if you want to change minds

 This is a loose collection of thoughts about how cancel culture intersects with how we handle when the people closest to us have views we really don't agree with. It's borne out of the current "freedom convoy" that's taking place in Canada right now- not just in Ottawa but in my home province too. Because the common thing to do if you are a "good person" is to just flat out refuse to associate with anyone with "bad person" views.

We all know how hollow that is- that to them, we seem like the "bad people"- but that's most often how people will think of it. The issue for most people from what I have been reading is that the convoy was partly organized by people with histories of ties to white supremacist and neo-nazi organizations, so anyone who supports it is implicitly condoning those actions. The protestors have also been said to have been hurling slurs and other nasty shouts at POC in Ottawa. They notably have not been arrested or brutalized by the RCMP or local police. 

But putting aside whether or not the convoy has racist elements (it does)- the point is that you may find yourself in a situation where a family member or (close) friend admits either to you or to everyone that they support this. For the rest of this post, I am writing to my fellow white Canadians who find themselves in this situation. The thing to do is to cut them off, right? I read an article in the CBC today about how people are doing just that. The line that was quoted in the article that stood out to me was how someone said "I don't want to be associated with white supremacy."

The language of that is interesting to me. I understand it- I don't want to be associated with that either. But is that the goal? The end goal of your activism is just to not be associated with people holding oppressive viewpoints? I doubt that- I'm guessing your goal is to eliminate those viewpoints, to prevent them from being seen as a viable thing to think for anyone. My question to you then is- do you think cutting off your friends and family is in service of that goal?

I'd like to ask you to use your empathy muscles for a moment. Imagine you hold a belief that is widely considered to be "bad." You don't think it's bad, of course- to you it makes perfect sense. It explains everything. I'm going to need you to let go of some of your ego here- you are just as capable of falling in with cults and damaging belief systems as anyone else is. You are just as likely to go along with whatever viewpoint is popular at the moment solely because it markets itself well, and not because it actually has anything to stand on. But imagine- you have this view. It really matters to you. You spend a lot of time thinking and reading about it to learn more. And you know that the popular conception of this view is not good. People think that people with these views are bad people. But you KNOW you're not bad- right? If only they would listen, it might make sense.

Perhaps finally you grow tired of waiting for the tide to change and decide it's not worth keeping this part of yourself a secret anymore. You tell people. Maybe you just start with your siblings or parents, or your close friends, maybe you announce it on facebook and start talking about it at work and school. I don't know. Predictably, you get a negative backlash. People start cutting you off after you tell them. They block your number and profiles, they stop speaking to you in public, they don't answer your calls. What are you feeling now?

Are you thinking "oof, gosh, you know what, maybe they have a point. I should probably reconsider." I highly doubt it, and I speak from personal experience because this DID happen to me. More likely, you think "well, fuck them and good riddance. I'm part of this other community now and I don't need them. They didn't want to listen to me and see reason, it's their loss." If those people hurled nasty words at you before you cut them off- if they told you you were unacceptable, compared you to other people in their lives with different beliefs you also find offensive, if they issued ultimatums about staying in their life- what would you think? Would you be threatened into silence? Would you back down? Would you think these are reasonable, compassionate people who just want what's best for you?

Or would you just dive deeper into the view that caused the rift in the first place? Would you just become more convinced of your own view of yourself as a persecuted minority? Would you be an easier target from your community to become emboldened to take actual action in person?

Now let's imagine a different route you could take. Imagine someone from your family shares that they disagree, but they're curious about where you're coming from. They want to know what you have to say. Eagerly, you tell them everything, thinking you've convinced them, but they don't necessarily jump on board. They may agree with you on some things, but not others. You go harder. Things become personal. They acknowledge that the things you have been through or are going through are difficult. They say they understand. How do you feel now? Is this a reasonable compassionate person?

You might feel curious about what they think. You might ask them questions in return, and they would answer them honestly. You see how they have struggled too. You might gain empathy for them, the same kind of empathy they showed you in the first place. In this scenario, you might begin to think they have a point about some things. That maybe this group you're part of isn't totally right. You might have doubts, you might start to think more critically. You might change your mind entirely- or you might distance yourself from the more extreme aspects of whatever you believed in. If you did change your mind, there is no gloating told-you-so, only a "I'm glad to see we agree on more. I'm happy to talk about this whenever you want." You feel connected, appreciative. Challenged, loved. 

Now go back to reality. You're still you. You don't have any unpopular opinions, at least not any that really go against the grain. You're still staring at that message or post or person saying that they don't believe x, or they believe y instead. What are you going to do this time, if your goal is really to change minds?

I don't say this to imply that this will always work this way, I'm not naive. It might be that in the alternate universe scenario, the other person sees that you have a point and changes their mind. You might meet in some hypothetical middle. In reality, talking to people might just end with them doubling down and becoming mean or abusive. This isn't always going to work out this way, and it doesn't have to. If it goes bad, you are always allowed to cut them off.

