Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein recently had a conversation titled “Bridging Gaps vs. Drawing Lines,” where they discussed the recent passing of Charlie Kirk. This conversation stemmed from Klein’s article titled “Charlie Kirk was Practicing Politics the Right Way,” an article that Coates strongly disagreed with.
Their conversation is an example of how to disagree — the two clearly respected one another, held space to hear each other out and tried to find common ground. In today’s polarized political climate, this is a rare occurrence. There is no shortage of heated debates that we can find online; after all, this was Kirk’s claim to fame: “owning the libs.”
Nonetheless, I learned a thing or two from the conversation between Coates and Klein — that it is possible to have a healthy disagreement that doesn’t end in someone being disrespected or made into an online spectacle. I learned how to disagree — the right way.
During their conversation, Coates was trying to emphasize to Klein the importance of drawing a line. Coates believes, as I do, that we need to draw a line whenever we are disagreeing with someone, meaning you need to create boundaries for yourself and call out anyone who is crossing them. For me, this means that the person I am speaking to must have basic respect for my humanity and identity. If someone disrespects me, then that conversation is over. Every conversation needs to happen with a baseline level of respect. Not everyone will grant you this respect.
In my life, there have been times when people certainly didn’t show me respect. When I lived in Florida, for example, I was surrounded by people with beliefs significantly different from mine. While an environment with a diverse set of beliefs can be beautiful, sometimes their beliefs can be a threat to you as a person. Sadly, there are people out there who will disrespect your identity, and that’s what happened to me. Now, whether out of politeness or timidness, I don’t always speak up for myself. I thought our disagreements could go on without having to call out the disrespect. Nonetheless, a valuable lesson I learned is it is always better to walk away from a conversation if they don’t grant you a basic level of respect. Once you have established your boundaries then you can move on to the next step in a disagreement, which is finding common ground.
There is a quote from Barack Obama’s book “A Promised Land” that always sticks with me. Obama writes, “Most people, wherever they’re from, whatever they look like, are looking for the same thing.” I take this to mean that deep down we are all human beings, and not as different as one might think. We all wish to live a happy life, or as my fellow philosophy majors like to say, we are trying to figure out how to live “the good life.” This idea is important to remember whenever you disagree with someone. There is always common ground with someone, no matter how different their beliefs might be. This statement by Obama reminds me of the countless debates that I’ve had with my family members. They are all much more conservative than I am, so for a long time, I thought our conversations were a lost cause and that I would have to avoid politics at Thanksgiving dinners. But one day, I realized that I could approach this disagreement thing in a novel way.
Particularly, I remember one conversation with my mother where I was trying to convince her that the current government is terrible and that we need someone like Zohran Mamdani. Of course, my mother disagreed with me, and we broke out into a very unproductive debate. Then, I decided to try something different. I simply asked her, “Do you think it’s fair for people to go bankrupt after getting cancer treatment?” After saying this, I could see that we don’t really disagree on the fundamental things. We both know that sometimes things happen where we have to get medical treatment and going bankrupt because of the price is unjust.
We might disagree on how to solve this problem, but now we know where we can begin our disagreement. This is where our conversations should begin, not with our “hot takes” but with the things we all have in common. Don’t forget to create boundaries for yourself, walk away from anyone who disrespects your humanity, find common ground and start from there, rather than starting from a point of extremes.
Contact Edgar Zatarain at zatarain@oxy.edu
