Friday, March 21, 2025
Would You Engage Someone Who Says Hateful Things if You Thought You Could Change a Mind and/or Heart?
Alicia Diozzi
Makes sense, right? Someone is in a hate group, or says hateful things, or votes for someone who seems to stand on the side of hate, and we CANCEL them.
We don’t engage anymore. It’s not our job. We block them, unfollow them, cut them out of our lives.
Done.
Or are we? Do you miss someone that you cancelled? Do you think, “Wow, they *were* so nice, until they became ‘radicalized’. But I’m glad I know, so I can cancel them.”
And again, it’s not your job. But whose job is it?
When you cancel someone, you haven’t killed them. They have not gone away, nor have their beliefs, nor have their fears, nor have their assumptions. They are still here. But they are not in YOUR life, so you can pretend that you’ve actually made a difference, actually done something, but that is an illusion.
Would you engage with someone if you thought you could make a difference? I can think of no better example than the KKK. Can we just agree that they are dangerous haters, a homegrown terrorist group, calling themselves “Christians” and being a disgrace and a detriment to their communities? OK, yes, I agree with that. So, I understand the urge to cancel them outright, to give up on your friend or relative if they joined a terrorist group, yes, I get that.
But you can’t ignore the work of Daryl Davis, and I want you to at least think about it. He fights racism, specifically the KKK, through engagement. Google him, as the holidays approach. Some of us are at a loss, distressed, upset about encountering folks who are on the other side.
What about engagement over cancellation? Engagement is much harder. Cancellation is the easy way, but maybe not the most effective.
My question for you is, would you engage if you truly thought you could change a mind and/or a heart?
We Should Engage Our Opponents – But Beware of the Limitations
Russell Lane
A few thoughts.
First, deciding to not engage with people whose point of view you find disturbing isn’t “cancelling” them. You haven’t done anything to them. You just don’t want to engage with them anymore. That might be a good idea, or a bad idea, but it’s not “cancelling”. You haven’t denied them their ability to speak, you haven’t caused them to lose a job, you have simply removed yourself from their orbit.
That said, I think it’s good to maintain connections with people who you disagree with, just at a basic human level. It can help moderate more extreme points of view (for all parties), and can generally help to prevent everyone isolating into their own self-reinforcing social and cultural bubbles. It can help us remember the humanity of the people we disagree with.
And *that* said, I think there are limits to what we can expect to accomplish in terms of changing anybody’s mind. About anything. People think and believe what they think and believe for all kinds of reasons. Staying engaged with folks you disagree with might humanize your point of view for them – might make it real, rather than some cartoonish version. If you get that far, it’s a win. But it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to convert them to your point of view, if that’s the goal.
And there are also limits to what anyone should be asked to put up with. There are folks who find it entertaining to bait other folks, to wind them up and upset them. Those people are called trolls. Nobody is obliged to engage with trolls, we aren’t here to provide perverse entertainment for malicious jerks.
If there are people in your life who you disagree with but who you want to keep in your life for whatever reason, then by all means keep them in your life. But be realistic about what you expect from the relationship. You are unlikely to change their minds in any dramatic way, and it can actually be kind of manipulative (on your part) if you are maintaining your connection to them just for that purpose. And you should also be aware that your own point of view may be changed.
On the topic of Daryl Davis, it’s worth noting that there are a number of times in his engagement with KKK members where it could have cost him his life. He was willing to take that on, which was frankly heroic on his part. If that’s your calling, go for it. But if it isn’t, be mindful of the waters in which you tread. Differences of opinion are one thing, but some points of view are not that benign. There are people who will harm you over the kinds of differences we’re talking about here.
The Key to Engaging “Hateful Speech” is to…Listen
Michael F. Mascolo
Alicia asks, “Would you engage someone who espouses hate speech?” The key term here, it seems to me, is “engage”. What does it mean to engage?
In response to Alicia’s question, a friend said:
If I truly think there’s a chance at changing someone’s mind or heart if they’re truly able to listen, then yes, I can engage. But it feels like most aren’t willing to let you even get that far.
For this friend, engage means “try to convince the other person”. It means to try to get the other person to listen. Why wouldn’t it? If someone says something we find morally repugnant, we want to change their minds? Why wouldn’t we?
Well, imagine that the roles were reversed. Imagine you were the one who was regarded as espousing hate speech – or some other outrageous form of speech. Imagine someone approaches you, and, truly believing that you have performed immoral acts, says, “I see that you _____ (“voted for X”, “are a meat eater”, “use plastic bottles”, “have done nothing about famine”). You are immoral. Listen as I tell you why.” How would you respond? Would you be willing to listen? Probably not.
As paradoxical as it might sound, I suggest that the effective strategy is just the opposite. It is to listen – without judgment (huh?) – to understand. It is to be radically curious, as if to say, “I don’t understand what you are thinking and feeling. I want to understand what it is that you think, and why you think this way.”
