Many of us living in (and being repulsed by) Trump’s America have found ourselves in quite the pickle: Knowing that bigoted rhetoric—like the kind that spews from the president daily—can have very real consequences, what do you do if your relatives have a history of making derogatory jokes, using slurs, or bemoaning “political correctness”?
In a recent New York Times op-ed, Maureen Dowd wrote, “For those that believe this is a national emergency, severing ties may feel like a moral imperative.” Does that mean you boycott holiday festivities, block your relatives on Facebook, and amputate them from your life like a gangrenous limb? Do you ban politics from your dinner-table discussions? Do you silently fondle your green beans while your uncle complains about Colin Kaepernick’s Nike ad? Do you talk to your right-wing family members and probe the foundations of their belief systems? Or is trying to communicate utterly hopeless?