Don't you want to talk about the US election!?

[conuly]

Letter one:

Dear Amy: My soon-to-be father-in-law "Carl," decided to cast his vote for Donald Trump because, as he said: "I think I will be able to retire more quickly with Trump's stock market."

I teach at a university and my specialty is race and diasporic studies.

My Ph.D. is in African/African Diasporic studies, and I am flummoxed because after Carl’s proclamation, my partner's family has decided it isn't worthwhile to have a discussion with him because he is going to do whatever he is going to do.

I find this utterly untenable. I think Carl needs a serious wakeup call to the racial, social, and health issues that are at stake, and further, I think someone should let him know how selfish he is being. I get along well with him and I have been with my partner for six years, so it's not like I am new to the family dynamic.

My question is, even if my fiancé doesn't think it's worth it, can I still contact Carl and make my case?

— Frustrated Future Daughter-in-law

Dear Frustrated: You should absolutely go for it and take it upon yourself to educate your future father-in-law on the subject of your Ph.D. studies.

But, before you do, it might be helpful for you to understand that someone who claims he is voting only about the stock market and his retirement package is not likely to acknowledge that anything else is important to this country, because it is not important enough to him.

I think it would also be useful to acknowledge what you no doubt already know: that this country will continue to struggle, strive, and move in sometimes unfortunately violent fits and starts toward a new racial understanding, whether or not “Carl” is enlightened. This is happening right under his nose, even if his head is currently in the sand, and will continue to happen, no matter how he votes.

No one in Carl’s family is specifically asking you not to engage with him; I infer that they are implicitly trying to tell you what I am trying to tell you, that your words might be wasted and your effort unappreciated.

But yes, my opinion is that you should do your darndest to urge Carl into a more enlightened understanding of racial issues. However, branding him as “selfish” because he has decided to vote along his own narrow metric wouldn’t be helpful. When you are trying to engage and educate someone, criticizing their character will usually inspire them to close the door to further conversation.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/askamy/s-2434156?fs

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Letter two:

DEAR HARRIETTE: I am in an interracial relationship and have been for four years. With the election coming up, my boyfriend, who is white, told me that he will not be voting because he does not support either of the candidates. I told him how important it is to vote and that we should exercise our right. I offered to let him come with me so we can vote for Biden together.

He then shared that, if he were required to vote, out of the two major candidates he would most likely vote for Trump over Biden. He says he doesn't particularly agree with Trump's views, but he also does not agree with Biden's views. I told him that in the interest of our interracial relationship, Biden is more on our side, so we should support him together. My boyfriend strongly disagreed and dropped the conversation. He couldn't give me an answer as to why he would vote for Trump. Then he just concluded the argument by saying, This is exactly why I will not be voting. What does this mean? I'm having trouble processing and coming to terms of what this conversation meant. -- Interracial Voter

DEAR INTERRACIAL VOTER: This election is more polarizing than any I have seen in my lifetime. While I am not going to tell you who you or your boyfriend should vote for, I will say that it is smart to talk about the specific views that each candidate has on issues that matter to you. Go to their websites and pull up their statements on the issues that you care about. Debate what they have actually said rather than what you have heard second-hand.

Instead of arguing with your boyfriend, ask him to explain why he thinks Trump would be better for his life and for yours. It is worth further discussion even if it is difficult. Essentially, you want to know each other's views about life and what's important to you. These candidates help to delineate certain values. You should get clear on what each of you feels about how to build the economy, the right to life, women's rights, health care and government support of the poor. Regardless of who you vote for, you should know if you two are on the same page on these key issues.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/senseandsensitivity/s-2434265

Comments

[conuly]

LW1: If your future FIL thinks the stock market will be better for him after another four years of Trump then he's beyond help. There is no productive conversation to be had, plus, he doesn't seem to have any grasp of morality other than what directly benefits him.

LW2: Harriette's advice is good, but here's what it probably is going to boil down to - dump him. That relationship is going nowhere. There, I just saved you a long conversation.

[lilysea]

Yes, between

Trump's misogyny;
Trump's racism;
and the fact that Trump has admitted to committing sexual assaults

I can't imagine staying in a relationship with someone who said they would vote for him.

[cimorene]

It's mind-boggling the number of people who persist in thinking they can just have... conversations... about this that will either help them understand or change someone's mind. I mean, also I admire the readiness of people like LW1 for sure, because I tend to get angry or upset in a way that prevents me from continuing to argue after a little bit of that, and there ARE cases where verbal persuasion from people someone already knows really do wake them up... it's just those cases are incredibly rare.

As for understanding what her boyfriend is thinking, I'm baffled trying to imagine how she thinks that could work and how she envisions the conversation going. What does she want to hear? What does she think she COULD hear that could POSSIBLY help???

[conuly]

She probably thinks she cannot possibly have wasted so much time with a bigot, she must be missing something.