And this is what Daryl Davis did with the KKK. Here is part of an interview with Davis. Davis had just talked about how – as Russell indicated – he actually risked his life speaking with armed members of the KKK. The interview asked if Davis was armed when we to these meetings. He said, no – he did not carry a weapon. The interviewer – unable to break out of the idea that Davis was engaged in a battle of some kind, asked, “You wanted to go in and battle them on a mental level as opposed to maybe carrying a firearm that they may have considered a threatening action.”
Davis responded by embracing a different kind of engagement:
I don’t use the term battle because I don’t want to battle them. Even though I don’t support their beliefs. I went in there to learn from them, to try to gather information, to help me try to understand “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me — just based on the color of my skin?” And to converse with them and hopefully plant a seed – give them some food for thought. And over time that worked. That’s how friendships evolved. Because I gave them something they never had before. They never sat down and had a one-on-one intelligent conversation with a black person. I’d never sat down and had a one-on-one conversation with a Klan member. So you know we each gained something. And what we found was that most times we had more in common than we did in contrast. The only thing that we had in contrast was how we each felt about race…. But other than that, we agreed on a lot of things. For example, we agreed that we need to get drugs of the street; we need better education for children. Things like that. So when you find commonalities, you build upon those, and then you each realize you know what? He wants the same thing I want.
Davis is able to foster change in members of the KKK not by seeking explicitly to change them – not by convincing them of anything – but instead by disconfirming their biases and experiences. The KKK members can begin to see: I am speaking to an intelligent, compassionate and caring Black man. I like this person. I’m feeling different here. Maybe I need to revise how I think.
And this all starts not from convincing, but instead from listening with curiosity and compassion. It comes from deep, authentic, curious, and caring human engagement. Yes, it’s hard. It carries risk. It may not even be for everyone. But this is the process by which relationships are formed and transformed. It may be the key to transforming our political woes.
Is It Worth It?
Russell’s Response
What we’re discussing here is how best to engage with folks we disagree with. And not just disagree – engage with folks whose point of view we find not merely incorrect at some factual level, but morally or ethically wrong. Not just incorrect, but bad.
The first point to consider is whether it’s something worth doing at all. Because it can be hard to do. Time consuming, emotionally draining, potentially challenging to your own assumptions and point of view . It can be hard. So why do it?
The basic reason for attempting it is to overcome divisions between people. Differences in our point of view can separate us from each other, in the extreme can make us see others as our opponents, our enemy. And sometimes people *are* opposed to us, may even be our enemies. But I think most folks would say that is not a desirable place to be, and if we can avoid it or remedy it, all good.
So let’s stipulate that it’s a good thing to do, to the degree that it’s possible.
I am in complete agreement with your statement above that, should someone want to take this on, it’s best not to approach it from the stance of “you’re wrong, and let me tell you why”. That will lead to a very, very short conversation. Approaching it from a stance of “I want to understand why you think and believe as you do” will be more fruitful – it won’t immediately put the other person on the defense, but instead is more of an invitation. But you need be sincere about this – you really do need to *want to know*. If it’s just pretext to get the part where you get to tell them why their point of view is bad, that will become evident. And, you may need to do some work of your own to get to that point.
What we are talking about here, really, is establishing trust. You are asking the other person to be vulnerable – to expose their own aspirations, fears, motivations, perhaps to express thoughts that may be judged. It’s a lot to ask, and to ask it in good faith, you need to commit yourself to being a trustworthy counterparty. To not be someone looking for opportunities to pass judgement on them. Not be someone engaging just to “win the argument”. But someone who is, sincerely, curious and interested in understanding their point of view.
This may require you to suspend your own assumptions and beliefs, even if only temporarily. You may have reactions to what the other person says – which you may need to manage.
It can take discipline and self-awareness on your part.
The basis for doing this – for putting aside your own (perhaps correct or understandable) instinctive responses, your own tendency to make judgements – is recognizing the fundamental humanity of the other person. Even if, as you understand it, they are failing to recognize that of others. To recognize that your counterparty is a person, like you, entitled to a basic level of respect, even if (as you see it) they don’t extend that to others.
Note that you don’t need to surrender your own point of view to do any of this. Your point of view *may* be changed in the process, or it may not. All that is asked is that you suspend, for a few moments, any need to insist on your point of view – any need to “be right” – so that you can actually hear the other person.
What can we expect from this?
I don’t think that “finding common ground” is a realistic goal here. People really do believe different things are good, for reasons of their own. There may not be common ground to be had.
What is achievable is building a relationship of trust, mutual respect, and a basic level of mutual understanding. And all of that can be the basis of co-existing, in spite of differences.
We don’t have to agree, or want the same things, or think the same things are good. We do need to get to a place where we can be different, but co-exist peacefully and without animus.
The Costs of “Private” Cancelling
Alicia Diozzi
Russell wrote:
[D]eciding to not engage with people whose point of view you find disturbing isn’t ‘cancelling’ them. You haven’t done anything to them. You just don’t want to engage with them anymore. That might be a good idea, or a bad idea, but it’s not “cancelling”. You haven’t denied them their ability to speak, you haven’t caused them to lose a job, you have simply removed yourself from their orbit.
