What helps us connect with people who are different from us?

You may have noticed: almost all of my writing describes what it’s like connecting with someone who, in some noticeable way, is not just like us.

The differences are many: race, class, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual identity, gender identity, age, disability, physical appearance, political party, political point of view, ideology or affiliation, and a wide range of cultural differences.

The differences are real.

Yet repeatedly—in thousands of voter conversations—I’ve learned that these differences do not rule out connection, even if they sometimes complicate it.

My friend John Newsome is one of the best organizers I know connecting across difference. I first met John in the 1999 when he was working for U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland, CA). Over the last 30 years, John has done work in strategy and politics in California and around the country. Throughout this time, we’ve stayed in touch and sometimes gotten to collaborate.

In his day-to-day life away from politics, John also connects across lines of difference, often differences of race or sexual orientation. Those conversations have affected him as much as the conversations he’s had going door-to-door. Here’s his take on what it has meant for him, as a Black gay man, to talk with people who are like him—and people unlike him.

Meet John Newsome

John:

When I moved to New York City about 12 years ago, I got into antiques because I had to furnish an apartment all at once. I realized I can get a beautiful quality coffee table for half the price of a crappy IKEA coffee table.

Little by little, I started furnishing my apartment with antiques: my dining room table, my couches, my rugs, almost everything's an antique. These are not your fancy high-end antiques, these are your they-won't-sell-anymore antiques.

One of my favorite hobbies is to buy antiques on weekends. And do you know who sells antiques? Old White people. I’m often going to the homes of older White Americans to buy their antiques.

In 2020, Facebook Marketplace listings ended up taking me all around the Hudson Valley, two hours outside of New York City. As I drove up towards someone's house, at least half the time there was a massive Trump-Pence sign, or a Blue Lives Matter banner. And I would pause and think, "Okay, gay Black man with dreadlocks, do you want to walk into this house?" And every time, I said, “Yes (I think),” and the people I met were lovely. Specifically, they were lovely to ME. They would tell me the heritage of the piece that I was inheriting. It was almost always from a mother or a grandmother; it had been in the family. They said they were so grateful that it was going to a good home. In my case, a good Black, gay home.

These experiences remind me that people are good, they want to connect. All the rhetoric and bullshit out there has little to do with the way that we want to interact with each other, as people. So I have to remind myself: the insurrectionists, that's not most Americans.

Dave:

Have any of the White people acknowledged the racial difference between the two of you?

John:

What often happens is subtext. I work really hard to put the resident at ease. I knock on the door, then I step 10 feet back, I'm sheepish, I take my hat off, I want to make sure they can see me. And the residents almost always do the equivalent. They open their door wide, and they invite me in. In the peak-COVID era, sometimes they said, "Oh, you don't need to be wearing your mask." I said, "Nope, I need to be wearing my mask." They’d go out of their way to make me feel as comfortable as possible. I think that's in part about race. I think it's an attempt to bridge a gap.

I had a similar experience with a contractor a few months ago, a lovely man. I'd had some people come look at my roof and tell me, "Oh, you may need a new roof, it's going to be $8,000." Then I saw this guy working on a neighbor's house. I asked him to come over to give me a second opinion; my hope was he could do some patchwork on my roof. He crawled up, then came down and said, "Your roof is fine. You don't even need patchwork. You certainly don't need a new roof. Someone's trying to rip you off, and I don't believe in that, I believe in being really good to people. So if you ever need anything else, here's my card, please feel free to call me." I was so grateful. He got into his truck; as he drove off, I noticed in the back there was a GIANT Trump-Pence sign.

I have friends who say, "Oh, those Trump people, fuck them all." I can't say that. Because I’ve had experiences of forging connections across ages and races and differences in ways that, allegedly, aren't supposed to happen. It leaves me feeling hopeful and surprised, and humbled that someone seemingly so different from me is willing to allow me to carry their family heritage into my home.

I have the same experience when I go canvassing. Sometimes I'm in a neighborhood where I'm knocking on doors of progressive folk or Black folk or progressive Black folk, Latinx folk, and that has its own set of experiences. But more often I'm knocking on doors in a White middle-class neighborhood, working-class neighborhood, suburban, exurban, moderate, maybe conservative.

The first few doors are scary. I'm always wondering, "What's going to happen? How are people going to receive me?" I don't like doing this, right? As soon as I get the script, I’m reminded, "Shit! I hate this." I don't remember the script, I don't know the context, "Who's running again? And what are the issues in this race?" And I go up to the front first door and I worry, "Are they going to be mad? Are they going to feel threatened by me? Do they have a gun?" And the first household isn’t home, or the second, the third. Then someone opens a door and they're usually lovely, and I can’t detect any sort of hostility towards me as a Black man. Even if they’re busy, they'll say, "I'm busy, come back," or “someone else already came by.”

But oftentimes they want to talk. They want to understand, "Who's running? When is the election again? I don't like that guy.” They want to have a conversation. I always leave feeling better about people, about my community, about our democracy, wishing that we did these engagements all the time.

Dave:

Sometimes a White canvasser comes to me worried they will fail to connect in a predominantly people of color neighborhood. They wonder if I could find them a White neighborhood to go to, although they never ask for it exactly that way. What would you say to that canvasser?

