A Message From A Beautiful Mind
By Bill Gwaltney for The Civil Conversations Project
Bill writes from Oahu Hawaii. Bill is a retired Park Service and American Battle Monuments Commission executive based in Paris. Bill was also a 15 year federal law enforcement officer, historical consultant to Danny Glover and Denzel Washington for the movie Glory; an historical consultant to the US Congress and the Smithsonian in developing the Smithsonian national Museum of African-American history and culture in Washington DC. Bill also created the Massachusetts 54th Civil War reenactors. Bill is also a good friend, an all-around good guy, and on the board of The Civil Conversations Project. He specializes in talking my ear off. Bill writes from Oahu, Hawaii.
In the 2001 film, “A Beautiful Mind,” troubled American Mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr. was portrayed by Australian/New Zealand actor Russell Crowe.
The film showed Nash as a brilliant mathematician whose contributions to geometry, differential equations, and Game Theory not only gained him acclaim with many awards and accolades. In 1994, Nash’s work gained him recognition with The Nobel Prize in Economics.
The film covers Nash’s struggles with overcoming mental illness, but in a way, his work highlights America’s struggles with a different type of national mental illness.
Part of Nash’s work deals with something called ‘Game Theory’. The concept is rather complicated, but we can best understand it by saying that it is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational players.
One concept to come from Nash’s work is known today as ‘The Nash Equilibrium’. The Equilibrium may help us better understand the resiliency of Racism in the United States.
If it is possible to connect Nash’s Equilibrium with Racism in the United States, it might mean that a series of interchanges, policies and behaviors that might have been initially intended to be democratic and cooperative in nature have been turned into a non-cooperative game in which everyone loses.
The Nash Equilibrium describes the impasse created when one of the players decides that “The Game” - which in this situation is the democratic ideal of shared power and recognizing that all Americans are actual citizens - can essentially be played as non-cooperative in nature, and that the player decides that there is no incentive to him or her to deviate from their initial strategy.
The players who hold the dominant position believe that they know their opponent’s strategy, but still will not deviate from their initial chosen strategies because it remains the optimal strategy for that player.
In applying this concept to Racism in the United States, we can imagine a situation where the majority fails to see any reason to change or eliminate Race based strategies that are believed to benefit them, while causing significant disadvantages for the minority.
Under this scenario, the majority might see the damage done by creating situations in which segregation infused policies that have created inferior educations, segregated communities, unequal access to banking and investments, reduced social services, less availability to medical care and related issues as normal, natural, and non-problematic, and continue to allow these concerns to remain in place.
The outcome of this situation is that Racism, and the use of the imaginary concept of “Race” become normalized and each “Player” is expected to maintain specific roles and responsibilities.
Those who feel oppressed by the status quo feel anger, disappointment, and an ever-present, low-level rage, especially when reminded of the essentially democratic nature of the ‘American Experiment’.
Those who knowingly or unknowingly profit from the way things are feel consistently surprised and shocked that the other “Players” do not have more appreciation, or even enthusiasm for the way “The Game” is played.
The normalization of Racism has taken many forms over the life span of the United States and are represented in ways that range from the now hidden racist lyrics in “The Star-Spangled Banner,” to The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and from Legal Segregation i.e. the creation of “Jim Crow Laws” at the state level after the Civil War and giving African Americans less opportunities under the G.I. Bill after WWII.
The normalization of Racism has affected and infected about every aspect of Human Life in the United States from where people can live to who people can marry (Virginia v. Loving) and from the discriminatory misuse of the Posse Comitatus Act to the regular and repetitive attempts to prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote.
In the film “A Beautiful Mind,” the life of John Forbes Nash, Jr. is explored broadly, and his struggle with mental illness made plain.
While a hard film to watch on some levels, Nash’s consistent attempts to heal, and the support of his wife, friends and colleagues allows him to finally throw off the yoke of mental illness and return to his life and career.
We can only hope that the United States, with the determined efforts of persons like yourselves, and with the support of anti-racist Americans, living and dead, can likewise throw off the heavy and unnecessary burden of Racism.
It is a legacy that makes us all crazy and is an equation much like The Nash Equilibrium in which no one wins - or can win.
If you want to make a difference in helping to overcome America’s Thing With Race, consider becoming a member of or a donor to The Civil Conversations Project.
The Civil Conversations Project crafts carefully researched and engaging stories through published writing, documentary filming and other media, podcasting, and blogging - challenging many of the long-held beliefs and assumptions that America tells itself about “Race.”
In particular, the Project reaches out to all Americans regardless of political affiliation or beliefs in an effort to facilitate, initiate and encourage deep and informed civil conversation surrounding race and racism. We meet people where they are as we seek to educate so that these mind and life changing conversations can move forward with facts and information rather than emotion, anger, frustration, and conjecture.