Have the Hard Conversations
Why Now is Not the Time to Cancel One Another Out
Today the world hangs in the balance. We’re suspended between dark and light, and we are tipping slowly into the darkness. This is not doom and gloom — every fall, the light gives into the dark as the world turns and we descend into winter in the Northern hemisphere.
This time around, however, I can’ help but feel like there really is more in the balance than usual. I don’t know one person who doesn’t think we’ re all fighting for something… that the events of this fall are about to determine something important, and we’re all a little nervous about what the outcome is going to be. Few people I know are drifting along, copacetic in their thoughts about where our country is headed.
In fact, I’ve heard the words “civil war” from far corners of my network, and when people from different parts of the country and the world are saying the same thing, I listen, and I pay attention. And the words “civil war” are unnerving.
I asked a friend of mine, what does that mean, civil war? Are we going to have hand to hand combat? It’s not like we have bayonets and muskets anymore. Wars in this day and age are waged online. She said, “Well, if all of my neighbors are Trump supporters, I’m going to have to move. Neighborhoods might change. There might be neighborhoods for one political party…” She went on to describe some of the likely scenarios if America really were at war with itself. Maybe people would just conduct raids on one another, entering each others homes, taking, raping, killing (in that sense, war hasn’t changed much throughout the millennia).
The words civil war are deceiving to me as an American, because they automatically equate to an old-time problem, something that happened 150 years ago (which, honestly, is not that long ago). But that’s a mistake to think that way, I know. I think of the differences between the Hutu and the Tutsi in Rwanda. This was a modern day civil war in the 90s. Hutu extremists went from village to village (read town to town, or city to city) and systematically wiped out Tutsi, people who qualified as “the Other” in their eyes. These were their neighbors, people they knew over the course of a lifetime. An estimated 800,000 people were killed over 100 days. They killed the men and raped the women, then killed the women and the children.
They were convinced over a number of years that the people they were out to kill were to blame for their problems. They were the “cockroaches.”
We saw the same thing with the Jews in Nazi Germany. Germany had lost a war and were in destitution, and they needed a common enemy to unite against, and Hitler gave them the Jews, an easy target.
We think of these crimes as not possible here, so atrocious that we can’t wrap our heads around them. And yet, when it comes down to it, we will have our own brand of atrocity — we already do. At this moment, we’re keeping people in cages at the border, in inhumane conditions. At this moment, immigrant children in custody are disappearing from their parents, for god knows what. At this moment, immigrant women are being sterilized at at least one detention center in Georgia.
This is our country right now.
You can argue with me and say “they’re here illegally” and you’d be right. But being an illegal immigrant doesn’t make you a justified target for torture. That’s like saying “they had it coming,” which is an incredibly cold (not to mention scary) justification for anything.
But I digress. I share that only to say we already have the capability, we already have the pathos and the ethos that says “we are better than…” whatever it is that we decide is the Other.
Although the actors are largely invisible, we do see the effects of an invisible war already (we’re experiencing the effects right now in our public discourse, in our politics, in our election). Our American exceptionalism is being used in a vulgar way. If we keep allowing our sensibilities to get whipped up (via social media) and we keep believing the lie that the “radical left” is out to take away your freedoms or the “radical right” is going to come with their guns and take your life, we are going to end up fighting one another.
The only thing that’s going to stop this slow slide is to resist the urge to make the person you disagree with “the Other” and lean in. Instead of cancelling them out, unfollowing, blocking, we need to engage in conversation. It’s not okay to just walk away right now.
Ask questions instead of coming out swinging. Really try to get an understanding of what they believe, and more importantly, how they came to believe it.
We’re being intentionally driven apart right now. We know this. Go against what you’re being manipulated into doing and lean into your discomfort and anger.
I will say that many POC and other advocates may have been doing this for years — trying to explain white supremacy to people who can’t hear it, trying to bridge the gap and come to some measure of equality, for example. I know there are many who are burned out and ready to walk away from relating with anyone who doesn’t understand their point of view. I don’t think you have a duty to lean into these conversation — right now. Recuperate. Recharge. But we’ll need you back in the game eventually. You have more practice than the rest of us. In a country that’s been trained to “not say anything if you can’t say something nice,” we all need to learn from you.
But for those of us who are the quiet type, who tend to stand on the sidelines even though we have opinions, thoughts, and ideas about where we’re going now, it’s time to get off the sidelines.
It’s not easy, I know this. I have three close relatives that I’ve had on block for the last two months, and I have to swallow my own medicine (as always). It’s not easy, but it’s essential that we get an understanding of one another, that we not believe the rhetoric being casually floated around.
This is not the time to sit out. In whatever way you can, it’s time for you to lean in and use your voice to help bring us together.