John:

I can tell them my experience in White neighborhoods. As nervous as it makes me at first—what if some person accuses me of trespassing, pulls a gun? as sometimes happens to black people—most people want to talk, most people are grateful that I’m there. They often marvel that somebody cares enough to come see them. They feel cared for. And I’m there for a good reason.

Dave:

I remember when you and I went door-to-door together in late 2017, in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, a conservative White neighborhood.

John:

It was the first time I ever went deep canvassing. As you know, I only wanted to go out with you, because I was afraid. I was afraid that I didn't understand the deep canvassing methodology, I was afraid of messing up, my old jitters about knocking on anyone's door—and especially conservative White people's doors at dusk heading into night. I was very nervous.

At the first door, you asked if I wanted to knock on the door or should you? I wanted nothing to do with knocking on the door. I deliberately positioned myself behind you. So you were the person who knocked on the door, you were the person they would see first. I was a good three feet behind you.

In the back of my mind, I was thinking, "Ok, well, at least on the plus side, I'm with Dave," and you’re not very scary. But I also thought, "Well there are two of us; so some people might look through the window and see two kind of short gay-looking guys, but still two people, and be afraid to open the door." In a short shift, we got three people to open their doors, and all of those conversations were lovely. All three had voted for someone other than Hillary Clinton in 2016.

In our first conversation, you asked something like “on a scale from zero to 10, how do you feel about Donald Trump?" Something like that. And the man said, "I'm a 10. Voted for Trump." Then you started mentioning some of the issues that throughout the Trump presidency were incredibly divisive and toxic; one was immigration. And he says, "Oh, immigration? I'm a zero on Trump’s policies on immigration. My daughter is married to an immigrant, I love immigrant communities." He went on for a good five minutes about how unacceptable it was that Trump was bashing immigrants.

Near the end of the conversation, we came back around and asked, "Given all that, when you think about Trump on immigration, where are you on Trump?" And he says, "Oh, I'm a 10 on Trump." And we had a really lovely back and forth because what had opened up for me was the sense of possibility, the cognitive dissonance that this guy was experiencing where he thinks Donald Trump is a 10, but he actually strongly opposes one of Trump’s signature provocations. What I realized but didn’t say was: “Dude, you're not a 10, maybe you're an 8, but you're not a 10." So there's an opportunity to have more dialogue with him, and folks like him. After that one house, I went from being nervous and skeptical to being completely pulled in by deep canvassing. That’s why midway in the conversation I stepped forward, and the three of us were in this conversation.

At another house, a woman opened the door. We had a list and asked for a voter who turned out to be her husband. He came to the door wearing a light robe. This was a very cold night. We asked about Trump and he was hugely opposed, he was a Sanders supporter. But then when we asked if he'd voted for Hillary, he said, "No, didn't vote for Hillary, I just didn't vote." So he was a Trump opponent and Sanders supporter who sat out the 2016 general election. He wanted to share with us what it meant to him to vote for Bernie; and to be so disgusted with Hillary that he couldn’t vote. Now Trump was in office, and he didn’t know what to do. We started talking about that, and then he said, "I'm sorry, I probably can't stay out here for too long. I've just had open heart surgery." He exposed this scar down his chest, he's standing in his robe, it’s freezing cold outside, but he really wants to talk, can’t stop himself, while we, too, try to find a gracious exit.

Just then, his wife came and reinforced, "You should come inside.” He gave us both a hug. It was such a reminder that people want to talk, they want to engage, they want to make sense of what is happening. We don't have enough spaces to talk and someone else will listen and help us think it all through. The approach of deep canvassing creates that space. We arrive with our own point of view, but our intent is to give people enough space to move themselves, and maybe be moved ourselves. I saw it, and I fell in love, and I've been a deep canvassing fan ever since.

Dave:

The night you’re talking about was the first time either of us had been to Dyker Heights. Which makes me want to know, what was it like for you at the other end of the spectrum, going back to campaign in your hometown two decades after you had grown up and left?

John:

I grew up in the D.C. suburbs in Silver Spring, Maryland. At that time, it was a liberal Republican area and in theory anti-racist and pro-LGBT. In reality, my high school was incredibly segregated. Black and Latinx students were tracked into remedial classes; I was one of five and then four, and then two Black students in honors classes. I got bullied for being Black and in honors.

It was an ugly environment in many ways, and yet I got a world-class education. It was also incredibly homophobic: my junior year, one of my classmates painted on the football stadium in 10-foot-high letters, "The class of 1990 says John Newsome is gay.” My full name. John Newsome is gay.

Dave:

I am sorry for all the pain, I didn't know you went through that growing up. Did you even come out when you were in high school?

John:

No. But everybody knew I was gay. All my best friends were girls, I played the violin, and I was in fact gay. So the graffiti was accurate, except that no-one deserves to be outed as gay or tormented.

Dave:

You're right. You’re also reminding me of the time a few years back when you and I were hanging out at Dolores Park, in San Francisco. You talked about being in the gifted and talented program in school. You told me some people were gifted, but you were merely talented, because of the violin. That's why, as the number of Black people in gifted and talented and honors classes kept shrinking, if you felt you're only talented, not gifted, were you wondering, "How long am I here?”

