by Ali Wright (MSGA ’20)
On this episode of Connecting the Dots, the NYU Center for Global Affairs sits down with Pulitzer Prize Winner, Nicholas Kristof, to discuss his new book Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope. Our conversation covered issues of economic inequality and social injustices in modern America, as well as the empathy gap affecting its citizens. We also dive into Kristof’s professional journey, from a keen young journalist to an esteemed author and renowned advocate for social justice.
America’s Empathy Deficit
Award winning journalists (an undeniable power couple), Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, have dedicated their professional lives to writing about neglected human tragedies. In their previous work, the husband and wife team have focused on addressing disparities in socioeconomic development abroad. From brothels in Cambodia to fistula hospitals in Ethiopia, the duo provides a platform for voiceless citizens, particularly women and girls. In their most recent book however, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, the authors narrow in on injustices at home in the United States.
Set in Kristof’s rural hometown of Yamhill, Oregon, Tightrope offers a disarmingly honest perspective on issues of poverty, substance abuse and premature death in modern America. And while devastation in the developing world is admittedly different than in Yamhill, Oregon, it is devastation nonetheless.
One of the most powerful images in Tightrope is of the Number 6, the school bus that Kristof rode as a child with his classmates each day. Close to 25% of passengers on the Number 6 (who would today fall likely between the ages of 50-65) are no longer alive. Compared to the national life expectancy of 79 years of age, it is clear that Yamhill is well below the average.
But the demons that haunt passengers of the Number 6 bus – alcoholism, narcotic use and homelessness – are not unique to rural Oregon. On the contrary, the town is emblematic of a wider problem facing Americans. Kristof and WuDunn’s research demonstrate that life expectancy in the United States is on the precipitous decline. The national life expectancy has fallen for the past three consecutive years, a pattern that has not been observed in the country for the past century. A contributing factor to this drop is what Kristof and WuDunn call ‘deaths of despair’ – lives lost as a result of disadvantage, bad choices and outstanding systemic failures.
In the past decade, the pressures of globalization have catalyzed a rise in populism in the United States. Heightened feelings of nationalism are particularly salient amongst rural, poor communities, which have been left behind by the fast paced phenomenon. While many have become rich through globalized economic forces, many others have been left out of work and out luck.
The erosion and disenfranchisement of the American working class has been an instrument for demagogue leaders to use nationalist, anti-global, rhetoric. But while appeal to the forgotten American may have been what got President Donald Trump elected in 2016, little has been done to actually fix the problem.
In the American political boxing ring, issues of accountability for social injustices are heavy hitting. On the right, conservatives tend to take punches at the individual. Conservatives assert that when it comes to life choices, individuals should have the rational agency to make their own decisions. On the left, liberals take their shots at the system. They emphasize that an individual’s ability to make choices is heavily affected by the social system that they are born into.
Kristof and WuDunn reconcile these two perspectives by claiming that personal accountability must be contextualized based on the individual’s environment. The authors demonstrate that individuals cannot be absolved from the burden of making choices in life. However, if you can predict the exact bad choices that an infant will make based on their postal code along, there are undoubtedly systemic failures at play. Kristof and WuDunn demonstrate the need to examine not only the “complexity of self-destructive behaviors” within the US, but also the conditions by which those complexities are enabled.
Outside of the boxing ring, there appears to be a larger problem at play in America. Diverging experiences to globalization within the country has created not only economic divisions, but psychological ones as well: between Americans who understand what its like to live with nothing and those who do not. Kristof and WuDunn propose that there is an “empathy gap” in America, which has allowed wealthy citizens to insulate themselves from the suffering of their poorer neighbors.
Their point is exemplified through the fact that the poorest 20% of Americans provide a higher percentage of their income to charity than the richest 20%. This is not to say that wealthy Americans are inherently evil or greedy people, but rather to demonstrate that firsthand exposure to poverty cultivates a deeper understanding of human suffering. In this sense, Tightrope is not only an exposé, but also a call to action. It is a plea to Americans to remove their tinted glasses to see the complete picture of their country. And once they have seen it, they will have no choice but to care.