Russell is right, I think, to discriminate between what people do when they “deplatform” someone who has said something that some may find as disturbing and what they do when they cut those who hold disturbing views out of their lives. He says that the former is cancelling, whereas the latter is not. Fair enough.
Perhaps another way to think about it is to differentiate between public cancelling and private cancelling. Public cancelling occurs when some powerful constituency works to silent, ostracize, shame or otherwise disenfranchise someone with whom they disagree. We might use the phrase private cancelling to refer to the act of disengaging from friends, family and acquaintances whom we find offensive. The consequences of public cancelling can be devastating both to the individual cancelled and to the society who has been robbed of the opportunity to hear what the cancelled person has to say – no matter how offensive people may find it.
But private cancelling is not harmless. Russell says that when we disengage with those we find offensive, “You haven’t done anything to them”. Perhaps you have not done anything public to them, but you have, I thinking done something to them. You have not only done something to them, but you have also done something to society as well.
When you cut a person out of your life, you are not saying that it is appropriate to define someone in term of their political beliefs. When this happens, you rob the other person of a relationship with you. You rob yourself of a relationship with the other. And you continue to perpetuate the fractionation of people into politicized social groups.
Each time engage in an act of private cancelling, we fail – as Russell said so eloquently – to see the humanity in the other person. To do this, we have to separate the person’s politics from the emotional aspect of the person – that which truly makes them a person. When we treat the other person as if they were their politics, we fail to see the good in the other person. We fail to see the love they have for their kids, how they strive to make the world a better place, their insecurities and vulnerabilities, their strengths and failures.
It is okay to disagree with someone’s views. If you choose to disengage from them, do so because you cannot find ways to connect to who they are, deep down, as persons. You may think that they hold some belief you find offensive, then that is who they are deep down. In my experience, it is possible to find good in most people – even people who have that I cannot tolerate.
Be Sure to Take Care of Yourself
Russell Lane
There are points of view that are actually harmful – that are inherently dehumanizing, whether to you directly or to others. Views that would deny others their basic rights as people. And these views are sometimes expressed in aggressive or hostile ways, sometimes with threats of harm or actual harm.
If you want to do this work, you need to be mindful of how it affects you and those around you (for example, children). It can be deeply disturbing to engage with people whose point of view calls, for example, for your own elimination, or that of people you care for. Or whose point of view calls for denial of basic rights like employment, housing, the right to marry or have a family. The right to due process under law. These are not abstract examples.
Pay attention to how these conversations affect you and those around you. Pay attention to your own reactions and the reactions of those around you. Respect your own limits and those of folks you care for and are responsible for
It’s also fair to expect the fairness – the openness, the basic level of respect – to be reciprocal. Some people are bullies. No-one should be expected to offer themselves up to bullying and abuse.
This kind of work can be exhausting. Pay attention to how it is affecting you. The times are fraught, and it’s likely to get weirder before it gets better.
Take care of yourself.
Common Ground isn’t Merely Found – It Must Be Actively Created
Michael F. Mascolo
Alicia and Russell separately address what I think is the core issue in getting past cancel culture: Don’t cancel, engage instead — where engage means connect to what is human in the other. Connect to the emotional underbelly of the person whose beliefs you may hate – without giving in to those beliefs.
And although we should seek to connect to the good in the other, we should also connect to the darker aspects of the other. And what is human need not just be something good; it could be the very thing about the other’s statements that we hate. This means seeing that in different circumstances, we could also believe and feel that which we hate in the other.
If I were a white person living in the deep south during Jim Crow, I could have developed racist beliefs.
If I were a white man who grew up in the male political culture prior to women’s suffrage, I might harbor views that women were inferior thinkers.
If I were a straight male who was never exposed to gay men, I might harbor feelings that homosexuality is a threat to my masculinity.
And so forth.
Don’t fear the contradiction between good and bad in humans. It’s both there. Let’s work to acknowledge it and transcend it.
It doesn’t make those beliefs right – only understandable. And if I can have compassion for those who harbor what I experience as “hateful”, I may be able to engage them.
Finally, after beautifully calling for the need to engage the humanity of the political other, Russell says, “I don’t think that “finding common ground” is a realistic goal here. People really do believe different things are good, for reasons of their own. There may not be common ground to be had.”
Many believe that the best that we can do is to create a society in which people who disagree should work to co-exist. That is not a bad goal. It’s not enough for me though. I actually agree with Russell when he says, “I don’t think that ‘finding common ground’ is a realistic goal”.
The idea that we should “find” common ground suggests that between disputants, there is already “common ground” that we can look for and discover. Well, as Russell correctly says, “there may not be common ground to be had.”
But common ground is not simply something that is found – it has to be actively created. Don’t look for common ground that already exists, build new ground. Build a bridge over the chasm. The bridge becomes the new ground. Or start digging into each other’s back yards and bring the fertile soil from each yard together to cultivate new ground.
Alicia Diozzi, Russell Lane and Michael F. Mascolo
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