Can We Talk?

Americans are stuck in a vicious cycle of hate and distrust, but maybe there’s a way back to civility.

- Dashka Slater

LAST OCTOBER, SHORTLY before the election, I came across a startling photo from Oakland, California, circa 1969. Two men stood side by side: a black guy in a beret and leather jacket and a white guy in a denim vest emblazoned with the Confederate flag. The white guy was part of the Young Patriots, a group made up of poor white Southerners. The black guy was a Black Panther. The two organizations, along with a Puerto Rican group called the Young Lords, had formed what they called the Rainbow Coalition—a name Jesse Jackson would revive and popularize 15 years later. They had teamed up to fight for low-income issues like fair wages and access to health care even though, when the Panthers first approached them, some of the Young Patriots were enamored with racist ideas and symbols. “It wasn’t easy to build an alliance,” former Black Panther Bobby Lee once recalled. “I had to run with those cats, break bread with them, hang out at the pool hall. I had to lay down on their couch, in their neighborhood. Then I had to invite them into mine.”

After Donald Trump was elected, that photo kept returning to my mind. Amid all the banter about how to reach white working-class voters who defected to Trump—or, conversely, about why progressives should leave those “deplorables” behind and focus on voters of color—I’ve found myself vacillating between these two points of view. I don’t believe in writing people off, and like many journalists I actually enjoy engaging with belief systems different from my own. But engagement only works when people can share a set of facts, or at least agree that facts exist. As we withdraw further into our political, geographical, and informational silos, any quest for common ground feels futile. So why make the effort?