Even when we think we are listening to someone, we can easily miss their whole point unless we listen for the emotion.
Let me show you how much we can learn from Trump voters when we notice their feelings, particularly their unspoken feelings. When we hear fervor and passion—when their voice becomes louder and more emphatic—when we see emotion flash across their face—they want us to know: this really matters.
Meet Darren, a Trump voter
I met Darren on January 21, 2017, Day 2 of Trump’s Presidency and Day 1 of our seeking out Trump voters. Our goals: to see if we could understand why they voted that way; and what, if anything, might help them not vote that way again.
Most were surprised to see us; we were in the most conservative and Republican areas in Los Angeles County, neighborhoods where progressives don’t bother to campaign.
Yet Darren and his wife Natalie enjoyed talking with me. When Darren answered the door, I introduced myself and got his permission to video. Then we began. In our first ten minutes, it was only me and Darren (Natalie joined later). The only emotion either of us expressed was a gentle kindness—with a few exceptions, which I’ll point out in bold when we get to them.
Dave:
Personally, I voted for Clinton. But I'm really interested in talking with people, whoever they voted for, because I hope that we're all able to talk with each other.
Darren:
We have to. If we can't get along, nothing's going to happen.
Dave:
Yeah. That's so true. And who did you vote for?
Darren:
Well, I voted for Trump.
Dave:
And what was the thing most on your mind with your vote?
Darren:
I was looking for change. [pause]
I mean, I just think that we need to get away from politics [pause];
and get maybe somebody that can get things done [pause];
and not really just trying to appease everybody.
Readers, let me describe what I just heard, saw and sensed. Darren said “appease” with great emphasis, a negative tone of voice, and a frown. He drew out the word “appease” over 2 full seconds. The emotion was unmistakable; Darren said it the way you might say “F- you” to someone when you really meant it.
I immediately had a hunch about what Darren meant to communicate to me. But before I asked him to tell me more, first, in a neutral tone of voice, I repeated back what I had just heard, to be sure I got his ideas and words right. After all, he had just offered four reasons he was drawn to vote for Trump.
Dave:
[long pause as I finished writing down what Darren had just told me]
Yeah. And when you're thinking about that constellation of things, [pause]
Change [pause]
and getting away from politics [pause]
and getting things done [pause]
and not just appeasing somebody [pause], is there a specific way in which you think about this in your own life and hopes that you have for your family or yourself or people you care about?
Darren:
Well, I'm retired. The wife and I are both retired and we're just trying to stretch what we have a little, as far as we can.
Dave:
Got it. Yeah. How are you feeling about retirement and the economy? Are you mostly feeling pretty secure or are you worried? What's going on for you?
Darren:
Well, I'm pretty secure in my situation. I was fairly lucky to work for a union company.
Dave:
Were you a union member?
Darren:
Oh yes.
Dave:
Which union?
Darren:
Teamsters.
Dave:
Got it. Sure. And the Teamsters got you a good pension.
Darren:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I worked [as a truck driver for a large, respected local company] for 40 years.
Dave:
Good for you.
Darren:
Then all of a sudden they closed the doors.
Dave:
Yeah. That was a huge story. I remember when that happened.
Darren:
Blame all—
Dave:
Were you still working there?
Darren:
Yes.
Dave:
Oh my God. Wow. And blame, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
Darren:
Well, they wanted to blame all the unions for the money, [as though] they were paying us too much, [as though] our benefits were too much. Well, I worked my last year and a half without any pension benefits being paid by the company. Then they took a lot of the money that they were not paying [us, the blue-collar workers] and gave it to executives to keep them through the transition. They knew they were going to close.
Not that I would wish this on anybody, but I had a lot of health issues at the time. I was able to get everything that I was owed because of my sick leave and I took it all. I retired before they shut the doors. Even the Teamster pension people, they told me, "What do you want to go back to work for? They're probably going to shut the doors in six months."
Dave:
Wow.
Darren:
When I retired, I was not prepared to retire, let's put it that way.
Dave:
Oh, okay.
Darren:
[Before I retired,] I didn't have a fixed income; to go to a fixed income and considerably less than what I was making, it was an experience I had to adjust to.
Dave:
Yeah. Yeah. Because now you've got Social Security?
Darren:
Right.
Dave:
Is that the basic bedrock that you're working with, plus your pension, plus your savings?
Darren:
Yeah, that's it.
Dave:
Yeah. That's a big deal.
Darren:
It's a big deal.
Dave:
When you were thinking about this election, was that probably the thing most on your mind?
Darren:
Oh, of course.
