Dear America, sit down and listen

It’s been a weird week, America. We elected a former reality television star as President. There’s rioting in… Portland, Oregon? And possibly the most reasonable perspective on it all came from a stand-up comedian known for skits about crack heads. (I’m not super familiar with Revelations, but these are all signs of the apocalypse, right?)

“I’m wishing Donald Trump luck,” said Dave Chappelle on his surprisingly insightful opening monologue on last week’s Saturday Night Live. “And I’m going to give him a chance. And we, the historically disenfranchised, demand that he give us one, too.”

Giving Trump—and his supporters—a chance was why I wrote an article last week titled “Dear Trump supporters, please help. Signed, a Charlotte liberal.” I asked readers who voted for Trump to share with me why this man will make a good leader for our country. I was sincere in wanting to hear, but honestly, I didn’t anticipate having my mind changed.

I was wrong.

Relax, fellow liberals. It’s not that I don’t still fundamentally disagree with Trump on basically everything. But somewhere in the middle of the almost 50 emails I received, my feelings of frustration with his supporters began to change to compassion and respect. A sampling of the stories I heard:

– There was a man who described his inability to pay for healthcare for his family under the current system.

– There was a woman who described her fear of leaving her children’s generation in deeper debt.

– One woman shared a story about her husband having to sell his grandfather’s watch in order to buy their family health insurance.

– And one man wrote about watching his community suffer as jobs moved overseas.

Charlotte, these are our friends and neighbors. They weren’t views I necessarily agreed with, but they let me see the supporters as people, not as faceless enemies to my ideals. And that was exactly the point.

That’s also why I’m not going to share their quotes on here as I’d originally planned.* The emails I received were pages long. They were full of personal stories and well thought out reasoning. And cutting them into quotes would do us all a disservice. So, I’m just going to suggest that you do the same thing I did: Ask and listen.

I can’t believe that I’m about to quote Winston Churchill in the same article as Dave Chappelle, but like I said, it’s been a weird week. Churchill said, “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” **

From what we’ve seen this week there will be much standing up and speaking over the next few years—and I love that I live in a country that both allows and encourages that. But I hope there will be sitting down and listening too. Because I think it can begin to bring us back together. Which brings me to the one quote from a response that I will cut to share: “You’ll hear many comments and opinions. I hope they help. I hope they allow all people to see how much we have in common, no matter who we supported.”

*You can see the public responses in the comments section on the original article and on our Facebook page.

** There is some debate over whether or not this quote was actually from Churchill. My apologies to the late famed Prime Minister if I’m misquoting him.

Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP

This story was originally published November 16, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Dear America, sit down and listen."