About those Trump letters…
On Nov. 7, I walked through downtown Los Angeles to see and hear the kind of jubilation one would associate with liberation from a foreign occupying force. The trauma inf licted by the Trump administration’s four long years — the Muslim ban, the border separations, the assault on democratic norms and institutions, the politicization of just about everything and, now, the crazed effort to overturn the results of this election — will take many years to heal, if it ever does.
I think the trauma helps explain the strong reaction to the page we devoted last week to letters from Trump supporters. Their critiques fell into six categories:
First, The Times is giving a platform to racists, extremists or fascists, and thereby granting them legitimacy they do not deserve.
Second, The Times is practicing “false equivalence” — treating each side as if it were equally valid.
Third, mainstream media have already devoted far too much attention to Trump supporters. That time would be better spent listening to communities of color, victims of police violence and people who have lost work because of COVID- 19, among others.
Fourth, what Trump supporters believe is already well known, and there is nothing more to say.
Fifth, by running letters from moderateseeming Trump voters, we are not giving an accurate and complete portrayal of the extremism, disinformation and white supremacy that are at the heart of Trumpism.
And sixth, by giving a full letters page to Trump supporters, we are treating them like exotic “zoo animals,” revealing our own blind spots as liberals.
The criticisms have given me a lot to think about. I stand by our decision, but I wish to address these objections.
First, we ran letters from ordinary voters, not political figures. The letters page is supposed to be a forum for public discussion. And while I agree that Trump has produced lies and distortions nonstop for four years, I think it’s reductive and unhelpful to argue that every one of his 73.7 million voters are deluded, selfish, racist or extremist, or all of the above.
Second, we do not practice “both sides” journalism. We know that climate change is real, that hyperpolarization is largely fueled by the Republicans, and that economic inequality and racial injustice demand action. The vast majority of our space goes to sober discussion of those, and other, critical problems.
Third, journalistic attention is not zero- sum. Listening to white voters in rural California need not — in fact, must not — come at the expense of talking to younger, urban voters, most of them in this state people of color.
Fourth, I disagree that everything to say about Trump has already been said. We will be trying to understand the forces that produced Trumpism for a very long time.
Fifth is a hard one. As a journalist who also happens to be gay, Asian American, a firstgeneration college graduate and the son of immigrants, I understand the climate of fear, anxiety, even despair that Trump has generated. And I do get hate mail.
But I believe our letters page needs to be limited to civil and reasoned discourse ref lecting multiple viewpoints — especially ones with which we disagree
Finally, perhaps we are guilty as charged. But I am old- fashioned in believing that only empathy can drive out hate, that only understanding can drive out ignorance, and that, as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. taught us, only light can drive out darkness.
I welcome additional dialogue with all our readers.
— Sewell Chan, editorial page editor