At this point, Natalie poked her head through the front door to ask what we were talking about. So I brought her up to speed; asked who she voted for (“Trump”); and invited her to tell me why that had been the right choice for her. The more I listened, the more she had to say. She strongly disapproved of the demonstrations against Trump; after all, he had won. She was disgusted by what she called the “ugly” campaign. And she acknowledged that some of the things Trump said were blunt, even unkind. When she was done, I knew it was time for me to go back to the comment Darren had made using the word “appease” and see if her comments reflected a similar point of view.
Because I had heard the word “appease” before; and what it almost always meant, when said in that emphatic voice, was something profoundly negative around race. It was racially-coded language for not just disapproval but prejudice. It raised for me the question: was race-based prejudice part of the reason (or even the biggest reason) this couple had voted for Trump? I had to use the word thus far unspoken—race—so I could better understand what was on their minds.
Dave:
Well, one of the things I wanted to ask about is race ended up being a huge topic in this election. And so on a scale of 0 to 10, when you think of black people, Latinos, all people of color, and how much they're discriminated against today, do you think that they pretty much face no discrimination, or a lot of discrimination, or is it somewhere in the middle? How do you see that?
Natalie:
Well, it really depends on the person too. Because the people that I know, they're educated and working. And so if you are of color and you don't have a job and you're breaking and entering [said sharply and unkindly] and doing things like that [pause, catching herself]— and I'm not just saying because white people do that as well.
Dave:
Right. And when you think about the big picture overall for the whole country, do you think probably we're close to the end of the spectrum where there isn't discrimination anymore? Or do you think there still is a lot of discrimination? What number would best capture where you think we're at?
Darren:
I'd say probably more like a 6 or a 7.
Natalie:
Yeah, I would say the same because I would say it's not—
Darren:
I think there's a lot of people of color that instigate [said emphatically and unkindly] and try to do things. But then I don't know that for a fact.
Natalie:
But then there are white—
Darren:
But there are white people that do the same thing. So it's—
Natalie:
Because we have family up in Oregon where it's very white, white. And I don't feel as comfortable there just because I think it's nice to have families that blend. I think it’s important. You get great kids like our neighbors across the street. They're from Argentina.
And then our great-grandson is adopted. Well, he was adopted by a Mexican family. They bring lots of family and culture to his life. I mean, I think it's important.
Dave:
Your great-grandson . . .
Natalie:
Is in an adoptive home.
Dave:
Oh, got it.
Natalie:
And they're a Mexican-American family.
Dave:
Got it. How did that end up happening?
Darren:
Long story.
Natalie:
Our granddaughter.
Dave:
I don't mean to ask for a long complicated story.
Darren:
Nope, nope, nope, nope.
Natalie:
Our great-grandson in a much better place. He wasn't born into a good situation.
Dave:
I'm so sorry. That must have been so hard for you and for everybody.
Darren:
It's continuing. Yeah. It doesn't go away.
Natalie:
Yeah. It is painful.
Dave:
But you still see him, it sounds like.
Natalie:
Yes. They're wonderful people.
Dave:
[pause] Do you think of them as family, the people who are raising your great-grandson?
Natalie:
Oh yeah. Absolutely.
Dave:
So you have family who are people of color. Was that a big surprise for you, to all-of-a-sudden have family members who weren't white?
Darren:
Not really. Because our concern was for the child. As long as he was in a stable, in a very good environment, we were happy. And the more we got to meet the people and got to know them.
Natalie:
He's three today actually. So we've known them—
Darren:
For three years.
Natalie:
Yeah, for three years. But they're just, we just are like family quite honestly. We don't agree about everything because there's certain things about our granddaughter that they say, but I understand their point. Cause they're raising—
Darren:
The child.
Natalie:
The child, they're giving Cody a loving home. He's just [pause]—[this next said with great, positive feeling, including both love and relief] if you put in an order to God for the perfect family for him, this is it.
Dave:
Wow.
Darren:
Yeah. That is amazing.
Dave:
I am so glad.
Natalie:
They are super people.
Natalie and Darren then told me more about the Mexican-American couple raising Cody. They were clearly grateful for the couple, and had respect and affection for them. They told me more about the couple; and then I had a question.
Dave:
So this couple that's raising your great-grandson, it sounds like a lot of things are going well for them. They're well-to-do and they're working. But you also mentioned they've had struggles. And I just wondered, have you ever asked either of them about whether they have faced any prejudice because they're Mexican?
Darren:
No, we've never . . .
Natalie:
You could just tell from the things that they say—I mean they've had to go to school and work hard for where they are. I think they're just hardworking. They don't dwell on anything. They haven't really said anything.
We didn't know for probably a year. Then they came to our house for dinner around Christmas, around the holidays. She said they’d recently had fish. And I said, "Oh, are you Italian?" I know fish is Italian.
Dave:
You didn't know they were Mexican?
Darren:
No, no.
