Another person just cited Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s famous book, Why We Can’t Wait, to explain her impatience with incremental change. I found myself lured in yet again to the age-old debate about radical, transformational change vs. incremental change.

It began when a friend of mine posted on social media a quote by Robert Reich, the economist:

If we allow ourselves to fall into fatalism, or wallow in disappointment, or become resigned to what is rather than what should be, we will lose the long game. The greatest enemy of positive social change is cynicism about can be changed.¹

A woman whom I will call Eleanor responded:

So how do we change the current system?

I stared at her response, anticipating where the conversation could be headed. 

Flashes of protests long ago came to me:

What do we want? Justice! 

When do we want it? NOW!

Somehow, over the years, I no longer think of systemic change as something that happens NOW. I know it takes long, arduous, often painfully slow actions. I have become an incrementalist and am okay with that.

I debated with myself. Do I really want to get into a discussion about incremental vs radical change with a stranger on someone else’s Facebook page?

Of course not, I thought. As soon as the thought hit me, I ignored my own advice and started typing.

Jean

Eleanor one small win at a time. Celebrate our accomplishments.

Don't focus on how far there is to go. if we focus on how far there is to go, we will be too de-motivated to do anything at all

The response came almost immediately:

Eleanor

Jean no because we haven’t answered the call. We move like snails. We have no leaders. We have no idea of how much we need to do.

Because of the leadership consulting and coaching I do, I wondered whether this wasn’t just about the tragic world events going on now. This was about an immediate situation Eleanor was in, maybe in her workplace.

Just this week, I talked with a woman who was despairing that anything could be done about her toxic work environment. Yet, the pay was good, her situation at home required a steady paycheck, so she stayed, resigned that nothing could be done.

With her in mind, I responded to Eleanor:

Jean

Eleanor, sounds miserable. I still don't understand how what I'm saying is contradicted by your reality. In a case with no leaders and no idea of how much there is to do, the only thing I would know to do is to take a step in my best guess of the right direction.

Impatience is one good way to destroy hope of change.

So what am I missing?

Eleanor’s response stopped me in my tracks. 

Eleanor

Jean you answered me. You want to somehow make me believe what you are saying. I don’t. Call it miserable because I don’t believe you.

Oh no!  I know better than to try and have a meaningful conversation in a chat or text. I responded immediately to clarify what I meant:

Jean

Eleanor, my apologies. I was not clear.

I wasn’t saying that you were miserable.

I was saying the situation you were describing where you have no leadership and direction is miserable. At least I have felt miserable when I’ve been in that situation.

Thanks for following up and letting me know that my words didn’t reflect my meaning.

Eleanor

Jean you have to work with a certain intention. You can’t just be willy nilly. That’s not how change happens. Read “Letters from a Birmingham Jail.” Or Why we can’t wait.

She is right, of course. We have to work with intention. Yet we also have to be willing to be in for the long haul.

Why we can’t wait calls for immediate action. People who cite it refer only to that critical moment in history during the heyday of the civil rights movement,

Seldom do they mention the legions of unknown, uncelebrated brave groups and individuals who paved the way for that moment of transformative change.

As Robert Reich is warning us – and Eleanor implied in her initial response – people get weary of the long path to change. They want results NOW.

They want the organization to become more inclusive NOW. They want the politicians to vote in the right laws NOW. They want their family members to shape up NOW. They want peace NOW. (For that matter, so do I.)

I haven’t yet responded to Eleanor, choosing to write these Reflections instead. 

Here’s the way this discussion plays out when I’ve had it with others: 

Immediate change advocate:

Dr. King demanded instant change. Malcolm X demanded instant change. Frederick Douglass demanded instant change. During the Civil Rights movement they *DID SOMETHING*. 

Now in today’s time, we just sit around and accept the status quo. We can’t change the system so there’s no point in trying.   

As Robert Reich has pointed out in the quote at the beginning of these Reflections, those thoughts are a sure way to do nothing. We’re beaten before we start. 

Here’s the fallacy of the “CHANGE NOW” approach by referencing the Civil Rights movement: That’s really not how it happened.

The civil rights movement wasn’t born in the 1960s. It started post Reconstruction, in the aftermath of the Civil War. It continued through the Great Depression, the repressive 1950s, and year after year with minor protests, lawsuits in small spurts, and one major victory with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, followed by much smaller victories and plenty of setbacks. 

Tell me incremental change doesn’t count. Think of the years of frustration, failed lawsuits, chronic indignities day after day, year after year, that led to those glorious and fateful days when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended legal segregation in this country. 

A year later, President Johnson declared, “We shall overcome,” as he proposed to Congress a voting rights act aimed at eliminating barriers to the right to vote. After the Voting Rights Act of 1965 came the Fair Housing Act (1968), the Equal Opportunity Act (1972), and other legislation advancing civil rights with vulnerable groups.

Then, too soon afterwards, we entered another super-long period of retrenchment.

Here’s the way I know that change occurs: Brave innovators lay the foundation, brick by brick, layer by layer, slowly and tediously, building the case for change, recruiting people as they can. 

They suffer being called irresponsible, overly idealistic, delusional. To paraphrase Gandhi, they get ignored, then ridiculed and fought against.

Then, one day, a burning platform appears, seemingly out of nowhere – a 13-year-old boy is castrated and lynched, a revered national leader is assassinated while standing on a balcony outside his hotel, a man is slowly suffocated while calling for his mother, and people erupt in fury.

At that moment, for a relatively short period after, radical change is made possible. I have witnessed each of these events and more and saw people galvanized for a few weeks or even years.

Then slowly, complacency sets back in, people turn back to their own lives and struggles, and most people start bemoaning how nothing has changed.

We don’t have to be those who only act when the platform catches fire, social media fans the flames, and people push for transformational change. 

We have a choice. We can be among those who are ready to engage in the long haul and are willing to be insulted by those who have retreated into do-nothing cynicism and learned helplessness. 

As Brené Brown says, we can choose to be in the arena, doing what we can, in our sphere of influence.

[1] https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1716518005595578643@@