My Mistake

Malcolm Gladwell, author of the popular book, The Tipping Point, has done an amazing thing. He has admitted to being wrong. Twenty-five years after Tipping Point was first published, he now says that in his effort to get his point across, and yes, to sell books, he told a compelling story about reducing crime in New York City that was centered on what he now says is a mistaken conclusion. He goes on to say that instead of writing with such certainty, he should have written, “this is what I believe happened now” because he was representing the position of that very moment.

Gladwell admits that he could have tried to explain away his mistake by saying he was just writing what everybody believed to be true at the time, or that the new information that changed his mind came to light after the book was published. Yet, he does not lean on those excuses and instead explains how these excuses would only perpetuate his mistake by exposing how he was seeing the problem only from his perspective and that he was blind to the harm inflicted on others because of his mistaken conclusion.

Lastly, Gladwell says that at the time he wrote the book, he thought that, as an expert, he had to communicate with certainty. He now says that’s backwards, that when engaging with a social problem it’s better to acknowledge the uncertainty and fragility of your position when it is based solely on one perspective, even if that perspective is an expert’s.

By placing the words “this is what I believe now” at the center of understanding is acknowledging that a position can change if the facts change, and that it is a mistake to assume that a theoretical explanation that is based upon today’s facts can, or will always be, the explanation for the way things are. That is just not how the world works.

Gladwell’s admission has made me think about my own actions in expressing views on complicated social problems. Have I been too willing to follow so-called experts like Gladwell down a certain path without questioning how that path looks to others who are impacted by it?  

This is not a rhetorical question. For some time, I have been privately concerned about the inflammatory language used by the DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) movement that has called for things like defunding the police, dismantling hierarchies, decolonization, and built upon other confrontational and divisive concepts like white privilege and white fragility. These concepts are advanced with an explicit intention to create discomfort and there is little concern for the effect it has on those who feel blamed.

Despite my private concerns about these aspects of the DEI movement, I have done nothing about it. And tacitly, through my non-action, I have created an appearance of support for a vocabulary and tactics that I do not fully condone. Like Gladwell, I admit, this was a mistake. I regret that I have not spoken out about the consequences of not taking the perspectives of DEI detractors more seriously. When peoples’ concerns are ignored, when they feel like they are being sarcastically mocked, when they feel villainized, all productive dialog ceases, and nothing is accomplished. It’s time for a course correction.