A cyber quest for ways to understand the other side
“Have you experienced being the target of intolerance? What causes you to be intolerant?”
Sitting in his book-filled Berkeley living room, Lewis Brown Griggs chewed over those questions and others with six other people via the Zoom conferencing app last month on, appropriately enough, the International Day for Tolerance.
A Mormon mother of five said others sometimes assume she supports polygamy and hates gay people. Three people of color said they were all too used to being judged by their race.
Ranging in age from early 20s to early 70s, and hailing from Colorado, Virginia, Utah, Maryland and California, the group was brought together by Mismatch.org, a site that aims to “mismatch” people who are politically and geographically diverse for group chats with others of varying viewpoints. It’s like a non-romantic dating service for civil discourse.
“Our nation has so many problems with division,” said John Gable, Mismatch cofounder, who is also CEO and founder of AllSides, a website that tries to provide balanced news by showing three different perspectives on current stories. “We need to learn how to talk to people who are different than we are, how to listen to them and understand them as people.”
In an increasingly polarized country, Mismatch aims to help people across the political spectrum find common ground via structured conversations on topics like immigration, tax reform and climate change. Mismatch grew out of Living Room Conversations, another transpartisan project that brings together folks of varying views to engage in discourse. But while Living Room Conversations hosts in-person groups — hence its name — Mismatch casts a wider net by seeking people nationwide to meet up via videoconferencing.
“I live in Berkeley, and gathering a bunch of conservatives here isn’t an easy thing to do,” said Joan Blades, co-founder of both Mismatch and Living Room Conversations, and before that of the progressive powerhouse MoveOn.org. “Mismatch is a great way to get more diversity in the room.” (The downside of videoconferencing: no snacks.)
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mismatch groups still tend to skew blue, organizers admit. Griggs, for instance, is a registered Republican, but he works as a diversity trainer and describes himself as a “never Trumper” who leans left on social issues. He relishes encountering different perspectives.
“Look at the gift of meeting people you’ve never met, the gift of feeling seen,” he said after the hour-plus conversation on tolerance ended.
Participants are self-selecting, so by their nature they are folks who are open-minded.
“Those that love Trump are less likely to show up,” Blades said.
Defining people as either left or right is too simplistic, she said.
“This is about having more shades of gray. If you go into a conversation with true curiosity, then your world becomes a little bit bigger.”
Anat Shenker-Osorio, a communications consultant and expert in applied cognitive linguistics who is not affiliated with Mismatch, said her research showed that curiosity is a trait of people who evolved their political viewpoints, such as conservative white women who became progressive, and apolitical women of color who became activists.
“Encouraging and rewarding open-mindedness generally influences people toward greater respect for things like equality, freedom and shared prosperity,” she wrote in an email. “I do see a value in people holding conversations with others who do not share their viewpoint.”
However, she said, she’s skeptical if the “both sides” approach means giving credence to viewpoints such as racism.
“Tacitly comparing, say, a white supremacist and a Black Lives Matter advocate is beyond a false equivalency — it’s an insult,” she wrote. “The former stands for subjugation of others and the latter fights for recognition and respect.”
Gable said Mismatch doesn’t aim to have people persuade each other that their views are valid.
“It is about understanding each other as humans,” he said. “We may or may not find common ground, but we always find common humanity.”
Mismatch asks participants to abide by some simple rules.
“What we learned in kindergarten,” take turns, be respectful, own your part of the conversation,” as Blades described it.
Each conversation centers on an issue such as criminal justice reform, with questions provided by Mismatch and Living Room Conversations to help focus the discourse.
“It’s super simple, which is why it’s so reproducible and doesn’t require a facilitator,” Blades said.
Participants start by introducing themselves — who they are, where they come from and what drew them to the topic — and then dive into increasingly deeper questions. They finish by sharing one thing they got out of the discussion.
Mismatch, which has raised about $750,000 in donations so far, started two years ago focusing on students, but now is expanding to all ages, something its website will soon reflect. More than 10,000 people have participated in Living Room Conversations, and some 1,000 have tried the Mismatch video component, Gable said. Organizers hope to reach 1 million participants by the end of 2019, in part through partnerships with groups like AllSides and ProCon.org, faith communities and advocacy organizations.
“The internet is becoming so one-sided that when it comes to political and controversial issues, we have less access to different points of view today than 20 or 30 years ago,” Gable said.
Can something as simple as structured conversations among disparate people really make a difference? Blades and Gable both think so.
“Overall, our biggest goal is to improve democracy— democratic society and governance,” Gable said.
Blades, who helped turn MoveOn into a behemoth that mobilizes millions of people, has similar hopes for Mismatch and Living Room Conversations.
“I think this movement is getting ready to take off,” she said. “I learned from MoveOn how to do things at scale. Mismatch is one way to scale Living Room Conversations.”
The alternative, as she sees it, is grim.
“If we determine that not talking to each other is the best way to keep the peace, that has some really dangerous implications,” Blades said.