the limits of pragmatism

Organizations, for- and nonprofit alike, are averse to risk. Humans have self-preservation on the brain and our organizations are extensions of ourselves. This means that most people see risk to a company as a threat to their livelihood. These companies came to be from centuries of theft of land and labor. Direct or indirect profits, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how many hands this theft have passed through. It's now millions and billions of dollars that want to stay put.

We see that same fear of risk when we zoom in to everyday decision-making. Pragmatism is often described as the most reasonable or realistic choice. People use the term to characterize a rational middle path between extremes. It could be the difference between "what we can do" and "what we can do right now." It's why tangible, meaningful change is so hard to win and even harder to keep. And worst of all, it helps to maintain the white supremacist institutions around us. Here's why.

the safe choice may not prevent harmful consequences

Pragmatic decisions are often preferred because they feel more reasonable. But they can force people to pivot away from a solution that might work towards one that is easier to achieve. I often see those choices as two separate goals. Are we trying to solve the problem, or are we trying to find a solution we can achieve?

A program to "reform the police" sounds to many like a much safer choice than "defund the police" does. Minneapolis posed a question along these lines with a 2021 initiative sent to voters. Question 2 sought to replace the police department with a department of public safety. Voters unfortunately rejected that initiative, maintaining the police department as it was. In the years that followed that vote, police violence against Black people is still high. Violent crime is also up, even though Minneapolis restored police funding in full. Elected officials running today advocate for more "nuanced" reforms for this department.

pragmatic ideas can't solve it all

It often takes complex solutions to solve complex problems. Solutions that touch all aspects of a system or society can be a hard sell to decision-makers. A realistic option that's divorced from the bigger picture can't solve everything. People often push the realistic choice over the unrealistic one. What they're promising is a solution to the problem with much less effort. That's a lot of pressure to put on a single proposal or idea. When it fails, it can lead people to believe that no solution will work. The problem is too hard, too complicated, and the best solution is to do nothing.

Housing inequality is the result of many decades of decisions. Redlining, or rating homes in neighborhoods of color as being unsafe bets for loans, is only a part of it. Differences in inherited wealth among racial groups is another factor. So too is the wealth gap—how fast you earn money and how much you can afford to save—and racial discrimination in hiring. This constellation of problems demands solutions that are wide-reaching. Ta-Nehisi Coates brought the case for reparations into the mainstream for many white americans. People in power dismissed reparations as unrealistic. The government banned redlining in 1968, yet discrimination and housing disparities continue. As important a step as the redlining ban may be, it alone wasn't the sole driver of inequality.

pragmatism is an echo chamber

Pragmatism sells. It appeals to people who don't care much and people who don't want much to change. Groups of people in deep conflict are often taught to focus on where we agree, solve that problem first. The group may never resolve their differences along the margins. But that focus on the center, where we agree, encourages people to continue doing that. We as decision-makers become too concerned with not ruffling feathers. What if those feathers could use a good ruffling?

Most food banks know a donor who asks them to make sure their money only goes to the people in their town. Or that their money go to Christmas hams when parts of the community don't celebrate Christmas or eat ham. The easiest choice is to accept the money and program around it. That means we've missed a chance to ask why only certain people get to have their needs met. It means we've set a precedent to allow more people to make demands about where their money goes.

when the best we can do isn't good enough

The need to do something is not enough to justify ignoring hard decisions. We can do better than accept a slight change to the status quo. Here are some I rely on.

Articulate a bold vision. So many people feel like they're spending all their time defending the reasonable. It may feel like you're protecting people against something worse. Instead, you may be delaying the inevitable. Rather than trying to find the bad apples, talk about something bigger. Focus your attention on solutions that will lead to something. Build trust by making progress on that bigger picture.

Don't promote something worse to make your pragmatic option seem more "reasonable." Sunlight is not the disinfectant people seem to think it is. Why should we raise awareness about bad ideas at all? What if some people end up liking it more? Now you have two crappy ideas to discuss at your meeting. Either our proposal will work or we need to figure out something else.

Act with consent, not consensus. And definitely not with a simple majority. Pragmatic decisions are a compromise where nobody is very happy. Why should we want that? I'm sure there are nonprofit leaders who have "perfect is the enemy of the good" tattooed somewhere. I'm going to get one that says "you'll have to finish that incomplete idea tomorrow." We don't need to rush if we do something well. Good decisions take time, not delays.

giving in to cynicism

Pragmatic thinkers might be too jaded for their own good. This is the best it'll get, they say. This is what we can achieve today. I spent my teenage years cultivating a cynical, jaded worldview. It didn't help me solve the problems I noticed in the world. Half-measures and triangulation won't either. While it may have some benefits in some situations, it shouldn’t occupy the time and energy that it does.

Work for the solutions that will work. Imagine the world we'd enjoy if we didn't always have to meet in the middle.