Natalie:
No. She said, “as a matter of fact, we're both Mexican.” And I said, "Oh my gosh. That's cool."
The most common reaction when I show people the first part of this conversation
When I show liberals the first five minutes of my conversation with Darren, the most common thing I hear is, “He should have been a Hillary voter!” What they mean is: Darren had positive feelings about unions, he cared about health care, and he was a likeable person. He had concerns about his economic situation, but was grateful for Social Security and his union-won pension. Listening to Darren’s words, they don’t know what could have brought him to Trump.
What they missed was the emotion. They weren’t listening closely enough to catch the way Darren said “appease.”
Once Natalie joined the conversation and I asked about race, her first reaction was to associate Black and brown people with “breaking and entering.” Darren talked about people of color who “instigate” things. What I noticed was when they think of non-white people generally—as a group—they don’t like them, and they don’t trust them.
This is bigotry, and whenever I hear it, I know I’ve found a person whose buttons are easy to push. I’ve found a person susceptible to an appeal to prejudice. When Trump calls African countries “shithole nations,” when he calls White supremacists “very fine people,” when he describes immigrants from Mexico as rapists, murderers, animals, criminals, and vermin, the language and the disgust underneath the words land with force for susceptible voters like Darren and Natalie.
This is why Donald Trump is such a menace: not just to our democracy, but to our ability to make it as a country. In the musical South Pacific, one of the most poignant songs in the score points out that prejudice flowers when it is “carefully taught.” Donald Trump, sloppy in so many other ways, is a careful teacher when it comes to racism. He revels in his ability to humiliate. He knows it’s central to his appeal.
But Darren and Natalie also teach us something that I find incredibly encouraging
When they interact with individual human beings who are Black and brown, their actual behavior is nowhere near as cruel as what they say about people of color as a whole.
Most remarkably, when they learned that the couple raising their great-grandson were Mexican-American, Natalie and Darren didn’t respond with bigotry. With both their words and emotions, they expressed unqualified gratitude. Natalie was moving when she said, “if you put in an order to God for the perfect family for him, this is it.” Both Natalie and Darren consider this couple family. (A tip of the hat here to Jill Harris, an outstanding organizer and friend of mine who, a mere week before I canvassed Darren and Natalie, alerted me to the remarkable rise of blended families that are multi-racial.)
The way Darren and Natalie acted in real life was not driven by their political opinions and prejudices.
Would the outcome have differed if they had known that the couple was Mexican-American right from the start? I don’t know.
But I’m curious about Natalie and Darren. Because, if we think about our own lives, none of us would want to be judged by our worst mistake, our worst impulse, even our worst prejudice.
Are they fundamentally and forever racists?
Or are they people whose opinions on race are out of sync with how they treat people in real life—and out of sync with who they want to be?
Here’s what we do know about reducing other forms of prejudice
In our conversations that lastingly reduce prejudice against LGBT people, I have repeatedly seen a voter express prejudice against LGBT people as a group—and then they tell us about an LGBT individual they know in real life, someone they care about deeply, someone they love.
These are the people whose minds we are able to change.
Not by wagging our finger at them, or calling them hypocrites. But by reporting back to them what we just heard them say. I can say, “I heard you say this about lesbian and gay couples, or transgender people; and then I heard you tell me this about [the specific person they know]: is it possible you have conflicting feelings?”
Often, they say, with some surprise: “maybe I do.”
That allows me to ask: “How do you want to resolve these mixed feelings? What feels right to you?”
Often, they believe their real, lived experience more than they believe their own prejudice.
I cannot tell you with certainty that this is the way we will conquer racism.
But I can tell you, this kind of dialogue has helped us reduce anti-LGBT prejudice. This is how we have gotten more people to vote against anti-LGBT ballot measures.
We would never have made progress if we hadn’t gotten better—much better—at listening for the emotion.
If there is a path to remove Trump from the soul of American politics, I think we will find it by working harder—much harder—to listen, and especially to listen for the emotion.
What if the more effective questions we can ask are open-ended? Because the obstacle we face is helping the other person better apply their emotional intelligence to the dilemma of their conflicting feelings. Facts, sadly, don't go as far as we need when we want to reduce prejudice.
Thanks Dave, for your wise and thoughtful series on how to listen to potential voters who likely did not vote the way we do. You declare from the beginning the primary purpose of your visit: "Personally, I voted for Clinton. But I'm really interested in talking with people, whoever they voted for, because I hope that we're all able to talk with each other." The Trump voter readily agreed with you, so you were able to start on common ground--with an open-ended question. But the central point of this essay is that we all must listen carefully to the feelings behind the comments of the people we are hoping to have a conversation with. We are then properly advised to regularly incorporate those feelings and words into our responses.