“If you voted for Donald Trump, you are a racist. If you voted for Trump, don’t associate with me.” Sound familiar? It should. It’s been spewing from the mouths of countless blue-blooded liberals this week.
I was raised to be a conservative. Influenced by their deeply held religious beliefs and individualist methodologies of self-sufficiency, many of my closest loved ones still lean and vote Republican to this day.
At least 50 percent of the country can relate — owing to the rise of American conservatism that was so clearly put on display last week. When mass polarization and contention took the country by storm following the general election, I would like to believe that those with conservative family members were as disheartened by it as I was.
What kind of an echo chamber must one exist in to have the luxury of saying something like this? In one reality, all of the people who are closest to them — family, friends, colleagues — share all of their political opinions, effectively creating an isolated ideological bubble. In the other reality, their relationships with dissenting individuals do not play a significant role in their lives, such that cutting contact over a view on economic or social policy seems a justified reaction.
But where does that leave the rest of us, with deeply cherished loved ones that just so happen to fall on the other side of the aisle?
Homogeneity within one’s social circles isn’t inherently negative; of course, it’s easier to resonate with those whose political and social values align with ours. But we are not talking about small, isolated numbers of variance. We are talking about the majority of one of the largest countries in the world; the majority of small towns; the majority of Christians; the majority of men. For many people, we are talking about the majority of their families. To flippantly suggest cutting contact with those who do not politically align with oneself is a gaudy display of disregard for diversity of thought.
In her The Daily Tar Heel column, Eva Eapen suggested that we “consider not gasping in horror when a peer says they’re considering voting for the GOP candidate.” I found it bitterly ironic that, in the online reaction, many presumably liberal contributors took serious issue with this suggestion, refusing to condone exchanges with those who, so they claimed, rejected their rights and tolerated fascism.
In response, I claim now what I claimed then: how do we, the left, expect any social progress to occur if we refuse to engage in discussion with those who think differently than us? Of course systemic change is necessary — and that happens through shared dialogue and understanding, not elitism and exclusion.
Democrats and progressives alike afford me the separation of my individualism from the candidate whom I voted for, understanding that a vote does not always equate to a complete endorsement of ethical policy. We must afford this same luxury to many Trump voters this year — indeed, even more so than Harris voters.
