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Mónica Guzmán’s family is a microcosm of America. In the past three elections, Guzmán voted for Democrats, while her parents backed Republicans. Everyone is passionate and committed, and discussions get heated. But things don’t boil over.
“Heat in a conversation is good,” she said in a recent interview with Chronicle editor-in-chief Andrew Simon. “Heat in a disagreement, friction between points of view, really sharpens you. ... But the question is: Are you cooking something, or are you burning something with that heat? And if you’re burning something, you’re burning a sense of dignity. You’re burning a sense of safety.”
Guzmán, a journalist and expert on polarization, spoke with Simon as part of our Commons in Conversation interview series. They talked about relationships in a time of toxic polarization and how America — and individual families — can come together despite an array of forces that pull us apart.
The two also discussed the work of nonprofits and philanthropy. Too often, Guzmán cautioned, advocates who set out to connect people across division instead end up trying to persuade someone they’re wrong. “We all think that we have the best judgments, and we all want to make the world a better place,” she said. “And it’s easy to think we make the world a better place by just doing everything we can to convince everybody that we’re right.”
Guzmán is senior fellow for public practice at Braver Angels, a nonprofit dedicated to depolarizing America, and host of the Braver Way podcast. She also is the author of I Never Thought Of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations In Dangerously Divided Times.
Watch the discussion on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s YouTube channel or on LinkedIn with free registration. Below is a lightly edited A.I.-generated interview transcript.
“A Drought of Trust”
Andrew Simon: For starters, maybe you could tell our audience about the type of work that you do for Braver Angels.
Mónica Guzmán: Yeah, so at Braver Angels. We work on political depolarization. So our mission is to help strengthen our democratic republic by bringing people together across the political divide. So, it’s not about changing people’s views on the issues. It’s about changing people’s views on each other so we can tackle the issues at all. There’s this huge sort of drought of trust among people, among neighbors, among people in their own community, just around the political divide.
We know that there’s many other differences where there’s so much distrust and so much suspicion. The political divide has become this extremely potent kind of difference that is really challenging people’s ability to see each other, understand why people come to believe what they believe, and most importantly, come together to fruitfully solve or make progress on the debates that really challenge us.
Due to a lot of the toxic parts of political polarization, we tend to have debates that aren’t even the real debates because we’re not coming close enough to each other to see what the real debates are all about. We’re getting a lot of signals from rhetoric, from media, from politicians who are driven in different directions. “Let’s win elections. Let’s get eyeballs.” Right? But in this society, we need to make sure we understand each other so we can work together.
Simon: You mentioned the election, and you’ve been doing this work through several election cycles now. I know we’re just about a month, since the results, but is there anything different about this current election cycle and the outcome? Anything that feels different to you?
Guzmán: Yes, the last month has been a real opportunity to observe, you know, what happens when these things that we all have a voice in, but we can’t control the outcome of come to pass in our political process. So, in this case, one thing I observed was the impact of fear in the campaign in particular. Fear is such a strong mobilizer.
If you’re afraid, then you can’t let go of a thing, and you’re going to go to the polls and make sure that you vote in a way that keeps the scariest things from happening. As someone who works in depolarization, I’m in a lot of mixed spaces, and I’ve talked with people on all sides of the political divide, and I saw how the campaigns, all of them, raised the fear so they could raise the stakes and make sure that they got people to the polls.
So, one thing I kind of knew what happened was whoever lost, that side was going to have to reckon with the fear that they now have to face. The winning side was going to be spared the cost of that. “We won. Everything’s fine like our country is going to be the way we want it to be.” But do due to the elevated rhetoric, this election in particular felt like the fear got up so high that the last month for a lot of folks who happened to be on my political side, the left, it was just… it’s so much pain, it’s so much fear, a lot of which is well-founded, given the issues, given the real divide. So, this is not to diminish those issues, but the cost of fear neurobiologically is that you can’t wonder about something you think is out to get you. It is harder to get curious when you’re afraid, and it’s harder to exercise good judgment. You’re mostly thinking about survival. And so, it’s a kind of freeze, right? It’s easier to go to despair. It’s easier to go to immobilization. It’s easier to just not know what to do. But I believe that it’s true for this election. It was true for all the elections.
