Ranting about the left or the right, or even Trump, does no good for anyone. I’ve watched plenty of it, and I’ve never once seen it change a mind. Talk to people in good faith, to learn and to come to some understanding.
The idea isn’t to try to convince. Just listen. Understand. Explain your viewpoint. If those in the conversation can get past the “i’m right, you’re wrong” thing, everyone might learn something. And understanding the “other side” can help.
Ask questions without imposing your own conclusions.
Let’s take guns. I’d ask “Why is gun ownership so important to you?” and keep asking questions. My purpose is to find out why they believe what they believe. The answers can be interesting and surprising. I asked someone why they needed guns and the answer was because the police are at least 2 hours away. They need to be able to protect themselves because the cops don’t work the same way as in cities.
Ah. I thought. Now that makes some sense. Or why do they believe something about Hillary? They read it on some stupid website or their buddies, whom they trust, told them so.
The concept isn’t to change their mind, but to get into an honest conversation without shaming them or making them wrong. They have a different point of view and they hold their beliefs just as strongly as everyone else.
I asked a protester for animal rights why they thought cage-free eggs were so important. They said it was better for the chicken.
Okay, that’s interesting, because factually it’s NOT better for the chicken. Because I listened to them first, we had a good conversation, got on the internet, and did some fact checking. I learned a few things about how farmers raise chickens (ugh) and he learned a few things that the so-called animal rights groups were telling him that turned out to be untrue. (Note: Free range is better for chickens)
Another time, I asked a person why they were so upset about immigration.
We had a good conversation. I didn’t judge. Didn’t impose my own beliefs and conclusions. The man felt his own livelihood, his means for keeping his family fed and alive, was at risk. Interesting information. We got into the why’s and where did that information come from. In the end, neither of us changed our minds, but we at least understood each other.
My belief is we’re all people. We have basic needs and we base our opinions on information we have available. Unfortunately, sometimes that information is wrong. But regardless, people will defend their beliefs if they feel they’re being attacked. So don’t attack them. Don’t shame them. Don’t get emotional. Just listen and ask questions.
Sometimes, they realize how absurd their conclusions are and change their minds, sometimes they don’t. And sometimes I realize I’ve come to the wrong conclusions and change my mind. Sometimes I don’t. But at least I have a better understand of their point of view and they have a better understanding of mine.
Once you know why, you can address it. If you’re just saying “they’re hopeless and their opinions and beliefs have no validity” you can’t address anything. In fact, you probably just make it worse because you think the person is a racist and he thinks you don’t care that his family is barely surviving and he’s got to work 80 hours a week and … you get the idea (made up example).
But if you know he’s afraid of black people because he thinks he might lose his job or because someone he trusted told him something that wasn’t true, you could invite him to meet with people of other races, learn about them, and that might change his mind. Maybe you could change a so-called “racist” into a better person just by listening and then helping him understand.
In any event, that’s my approach. 🙂
One man I talked to was furious about welfare, so I asked him why it bothered him so much. I expected a lecture about laziness. Instead I got a story about working two jobs, watching every dollar, and feeling like the system rewarded everyone except the people quietly doing the right thing. I still didn’t agree with all of his conclusions, but I understood where the anger came from, and once I understood it, the conversation stopped being a fight and became two people comparing notes on the same broken thing from different angles.
Asking instead of arguing
I talked with someone on the opposite side, a person convinced that anyone who owned a gun was a danger to society. I asked why she felt that way. She’d lost someone to gun violence. That’s not an opinion you argue with. That’s a wound. Once I knew it was there, I could hear everything she said differently, and she could hear me differently too, because I’d bothered to find out why before telling her she was wrong.
That’s the pattern in every one of these.
The strong opinion is almost never the whole story. Underneath it’s an experience, a fear, a loss, a piece of information someone trusted. If you go straight at the opinion, you hit a wall. If you go looking for what is underneath it, you usually find a person, and people can talk to each other. Positions cannot.
Why questions work
The reason I keep coming back to this approach is that the alternative doesn’t work. Shaming people doesn’t change their minds. Calling them names doesn’t change their minds. Winning the argument doesn’t change their minds. What occasionally changes a mind is the slow, unglamorous work of understanding why a person believes what they believe, and then giving them a reason and a path to believe something better. You can’t do that from behind a wall of contempt.
You can only do it by treating the other person as a person, which, not coincidentally, is the same thing prejudice refuses to do.
It’s slower than yelling, and a lot less satisfying in the moment. It’s also the only thing I’ve ever seen work. After every one of the conversations I’ve described here, I came away knowing a real person a little better, and I’m not going back to shouting at strangers I never bothered to understand.
I write more about this in my forthcoming book, Everybody’s Prejudiced: How We Judge, Why We Do It, and What Rational People Choose to Do About It. Coming soon.