Group identity might be hiding our flaws

The man was working up a lather, fuming about the “ungodly” people he’d recently had a conflict with. We were at summer Bible camp or some other true-believers-only setting — rather like today’s ideological and political “bubbles” and potentially just as toxic.

The man narrated the back-andforth of the conflict, culminating with the non-believers’ harsh rejection of him and his message. He proclaimed triumphantly that this was what it meant to “suffer for your faith.”

It was the first time I remember assessing someone’s “testimony” and thinking, “Or maybe you were just being a jerk.”

I’m seeing this pattern more often these days, in worlds far from my teenage religious milieu.

We hear lots of discussion about how the hyper-focus on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or other group identification is driving us apart as a society. And it is.

It is also making us worse as individuals. The more we experience our individual identity as bound up with a particular group or cause, the more likely we become to interpret fraught interactions with someone from a differentgroup as evidence of their bias.

But what if it’s evidence, instead, of our own shortcomings or flaws? What if, in any given conflict between people from different groups, someone is just being a normal human jerk? Or both parties are?

Consider the zealous fellow from my youth. When he talked to non-believers about Jesus, he interpreted their negative reaction as proof of his righteousness. What if he’d created the problem through bad timing or emotional insensitivity?

If he’d considered the possibility that their pushback was reasonable, he might have spent productive time working on his communication skills or empathy. Instead he condemned them, while preening.

This isn’t “shooting the messenger” for bringing bad news, but it’s close. It’s rejecting the message because the messenger is a different religion or race or gender or whatever. When we do this, we miss potentially important, even life-changing, information that we might really need to hear.

At this moment in history, it seems that any fraught exchange is immediately assumed to be due to bias.

In a Substack article titled “What Happens When Doctors Can’t Tell the Truth?,” journalist Katie Herzog tells of anguished medical professionals from around the country who meet each month via Zoom to discuss the “deeply illiberal ideology” that is poisoningtheir workplaces.

They are “largely politically progressive[s]” devoted to correcting racial inequities that have historically corrupted the practice of medicine, but they are themselves now stymied by racial politics.

Some say they’ve been “reported to their departments for criticizing residents for being late.” They’ve “stopped giving trainees honest feedback for fear of retaliation.” They’ve seen residents “refuse to treat patients based on their race or their perceived conservative politics.”

But what if young professionals need to be taught punctuality and respect for the value of other people’s time?

What if they need constructive criticism?

What if they should treat all patients, regardless of race or political persuasion?

They do, and they should. Now consider the opposite perspective. What if doctors called out for criticizing their trainees did so in a brusque, dehumanizing way?

What if they humiliated their students in such a way that it hindered learning rather than helped?

We can say unequivocally that medical students or professionals who “refuse to treat patients” based on race or political persuasion need to be strongly reprimanded or told to find a different line of work because they are betraying medicine’s noblest ideal.

As for the other interactions, we can’t know because we weren’t there. And the people who were themselves part of the exchange may not know either.

To “know” anything about any significant human interaction requires reflection and self-examination. The conclusions we reach may prove elusive as time passes or as we and our tormentors change.

This is certain, though: Groupthink won’t bring us any closer to social harmony — or to individual maturity. We will be and remain jerks.