The election every four years is our best user-experience survey of the country. It is the only one that is oh-so comprehensive. It still doesn’t get everybody, obviously, but it gets a lot of us. There’s so much to learn. There’s so much to learn. So the impact of fear keeps us from wanting to get close enough to see like: What actually happened here. What can I understand about the state of my country? What can I understand about people who disagreed with me and where they want to take things?
And maybe, could we work together? Could I advance some of my goals even if my side lost? Right? These are the kinds of questions that would be really cool to put into circulation. And I’m kind of hoping, you know, I’m seeing people get there bit by bit.
Strategies to Connect
Simon: When you talk about fear, what are some strategies that might help people push through that fear as a way to make connections? If you have any examples of that, recent or not, it’d be great to hear them.
Guzmán: Yeah. One thing that really works is to be specific. A lot of times when we are feeling afraid of something, political or otherwise, we’ll be tempted to talk in abstract, cosmic terms. The end of everything, right? The end of democracy, the end of something huge that we value. The problem with that sort of broad-based language is there’s nothing to do. It’s difficult to get a grip on something that we can actually hang on to as a kind of guardrail or a specific step.
So: get specific, right? If you’re afraid of something that’s going to happen, if you’re afraid of, you know, a good example might be the judicial system. You know, both sides have cases to make. You know, the way they see it about how the judicial system could be used against them or against their candidates or already has been or has already been corrupted. So, think about that. You know, I’m worried about the independence of the judicial system. I’m worried about what’s going on with our judges. Okay. Like, that gets us a little bit closer to the ground. What could we do about it? You know, we’re citizens, we are active, powerful people, and we can always work on guardrails. So that’s one thing about fear.
Another one is, this is really important after this election in particular, but after all such elections, often what happens is that people start to believe: “My side’s fears are real. Their side’s fears are imagined and hyperbole.” And that’s not true. It’s never that simple. What’s probably closer to the truth is that both sides have fears that are really based on, you know, serious concerns underneath them that ought to be looked at, and some that are exaggerated and hyperbole.
So which is which? The process of discernment is really important, but it really has to begin with not falling into that trap of thinking that all my side’s fears are real and all of their fears are completely silly and made up. Let’s not laugh at each other’s fears. If you’re having conversations across the divide and somebody says something that you’re like, “That’s just crazy,” try not to say that. Even if you think it in that moment, it’s not crazy to them. It really, really isn’t. So ask the questions, get curious. You know, “I’d love to know where that comes from for you. Like, “What sorts of things are you concerned about there? Because it’s not something I’m seeing, but…” You know, maybe it’s a relative like, “You know, I care about you, like, I want to know what you’re thinking, like, what’s going on,” right? So really resist that temptation to laugh at other people’s political fears.
‘Real People, Real Impact’
Simon: What’s the role that philanthropy can play when it comes to depolarization in this work, particularly thinking about the fact that there might be some fatigue? Whether it’s on the giving side, and even the nonprofits that philanthropy supports, there could be understandable fatigue with this work. So I’m just kind of wondering if you have any thoughts on the best role that philanthropy can play to help continue this work?
Guzmán: Yeah, I mean, my bias has always been toward grassroots, real people, and real impact. I think one of the things I’ve observed can, you know, philanthropy, journalism, all these institutions can get kind of carried away with is scale. We want scale. We want metrics that show us that lots of people are liking this on Instagram. And that’s what matters, and that’s how we know that this is working.
No. Those metrics are so not really a great measure of impact. I think that the closer philanthropy can get to the ground, the more wide open folks in philanthropy can be about what’s actually making a difference in people’s lives. Where are the testimonies that backed that up? You know, sometimes I’ve seen some very, very, very small projects, like, really make a difference, scale that, scale that, and don’t scale that by slapping it on social media. Scale that by empowering people to then bring it into their own communities.
So that’s what we need. I think we need a philanthropy that can, kind of ask itself, what is that human level? Because only at that human level, the one-to-one conversation, the smallest units of connection, can we build trust at all, all these other places where we think we’re building trust. It’s often too performative.
