By Mark E. McCormick
Is it OK to do the right thing for the wrong reasons? Do opened hearts change behavior, or does a change in behavior open hearts?
Do the people you want to reach need to care about helping other human beings in harm’s way, or simply buy-in because it suits their self interests?
It may not be preferable Los Angeles-based civil rights lawyer Connie Rice said in a recent PBS interview, but to make progress on complex issues, you have to worry less about winning hearts and minds and more about remaining focused on your purpose.
“I want people to do the right thing,” said Rice, author of “Power Concedes Nothing: One Woman’s Quest for Social Justice in America, From the Kill Zones to the Courtroom. “I don’t care if it’s for a selfish reason.”
So should we care?
Of course, said Rice, who has won praise from the U.S. Department of Defense for her anti-gang efforts and who is the cousin of former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. But we should care about making progress on our selected purpose and make conscious choices aligned with that purpose moving forward.
People don’t want to do the “morality thing,” she told talk show host Tavis Smiley last week. “We don’t care about our morality. We just don’t. And I’m talking about all the races; E Pluribus Unum. Our American tapestry. We don’t do things for the right reasons.”
She says she’s seen such indifference in her work against gangs.
“We keep putting kids in kill zones, we keep letting their schools fail them, we keep letting them have to dodge bullets,” Rice said. “Obviously they don’t care about these kids, we don’t care about these kids or we’d have fixed it by now.”
Rice said a person could spend a lifetime trying to change hearts and minds and never accomplish anything.
So she focuses instead on changing behavior.
“I want democracy to work for those with the least. If you keep your eye on that mission as opposed to winning a case, you get a very different result.”
So what do you think? Do the people you want to reach need to care about helping other human beings in harm’s way? Or simply buy-in because it suits their self interests?
