Is it really the holidays again?

Do you feel stressed just thinking about a few of your relatives who will create contentious conversations? Who are difficult to deal with? Are you ready for the holidays to be over before they begin?

The best advice is usually to avoid those thorny conversations, to find common ground, and focus on stuff you agree on. It’s good advice. But that’s not always possible. Sometimes you can’t avoid the tough conversations. So why not find ways to make them easier over time?

Ram Dass famously said, “If you think you are so enlightened, spend a week with your family.” And it’s true. Our families can be the most challenging group for us to deal with. There is so much history there that they can struggle to see the person you are now, as opposed to the person you used to be. It’s easy to forget that people change when you’ve known them for decades, especially from childhood.

I’ve been teaching Anthropology, Cross-Cultural Communication, and Diversity for almost ten years. So, I thought maybe I would offer up a few tips to help you navigate the holidays and how we can start healing the division we’re all experiencing.

Before I dive in, I want to ask you to read the whole thing. Quite frankly, when I am out in the world discussing this stuff, people will often interrupt and dismiss some of these tools for a variety of reasons. I will address most of this below, so even if you don’t agree with something I write, I encourage you to keep reading till the end because your question might be answered.

1. Listen to Understand, Not To Be Right

When I teach classes on diversity or communication, students are assigned reading reflections. In the first portion of these assignments, they must fully summarize an article with the core ideas, and the evidence the author is using to make their claims. They are not allowed to inject their opinion in the summary section. Why? Because before you can critique an argument, you have to fully understand it. So, before they are allowed to share their opinion, in the following section, they must first demonstrate they can summarize someone else’s argument.

This is an important life skill.

When someone has contrasting beliefs with our own, we tend to shut down and stop thinking critically. The walls go up. Then we accuse the other person of a lack of critical thinking or ignorance or dismiss them in some way. Who is right and who is wrong isn’t really the core issue here. Neither side is hearing the other and so no one will see a way across the divide.

Don’t listen to someone to prove something. Don’t listen to someone to be right. That is just an emotional reaction. You have allowed your emotions to take possession of you. This means the other person will also react emotionally and the conflict will escalate, and both parties will walk away miserable.

What to do instead?

Take a breath and listen. Don’t just listen to what they are saying, but try to understand where their concern comes from. What’s at the root of their fear and anxiety? It’s often different than you might think. What are their desires? Their hopes? What does a good future look like to them?

This leads to the next point…

2. Ditch the Devil’s Advocate

After nearly a decade of teaching, I’ve come to believe that the Devil’s Advocate approach is well, a devil. Meaning that it’s rarely a useful approach. The position of the Devil’s advocate masks itself as sincere critique, but most of the time, it ignores the concerns of the other person and seeks only to undercut someone else’s argument. It’s often dishonest, and disingenuous.

There are spaces where it’s possible to use the devil’s advocate well. If you’re in the midst of a debate in some kind of performative setting, where there is a moderator or someone able to continually keep both people in bounds, it can work. But the Devil’s Advocate isn’t a tool to persuade someone to your side, it’s to persuade an audience to your position. That’s a completely different tool. You’re not going to connect with the person you’re arguing with by using the Devil’s advocate approach, at least not usually. Yes, there are some people who can get something from this approach, but again, in my years of teaching on these topics, I’ve found nine times out of ten, it causes more problems than it solves.

What to do instead?

Use a kind of soft Socratic approach. You have to be gentle with this approach because remember, Socrates pissed enough people off that they made him drink poison. The goal is not to make the other party feel stupid or ignorant (which is what got Socrates killed) but to open the door for them to think about their viewpoint. Ask questions motivated to understand what the other person is saying. These questions should be rooted in an earnest curiosity to investigate their true thoughts and desires.

You’d be surprised how many people build a wall with their beliefs to try and prevent themselves from feeling overwhelmed by information. Soft Socrates can help them recognize that wall, to see that they’ve created a blockage between themselves and others.

How do you do this?

Don’t try to argue your beliefs. Don’t try to make appeals that work on you. Everyone has empathy, it’s a matter of who they have empathy for, and what they feel personally connected too. If someone doesn’t like immigrants, talking about women and children suffering, isn’t going to work in a direct approach.

Ask questions that show them you are empathetic to them, that you’re willing to listen and want to understand them. This builds rapport and creates space for them to share their deeper feelings and thoughts over time, and allows you to speak to them in a way they may understand in the future.

Again, you don’t have to agree with their beliefs or ideas (you can disagree with them intensely), but being able to summarize someone else’s argument effectively, is a really powerful tool for a number of reasons. Remember, this is just a conversation. Nothing is lost if they don’t ultimately agree with you, because, well, they already don’t. So ask lots of clarifying questions. If you can understand their point of view, you can learn to speak their language.

Ask questions like:

You keep bringing this up. Why is this issue more important to you the others?

Can you help me understand how and why you came to that conclusion?

If they got their ideas from a media personality consider: Where do you think that this person got their ideas and information? Have you seen this personally?

Was there something that you experienced that made you feel this way?

How might someone else interpret that experience?

It sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. I have too. But do you think you can explain the beliefs of people who disagree with you? Do they all think that way?

How do you think the other side came to their beliefs?

Why do you think their conclusions are as important to them, as your conclusions are important to you?