It’s not going to be as impactful as it looks from the outside, and if you actually query the people behind the keyboard, you know, maybe they weren’t paying that much attention, maybe not that much was going on. So, I’m a big fan of that, and I would really encourage folks, look at the organizations that are doing grassroots work and have a high level of scrutiny.
Is it working? How do they know? What are the metrics that actually reflect a deep impact on people’s ability to build trust where it is hardest to do so? This should not be easy. It is extremely difficult, and we need to empower the best innovation.
Simon: Are there any examples that come to mind of grassroots efforts? Maybe something that felt like it started really small, really modest, super local, perhaps, but felt like it turned into something?
Guzmán: Yeah, well, I mean, my bias, of course, is Braver Angels, started as a grassroots organization and has grown to 100 chapters across the country. And it’s all volunteer led. It’s people on the ground, chapters that are co-led by people who are conservative and people who are liberal. And we really take that very seriously all the way down our levels of leadership.
But there’s also organizations like, for example, BridgeUSA. Bridge USA does extraordinary work at the college and high school level, run by people in Gen Z, really young people who are just as tired as the rest of us about the status quo here and what’s become so toxic, bring a lot of fresh energy. It’s remarkable when I go to BridgeUSA Events on college campuses, the debates that they have on college campuses, which the headlines have been talking about, how, you know, how completely dysfunctional is discourse on college campuses. It’s such a battleground for these things that we can’t solve.
You go to a BridgeUSA debate, and you see college students actually tangle with the hardest issues right across the room from somebody who completely disagrees with them. And they are leading an extraordinary movement, right there with Braver Angels. And there’s others as well. Future Caucus is a great organization that is working to help young people get elected to public office and then organize them around some cross-partisan types of initiatives that can really, you know, elevate the discourse and all of our politics. I could go on and on and on, but there’s some really great efforts going on, I think.
Simon: What do people get wrong about doing this work? Even those with good intentions who were endeavoring to eradicate this toxic polarization? Are there common missteps? Do people kind of commonly get things wrong?
Guzmán: Yeah, there’s a lot of really good intentions, and I think there’s a lot of unseen intentions that come out kind of here and there in different ways. So, I’ve seen, you know, some folks come passionately into pluralism work, bridge-building work across the political divide. And there’s a motive that they had that maybe they didn’t recognize, realize, which is: “I really just want to educate the other side. They’re wrong and they’re stupid and we’ve got to change them.”
That doesn’t work, that doesn’t work. It becomes pretty transparent pretty quickly. And, you know, it comes from a good place, right? We all think we’re right. We all think that we have the best judgements, and we all want to make the world a better place. And it’s easy to think we make the world a better place by just doing everything we can to convince everybody that we’re right.
The science of persuasion, the research into human dynamics across those kinds of disagreements show that even if it’s true, let’s say, Andrew Simon, you, have all the answers, to everything. Even if that’s true, if you went around and just tried, everything you did was just informed by: “I want to convince this person. I want to convince this person,” it would not work.
What we need to do is receive people and build up our capacity to receive people just as they are so that we can connect, so that we can discuss the best ideas without people having their own motives to slap them down as a sort of defense. We have to get out of that win-lose mode to be able to have honest conversations at all.
So, that’s a really big thing I think a lot of folks get wrong is: Even if you are right, even if you do have all the answers on your political side, you know, which I, I don’t think that’s true of either side. Even if… you’ve got to put listening first. You’ve got to put humility first. You’ve got to know what that looks like and you’ve got to open your eyes to everything you don’t know and everyone you don’t understand.
‘A Rollicking Ride’
Simon: And for the record, I, Andrew Simon, definitely do not have all the answers.
So, you have a personal attachment to this work through your family. And I know you’ve written and spoken about it. I’m just wondering, for the audience and the uninitiated, if you might talk a little bit about how you come at this, just again, in a personal way.
Guzmán: Yeah, so very informed by my relationship within my family. I’m a Mexican immigrant, and so are my parents. You know, they brought me and my brother over when I was about five, six years old. And when I turned 17, they passed their citizenship test, and they became U.S. citizens. So now we’re all dual U.S.-Mexico citizens. And it was in the year 2000 that they cast their first votes on U.S. soil and went Republican. And I, in 2004, the first time I could vote for president, I went very Democrat. And it’s been that way ever since.