That's the thing. This post isn't telling you you're wrong for cutting off people with unsavory beliefs or beliefs you personally find abhorrent. There is a time and a place for removing people from your life, and you may find yourself removed at one point or another. That's not morally bad, and that isn't the argument I'm trying to make here. Sometimes the goal is just to keep yourself sane, and in that case, cutting someone off might be your only option. If the person in question has beliefs that are responsible for your actual oppression, I am especially not obligating you to talk to people.

But in this real-life case, where white people who want to be good allies are cutting off their white friends and family who hold racist views because they don't want to be thought of as racist, I'm going to go against the grain and say you are a little obligated to have these conversations. You're obligated to try. Those beliefs don't personally oppress you. That system they support doesn't negatively affect your life. You don't suffer from that particular kind of oppression- meaning you have far more energy to tackle it from the inside than anyone who does suffer from it. When you cut off your racist friends and family because you can, you're inadvertently shifting the responsibility of bringing people into anti-racism work onto people who are actually impacted by racism. I don't think that makes you a good ally. 

Your racist friends and family are far more likely to listen to you- not just because you're white, but because you're a friend or family member. You have trust with them, perhaps a trust where they shared this with you in a moment of vulnerability. What I mean by this is: people are far more likely to change their minds when the mind-changing information comes from somewhere- or someone- they already trust. 

And let me be clear: if you agree with me, when you have these conversations the one thing you absolutely cannot do is sit on your high horse. You need to empathize, you need to ask from a place of genuine curiosity, and you need to remember you aren't better than them. The second you talk down to them, dismiss them, condescend to them- you have lost them. Nobody wants to be spoken that way. Everybody wants to be taken seriously. 

This hasn't even yet touched on how white supremacy and incel groups in particular tend to prey on people in those privileged groups (white people and men, respectively) who are going through a hard time. You know what's a hard time? Having friends and family desert you. Having them explicitly say you are a bad person and they won't be supporting you anymore. Feeling alone and friendless, with no one to turn to. Humans are social creatures, and when desperate, they will run to the first group that will accept them. If it's not going to be you, it's going to be them. 

At the end of the day, I can't tell you what to do, and I won't. I am speaking simply as someone who was cut off- after a barrage of insults and abuse and gaslighting and projection- from a friend group for thinking the "wrong" things. If my friends wanted to change my mind, they did a fucking terrible job. I no longer think of them as intelligent, compassionate people. I think of them as well-meaning women sucked into a terribly sexist belief system because they care so deeply about being "nice" that they've never thought critically about what they were spouting for one moment. I think they were all too eager to be good little allies and make sure I knew I belonged in the dirt for what I thought, despite the fact that none of my thoughts are hateful or malevolent. I challenged their worldviews and I can see that- they thought only bad people could believe these things and thought themselves too smart and kind to befriend a bad person. I had hoped that four years of friendship and trust might get them to see that I wasn't a bad person and therefore maybe people with my beliefs are not all bad people, but instead they chose something far easier- that I had simply been a bad person all along and tricked them for years. This simple fact meant I was deserving of the very worst of them, and that is what they gave me. I got it all- being told I was unacceptable, comparisons to their racist, homophobic, and abusive relatives, demands to apologize for things that were not objectively wrong, insistences that I had no "right" to be hurt, gaslighting about a million other completely unrelated aspects of my behavior, condescension from someone trying to help me "see the light," and insistences that I believed things I made clear I did not. It felt very much like the physical equivalent (since this mostly happened over text) of being told they wanted to hear me out while standing around me with clubs in their hands and malice in their eyes. 

I don't like to talk about what exactly the issue was because it still isn't popular. I don't feel safe talking about it, especially after what happened to me. I'd like to highlight a different scenario: that of my fiancee. He and I had had the same fight about the same issue a few years prior. Instead of insisting I was a bad person, instead of deciding I deserved to be verbally abused and abandoned, he heard me out. There was anger, for sure, but there wasn't condescension. He spoke to me like I was intelligent, he asked questions from a place of genuine curiosity and offered counter arguments in a non-offensive way. We continued talking about this over the years. Eventually it grew into a dynamic where we both felt safe to say things we might not feel safe saying out in public. I had more trouble with this than he did; I often jumped to worst case accusations that put him on the defensive. This did make him learn to word things differently and think about what conclusions I might jump to, and it's lead to a deeper understanding. When my friends did what they did, he was there for me through it all, despite the fact that he doesn't share all my beliefs on the subject and challenges me on them regularly. 

That is where I am coming from. Two very, very different experiences, the latter strengthening our relationship and our intelligence, the former deeply traumatizing for me in a way that I still think about it every day 4 months after it ended. The latter is something my therapist often remarks upon positively, the former is something she has had to help me grieve because I have been unable to do it on my own.

Next time you want to cut someone off, try talking to them first. It might not work, but other people have far more to lose if you don't say anything.