NOTE: I wrote this two or three years ago, sent it off to a handful of places with no success, and then forgot about it. I post it here as a freebie to revisit a time not so long ago when I still felt hopeful we could talk to each other.
When I was in fourth grade, my family moved from small-town Arkansas to an even tinier Mississippi hamlet with limited educational opportunities: an all-white, K-12 private “academy” and a public school with a mostly African-American student body. In Arkansas, itself no bastion of racial equality, I attended integrated public schools. In Mississippi, my parents, not wishing me to be both the new kid and the different one, enrolled me in the private academy. When my peers referred to the “the nigger school,” even during class, it shocked me. Introverted and confused, I had no idea how to navigate a school full of strangers except to do what they did and talk like they talked. So, even though I had begun to question the logic and morality of racism, I, too, used racist language, to my everlasting shame.
My best friend’s name was not Joe, but that’s what I’ll call him. On my first day in that academy, I stood alone. Since most of the kids came from lower-middle-class or impoverished backgrounds and everyone was white, there were few cliques, but these kids knew each other and had formed patterns of behavior of which I was not a part. As they scampered off for their usual recess activities, they did not think to ask me along, and as an introvert, I did not assert myself. Instead, I just walked around, daydreaming and kicking rocks in the gravel driveway. Spotting me, Joe approached and introduced himself. We talked. He suggested that we hang out after school. In short, he performed an act of kindness and empathy: he noticed me and reached out. Soon, he became my best friend. Though we lost touch after I moved away, we found each other through social media in the mid-2000s. We still loved each other like brothers. We could talk about anything.
Politically, I’m a leftist. Joe leans to the right. He provided a dissenting but reasonable voice to some of my farther-left positions, and I suggested new ways for him to interpret situations. Sometimes, we even changed each other’s minds.
In my remembrance, our relationship’s degeneration began with debates over guns. Given the incredible statistics about gun violence, weapons’ ubiquity, and many other factors, I have long believed that this country needs to revise its stance on firearms and its unsophisticated readings of the Second Amendment. I have never claimed that new gun laws alone would solve gun violence. In fact, I have always argued for a multifaceted solution that includes regulation, new law-enforcement methods, destigmatization of and accessible treatments for mental illness, a reassessment of violence as a solution to our problems, and more. In short, I have rejected the idea that we can do nothing about our gun problem, but I have also rejected overly simplistic solutions.
On social media, though, far too many people insist we do nothing. “We cannot limit our access to weapons because of the Second Amendment,” they say, ignoring how we have already limited our access in common-sense ways. You can’t just run down to Wal-Mart and buy weapons-grade plutonium or a surface-to-air missile or a LAW rocket. “Laws won’t completely stop gun violence, so we shouldn’t have any laws,” people say, ignoring logic. As others have pointed out, why have any laws if that’s true? Why have traffic laws when people run red lights and speed and pass against the yellow line anyway? It only stops good guys with cars from getting to work on time. Why outlaw heroin and cocaine when people get high anyway? It only stops good guys from getting high responsibly. Why make murder illegal? It just keeps the good guys from killing bad guys. And so on. Of course, no one wants a meth lab next door or a lunatic driving one hundred miles an hour through their residential neighborhood, but some people believe that guns exist in a sociopolitical and moral vacuum in which normal logic does not apply.
I had these conversations a thousand times on social media—the same people making the same points and counterpoints over and over and over, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. If I suggested that maybe, just maybe, in the wake of Mass Shooting #3,824, we should finally try something, the exact same conversations ensued, often with the exact same people. I would also have to hear the same evidence, often quoted out of context. Chicago is still violent! (As if its violence or lack thereof is directly attributable only to its gun laws.) “Good guys with guns can prevent violence. I know because I heard about somebody who managed to do it.” (No one has yet explained how anecdotal evidence is applicable to the entire nation and all the possible conditions under which violence might occur, to say nothing of the questions raised by the whole “good guys with guns” concept. Who decides what constitutes a good guy or a bad guy? Is it always obvious? If two good guys with guns arrive to stop a mass shooter, how do they recognize each other—a secret password? A handshake? If a good guy with a gun shoots at a bad guy and hits a bystander or another good guy, does that now make the good guy a bad guy? And on and on.) Once you’ve covered all this dozens of times with people who never listen, trying to respect their positions and their rights when they don’t respect yours, you become weary. And so I instituted a new rule for my own social media feeds: I would no longer have these conversations. I would no longer debate whether we have a gun violence problem or talk about these same points. I would only discuss and debate methods to fix the problem. People could still have those same conversations on their own Facebook walls or Twitter accounts if they wished, but I would not participate, and I would delete the posts of anyone who tried to hijack our discussion of solutions.
