Examine the individual, not the label
Brené Brown is one of my favorite writers and thinkers.
She has a way of giving language to feelings I've never voiced.
Her book, “Braving the Wilderness,” is my go-to for expressing this inner dialogue of mine. It's the first book of Brené’s that I read, and it remains my favorite to this day.
Recently, I cracked open the book again seeking the right words to emotions I’d noticed in myself.
In Braving the Wilderness, Brown writes:
“The sorting we do to ourselves and to one another is, at best, unintentional and reflexive. At worst, it is stereotyping that dehumanizes. The paradox is that we all love the ready-made filing system, so handy when we want to quickly characterize people, but we resent it when we're the ones getting filed away.”
Years ago, when I published my podcast episode with former QAnon believer Ashley Vanderbilt, I knew how some people would react to hearing her story.
And Ashley knew it too, acknowledging the anticipated response she’d get during our conversation.
Some people despise her for what she formerly believed.
Some people don’t believe she has changed.
Others look to her as a beacon of truth now.
And as expected, some see her experience as an indictment of an entire swath of people.
One tweet I received years ago read:
#ashleyvanderbilt and her likes need to deal with the gap in their soul that they have managed throughout their developmental years to fill with indifference - so #QAnons came knocking and because they looked like them - They’ve opened the doors and served them a buffet.
Do you see it?
The implication is that an entire collection of people is a band of indifferent, lost souls ripe for the plucking.
Sort. File. Stereotype. Condemn.
As Brené Brown puts it, “Some people will continue to believe that fighting for what they need means denying the humanity of others.”
We’ve been here before
In 2016, we saw it play out when then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables.”
In 2021, President Joe Biden called the decision by Texas and Mississippi's governors to lift COVID mask mandates in their states “Neanderthal thinking.”
President Trump’s rhetoric surrounding just about anyone who disagrees with him typically devolves into grouping, labeling, and name-calling — anything from calling journalists “enemies of the people” to immigrants “animals” and “evil.”
But it’s not just our public figures who display these communicative categorizations.
If you’ve spent any time working in a corporate environment, especially in sales and marketing, recall the language often used to describe competing companies and their tactics.
Enemies. Rivals. They are “slimeballs” and “liars” who “will do anything to steal our customers.”
I know, because I've used this language myself.
In competitive sales situations, I’ve seen the sales rep on the other side as more than just the competition. I made up entire stories about them and their ill-intent based on my unconscious categorizations.
Simply because they chose to work for a different company.
When the response to an idea you disagree with or oppose is to take aim at an entire group of people with broad-sweeping strokes that stain them with the funk of dehumanization, it is unfair to the people — the individual human beings — who absorb your judgment.
And you know it’s unfair because you know how it feels to be the target of such stereotyping.
It sucks.
It sucks because when you are sorted and stereotyped, you never get to explain the context and the intricacies of your thoughts and decisions.
What do you expect to happen when an entire swath of people are called deplorable and Neanderthals and soul-less and “the enemy” for years and years?
What would your response be?
What do we fear?
Fear shows up in so many ways.
Fear for your livelihood. Fear of being truly seen, faults and all. Fear of getting hurt — emotionally or physically. Fear of change that isn't your choice. Fear of conflict. Fear of failure. Fear of loneliness.
We are each incredibly deep, complicated creatures. Our thoughts and emotions rarely ever manifest themselves in a linear path to our actions and spoken words.
This is why sorting and labeling are so destructive to communication and to finding common ground.
They provide a way to lump your fears and emotions into one category, give it a name, assign it characteristics, and then wholeheartedly discard it or blindly identify with it.
But in doing so, it not only halts reconciliation and understanding, it widens the gaps.
I implore you to resist this. I myself have to work to resist it each and every day.
Yes, individuals are responsible for their own words and actions, whether they’re part of a group or not.
And sometimes those words and actions will spark disagreement and conflict.
But the more you work to examine the individual and not the label, the more you can see the humanity — the broken humanity — each person carries around.
And the more we see each other’s humanity, the more we find common ground that solves real issues.
Ashley Vanderbilt shared with me that she connected with QAnon ideas because, as she explained in our conversation, she was deeply afraid of death. And as a mother to a little girl, she feared for her family’s safety.
Aligning with QAnon gave her not only the perceived protection of a community, but a target for her fears.
Misguided? Yes.
Soul-less? It hardly sounds like it.
Ashley told me:
“I would say a lot of people in there [in QAnon], if not the majority of the people in there, are being as crazy as they’re being because they’re scared out of their mind.
“...have a little bit of compassion and have open communication with them without making them feel like they’re crazy or wrong or anything.”
What would it mean for you to see someone you disagree with as scared? Scared of losing something? Scared of change that wasn't their choice? Scared of the unknown?
How might you communicate with someone who is scared versus someone you see as your enemy?
My guess is it would be drastically different, and it would produce far better results.
