Permission to Disagree

I’m 47 and a former high school teacher.  I haven’t been in the classroom for a few years, but if you’ve ever been a teacher, you know it’s not something you just stop doing.  Because of my family background and my position as teacher and mentor to young people through some of the groups I’ve belonged to, it’s always been important to me to set a good example.  And as I view everything through the eyes of a teacher, I find myself mentoring a lot of people.

Last night, a former student of mine posted a particularly harsh meme about police.  I don’t want to get into the politics of that, here, because that’s not what this post is about.  But I did want to have a discussion with her about it because politics and civil discourse are two subjects that are always on my mind lately, and I’m very passionate about it.

I remembered this student to be kind of fragile and a loner, so I was cautious about how I would approach the topic with her.  Instead of just jumping right in with my alternate perspective, I asked her if she would be open to hearing a different perspective.  The picture below is a conversation that took place in the comments.  I find it both funny and telling.

I consider myself fairly liberal.  I am originally from California, after all.  I didn’t really pay close attention to politics until Trump got elected.  I mean no disrespect to people who voted for Trump, I know a lot of good people who did.  What puzzled me is how, two years into his administration, he still has such passionate supporters.

I’ve tried talking to people about it, my own Mother, for example.  She’s always been anti-politics and has often told my sister and me that she doesn’t like to see it on our Facebook posts.  So imagine my surprise to see that she has recently begun posting not just pro-Trump memes, but very ugly anti-liberal memes.  I know that my mother is no racist.  She raised me and she taught me that no one is better than anyone else.  She told me what prejudice was and it was an important subject in our house, at least when I was little and she was still taking the time to teach us things.

So if it’s not racism that causes people to continue to support Trump, what can it possibly be?  That’s what I’ve been wondering.  I know that he’s made a couple of policy decisions that are being held up as proof that he’s a great president.  But even if he has gotten a few things right, the childish way he throws Twitter tantrums, the way he insults our allies, and the blatantly racist and misogynistic comments he makes continue to leave me baffled at how he can still have such passionate followers.

Then I read this article.  If you’re baffled like I was, I encourage you to read it.  The gist of it is that poor, uneducated white people are the last group who are still considered fair game for stereotypes and ugly insults.  White trash, trailer trash, hillbillies and Okies.  Poor whites are portrayed as lazy, toothless, dirty, stupid, and even incestuous.  Who hasn’t seen the caricature of the snaggle-toothed man with the MAGA hat and the Confederate flag on his shirt, brandishing his AR-15?

If you think about it, we’re demonizing them for conditions that many of them have been born into.  In Appalachia, especially, coal mining shut down and left whole communities out of work.  What can they do?  Raggedy clothes, bad teeth, children stay out of school to help where they can.  These people grow their own food and hunt for whatever meat they can find, including squirrel and possum.  They are poor through no fault of their own; and yet they are ridiculed and dismissed and further insulted if they dare try to defend themselves.  It’s not hard to see how resentment toward “Black Lives Matter,” for example, could manifest.  Am I saying that BLM is not a legitimate organization?  Absolutely not.  I fully support it in its legitimate form completely.  But reasonable people also have to acknowledge that there are extremists in every group.

Mine is a gross oversimplification, and the article I linked can do a much better job of explaining.  The point I’m trying to make is that we’ve created a culture in which we think it’s funny to subject white people to the same kinds of stereotypes we no longer tolerate when speaking of black people, Mexican people, Native Americans and more. They (whites) resent it, as anyone would, but we tell them that they’re racist if they don’t see that as white people, they’re privileged.

I’m old enough to remember the beginning of the Internet.  I started teaching not long after.  I’m not blaming the internet, but I think the Internet has helped encourage a growing trend in our society to be ugly to each other.  We used to watch shows like Jerry Springer and similar shows and laugh at the over the top antics of their guests.  Then came reality shows in which people engage in barbaric behavior that most people would consider unthinkable.  We’ve evolved into a society of judgmental, overzealous, uninformed people who believe that the first amendment entitles us to be ugly, hateful, and self-righteous.  We put everyone into groups:  all liberals are cop-haters and have no respect for the country, the flag, veterans, or God; all conservatives are judgmental, hypocritical, hyper-partisan, misogynistic and racist.

We have become a society that cannot communicate because we go into conversations believing that we know everything we need to know about our counterpart, based on the position they take.  We have our thoughts well thought out an well-rehearsed.  We recite them, wait for a response, then continue our monologue.  This is not dialogue.  This is not communication.

I think, before we can ever create a world in which all humans have equal opportunity, equal rights, and equal and fair treatment, we have to begin with the way we speak to one another.  We cannot do that by making assumptions and categorizing people.  We must follow the golden rule when having conversations.  “Speak to others the way you would have them speak to you…”  But I have an addendum to the golden rule.  “…even if they don’t offer you the same consideration.”