Reposted from Forbes.com. The original article can be found here.

President Trump continues to divide the country along ethnic and racial lines, standing by as his supporters chant “Send Her Back” in reference to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Nothing good can come of this, and this was recently underscored for me by a small incident in my own life. A panel discussion on reparations for black Americans that was to take place next week in New York in which I was supposed to participate has been canceled due to threats of disruption and concerns about violence.

As Prime Minister Theresa May has noted about the political climate in Britain as she nears the end of her term, “Some are losing the ability to disagree without demeaning the views of others,” adding that she regrets the “absolutism” that has come to characterize politics in her country. Of course, we in the United States find ourselves in the same worrisome situation.

The New York reparations panel was called off because of threats from individuals identifying with a controversial pro-reparations movement called American Descendants of Slaves (ADOS). They repeatedly threatened to purchase tickets for the event with the aim of disrupting the debate. One of these individuals wrote in an email, “Reparations is a debt owed and is not debatable. To do so is highly disrespectful to African American[s].” The panel’s organizers, fearing the worst and concerned that they wouldn’t be able to maintain safety and order, reluctantly decided to cancel the event.

This is, to put it mildly, most unfortunate. I had wondered whether there might have been pressure from far-right extremist groups or individuals who would not want this issue to receive a public airing. But according to the event organizers, the pressure seems to have come entirely from ADOS and its opposition to debating the issues.

The current political climate, in which debate is often shut down, is dispiriting. While Donald Trump and his right-wing supporters hurl invective and shout down opponents, certain segments of the left—especially on college campuses, but not only there—have made it clear that they simply don’t want to listen to things they don’t want to hear. That criticism is sometimes overstated, however. Most students are not at elite liberal arts colleges receiving trigger warnings before they encounter potentially unsavory views; they are in large public universities majoring in business and accounting, which are hardly known for their liberal bias.

Still, debate organizer Stephen Calabria notes that, with all the debates he’s organized, it’s always the left, and never the right, that pressures him to suppress discussion of issues.

This is self-defeating for the left, which will never prevail politically if it is perceived as shutting down debates rather than winning them. The tendency to want to stifle debate is a sign of weakness, not strength. Too many people on the left seem to think that suppressing unpleasant debate will make social injustice go away. But this is an intellectual fallacy. The disparities between blacks and whites regarding poverty, unemployment, rates of incarceration, educational attainment, housing, life expectancy, infant mortality, wealth, income and all the other dimensions of racial inequality will not magically disappear simply because debate is quashed.

The only thing that will change these harsh conditions is public policies that improve the lives of black Americans, and indeed of all working and poor people. The reparations debate centers on the question of whether a remedy that has been used for other groups–victims of the Holocaust, interned Japanese-Americans–can be mobilized to make amends to and improve the lives of the people whose ancestors began to suffer slavery 400 years ago this year. It’s a debate over public policy that has to be won, fair and square, in the court of public opinion in order for reparations ever to become a reality.

We must remember that the term “reparations” refers to all kinds of remedies, not just the writing of checks to individuals, as some may think. The idea of reparations could include such initiatives as college scholarships, loans to small businesses and support for black educational institutions. Blacks have suffered disproportionately in American life as a result of racist public policies, which is what justifies a special claim on the nation’s attention and concern.

But most people do not support the notion of reparations. In a democracy, some of those people will have to be persuaded in order for relevant policies to be adopted. Ultimately, any initiatives would have to be voted on by legislators at the federal level. And those lawmakers cannot simply be bullied into passing the necessary legislation.

In the meantime, the suppression of debate and of diverse viewpoints only convinces more conservatives that they are right about the left: that it is condescending and only survives on the basis of censorship.

The left cannot win politically if it does not win rhetorically. And to be sure, there is what Theresa May calls “absolutism” at both ends of the contemporary American political spectrum. The division stoked by President Trump and his supporters bears great responsibility for our current morass. Their words and behavior have, without question, caused the left to ramp up its own sense of outrage. But the left has to win debates, not suppress them. People sense weakness of this kind and recoil from it instinctively. It’s a losing proposition.Follow me on Twitter.