We Need to Talk: Why There Aren’t Any Bumper Stickers on My Car

Imagine this scenario: you’ve just stopped at a red light behind a Prius and are beginning to peruse their bumper sticker collection. “Coexist,” reads one. Another one proclaims the driver to be a “tree hugging dirt worshipper.” You begin to picture the clothes they wear, the music they listen to, and the way they vote. Turns out, there’s even a Facebook group dedicated to this specific stereotype (its unambiguous name is “Thanks to the Prius, I recognize liberals right away”). 

We all walk around with “boxes” like this, ready to drop people and ideas into them. This isn’t inherently a bad thing–we ease our cognitive load by relating a new experience to past information. In our stoplight example, though, the handy heuristic begins to break down when you spot a few other bumper stickers. Apparently the driver is also a “Military Mom” who supports her local Fraternal Order of Police and prays that “God Bless America.” You now struggle to find the right “box” to place this driver into.

And that’s the problem with boxes. It’s too easy to put someone in the wrong one–or to have built incorrect boxes entirely. 

I learned–or perhaps confirmed–something important about myself when I took the CliftonStrengths assessment. I am a “Relator.” To borrow language directly from the assessment, this means that I “deliberately encourage the deepening of relationships” and “want to understand [others’] feelings, goals, fears, and dreams.” The test helped me articulate that the more I “share” and “risk” with another person, the “more each of [us] proves [our] caring is genuine.” 

For me, that’s what’s missing in a “bumper-sticker relationship.” If we fail to communicate beyond the sticker, we risk interpersonal clashes like the ones that show up in the neighborhood battles over political yard signs. Like the Trump sign in Michigan with razor blades taped to it as a theft deterrent. Or the Biden/Harris sign in a yard in Shelbyville, TN that prompted someone to litter their neighbor’s yard with business cards from the KKK. Or, here in Lincoln, there was the passive-aggressive note taped to a Black Lives Matter placard, signed from “A Neighbor.” 

I actually dipped my toe into the front-yard political conversation for the first time this summer. Rather than supporting a particular candidate, though, I chose a sign that, I thought, stood for universal values that we could all rally around. But even this was stolen from my yard without a word. 

The real problem here is that no face-to-face human interaction is happening in any of these situations. In the absence of a recognizable human actor, we are left only with our inadequate–and problematic–boxes and labels. 

At their extreme, these boxes become monolithic political silos that prevent individuals from being just that; individuals. I saw this first-hand when I worked at a think tank in Washington, D.C. To my eyes, our “us vs. them” political structure is set up so that there is little room for individuality; for, say, a Republican to advocate for climate justice nor for, let’s imagine, a Democrat to argue for decreased government spending.

I hear the obvious counter-argument to all this. In the words of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Alexander Hamilton, “If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for?” Sure, a yard sign or bumper sticker could be the beginnings of a healthy conversation. But just because I don’t broadcast my views from my car or front yard doesn’t mean I don’t have them. It’s simply a choice I’ve made to help people avoid prejudging me (notice that’s just the word “prejudice” misspelled) in the hope that we can have an authentic conversation where our humanity and individuality, rather than our labels and affiliations, become the foundation of our relationship.

So...let’s talk.

-Alan Orrison, Associate Professor of Fine Arts