If you hang with your right-wing family this Thanksgiving, you're likely to hear and experience tacit or outright racism. You're going to hear praise for the misogynist in the White House. You're going to watch your grandma regurgitate that conspiracy theory about Killary Clinton feeding on the heads of children that she heard on Fox News while she pecks at her meal across the table from you.
What do you do? You have three options:
1. Grit your teeth and ignore it until dinner is over. Then you can pull out your phone again, returning safely to your own echo chamber on Facebook.
2. Tell the truth. It's the objective truth that Donald Trump has engaged in racism. Even Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said Trump's comments about Mexican American judge Gonzalo Curiel (Trump claimed the judge couldn't do his job because of his Mexican heritage) were "the textbook definition of a racist comment." And it's the objective truth that his comments about women ("grab them by the pussy") are misogynist. Those are direct quotes. Fuck that guy and fuck anyone who supports him. He's a fascist. Sorry (not sorry), grandma.
3. Use community organizing methods at the dinner table. Seriously. It's called a "relational meeting." You love your grandma (well, you probably do). So don't just explain at her that she's wrong—that's unlikely to work. Instead, pivot and ask what's really important to her in life. Ask what matters to her. Ask what she wants to see in her community. Where there are points of commonality, point those out and use them as a springboard for starting the next conversation in a better place. Xochitl Maykovich, a community organizer with the nonprofit Washington CAN!, is doing the same thing with Trump supporters who've been calling in expletive-filled death threats since the election.
"Whenever we have conversations with these Trump supporters, we're like, 'Hey, we want universal health care.' And they're like, 'Hey, we kind of want that, too,'" Maykovich told The Stranger's Sydney Brownstone last week. "I think the thing that this is showing me is that people are coming with a lot of assumptions, and we need to make sure we're not doing the same thing."
If Maykovich can do this with irate, violent Trump supporters threatening her life, you can do it with your grandma. Your grandma surely has feelings besides hate in her heart. Good luck!