At first, Joe resisted this idea. He once told me that if I only wanted to talk with progressives who agreed with me, I should not make my posts public, as if making them public meant that I owed the whole world those same useless conversations. I don’t. I was not and am not interested in living in an echo chamber, but I can no longer waste time with repetition while people are dying. Eventually, Joe respected my decision, but that conflict cracked the foundation of our lifelong friendship, even though I never advocated a solution that would affect him or his gun ownership in any substantive way.
As the years passed and Joe drifted further to the political right, we disagreed on more topics, but again, our conversations were mostly productive. Joe refused to acknowledge his privilege as a straight white Christian able-bodied male who lived above the poverty line, but overall, he listened to me, and I listened to him.
With time, though, nearly every interaction turned into a political argument. In the wake of the Orlando nightclub shootings, I shared a Facebook meme in which the writer argued that politicians, especially conservatives, should stop sending us their thoughts and prayers and actually do something. This meme pointed out that LGBTQ people suffer harassment, abuse, marginalization, torture, and worse every day. And it’s true. Anti-LGBTQ legislation contributes to an atmosphere in which treating non-hetero, gender-nonconforming people as subhuman becomes acceptable. So-called Christian politicians attack LGBTQ people as abominations, quoting the usual out-of-context and/or ahistorical Bible verses, which makes it a little more okay for bigots to reject and attack difference. The Orlando massacre highlighted all this. Florida’s own governor said that all we can do is pray. Well, no, we could actually try to fix these problems. We could do something, try anything and see how it worked, rather than shrugging our shoulders and saying, “Huh. Who could have seen that coming?”
When I shared the meme, Joe jumped on me with both feet, arguing that only a victim or a victim’s friends and family had any right to reject politicians’ lip-service “solutions.” I don’t pretend to understand Joe’s reasoning, but I pointed out that anyone can speak out against injustice, hatred, and inaction. I argued that the writer was correct in saying that individual hate crimes happen every day in America and that much of our rhetoric and politics actually encourage such events. For the meme’s author—for me, and millions of others—the Orlando tragedy was not an abstract, distant event. it was one more link in a long historical chain. It was not a matter of politics or culture wars. It was a matter of survival. In terms of our personal relationship, Joe and I could find little common ground in our positions.
Arguments about race finally fractured our friendship. Heated debates happened every time a white police officer killed an unarmed black person or people of color protested racist actions. To be fair, Joe clarified that he does not hate people of color and finds obvious acts of racism as repugnant as everyone else. When Eric Garner died on a New York City sidewalk, rasping “I can’t breathe” while caught in a white officer’s chokehold, Joe condemned the officer’s actions.
Whenever events seemed more ambiguous, though, or conflicting evidence surfaced, Joe tended to side with white people. He insisted that Mike Brown was guilty and Darren Wilson innocent. While this conclusion is hardly uncommon, Joe’s vehement rejection of racism’s possible role in Brown’s death and Wilson’s fear bothered me—as did Joe’s refusal to acknowledge our own privilege in debating racism as a theoretical possibility instead of a concrete, everyday reality. Given the history of Ferguson, Missouri, and America in general; the institutional racism and ethnocentrism that European settlers brought to North America and perpetuated through chattel slavery, Jim Crow laws, lynch culture, and a thousand other manifestations; and the fact that Darren Wilson represented a traditionally white supremacist authority during a time of increasing police militarization, it seems all but certain that race played some role in Brown’s death, even if Darren Wilson himself never had a conscious racist thought in his life. Institutional racism tends to ingrain in white people a fear of color, particularly blackness. Too many people respond to fear with violence, and if those people are white, our system tends to exonerate them, as it did Wilson. At the time, I argued that racism is so deeply entrenched in the American psyche that it almost certainly contributed to the conflict between Mike Brown and the police and to Brown’s death at their hands.
