I’m not looking to start beefs for the sake of starting beefs, but the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, Quentin Lucas, wrote a couple of tweets the other week that bothered me.
“Over the past few days, you may have noticed that certain candidates across the state have begun posting nasty attacks on large swaths of Missourians — typically black people, women, LGBTQ+ people, and the millions of us in Kansas City and St. . Louis. My advice: don’t commit,” he wrote the first messagepublished on May 22.
He concluded through writing: “The attacks are performative, whether to hide a silver-spoon education or to cover a shocking lack of policy positions that improve Missourians’ quality of life. There are smart ways to fight back. Amplifying their messages doesn’t is. Let’s have our narrative, we don’t play theirs.”
Lucas has elections to win already political future to nurture i understand
However, these messages seem to me to be precisely what needs to be said in the constituencies of Missouri and Kansas, and indeed across the United States. You don’t win battles for ideas by refusing to participate. You don’t change people’s minds by refusing to talk to them.
What’s more, don’t tell people who face unparalleled oppression by the state that they should essentially shut up and take it. This is totally harmful.
Kansans rally in support of transgender rights on May 5, 2023 at the Statehouse in Topeka. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
Framing of debates
Lucas makes a point that everyone should remember. If you’re arguing with someone about something, anything, really, you don’t automatically do it accept the framing of this person.
They may have a different worldview or set of moral beliefs than you do. They may have different life experiences. They may, as the mayor suggests, be trying to draw you into an overly emotional response that hurts your cause.
So don’t do it. Make your own case. Express your own vision.
Too often, I see progressives and liberals (and anyone not on the far right of the Republican Party) arguing with each other over tactics and vocabulary. Meanwhile, they ignore the seizure of large swaths of rhetorical territory by their ideological opponents.
Do I have an example? I’m sure. In the consequences of Donald Trump’s 2016 election, those in the progressive activist space were quick to confront the rampant racism poisoning American society. Diversity training and social justice campaigns spread far and wide. Don’t get me wrong – everyone needs this information and should be committed to fighting racism. It will change the way we see American history and culture.
At the time, I was concerned, however, that this work focused on like-minded people. At a certain point, people who hadn’t thought about race and its role in American life would also have to engage. The way progressives framed the issue, loaded with notions of collective guilt and social obligations, seemed certain to ignite new cultural war battles.
Within a few years, conservatives needed to distract the public from the January 6, 2021 insurrection and COVID-19. They found a juicy target in these murmurs born for justice.
Progressives were unprepared and caught off guard by the furor over critical race theory.
I would suggest that this happened precisely because they did not spend that time engaging with people who believed differently than they did. Activists, nonprofits, and advocates spoke more to themselves and their staunch supporters than to the unpersuaded or uninformed. Then they lost control of a critical narrative to build a better country.
They needed to get involved more and earlier. They needed to have facts, figures and framing ready. Instead, they argued over the definition of “critical theory of race” in itself.
Four panelists address critical race theory, gender identity, and parental rights during a June 13 Kansas Policy Institute event in Overland Park. Panelists, from left, were Dave Trabert, CEO of KPI; Wilfred Reilly, author of “Hate Crime Hoax”; Robert Woodson, a self-described “racial exorcist”; and Mary Miller, private school advocate. The moderator was Michael Ryan, right, executive editor of The Lion. (Margaret Mellott/Kansas Reflector)
Winning mostly
Many people in the political and news media complex confuse electoral politics with life. Elections produce winners and losers, and journalists turn these contests into comprehensible stories.
Life works differently. When politics affects the very existence of people, it will respond. Their voices and their anger may not be politically acceptable. It might seem counterproductive to Quentin Lucas, or Laura Kelly, or Ty Masterson.
And what?
As Statehouse lawmakers debated disenfranchising transgender people, I heard and read the emotional rhetoric of transgender activists. While I fully agree with his cause, I wouldn’t necessarily have used his words. You can read my columns on the topic to see my preferred approach.
But I might be wrong! That’s not only fine, it’s how public conversations should work.
I am older than many of these activists, and I would hate to tell them to shut up. They have a perspective, they have their beliefs and they should be able to fight for themselves. They don’t have choices to win or lose; they have their lives and the lives of their loved ones to protect.
Good reporters and columnists cover the world beyond electoral politics and legislative sessions. We try to show that our state and its people encompass more than just blue and red, liberal and conservative, urban and rural. Kansans (and Missourians) differ in a multitude of ways. Trying to deny or stifle this difference for political gain risks turning public dialogue into banal pablum.
This is a truth that Mayor Lucas would do well to remember.
Clay Wirestone is opinion editor for the Kansas Reflector. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of those affected by public policy or excluded from the public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own comment, here.
