This commentary is by Meg Mott, a self-proclaimed Constitution Wrangler; she is also Putney town moderator. She teaches politics and civil rights at Emerson College and through the Vermont Humanities Council.
Concerned about racism in Vermont, the elected leaders of the Democratic Party recently called for all Vermonters to stand up “against prejudice, discrimination and hate-driven conduct.”
Speaker of the House Jill Krowinski and President Pro Tem of the Senate Becca Balint assure us that we don’t need “the perfect words to stand up to hate.” Rather, “it is the action of standing up to hate and inequity that is critical to supporting our family, friends and communities.”
What standing up actually looks like, they do not specify. They acknowledge that the problem is complicated by the fact that not all Vermonters agree on what constitutes racism. “We don’t have a common language or a common understanding of what is meant by white supremacy,” they write, “and this is a real barrier to making progress on racial injustice.”
For people who are confident that they know how to stand up and know a racist action when they see one, this is a welcome strategy. But for those who are ambivalent about the evidence and wary of the prescription, this call to stand up increases distrust. Instead of unifying Vermonters, Krowinski and Balint’s rhetoric ends up splitting the state in two.
To be clear, I do not deny that there are organized and unorganized groups in Vermont that are looking for a fight with anyone, and with Black Lives Matter in particular. Any criminal or threatening behavior of this sort should be handled through the criminal justice system, with due-process protections afforded to the accused.
Many of the cases that involve xenophobic attitudes, however, do not rise to the level of criminal prosecution. Three recent cases, featured in VTDigger, described racial hostilities that were not actually crimes. This explains why Krowinski and Balint are looking for a social response to cases of racial hostility. Clearly, all Vermonters suffer when our communities are intolerant of racial, ethnic, or cultural differences. The question is: how do we build trust?
Rather than stand up to fear and hate, I believe we need to sit down and listen.
I discovered the wisdom behind this quieter approach in the mid-1990s while handing out clean needles and condoms on the Lower East Side of New York City. My friend Sharon, a doctor who took a harm-reduction approach to reducing the transmission of HIV-AIDS, used the needle exchange to improve public health. We didn’t call out the guys with tracks on their arms or tell the sex workers that they were being exploited. Instead, we asked them if they needed any help. One needle at a time, one condom at a time, we were there to establish trust.
Karith Foster, a Black comedian and diversity engagement zpecialist who uses harm reduction in her “Inversity” workshops, advocates “meeting people where they are.” In a September 2020 panel on “How to have difficult conversations,” Foster worried that many anti-racism initiatives actually did more harm than good.
When we “instantly consider someone to be racist just because they are not a person of color, we’re opening ourselves up to a world of trouble.” She recommended spending more time on conscious communication than on trying to change people’s minds. “If we go in there with guns a-blazin’, we’re going to turn people off.”
Social psychologists have discovered that asking open-ended questions, and listening carefully to the answers, makes it possible for people to change their minds. Motivational Interviewing has been used in recovery programs. It has also been used to help voters become more aware of their prejudices.
The trick is not to confuse listening with manipulation.
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant recently described in The New York Times how he used motivational interviewing to change a friend’s mind about vaccines. At a certain point, he had to ask himself whether he was truly interested in his friend’s opinion or in proving himself correct.
“If we succeed in opening minds, the question is not only whether we are proud of what we’ve achieved,” he confessed. “We should also ask whether we’re proud of how we’ve achieved it.” Shame, coercion, and psychological manipulation are not methods to be proud of.
So when we imagine how to “stand up to racism,” we should consider the presence of hidden motives. Are we wanting to make our state a place where more people feel they belong? Are we proving our credentials in the Progressive/Democratic Party? Are we uncomfortable with different political views?
One of the women featured in the VTDigger article said she was leaving for two reasons. The first had to do with racial animosity; the second had to do with political intolerance. Only when she left Vermont did she feel comfortable sharing her conservative beliefs.
We take away a person’s dignity when we denounce them with racial slurs. We take away a person’s dignity when we accuse them of being racist. And we take away a person’s dignity when we don’t take their political views seriously. Sitting down and listening is a gentle and proven way of inviting dignity back into the room.