This is a complex position that asks us to shine a harsh, introspective light on our nation and its myths. It requires us to remember that people seldom, if ever, make decisions in moral/ethical/sociohistorical vacuums. It reminds us that we must treat the disease, not just the symptoms. This is not to say that the position is perfect or always true, but its premise of complexity encourages deeper thought and intricate, tough solutions.
In this instance, though, Joe was more comfortable painting Mike Brown as a questionable character who should have complied with authority. I found this position too simple.
Then there was the response from Ferguson’s enraged citizenry. So much of the country condemned their actions as mindless rioting perpetrated by thugs. To me, it seems much more likely that the post-trial violence represented an emotional breaking point for marginalized and persecuted people. I do not condone violence as a solution, but I can understand the appeal of violence as a response to generations of oppression and anger and frustration and fear. In the wake of Ferguson, I found myself in several arguments wherein some people wanted to dismiss the town’s citizens’ concerns and their life experiences. Some even demanded that we never criticize the police and always comply with them, no matter what. A truly puzzling aspect to these arguments: the people making them also often insisted that we need an unlimited arsenal of automatic weapons to resist the tyranny of the very government that the police represent. But recognizing this contradiction would require introspection. Thus, many people on social media defaulted to arguments about nonwhite bogeymen from whom we (whoever “we” are) must defend ourselves and our property.
For Joe, Black Lives Matter particularly struck a nerve. He believed that Black Lives Matter is responsible for an atmosphere of hatred that led to events like the murder of Dallas police officers. This conclusion seems akin to blaming the French Resistance for World War II. Several times, I pointed out that Black Lives Matter is not about hating white people or trying to hurt/abuse/oppress white folks. It is about calling attention to violence against black people and peacefully trying to stop it. I pointed out that BLM has disseminated a manifesto, which does not call for violence or Othering white people. I pointed out that, in Dallas, the police and the peaceful protestors coexisted well, even posed for pictures together, before one very troubled person murdered people from ambush. I pointed out that Black Lives Matter spokespeople condemned these killings. I pointed out that the killer had perverted the aims and methods of BLM.
Whenever I posted about issues like this, Joe argued every point, never considering any possibility other than the ones he had already accepted as fact. He conflated a group responding to hatred with groups that act hatefully. My wife and friends privately expressed concern and wondered why I endured an alleged troll. I answered that we were like brothers, that I loved Joe, that I was willing to listen even when I disagreed, that I need people like him in my life to make me question my own beliefs and assumptions. It is also worth repeating that he is, in his own way, forward-thinking on many issues. He is not some back-to-1800 knuckle-dragger.
None of that made it any easier for other people who love me to tolerate his barrage of aggressive rhetoric, though.
Once, I shared an article about a burglary victim in Oklahoma who hung from a tree on his property several nooses and a sign suggesting that would-be thieves should not linger after dark. The sight of this display upset many locals. According to the article, the man removed the sign after he realized that people found it racist.
I commented that this situation demonstrated one more reason why we have to keep fighting racism and privilege rather than shutting down conversations about them, the latter strategy being one that Joe had advocated in a previous exchange. Joe made the first comment on the thread, simply asking how this situation related to racism. I responded that nooses hanging from trees evoked the long and brutal history of lynching, not frontier justice, which no longer exists and always seemed problematic anyway. Such an evocation causes real pain for people whose family members suffered such a horrible fate. Moreover, the sign echoed the history of “sundown towns,” in which nonwhite peoples were warned not to be caught inside the city limits after dark. These evocations and the resulting pain and anguish further diminish the ability of nonwhite people to live full, happy lives. I also suggested that the Oklahoman’s ignorance of all this history might have sprung directly from shutting down conversations about race, meaning that he was, in his own way, a victim.