So it’s been a rollicking ride through, you know. I feel like because we speak Spanish and we grew up in New Hampshire, in a place where there weren’t that many other Hispanics, we could be at restaurants speaking at a higher volume than normal, because to everybody else, it was just gibberish.
So, we had, like, loud conversations debating what Glenn Beck said last night, or what was going on with Clinton or with George W. Bush. But in 2016, with that presidential campaign, our family was tested, like so many other families have been across the country, you know. And looking back, I can definitely see that the one with the most angst was me.
I had a really hard time understanding why my parents supported the candidate they supported and went on to vote for him, now three times. And it became, like, yeah, again, just a challenge in our relationship. But, the reason I wrote my book and do the work that I do is because, as I like to say, I think we kept it to a simmer.
What I’ve learned from all my sort of obsessive research is that heat in a conversation is good. Heat in a disagreement, friction between points of view. Really good; sharpens you. It’s awesome. Let’s do it. But the question is: Are you cooking something or are you burning something with that heat?
And if you’re burning something, you’re burning a sense of dignity. You’re burning a sense of safety. Now you’re in fear, where you can’t be curious. You’re burning trust in a relationship that you care about, you know, which has devastated some families. But if you can keep it to a simmer, if you can pick up some of the skills and tools that help you do that, and they’re honestly not rocket science, they’re really, really, really not. They’re mostly how to human. It’s just how to human. And if you can do that, then you can keep those disagreements to a simmer.
And that’s what ended up happening with me and my parents. So, you know, we ended a part of that whole conflict with me understanding that if I had been my parents, I would have voted for Trump, too. It just added up. It just made sense. And I was able to kind of understand that, and it helped me understand myself and help me understand the country a bit better, too. So, you know, again, it’s a very, very difficult thing. And things can get hot really easily, but there are ways to cool it down, and they’re not as difficult as it may seem.
Simon: You’re talking about cooking and simmering. It’s the holiday season. We’ll be in our kitchens with our families. These debates are happening. What’s one pointer on cooling things down to a simmer? Something you’d recommend as people spend time with their families.
Guzmán: Yeah, totally. So let’s talk about anger for a bit. There’s the anger that you sense in yourself, and there can also be the anger that arises in the person you’re talking to. An author who I really deeply respect, Valerie Kaur, said: Anger is a force that protects that which is loved. Which is a great entry point to me to how we can be curious even about anger.
What are you trying to protect? So, if you find yourself getting angry, take that as information, take that as data, and maybe try to vocalize it. You know, so if you’re in that conversation, you find yourself getting angry, it’s impeding your ability to really listen, it’s impeding your ability to want to stay in the conversation. But maybe you feel okay enough to say something like, “I just want to let you know, I’m feeling upset about this. Like, this is making me upset, but I want to stay, and I want to keep listening. You just might see me get a little bit a little bit stiff or a little bit still for a minute. But let me think on it well while we’re here together.”
If you sense anger in another person, one thing that can diffuse it really effectively and this is not a script, you know, I’m not giving you a script. This is just like an example to illustrate the point. But, this has happened to me, and I’ve seen folks get really, really, really mad, especially in places where I didn’t expect it. And if I say what I’m observing, and I say something like, “I didn’t realize this mattered so much to you. Can you tell me more about that?”
You know, whoa. Like someone’s just acknowledged the anger. Someone’s just invited whatever the anger is trying to defend into the conversation from a calmer place. And I have seen people’s shoulders just go down. I’ve seen people sigh it out when they realize that someone is actually interested in hearing whatever the heck is making them so animated. And then they’ll take a breath sometimes, and they’ll just say, “I don’t know. I think it’s just this, you know, I think it’s just this thing about immigration or abortion that I just can’t…” you know, and then you can connect on that human level and you can go out of the argument and into, “yeah, you know, I get it that that is kind of tough,” and you cool it down.
Simon: Well, Monica, thank you so much for your time today. This has been a terrific conversation. Your book is excellent. I just read it recently. What a well-timed read. I’d encourage anyone to read it. Thank you again so much for being here with us.
Guzmán: Yeah, you bet. Thanks for having me.
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