What do you think is important for other people to know about this topic? Why is that?

Is there another way of thinking about that issue that you can at least partially agree with?

What do you have in common with the people you disagree with?

Wow, it sounds like you care a lot about this issue. How can we solve this issue in a way that benefits everyone involved?  

The point with this approach is to establish common ground and to get them thinking that there are other ways of interpreting the same information. You’d be surprised how often someone who believes the opposite things as you, wants very similar things.

In general, people want to know that their basic needs are going to be met. They want to have the peace and freedom to pursue their interests and desires, and that people will care about them when something happens. Yes, even bigots want these things.

3. Remember Context, Conditions, and Choices

If you’re new to my work, you may not have heard of the Three C’s (well, my three C’s) before. I gave a Ted Talk on this back in 2021 and you can certainly watch that if you want a full breakdown, but in brief, it’s important to remember the elements that make up identity.

Context – The cultural system into which someone was born. This includes all the available cultural knowledge they grew up with, the time in history, and important historical events that will have shaped their thinking. This is the entire system into which they were born, not their personal experience.

Conditions – These are the personal experiences that someone has had in their life. What kind of exposure to different ideas have they had? What challenges have they faced? What are their religious beliefs, language, gender, class identity, and so on. How do these compare to the norms of the culture (does that create conflict or perceived conflict for them?) These are their experiences within the system they were born.

Choices – Once you have taken the time to understand a person’s cultural background and personal life experiences, you can begin to understand many of their choices, their political opinions, their religious beliefs, and so on. This doesn’t mean you agree with them, but this exercise is to help you recognize them not as that ranting irrational person you can barely stand to be around, but as a complex person who has different thoughts, desires, emotions, and needs.

Humanizing someone is important. Dehumanizing someone is the first step to violence. That doesn’t mean you like what they believe (especially if their beliefs are dehumanizing), it doesn’t mean you agree with what they are saying, but understanding is the starting point to a more cohesive coexistence and to find ways to solve problems.

People do not usually change their minds because someone screams facts at them.  They have to connect emotionally with the facts. If you connect with them, and you build trust, they are far more likely to listen to you and given enough time, change their mind.

There are no quick fixes here. People don’t come to hate something in a singular moment. It takes time. Either they are born into a way of thinking and they are raised with it, or something happened to them to put them in a vulnerable position where the seeds of hatred could grow. Hate usually grows from outrage, and these days, all of us, across the political spectrum, consume media that purposely makes us feel outraged. That’s how these companies make their money.

That’s actually optimistic because we’ve created these problems. That means we can uncreate many of them.

4. This won’t work every time, and it takes lots of practice

As someone who has not only taught diversity for a decade but has lived and worked among other cultures, I’ve heard every argument for why we should or shouldn’t appeal to the humanity of someone who disagrees with us.

Things like:

“You can’t be tolerant of someone who wants to end your existence.”

“Some people just thrive on chaos.”

“They are a narcissist (or some other reason they will never listen).”

“They are willfully ignorant and will never change their mind.”

“I know better because I’m older and more experienced.”

“They are too old to change their mind.”

“They could never understand what I’ve been through.”

“Their generation has xyz issues.”

Maybe these are true. Maybe you’re right and that person will never listen. Have you tried the above approaches? Have you put down your weapons and tried to talk about these things, not to win, not to be right, but to understand? Maybe you have. Maybe my advice doesn’t work for the person or people you’re thinking about.

But it will for someone. And in a world where so many of us feel the rising conflict, every person who listens counts. Every courageous conversation counts. It’s often the little acts that change the world, that bring communities together.

People doubt their beliefs, especially when there are obvious holes in what they think. People are aware at some level, of their own cognitive dissonance. It’s why they get so angry when presented with a sincere challenge to their worldview. When you attack them, it gives them a reason to put aside their doubt, and build a higher wall.

But if you approach things from a different direction, if you meet their walls with an olive branch, sometimes they will open the gate. Given enough time, they might start to take bricks off that wall, enough that they can start to see over to the other side. Even if they never fully change their mind, softening their view can deescalate potential violence and conflict. Even if becomes, well, we know we can’t approach that topic but we still love and care for each other, that’s a victory. If you have even 10% more peace during your holiday. That’s a victory.

No this won’t work every time. It might not work the first time, or the tenth, but if we care about this person, or ever cared about this person, we must remember their humanity.

I am definitely not perfect. I screw this up all the time. Ten years of teaching, and I can’t always make it work. There are some people, and some things that just get under my skin and I have a hard time seeing past that. But over time, that’s less true. Over time, I can talk about complex issues such as race, gender, or oppression in ways that are more accessible and thought-provoking, less attacking, and more about developing connections.

I’ve been the angry activist on the street, screaming and shouting for tyranny to end. I’ve written no end of essays and articles about injustice. I conducted graduate research on media and representation and saw all the terrible ways our system treats differences. I’ve struggled with elements of my own identity for most of my life. I grew up in a deeply segregated community on the East Coast and didn’t understand anything about diversity. But I learned. I changed. I continue to make mistakes and reflect so that I continue to grow.

It’s know it’s hard to be the bigger person, really hard. But I promise you, the payoff is worth it. We just have to try. Sometimes we will make a connection and change things for the better. Sometimes we won’t. But you never know for sure until you try.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday and some of this is useful.

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