On containing multitudes

I was at a church event a few years back, visiting with a man I didn’t know. The conversation turned toward my profession, and I said I worked at the newspaper.

 His eyes widened. “Oh,” he said, “that must be so hard for you.”

I asked why he thought that.

“That paper is so liberal,” he said. “All those things on the opinion page. It must be really hard to deal with that.”

I let about 30 different responses, some of them less polite than others, bounce around in my head before finally responding that I actually thought our opinion page had an interesting mix of liberal and conservative opinions, as did our newsroom, and that I quite liked my job. Then I changed the subject.

But what I kind of felt like saying is what I’ll say here: “Actually, I’m kind of a liberal. And I probably wrote some of those things you don’t like.”

I would have said that if I thought it might have gotten us into a deep and interesting conversation about one of the topics on which I lean liberal – say, poverty, education, or health care – regardless of whether we agreed on the topic. But I knew that wasn’t likely. He’d already revealed his basic characterization of liberals, and it wasn’t a good one.

This post comes by request of my fabulous friend Savannah (she’s a blogger too – a food blogger, so you really can’t go wrong checking out her work at Appetite.) Savannah, like me, is a liberal-leaning journalist and an evangelical Christian. And, like me, she knows revealing one of those group affiliations to members of the other often gets a less-than-happy reaction, whether it’s surprised, confused, or straight-up offended.

It’s a situation far too common in America. We’ve gotten our stereotypes down so tight that we assume people who don’t fit them can’t possibly exist.

The problem with that is they do . Pretty much everyone, in some way, has some clashing labels on them. But so many of us are floating around out here worried that maybe the assumptions are true, so we keep our mouths shut.

This type of thing is exactly why I decided to start keeping a blog. (Well, it’s also so I have a forum longer than Facebook to talk about my cute/smart/interesting children, but whatever.)

I want to tell my stories with my opinions and frustrations and questions and hopes laid bare. I want to prove I’m more than the instant assumptions drawn from my labels. I want my own assumptions (and I have plenty) to be challenged. And I want other people to join in the conversation with the same opportunities.

This really isn’t a new or unusual hope – I mean, Henry’s preschool shows talk (in rudimentary form) about breaking down labels and stereotypes. It’s the theme on Glee like every week!

But it’s something the American public still struggles with. We’re terrible about it on the Internet, but we’re really bad about it in casual conversation, too, especially when talking to people we assume agree with us, like the man from my opening illustration. We make people with whom we probably have much in common feel alienated, and we lose a chance at connection.

So join me, readers. Be yourselves. Share in the comments some assumptions brought up when you reveal your profession, denomination, political persuasion, hometown, soda preference, whatever, and share how you don’t fit.

Let your complexities fly, friends! Remember what Walt Whitman said:

Do I contradict myself?

Very well, then, I contradict myself;

(I am large—I contain multitudes.)