A Third Way in the ‘Respectability Politics’ Debate
Opponents of President Trump can achieve a lot through empathy and loving engagement.
.. And protests at airports around the United States may have caused the Trump administration to reverse its decision to bar entry to green-card holders from the seven countries covered in its travel ban.
.. “For the average white citizen (read: voter), segregation was justified on the basis that Blacks were inherently ignorant, violent, hypersexual, and a whole other litany of adjectives that became increasingly difficult to apply to the people on the television peacefully protesting in the face of water hoses and attack dogs,”
.. he worried that he did not see “anything that would challenge the image of the leftist voter that Trump and his supporters used to their advantage,” and that “between the rise of the Tea Party and Black Lives Matter and a long list of college protests, marching has gone from a radical expression of protest to our shared dialogue. It’s basically mass texting at this point.”
As petty and vindictive as Trump can be, I do not imagine him or his supporters deploying the apparatus of the state to disrupt protests such as this one, mainly because they do not represent a challenge to him on any fundamental level. Where I do anticipate resistance going forward is against any attempt by the left or Trump supporters to relate to one another or build a coalition.
Trump won because he was able to convince all of us, left and right, that the chasm between us and our ideological opponents was far too wide to support a bridge. The work of the next four years will be proving him wrong.
Trump’s political adviser, Steve Bannon, depends on those deep divisions.
.. Neither the notion of most Trump voters as “deplorables” nor the caricatures many Trump voters have of feminists, coastal-dwelling liberals, or immigrants can remain as strong after effective, “in real life” engagement with individuals from the stereotyped groups—engagement rooted in love that transcends the conclusion that the Trump opponent in question is unusual, or “one of the good ones,” by addressing and respectfully challenging relevant prejudices.
.. It is one thing to be dismayed by the results of a Presidential election; it is entirely another to be utterly shocked by them. The latter signals that you do not know a significant portion of this nation as well as as you thought. We cannot afford to be alien to one another. Our unity is not guaranteed; it is a thing which we must guard jealously against all threats. In a nation as diverse as ours, unity is a prize we fight for daily. Sometimes that fight has been with bullets, other times with painted signs and shoe leather. This time, more than anything, we need open eyes and open hearts.
.. Mansoor Shams is a Muslim Marine Corps veteran dismayed to live in an era “where people would be questioning my loyalty to my country,” which led him to travel around America with a sign that says “I’m a Muslim, ask me anything.” He told NPR that the one-on-one conversations he’s having are breaking through prejudices.
.. This sort of thing does not work if attempted on social media. Even in person there would be a lot of failure.
.. But “large rallies can give a distorted sense of how much progress is being made in the fight against the Trump agenda,”