By Anthony Payton-Granite State News Collaborative
Nearly 23 years ago, a friend, who happened to be white, once asked me: "Where is the only place where white guys can be the majority, and no one will protest?" His answer: "On a military battlefield dying in war."
His response caught me off guard. Though I'm always prepared to have a civil discussion on sensitive topics, this was new.
We were involved in the kind of business where you don't ask questions and you don't break trust. Him, an Army veteran. Me, a drug war veteran, whose tour of duty encompasses gun violence and prison riots.
I let him continue. I sensed that he needed to vent and process. More importantly, he needed to process with someone who looked like me. For him, it was a bonus that I was someone he could trust.
He opened up about his father losing a job to a Black woman. He spoke about feeling that straight white men were being blamed for the country's problems, about political systems that no longer included him.
When he looked to the left, he saw a party that blamed straight white men for everything, while his voice wasn't allowed unless it advanced the party's objectives. When he looked to the right, he saw a party moving further to the fringes, weaponizing religion, race and ideology.
He had no political home.
He knew there was a way to be patriotic without demonizing the people he swore to protect. He loved ‘90s hip-hop and knew black American culture on a high level. He stood his ground if you tried to make him feel guilty for being a white male. And he felt he should be able to openly celebrate his European heritage, not in a hooded-Klansman type of way. Just in a bagpipe-and-kilt kind of way.
He didn't enslave anyone. He wasn't the one who designed the oppressive systems that permeate every level of education and government.
I listened. And I'll be honest, I felt both frustration and restraint sitting across from him.
No, it doesn’t end there. I lit his ass up.
Welcome to the party.
Because here's what I've learned about having these conversations: You can't meet someone where they are without first letting them arrive.
Find me a Black person, a descendant of the slave trade, born before 1968, and I'll show you a citizen who wasn't born with full rights. The final piece of the oppressive Jim Crow laws was real estate. That wasn't even 60 years ago. And one of the fastest ways American families handed down wealth? Real estate.
When you enslave a race of people and commit unspeakable atrocities, the damage is everlasting, even after slavery ends. You deny them education and employment. You enact laws that specifically target them. After some time, the work becomes autonomous. Some of the people will even begin to spew the rhetoric of their oppressors, in an attempt to align with that power structure.
Then their descendants, who benefit from these systems, turn around and ask why black Americans can't get their act together.
The nerve.
My friend took it all in stride. It showed me that he had something to get off his chest. He didn't flinch at my retort. He was one of the few who didn't have that knee-jerk reaction. Turns out, I needed that as well.
I've had the opportunity to live in a trailer park and experience white poverty. It mirrored urban neighborhoods I was raised in – a lack of fathers in the home, poor nutrition, not enough focus on education. And just like those urban communities, that population continued to vote for people who did nothing for their growth or betterment.
Unity can't be achieved without understanding. From those conversations with him, I learned to stay off the fringes, stop fearing what I don’t understand, and think twice before I judge.
My friend lives a smooth life right now, trying to stay on top of his declining health. We've been planning on having dinner for three years now, but distance and life gets in the way. With the political landscape in such a dire situation in New Hampshire and across the country, I'm thinking we should have this dinner soon.
We may just fix America … one dinner at a time.
Anthony Payton is a podcast host, freelance writer and father living in Manchester. These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.