There is a stark difference between me and most of our political leaders: I have the ability to be sympathetic and empathetic (they are different) toward almost anyone, even people I disagree with.
This is not to say I am in any way qualified to be a political leader; it’s just a difference I’ve noticed between me, a simple college student trying to make her way through life, and the people in our country who make decisions for everyone.
I hate Donald Trump, and I didn’t vote for him. But I know some people did vote for him (too many in my opinion). And in our current political climate, it would be easy for me to hate those people and say they are all bad apples.
Because that’s become the expectation for the way people on opposing sides of the issues treat one another. And it’s also the reason why we can’t have respectful, polite presidential debates anymore.
“This person thinks differently than me, so they must have my personal worst interests in mind.” But mostly, that’s not the case.
Think of it this way:
You grew up in a very rural community where you had little contact with the other residents of the town. There was no “local watering hole” where you could chat with the other people in the town and your only consistent interactions with others were at a rural school and with your family.
Probably in this rural town, most or all of the residents were white, Christian, cisgendered, and heterosexual. The residents probably held very traditional views.
You had never met a trans person or a gay person. There weren’t any or many black kids at school for you to be friends with. You didn’t spend copious amounts of time on social media; you went to school, you helped out around the house, and you did your homework – maybe there was a sport a job mixed in there.
Your family wasn’t poor but wasn’t drowning in riches either. You went to church every Sunday and ate dinner around the dining room table every night. Your parents probably lived a similar life, and their parents did too.
***End of thought experiment***
If you never met certain people and never learned certain things, can you really be expected to care about them and vote for policies to help those people?
If you’ve never been shown you have privilege, can you be expected to know you have privilege?
I don’t think so, at least at first. If you’re not raised to care about issues that don’t apply to you, why would you vote that way?
Where I draw the line and do actually start to hate people is when they refuse to change.
When you learn that trans people are actually just regular people who didn’t decide to be trans, and you still choose to hate them. When you learn the struggles an immigrant went through to get into this country to give their child a better life and you still choose to hate them. When you learn what DEI really means but you still choose to get rid of it because it doesn’t make your already privileged life more privileged.
This is why I don’t think age and the era you grew up in can be an excuse for prejudice. Yes, your grandparents might have been raised in a different time, but they are living in the now, where they’ve had the opportunity to learn and change.
I’m still not saying that I am qualified to be in a position of political power, but I do think that some of the people in charge aren’t emotionally intelligent enough to have the power they do. Maybe we can blame that on the era they were raised in. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
But my point is that no matter your political views, try having empathy and sympathy (again, they are different) for other people. Before you decide to hate them just because they disagree with you, think of their background and the way they were raised. Have they had a chance to learn and grow?
If not, try to (politely) educate them if they’ll listen. It’s important we don’t stop having conversations though. Talking through our issues, even just as regular citizens, is how we make our way toward change.