TIMOTHY SHRIVER, CHAIRMAN OF SPECIAL OLYMPICS, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO OF UNITE, AND CO-CREATOR OF THE DIGNITY INDEX.
PHOTO: NSBA

 

Our country feels more divided now than ever, and, according to Timothy Shriver, that’s no accident. Our media algorithms and our politics feed us outrage to keep us divided.

Shriver, a keynote speaker at NSBA’s 2024 annual conference in April in New Orleans, told the audience that we as a country cannot solve any of our problems until we solve the problem of contempt. One solution is bringing awareness to the problem by measuring contempt and dignity in public and personal speech and interactions.

Shriver, the third child of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver, stepped down as the CEO of the Special Olympics (though he remains chairman) to found UNITE, a national initiative for bringing Americans across divides together in common purpose to address universal challenges that can only be solved together.

UNITE developed the Dignity Index, which is designed to prevent violence, ease divisions, and solve problems. The index scores distinct phrases along an eight-point scale from contempt to dignity. Lower scores (1-4) reflect divisive language while higher scores (5-8) reflect language grounded in dignity.

The following are excerpts from Shriver’s keynote address:

I’m here to talk about dignity, the most difficult concept possible. People say, “We can solve all the problems in the country except the one you’re working on, Tim.” That problem: to change the country from one filled with contempt to one filled with dignity. We’re going to try.

And this is the most important room in the country for this campaign that we’re going to talk about today. Our goal is quite audacious. It’s extraordinary to think that one guy up here, together with all of you, could have the hope, the dream of changing our culture. Is it even possible? I wrote this book a couple of years ago [Fully Alive: Discovering What Matters Most]. It’s largely about my own family, and my mother, who grew up with a sister with intellectual challenges. My Aunt Rosemary. I wrote the story about growing up around an aunt who had an intellectual disability, and about the ways in which my experience in the Special Olympics changed me.

I was doing a book signing event for that book a few years ago. I got into the hotel elevator and there was a guy with a cowboy hat and a silver brass belt buckle, cowboy boots, and blue jeans. He looked over at me and said, “Has anyone ever told you that you look like a Kennedy?” The door opens, and I said, “Yeah I’ve heard that before,” and as I’m walking out of the elevator, he said, “Well, that must really piss you off.”

It was kind of funny but it’s actually a pretty important lesson. We look at each other, and we often get each other wrong. Sometimes when we look at each other, in a school board meeting, in a school building, your own kitchen table, you get these wrong. When we get each other wrong, we sell each other short, and when we sell each other short, it’s a short road to treating each other with contempt.

My first teacher was my mother. My mother decided in 1962 that she’d had enough. She’d seen her sister grow up, seeing her gift, seeing her value, and seeing her qualities that mattered in the world. She knew that the rest of the world had gotten her sister wrong and treated her with indifference and contempt for too long. When another mother called her and said, “There’s nothing for my child with an intellectual challenge,” my mother said, “You bring your kids to my house. We’re going to have a summer camp where your kids are going to learn to play; they’re going to learn to swim; they’re going to ride ponies at my house. If no one else will do it, I will do it.” The volunteer counselors at the camp were young people: 15- to 17-year-olds. My mother believed that those young people needed to have their attitudes changed, so they would be the ones to show dignity to everybody, just as much as the campers needed the opportunity to play. There was a reciprocal relationship that happened right there at the beginning where both sides of the divide, both sides of the labeling and misjudging and the demonizing, could be healed.

When I look at my 25 plus years in the Special Olympics movement as a professional, not counting as a kid in that summer camp, I thought to myself, it’s time for our country to pay attention to the lessons that our young people, and in particular our children with intellectual and developmental challenges, are trying to teach us. That’s why we are having this conversation today with you all who are at the center of this problem. We have a cultural addiction to the exact opposite of dignity, which is contempt.

It is not the political issues that typically divide us or around which we have debates. It’s not a curriculum, it’s not school boards, it’s not the border, it’s not taxes, it’s not the military budget. It’s contempt. If we don’t face the problem of contempt, we won’t solve the other ones.

Where did this come from? It’s not an accident. Some media feel it’s their job to place you in a state of devotional anger. Tech companies became key players in stymying our politics, our government, and our social fabric by seeding isolation, outrage, and addiction. How did this happen? Many of us are old enough to say, “It wasn’t this way when I was a kid.” That’s true. It wasn’t always this way.

If you woke up this morning and you watched the news, you were given a shot of fear and anger. You may have rejected it, but that’s what you were given. It’s not an accident. It’s rendered us unable to see each other. The difference between what we think of each other and what the other side thinks is being driven by people who are trying to divide you from the other side. It’s intentional. Contempt has become, because of the algorithm and because of the power of the media, the language of political speech. It seems like racism has gotten worse when it should have gotten better. Antisemitism is everywhere. We’re becoming increasingly violent. This is a direct outcome of politics buying into the machinery of contempt.

A recent poll said that over 80% of us feel that the country is more divided than ever. Those of you who have presided at school board meetings know this is the case. We are worried about who’s coming through the door, who signed up to speak, who’s made a FOIA request. Are they going to attack if I say this? Almost half of us are so scared we don’t say what we think. I’m worried about free speech in this country. We all should be worried about free speech. You know what the biggest threat to free speech is? It’s not the government. It’s contempt. Raise your hands if you’ve ever been in a situation where you haven’t said something you think in the last month. How about today? We’re censoring ourselves because we’re so scared of each other.

