This is the second of a nine-part series exploring conversations I’ve had with my cousin about racism. Ben and I are both white; I’m progressive and he’s conservative. We’re trying to listen to each other with respect, even as we try to change each other’s minds.
Cousins who barely knew each other
The first post of this series on racism was a month ago, which feels like ages ago because of the election. In that post, I explained why it’s useful for white people to talk to each other respectfully about racism, like my cousin Ben and I have been doing over the last couple years.
Today I’d like to share more about Ben as a person. I want to show you why, even though I disagree with many of his views, I respect him as much as anyone else I know.
Ben and I come from a large extended family. Our fathers and their seven other siblings all left their childhood home in southern Florida, winding up in many faraway places: the South, Wyoming, the Pacific Northwest, Canada, and even Japan. The cousins in Ben’s and my generation only know each other in little enclaves. I grew up in Portland and often saw my cousins in Victoria, B.C.; Ben grew up in the South and knows the cousins in that region, several of whom I’ve never even met as adults.
So our Facebook and video conversations about politics are the most Ben and I have ever spoken to each other. It’s been fascinating to get to know someone to whom I’m so closely related yet barely knew until now.
I’ve been happy to discover that Ben is a good-hearted, thoughtful man. He’s a young father and an avid outdoorsman who loves hiking, skiing, and mountaineering. He’s very conservative—he serves in the military and is active in his evangelical church. An incredibly hard worker who once served in an elite military unit, he ultimately realized he needed more time with family to be happy. After stepping down to a more low-key role, he got married and now enjoys having more time at home.
My impression is that Ben devotes his life to doing good and making the world better. He does his utmost to be helpful, always—in the way he speaks and writes and spends his time. He lives his Christian values through kindness and worship. He dedicates his life to serving his country. And he prioritizes caring for his family and others who need help. I admire all of that so much.
Disagreeing, but with curiosity and compassion
Ben shares my passions for history, politics, spirituality, and dialogue. We’re always talkative together. Each time we talk, we say we’ll keep it short, but then boom—another two-hour conversation has passed. We also keep thinking we’ll finally move on to talking about gender identity, another topic we’ve debated on Facebook, but so far we’ve largely stayed on the topic of racism. There is just so much to say.
The things I love most about Ben are his kindness and his intellectual humility. We may be at opposite ends of the political spectrum, but these are values we strongly share. We both believe in speaking up for what we feel is right, but we both understand that we don’t know everything and that conversations are opportunities to learn. We’re also both empathetic by nature—Ben may be an uber-tough military guy, but he’s a sensitive soul like me. We try to speak to each other with compassion.
This all makes for great conversation. It is so refreshing to talk to someone with whom I so strongly disagree, yet who listens to me with genuine curiosity.
Ben has asked me many thoughtful questions. How do I define racism? Why are liberals so quick to talk about privilege? What do I get out of my Buddhist mindfulness practices? (We do sometimes veer off the topic of race.) When I send him things to read or watch, he does. I’ve gotten him hooked on Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist who has studied the moral worldviews of liberals and conservatives. He’s introduced me to Jordan Peterson and Thomas Sowell.
Intellectual humility: Ben admits when he’s wrong.
To my amazement, Ben will cede a point when I’ve changed his thinking about something. That might seem pretty basic, but how often have you heard someone on the other side of politics say, “I didn’t know that—I see how you’re right on this one.” Not often, I’d wager!
Many people seem to think admitting they’ve been wrong is a sign of weakness, but it’s really a sign of strength. I respect it immensely.
Here’s one example: When we first started talking, we quickly discovered that we perceived President Trump very differently. It was clear to me that Trump was racist, whereas Ben didn’t see this at all. “Are we even reading the same news?!” I asked him.
He laughed. “Well, if there’s something you found convincing about this, feel free to send it to me. It’s possible I haven’t seen it.” Ben takes Fox News with a big grain of salt, but he also mistrusts a lot of mainstream media.
Later, I eagerly combed through the internet for examples of Trump’s racism. Was there something I’d found convincing?! To me, Trump’s racism was like trees: it was all over the place, just scattered around, and you didn’t have to go looking for it.
