By Raena Hunter Doty Arts & Features Editor The Center for Inclusive Excellence (CIE) hosted a two-part Diversity Dialogues series about voting. The second event, titled “Civil Discourse in a Divided Society: Defining Respectful Debate,” took place in the CIE Oct. 17. The event was moderated by representatives from a group called Braver Angels, a nonprofit organization devoted to helping people depolarize conversations when speaking to someone with another political affiliation. Jerome Burke, CIE director, said, “In today’s increasingly polarized world, the ability to engage in civilized discussion is more critical than ever.” He said Braver Angels was founded in 2016 and “brings together conservatives, liberals, and independents through structured workshops, debates, and discussions aimed at fostering mutual understanding.” Daphne Burt, the Braver Angels state coordinator for Massachusetts, said, “We’re not here to solve the problem of whatever the problem is. We’re here to help us learn how to speak with truth in our hearts and listen with open hearts to someone with whom we disagree.” Burt said she joined Braver Angels during the 2020 presidential election. Lisa Mair, a Braver Angels Massachusetts state tech lead and ambassador and a Framingham State alum who received her master’s in food science and nutrition in 1992, led the event alongside Burt. “Braver Angels hooked me by inviting me and anyone else to sign a pledge not to say anything nasty about the people voting for the other guy,” she said. She added at this point in time, criticism was a primary motivator for people to vote and involve themselves in politics, and this was causing the two sides of the political spectrum to get further and further apart. Mair added because many people were told not to talk about religion or politics growing up, they never learned how to talk about religion and politics, and “that has not served us well.” She said she ran for the state senate in 2022 after growing concerned about the national trend of polarization, which is when she was introduced to Braver Angels. Burt and Mair asked people in the room if anyone felt any tension during conversations about politics, and most people raised their hands to indicate that they had. They asked if anyone avoided talking about politics because of this, which was met with mixed reactions - some people indicating yes, some no, and some in between. Burt said, “We are committed to continuing to talk about [politics] because we need to understand each other. The only way I’m going to understand why somebody who’s [Republican] votes in a certain way is to ask her.” She said polarization is not an issue of what one believes, but rather how they convey this and how they think about people who disagree with that belief. She added depolarization “does not mean that you can’t have a strong opinion about something, because that’s awesome. One of the things that we learn to do is share those opinions in a way that doesn’t knock somebody over.” Burt and Mair explained that at Braver Angels conferences, everyone will wear a lanyard indicating their political affiliation - left-leaning people wear blue lanyards, right-leaning people will wear red lanyards, and others, such as third-party voters, independents, or moderates, will wear yellow lanyards. Mair said, “The really cool thing is that we can do this and [go to] these gatherings and conferences and everything and fully know that we are safe and we can accept each other and we’re not going to attack each other.” Burt and Mair invited everyone in the room to personally reflect on one way in which polarization has affected their lives. Answers ranged from feeling dismissed in conversations about politics to not speaking with family members for extended periods of time. They distributed a short quiz for participants to take, asking questions indicating how polarized their thoughts are, such as, “Do you assign good motives to your side and bad motives to theirs?” and “Do you focus on the most extreme view of those on the other side?” Answers were, “Often,” “Sometimes,” and “Never.” Burt and Mair recommended a few steps to take to help with depolarizing one’s own views after recognizing that they exist. Burt said, “One of the things Braver Angels says is you can say what you want about the candidates, but we try not to transfer those feelings to the people who vote for them.” Mair said people should reject stereotypes about people from the other side of the political spectrum and recognize that “their political views and motivations are a lot more complicated than the rhetoric that gets thrown around about them.” She said, “There are no such thing as bad people, but there are people who make really bad decisions.” Burt added, “You can believe that a viewpoint is completely wrong without believing that somebody who holds it is completely stupid. Distinguish between policies and core values.” They added advice for depolarizing one’s own thoughts can also be applied to like-minded people, and it’s important to be aware that polarization can happen among people who think in similar ways. Burt and Mair shifted toward strategies for depolarizing conversations with people who may not be like-minded. Burt recommended people avoid applying pejorative labels to people who don’t agree with you and lumping everyone into a single group of people by saying “‘they all,’ or its equivalent, ‘the Democrats’ or ‘the Republicans.’ “These are classic stereotyping phrases,” she added. “First of all, we’re usually wrong, but secondly we depersonalize them, put them in a box, and are unfair to them.” Mair added it’s important to recognize that supporters of a politician may have complicated views of said politician and be critical of them despite their support. Mair said another good habit to practice is to “pretend there’s an eavesdropper. “If you’re talking to somebody and you’re portraying your thoughts about the other side, pretend that person is there listening to you. Would they feel that you portrayed them positively, that you were fair?” she asked. Burt and Mair asked attendees to do an activity where they read two sample opinions about the state of police in the country, one written from a conservative point of view and the other from a liberal point of view. Attendees identified which one they disagreed with more, then found something in that sample that they agreed with. Burt said there are “two key principles” to communicating well with people who have very different opinions from one’s own. Mair said the first is to “aim for understanding them - going into the conversation like, ‘I want to understand you, I’m not going to change your mind.’” She added the second is to summarize the other person’s points back to them in a way that they feel accurately represents their point of view. Burt added, “I have three degrees … and one of the things that we learn in school is how to argue with a point. Whatever it is, we learn how to look at it and question it. That’s not a bad thing. However, I found … that when someone else is speaking, I’m thinking in the back of my mind, ‘How do I counter that?’” She said Braver Angels has helped her to grow from that mindset so she actually listens and learns instead of finding ways to refute an argument. To wrap up, Burt recommended people visit braverangels.org for more resources on the organization and how to depolarize political conversations.
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