I draw the correlation here between contempt and hatred and violence in our political and algorithmic worlds to the relationship to depressive symptoms in our young people. I remember reporting to the school board in the late 1980s that almost a fifth of students in the New Haven public schools where I was teaching were at risk of some mental health challenge. We were shocked. The school board and superintendent were shocked. Now it’s half — 49% of our young people will say their life is not useful. It’s not a stretch to correlate this kind of data to the invasive algorithm that is always with them, feeding them devotional anger, fear, and contempt. The larger culture that’s made them afraid to speak like all of us who just raised our hands. They’re afraid to speak their own truth in conversation.

This is not victimless crime, treating each other with contempt. There are victims. What do Americans say about the toll of division? We can’t solve problems. Any problem that requires the whole can’t be solved by dividing one group against the other. That’s why so many Americans are tuning out from the politics. They think it’s not designed to actually solve the problem it’s set to solve.

A poll conducted by Frank Luntz showed that people want other people to be treated with dignity. They’re hungry; they’re starving. They don’t know how to say it; they don’t know how to get it. That tells me that among your audiences, your boards and your school administrators and your faculty and your family and communities and young people, there is a hidden hunger. I say it is hidden because people aren’t expressing it openly, but it’s right beneath the surface.

I was fortunate enough to hear Archbishop Desmond Tutu speak. You know of his great career not only as a faith-based leader but also as a leader of post-apartheid South Africa. He was one of the founding leaders of the truth and reconciliation process in South Africa, not the revenge and hating process. In some ways it was an altogether novel response to almost 100 or more years of horrific criminal oppression in this country. When he was done speaking, a person jumped up and said, “Archbishop, isn’t it clear that evil is more powerful than good? Can’t you acknowledge that?” “No, evil is not more powerful than good,” he answered, “but it is better organized.”

We are at a point where we don’t make it unless we develop a new strategy to respond to contempt with the new response dignity. You say, “Well, that’s fine, but how are you going to do that?”

Treat everyone with dignity. It really works. Emanuel Cleaver, a current seated congressman for Missouri, said a few years ago, “There are agencies and organizations that score us on everything we do… Except there is not a single organization that monitors and scores us for decency and civility, and so it’s easy to come to the conclusion that that’s not important.”  Politicians often tell us, “Everybody says you want me to treat people with dignity, but you don’t get rewarded for that. You get rewarded for snark. You get rewarded for attacks. If I drive a real zinger at my opponent, everyone retweets me and reposts me and my contributions go up. I don’t get any benefit if I don’t do that.” We recently met with Rep. Cleaver, and he’s a great supporter of dignity and our work with the Dignity Index.

Here’s one way to change the conversation. Let’s give people a measure. It’s called the Dignity Index. Here’s how it works. The scale goes from one to 10. It is split between the ways in which we characterize each other that are filled with increasing levels of contempt and ways in which we characterize each other when we disagree that have increasing levels of dignity.

Treating people with dignity is not excusing them. People sometimes say, “If you treat people with dignity, are you holding them accountable?” There’s no lack of accountability here. It does mean that no matter what, I see in them the same gift of humanity that is in me. Each of us is born with inherent worth. We treat everyone with dignity no matter what. Stay on this for a second and let it settle in. Ask yourself, could you be this person? For those of you who grew up in faith traditions, you have probably heard a version of this from your parents or from your ministers. Those of you that grew up in civic organizations, you’ve probably heard a version of this in your Lions Club meetings and other places. Most of us have heard this message, but for some reason, we don’t think it’s realistic. We don’t think it’s practical.

It’s not impractical to use more dignity. It’s actually the most practical thing you can do if you want to solve a problem. If you want to make enemies, it doesn’t work. If you want to score points, it doesn’t work. If you want to solve a problem, it works. The Salt Lake City School Board is using the Dignity Index. Many of you could adapt this. The Utah School Boards Association has adopted the Index as a way of managing its operations. It’s very practical. It can allow you to make clear what you will tolerate. You are allowed to not tolerate hatred and violence in speech. Salt Lake City has adapted the scale for high school students so they can learn how to debate, build relationships, and have the control and confidence to share their opinion. They can reduce the chances of violence and contempt in this country and in their culture.

During disagreements, you could bring your points up, but you really should be listening to their points. What are their fears? What do they feel? Why do they feel the way they do? There’s a way to get through that and maybe learn something yourself. Maybe they will learn from you if you’re calm. Can you give a good argument instead of an emotional argument? If you still get to the point where you can’t agree, that’s OK. It’s OK to not agree on every issue. It’s not too late to be a better person. It’s never too late to be kind. It’s never too late to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, understand what they’re going through, and lead by example together.

Every generation gets challenged to defend democracy and defend core values. Every generation has its moment. Right now, we’re in ours. It’s not coming from a foreign power. It’s coming from within. So I ask you to take the Dignity Pledge. Challenge someone to take the pledge. Bring the pledge or the Index to your school board meetings. Invite each other to do better. No one’s perfect. If we do better, just a little bit better, we can begin to bring the things we believe in most deeply, which is the sacredness of every child and the sacredness of every life. If we bring that to our discussions, we will create the tipping point. We can in fact build the kind of democracy grounded in human dignity that we want and that we also desperately need.

The Dignity Pledge

As an American who knows and loves my country, I am convinced there is no America without democracy, no democracy without healthy debate, and no healthy debate without dignity; therefore, I pledge to do more to treat others with dignity, not contempt.

 

The Dignity Index: https://www.dignityindex.us/

Salt Lake City Schools Dignity Initiative: https://www.slcschools.org/departments/educational-equity-and-student-support/slcsd-dignity-initiative

Politico article on the Dignity Index: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/01/20/tami-pyfer-dignify-politics-00078409.