I found a couple sources I thought Ben would trust most. Not The Atlantic’s “Trump’s Racism: An Oral History;” not the 2017 Huffington Post article on the 20 times Trump embraced racism. I sent him the Wikipedia page entitled “Racial Views of Donald Trump,” figuring Wikipedia is often fairly neutral. The page is essentially a list of Trump’s many racist statements and deeds going back to the 1970s.
Ben read what I sent. The next time we talked, he said, “I have to admit—when I read through the things on that list, there are at least a few that, no matter what the context was, they were just…indefensible.”
Indefensible.
He went on to say that he still supported Trump. He said although Trump was missing certain key aspects of leadership, like compassion and care, he felt that Trump’s other qualities added up to someone worth supporting.
Nevertheless, his word kept echoing in my mind: indefensible. It felt like a little victory for truth. It was reassuring to know that at least in this case, when Ben looked at the information I’d been looking at, he did see what I saw.
His intellectual humility has rubbed off on me.
Ben’s humility has been inspiring to me. It’s helped set a tone of trust between us, so that I, too, will admit when I’m persuaded by things he says.
For instance, talking to him helped me articulate problems I’d been having with social justice culture, but which I hadn’t yet spoken aloud for fear of offending my fellow progressives. It bothered me how social justice advocates sometimes not only acknowledged their own privilege but even expressed shame over it, or participated in shaming others who had it. I’d been disturbed to hear derision and dismissal of people for their whiteness, maleness, family wealth, and other forms of privilege. I believe privilege implies responsibility, but not shame.
This was a nuance I hadn’t clearly thought out before talking to Ben. Nuance is often missing from political conversations, and our conversations have opened up opportunities for it.
Ben has many progressive friends, and they respect him.
When Ben posted on Facebook decrying the protests after George Floyd’s death, I considered challenging it. But I decided to sit this one out—at the time, I had recently challenged so many of his posts that I was beginning to feel like his personal troll, albeit a nice troll. I also figured we would talk again soon.
But I watched closely as many others did challenge him.
Another admirable thing about Ben is that he has a lot of articulate, progressive friends. These seem to be people like me who don’t share his views, but with whom he gets along. The same is not true of many of my progressive friends, most of whom are close to few if any Trump supporters. Many go so far as to unfriend people who fit that description.
Ben’s progressive friends regularly comment on his posts. They are respectful but vocal in their disagreement. I counted eight commenters who objected to his post about the protests.
They made many coherent arguments. Ben had brought up the Chicago crime rate; his friends said George Floyd’s killing was different from the Chicago murders because it was state-sanctioned, and they added that Chicago’s crime rate is closely tied to a legacy of oppression and systemic racism. They also pointed out that police violence is inflicted at higher rates on people of color than on white people.
As he does with me, Ben responded politely and thoroughly to these friends. He doesn’t fit the liberal stereotype of an uneducated, uncaring Trumpie. Often, we assume the other side’s views are just knee-jerk reactions born of ignorance, and to be certain, there are Trump supporters who do not think deeply, who hold their opinions out of closed-mindedness and blind adherence to party. The same is undoubtedly true of some of us.
But Ben has well-reasoned arguments for his views, which makes it harder to dismiss them. As a corollary, it also becomes harder to dismiss others who share them.
The more we’re humanized, the better our conversations will be.
Ben and I are talking about racism from a place of privilege. We’re both passionate about it, because we both care about the well-being of people of color, as I’ll explain in future posts. But because we’re white, racism is not and cannot be as personal for us as it is for many others. We don’t have as much at stake.
It’s partly our privilege that helps us have these calm, respectful conversations—and yet I see this as an opportunity, not something to lament. I really want to persuade Ben that systemic racism exists, and persuasion is most likely in an atmosphere of mutual respect. We can use our privilege for good by having these conversations.
I hope that if you share my views, what I’ve written so far has opened your heart to Ben and people who think like him a bit more. And I hope that if you agree with him, reading the way I describe him has opened your heart to me.
In my next post, I’ll say more about racism and unconscious bias.
