Michigan Divided

Searching for common ground in uncommon times

The 2016 presidential election revealed fault lines in our state that go far beyond traditional political divides. Different people are exposed to different news sources and get different social media feeds. Increasingly we even have different sets of facts.

With disappearing common ground, it becomes easy to demonize those we know little about, reducing them to disparaging and inaccurate stereotypes: the uneducated rural, the lazy urban, the narrow-minded Christian, the terrorist Muslim, the racist white man, the job-stealing immigrant woman. The growing gulf between groups makes it difficult to understand how others vote the way they do; and beneath that, the aspirations, fears or other factors that lead to those votes.