A few nitwits ignored the complexities of this position and posted racist responses. I refuted their arguments and then banned them from my page, since I didn’t know them or how they found my wall in the first place. I am uninterested in debating entrenched bigots, especially ones I don’t know. Joe posted several times, mostly about how nooses don’t signify lynching to him (an idea I attributed to his white privilege) and how Black Lives Matter was guilty of far worse offenses. At this point, some of my other friends got involved. One investigated Joe’s wall, found some anti-BLM posts, and called Joe a racist. Others groaned at his not-uncommon belief that progressive open-mindedness means we have to respect to every idea, no matter how dangerous or offensive. My wife even responded, which she had resisted for a long time, mostly to point out Joe’s use of unintentionally belittling language when speaking to one of my female friends.
When Joe replied, my wife told him not to mention her name again. Rightly or wrongly, she was fed up. Joe responded aggressively.
After that, we fed off of each other’s anger. We were both at fault. I said things I shouldn’t have said. Unable to understand his own role in my wife’s attitude and seemingly shocked that I would defend her, Joe unfriended me.
We have since reconciled to a certain extent. We are no longer friends on social media, but we have exchanged private messages that re-established our affection. I still love him like a brother, and when my wife experienced a serious health problem, he reached out with well-wishes and prayers. He is a good man, no more flawed than most of us.
Still, our conflict made me think about the costs of activism.
When I speak out online, I risk the wrath of trolls who will dog my every word with illogical, offensive, angry diatribes. I also risk being misunderstood. If I do not communicate an exact, unambiguous meaning and cover every possible counter-thought in a single Tweet, I can expect a deluge of missives from the human equivalent of rabid wolves. They snarl and bark and bite, driven by motives at which we can only guess.
When I participate in rallies or marches or protests or Pride Parades, I risk violence—verbal abuse, terroristic threats, Photoshopped pictures that ridicule or mislead, thrown objects, fisticuffs, knives and bullets and bombs.
When I advocate for causes and beliefs that do not match those of my family and friends, I risk censure, angry lectures, calls for me to fall in line. Several people have disappeared from my life because they disagreed with me, even if my advocacy and my causes/beliefs do not directly connect to them.
Yet when I do nothing, I risk losing my self-respect. When I abandon those in need, I do not just ignore their problems; I contribute. When I remain silent, I consent to the status quo and disconnect myself from the world spirit that should unite us all.
I am no saint. I do not hold the moral high ground over anyone but the worst of humanity. I do not consider my positions to be correct because they are mine. Rather, I adopt the positions that seem right, independent of my first reactions, and I am willing to alter my positions based on new evidence. I try to champion causes that will make America what it has always claimed to be and never yet has been—a land of true equality and love and peace, the city on a hill. In serving my conscience and my ethics, I can live with the verbal abuse and the threats of violence. I can give as good as I get, and I deal with trolls and social terrorists in much the same way I deal with political and religious ones. I say that you can harass me and even kill me, but you cannot make me afraid. You cannot stop me from trying to live a life of truth and integrity.
I wonder, though, how America has come to this point, where we have to choose between our beliefs and the people with whom we have shared our lives. When did our default mode of discourse become antagonistic and spiteful? When did our lives become an Internet article’s comments section? We lament similar attitudes and actions in our politicians, yet we build ever-higher walls around ourselves every day.
The idea that social media may isolate us as much as connect us is not new, nor is the conception that these media can be used as tools for bullying, domination, unprecedented hostility. What seems newer, in method and severity, is how social media and their instant call-and-response discourse can kill long-time, otherwise solid relationships. All of us, including me, can and should do better. If we cannot communicate civilly with our loved ones, how much chance do we have of reaching strangers? We have to find a way to share our differences, listen to each other, learn, and act without surrendering to the vagaries of our worst selves. Our choices should not be limited to silent and oppressive consent or isolation. Otherwise, social media, the connections they make possible, and even activism itself are threatened as we shout at each other across the borders of what David Foster Wallace once called “our tiny, skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation.”
One answer, I believe, is empathy—the simple ability to see a situation from another’s perspective, to understand how they feel, to realize that we don’t know the specific circumstances of their lives and have not experienced their pain, to get out of our own heads and see the world in fresh ways. Through blind certainty and obstinacy, we break our connections and shrink the world. Through empathy, we build bridges to new possibilities.
The world needs fewer kingdoms and more bridges. We can build the latter one word at a time.
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