The theory proposed here, at home economics, is that there’s a nature to how people act to improve their lives. For lack of better names, activities occur in spheres with public-facing tendancies or private ones. When people operate for the group, they give to improve for an affiliated public endeavor, whereas the private sphere engages privately held resources to grow and gain.
I think this framing helps to explain the suggested paradox described in this Free Press article about a Chicago Trump supporter coming to the aid of Venezuelan migrants.
Aleah Arundale voted for Donald Trump, supports his decision to close the border, and may as well have introduced herself by singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” when we met at her front door in Chicago last month. She was wearing a white sweatshirt with “USA” plastered on the front, a sequined American flag skirt, heart-shaped red glasses, and bedazzled red and white sneakers.
She also has spent the last three years helping Venezuelan immigrants. It began when buses from Texas started dropping off people at a street corner near where Arundale’s daughter went to dance class, as part of Governor Greg Abbott’s expulsion of thousands of immigrants to sanctuary cities across the country.
When Aleah makes decisions as a Chicago resident, her choices are weighed out within that context. Her group interests lie primarily on her block or down the street. She can be pro-Trump and anti-everyone-else-outside-our-boundaries. This keeps her public dollars and work weighted to the local food shelf, her elderly parents’ care, or a literacy program at the public library. Any outside force taking resources away from these microtransactions is a competitor.
But then the immigrants are dropped off by the busloads, on the corner where kids get picked up by the school bus. They’ve switched groups. No longer are they an impersonal one of many in a faraway place; they’ve breached the group. They now rate as the most in need within this new framing. And thus, the mechanisms that drive the force for the good of the group are energized. Aleah gives the plight of the Venezuelians in some rank or fashion amongst her other commitments.
There are two things to see here. First– the framing of the group and thus its acknowledgement. Second, the lever for activating time, energy, and resources differs from the private sphere. Yet this all transpires through a juggle of tradeoffs trapped in a world of constraints.
Home Economics 