[cimorene]

Probably. I've actually encountered this before with people learning someone close to them was a bigot - if they think they know the person well and they consider them to be a good person, they assume they have all the characteristics associated with being a good person, so only an unequivocal declaration of bigotry is strong enough to fully register right away. My sister took about a year to break up with her college boyfriend after he asked why she was crying about the death of Mike Brown and couldn't "get" her explanation, because the fact that he was actually racist took that long to like... soak into her brain, be approached in multiple different discussions to check, and finally be fully accepted. My cousin told me earnestly that her husband wasn't homophobic, he just "didn't like" gay guys to like, hang out with and be FRIENDS with because they weren't like him and he couldn't relate to them, so it was perfectly understandable and not bigoted that he and his friends mocked someone's straight-but-"too-groomed" boyfriend at her wedding... with gay jokes. (He has since left her for a married female friend from her bible study group.)

[sara]

I hope your cousin has recognized how lucky she is not to have this man in her life.

[cimorene]

I hope so too!

[rymenhild]

Captain Awkward is, not surprisingly, much better on this topic.

[shirou]

My father is an economist and voted for Republicans when the GOP was the party of conservative spending. He has been voting third party for a while now because the GOP became totally fiscally irresponsible, whatever they claimed. Now he is going to vote for Biden. That's largely because he is offended by Trump's racism, corruption, and abuse of power, but also in part because he thinks Trump's mismanagement of the pandemic will hurt the economy, including retirement accounts, in the long-term. Carl from the first letter is delusional and likely using the stock market as a fig leaf to cover for his identification with Trump's tribe.

I'm not sure what I would advise LW1. She's not in a relationship with Carl; she's in a relationship with Carl's son. I don't think a conversation with Carl would go anywhere helpful. I am, at least, glad she's getting this insight before the wedding.

The boyfriend from the second letter also identifies with Trump's tribe. He wants white men to hold on to power; Biden, although a white man himself, has strongly signalled he plans to include other people. The boyfriend couldn't give an answer about why he prefers Trump to Biden because he hasn't even created a fig leaf. Get out now, LW2.

[minoanmiss]

Word.

[sara]

Yup, yup, yup.

A bigoted in-law is survivable. A bigoted partner, nsm.

[cereta]

This is hard for me, because people I love very much are voting for Trump, some of them in Ohio, which is a swing state. I've sort of ignored the reality of local folks because my state is going to go blue. If Trump wins, though...I don't know if I can keep ignoring it. I especially don't know if I'll be able to keep ignoring it in one, two, three years, when the inevitable bad things have happened. I know I won't be able to keep ignoring it if Covid strikes someone I love.

Harriette, as always, is an idiot. Conversations are not going to help either relationship. There's nothing about Carl that suggests he wants to hear academic examinations of racism, and I cannot imagine continuing to partner through life with someone who cares so little for my well-being.

[shirou]

I'm in the same boat. I know people, including a dear family friend, who will surely vote for Trump this election. It's a real barrier. There are topics we can't discuss, and as much as I love my friend for being there for me when I was a kid, this gap between us will always exist. It makes me sad.

I find it useful to remember there are systems of power at play here. The GOP has managed to convince poor people to endorse economic policies that exclusively benefit the wealthy. They've convinced people to feel outraged over the death of an unborn fetus but turn a blind eye to the suffering of children (of color) in poverty.

None of that excuses support for racism, misogyny and corruption, but it does help me understand what's going on. I sometimes ask, how can this person hold such internally inconsistent beliefs? How can a generous woman who has housed refugees in her home vote for Trump? And the answer is that she is being manipulated by misinformation campaigns larger than she is.

[cimorene]

My mom keeps trying with a sister who was Foxified in recent years and she keeps reporting that she brought up X or Y feature of reality and the sister didn't know what she was talking about at all because all her information on the subject came from Fox news. That doesn't make it easy to convince someone who doesn't already have a strong foundation in, like, the scientific method and critical media analysis.

[laurajv]

I was fascinated recently by a PRRI poll that showed (among other things) HUGE differences between people who ID as Republicans and get their news primarily from Fox News, and people who ID as Republicans and get their news literally anywhere else. The people in the second category are....pretty much what I used to understand as Republicans, politically. I don't like their stances but they're perfectly ordinary center-right people: kinda racist, kinda sexist, don't want to hang out too much with them, but generally functional human beings. The Fox News group is completely off the deep end in some profound ways.

[conuly]

They're not both Harriette. The first is Amy. I actually thought Harriette's advice wasn't half bad - the conversation won't change hearts or minds on this election issue, but it may open LW's eyes to the sort of person she's* really dating. She's going to end up dumping him, but she wouldn't listen if Harriette just said that outright.

* I'm really hoping there aren't any LGBT individuals in interracial, same-sex relationships who are considering voting for Trump.

[movingfinger]

"Carl" is a financial idiot. If anyone can get through to him, it would be a financial advisor type. He doesn't care about racial issues and will not listen to the LW. LW should scrutinize her partner's family, also, because there are probably more maggots in there.

LW2's boyfriend is an asshole. On Election Day, LW2 makes a choice: either their stuff or his goes in cardboard boxes.