed opinion. And even if it is “informed,” perhaps it isn’t well enough considered.
Time spent working on a problem often beats time spent thinking about a problem
The last part that I wanted to address is the importance of taking action rather than just doing research.
It is really easy to start researching a topic and quickly fall into analysis paralysis, spending all of my time researching and none of my time acting.
Ultimately, a quick decision to donate money felt like it would be more productive than more time spent researching.
I will generally favor advocacy organizations and activitists who have worked on a particular area for years and have the expertise that comes with that experience.
In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.
So when people who are plugged into the activist community - where folks on the ground have spent years working on and thinking about these issues - critique where I’m giving money, I listen.
I come away from an experience like this humbled and inquisitive. By examining my own process, I’ll change the way I act moving forward.