John:

That was not only my self-perception, it was the public perception. "John's a great violinist." When the class rankings came out, with me in the top 10%, people were shocked. I was the third or fourth-highest-ranked male in my school, and I was kind of a sleeper. I remember all of the comments about the good fortune I would have getting into college because of affirmative action, including from school counselors—

Dave:

They validated your sense that you were neither gifted nor talented but you'd be included anyway?

John:

Absolutely. I thought I was an imposter until the admission letters started rolling in. In my first quarter at Stanford, I was sure they were going to find me out. Then my grades came back. They were almost all A’s and I was like, "Oh, I'm actually smart, I got this, never mind." From then on, I was fine. Before that, I wasn't sure I belonged.

So I did not have a very pleasant high school experience. I went to California for college, and never came back to Maryland except to visit my family. Never thought of going back for any other reason, except I did go back once to meet with a new high school principal to talk about the homophobia there. He completely blew me off.

After college, I moved to San Francisco, I built my life, and I did a lot of work on marriage equality, including fighting Prop 8. I don't remember where the Maryland ballot measure on marriage was in the sequence of state-by-state votes-

Dave:

Maryland came late, in November 2012, one of four states voting on marriage, Minnesota, Maine, Washington state, and Maryland. We could easily have lost all of them; we ended up winning all of them. It was the year that put an end to that string of votes on marriage, in part because the Supreme Court ruled on marriage.

John:

Yes, so it was 2012, I'm 40 years old, I had been out as a gay man for 22 years, and I'd done work on marriage equality. The night before the vote, I took the red-eye to Maryland. I went to the campaign office in Silver Spring, a mile-and-a-half from where I grew up. They sent me to a polling place around the corner from where I took violin lessons when I was five. My job was to remind people to vote. I'm handing out flyers saying "Thank you for being here for the election, please vote yes for LGBT marriage.”

Around half of the folk at the poll were Black, half were White, a few were Latinx or Asian. Most people waved and said, "Thank you." Some took a flyer, some didn’t.  When I was growing up as the Black kid in honors, the violin player, the obviously gay kid, I felt so ostracized from other Black students. So when I got there and saw all these Silver Spring Black folks coming through, all of those old feelings came back of discomfort and unease. But the people who came over to me and took a flyer were Black people. An older Black woman came over and said, "Thank you.”

Then, a young Black guy drove up in a souped-up Toyota with giant wheels; it was bouncing, its music was blaring, it was something out of a ‘90s hip-hop movie, it was loud and obnoxious. He parked his car and I thought "Oh, Lord," but I waved and said, "Hey, thanks for being here to vote, please remember to vote yes on LGBT marriage." He came over to me and he looked at me. And then he said, "I got you." He took a flyer and he went in to vote, and I lost it, completely lost it. Because he reminded me of some of the students who hassled me when I was growing up. But now I felt he meant what he said, he got me. I couldn't hand out flyers for half an hour. I was just weeping, realizing all of the hurt, damage, fear and sadness from the past but also the change: "My God, things are better, people are better, I'm better." I had such a sense of hope and possibility. And then we won. We won because the world changes, gets better.

“The world changes, gets better.”

What I love about John’s optimism is that it co-exists with reality.

Repeatedly, he was nervous before talking with anyone; but his nervousness didn’t preclude his ability to connect. Once the conversations started, his nervousness faded away because it’s so exciting when we do connect, which is often.

Similarly, he almost always felt like a stranger or outsider: in Dyker Heights, a neighborhood neither of us had ever visited before, talking with White voters; and yet also in the town where he grew up, talking mostly with Black voters. Feeling like an outsider didn’t keep him from connecting, even when his emotions ran the gamut. His predominant experience was that he found connection and a person eager to talk once they realized he would listen. Then, after they had listened to each other, John often found kindness.

Two big reasons for his success are related to each other.

First, John brought remarkable vulnerability to every conversation. He was himself, revealing his humanity as one way to offer the other person radical respect. “Here I am; here’s what matters most to me; I would be grateful to know what matters most to you.” These words, whether John spoke them aloud or not, guided his choices, so he could connect with Trump voters and Sanders voters, White voters and Black voters, voters old and young, voters different from John in a wide variety of ways.

Which brings me to the second reason for John’s success. Because he was face-to-face, it was easier for the other person to realize that John was treating them with respect and making himself vulnerable. No piece of mail or text can communicate these feelings so clearly. It’s very difficult to fully communicate these feelings in a phone call except with someone who already knows you. Our posture, our demeanor, our smile, our listening are so much easier for the other person to interpret when we are there.

So if you fear meeting a stranger of a different race, in a different neighborhood, someone unlike you in some noticeable way, don’t ignore your fear; but don’t let it be the last word as you decide whether to say hello. In a voter’s apartment building hallway, or their yard, or front porch, our vulnerability often becomes more important than our identity when voters can see it for themselves.

And: if we want to be seen, we have to let people see us. Consider this a possible New Year’s resolution.