Reply #8: I had a minor success last night [View All]

[ihaveaquestion]

at night school. One of the few successes I've had.

My class is made up of white males, mostly conservative, and me, a liberal white female. We usually have short civil agree-to-disagree exchanges atn that's that. Last night was different and I think I made small progress in getting them to think a bit differently.

The topic was a current local issue of whether the public school system should ban displaying the Confederate flag.

Our instructor sarcastically said he wanted to tatoo the flag on himself just to show how ridiculous he thinks it is that anyone should be offended by it. All others agreed and started to make fun of the issue, etc. I pointed out that some people are not just offended by the flag, but are genuinly afraid of people who wear/display it - that it has a violent history. They seemed shocked by this, but it got them thinking a bit.

The lessons I learned from this was (1) make a response to an issue very specific, avoid generalities, and (2) bring up the fear associated with the issue. Conservatives understand fear, I guess because they are afraid of lots of things. I think they're afraid of liberals most of all.