The Difference Between Optimism and Hope

Apparently a lot of us are pessimistic about the state of black progress in America. The Pew Research Center, with help from NPR, recently conducted a poll that measured the political attitudes of African-Americans, whites and Latinos. The results were released in mid November.

According to the poll, 20% of blacks say they are better off now than they were five years ago and 29% say they are worse off. In 1969, 70% said they were better off than fives years before. In 1999, 32% said they were better off and 13% said they were worse off.

There was a lot of talk about this poll on NPR. I’ve read and heard plenty of people interpreting the data and critiquing aspects of the poll itself (like the way it excludes the very real concerns of Asian Americans). I’ve heard and read some very well thought out comments on this subject.

The more I heard, the more I took issue with one of the assumptions implied in some of the discussions. A lot of people talk about optimism as if it is a goal or a virtue – as if being optimistic is something to strive for and expect from others. Some commentators even use “hope” and “optimism” as synonyms.

I don’t see it that way. I’m all for hope, but hope is not the same as optimism.

Optimism is an outlook on life that interprets situations in a positive way and expects things to work out in the end. Marriam-Webster Online says it’s “an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome.” The first definition listed drives my point home even better. It defines optimism as “a doctrine that this world is the best possible world.”

Optimism sounds nice, but I happen to think some elements of this world are unacceptable and better worlds are possible. There are a great many situations in which optimism requires someone to embrace the status quo, even when it may be harmful or unjust. Sometimes it even requires outright self-delusion. When confronted by death, disease, poverty, injustice, or desperation, a reasoning person has to detach themselves from reality to be optimistic.

That may help the comfortable stay that way, but it doesn’t do much to comfort the afflicted.

Sometimes things are bad. Really bad. When someone close to you dies, or your community gets washed away by a mountain of water, or your diagnosis is cancer, or you just feel desperately lonely and without meaning... at times like that expecting you to sing the sun will come out tomorrow is pretty cruel. It’s even worse when your troubles are cause by other people who are too hateful, greedy or ambivalent to treat you fairly.

But hope is “desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment.” When optimism merely sees a silver lining to what may be a very dark cloud, hope can clear the sky. When optimism sees a cup as half full (and in real life things are almost never that equal), hope makes the cup overflow. Optimism can make a slave smile – hope smuggles slaves to freedom. Optimism says “it isn’t that bad.” Hope fuels movements and revolutions that make it better. Hope expects change.

Hope stares the desperate, terrible, frightening reality in the face and refuses to look away until it’s been defeated. Hope has a confrontational quality to it.

For some, things really are getting worse. We don’t need a rosy outlook – we need change. Not blame games. Not self-delusion. Not mindless distraction. Definitely not blind consumerism. The word of the day is change.

Things will get better for “black progress” in this country (and underdogs anywhere in the world) when we learn (or re-learn) how to hope.

So we're not optimistic. That might be a good place start. I’m almost positive.

~Geoffrey Dobbins
Vice President, UCABJ