We need to hate less and understand more
This column appears every other week in Foster’s Daily Democrat and the Tuskegee News. This week, Guy Trammell, an African American man from Tuskegee, Ala., and Amy Miller, a white woman from South Berwick, Maine, write disagreeing civilly.
By Amy Miller
“I love men, not for what unites them, but for what divides them, and I want to know most of all what gnaws at their hearts.” Such were the words of early 20th century Polish poet Guillaume Apollinaire.
As 2024 starts, let us commit ourselves to seeing what gnaws at the hearts of others. Let us take this path towards disagreeing more amicably.
We are angry and afraid of what others are doing to our town, our country, our planet. But as the new year begins, let us agree, at the very least, that the best – the only – way forward right now is to allow for the possibility that people who have opinions we find disturbing aren’t evil, or even necessarily selfish. Perhaps they are not even wrong.
Let us begin, instead, with the assumption that they merely have a point of view based on needs and experiences different from our own. Let us assume that “what gnaws at their hearts” is different from what gnaws at our hearts.
I talked about this some in my recent column, but as we head into this year, I hold hope that from this assumption we might find a way forward. Perhaps from there, we might hate less and understand more.
The real question, of course, is how do we shift our perspective so profoundly. We do not have to change our point of view, just shift our interpretation of why the other person, party, or nation is so clearly at odds with what we believe.
Asking questions - honest questions based on curiosity - changes the tone of an argument. I have friends who are committed to the idea that people who hold politically different ideas from theirs are acting out of greed or hate. I am apt to agree that many political opponents have a vision that is hurting our country. But I insist that many of them have good hearts and admirable intentions.
So the goal is to find out how and why they arrive at such different answers. And this is where curiosity begins.
I’m not in the habit of quoting our 37th president, the only president to ever resign from office. But in addressing the racial conflict that is foundational to America’s history, Richard Nixon suggested that “reconciliation comes only from the hearts of people.”
And whether we are talking about race, politics or global warfare, he makes an essential point. The work must begin in our hearts.
By Guy Trammell Jr.
A request for a colored speaker at the annual Suffrage Convention in 1897 was rejected by Susan B. Anthony: “...a few of our new recruits are Southerners… for me to bring straight from Alabama and seat on our platform a simple woman who is almost an ex-slave either would anger them or make them laugh… Let your Miss Logan wait till she is more cultivated, better educated and better prepared.”
How should Mrs. Adella Hunt Logan, Tuskegee Institute’s first librarian, holding a master’s degree, civilly address this rejection? Adella continued as a prolific suffrage writer and speaker, catching the attention of, among others, President William McKinley’s wife.
George W. Carver, the greatest scientist to walk the planet, mastered all the known sciences of his day and created new ones. A master teacher and communicator, in 1921 he brought many of his peanut inventions to a Congressional Ways and Means Committee hearing on the need for a peanut import tariff. The following is from those proceedings:
Mr. Carver: Here is another breakfast food (from peanuts) that has its value. I will not attempt to tell you, because there are several of these breakfast foods that I will not take time to describe, because I suppose my 10 minutes’ time is about up… America produces better peanuts than any other part of the world, as far as I have been able to test them out.
Congressman Henry Rainey: Then we need not fear these inferior peanuts from abroad at all? They would not compete with our better peanuts?
Mr. Carver:.. some people like margarine just as well as butter, and some people like lard just as well as butter. So sometimes you have to protect a good thing... That is all a tariff means - to put the other fellow out of business. (Laughter) The Chairman: Go ahead, brother, your time is unlimited.
Carver maintained productive dialogue using easily understood word pictures.
Building stone walls and verbal attacks will only destroy conversations. And we must not love hearing ourselves talk. Listen and use respect. Let’s exit the fighting ring and become the audience, looking at the subject as we sit side by side, speaking a shared language.
Sears CEO Julius Rosenwald first stonewalled an offer to join Tuskegee Institute’s Trustee Board, and labelled Booker T. Washington a “darkie.” Washington then changed the dialogue, inviting Rosenwald to tour the school. Afterward, Rosenwald said: “I was astonished at the progressiveness in the school. I don’t believe there is a white industrial school in America or anywhere that compares to Mr. Washington’s at Tuskegee!” He became a trustee and a friend.
Johnny Gill joined the music group, New Edition, and argued viciously with group veteran Ralph Tresvant - until they learned their similarities and just talked. Then they made harmony! (Can you stand the….)