I Don’t Owe You My Friendship
It’s not my job to spend my time listening to bigoted ideas so someone feels heard.
When I published my piece about why I wasn’t going to share that Ellen kindness video going around, it was clear from some of the responses that people were struggling with my decision. Nearly everyone I got into a dialogue with conflated kindness, basic decency, friendship, and politeness.
Ideas like “you cannot fight hate with more hate” and “hate the sin, not the sinner, love all” were in good supply. On the surface, I don’t disagree with these sentiments. I agree that you can’t fight hate with hate, and that people generally deserve compassion. But there are a lot of options that seem to be getting ignored on the path from hate to love. Americans love the binary. We love separating things into either-or choices when in reality our choices are plentiful.
There are a lot of options getting ignored on the path from hate to love.
Being a decent and polite human being, being kind, and being actively friendly are three different things; options along a line that stretches from tolerance to hatred to apathy. Unless you have been intentionally cruel or harmed me, I’m going to be polite to you, and probably superficially friendly. We can…
