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Many people are still asking why. Why did so many people vote for the other guy? Everyone is different and had different reasons for voting the way they did. The only way to understand why they did what they did is to ask them. But you must do this in a respectful way. Not assuming you're better than they are and that you, out of the goodness of your heart, are trying to educate them about the error of their ways. Understanding the why is about being able to communicate effectively and connect with other people. Much of the voting behavior this time around was based on emotion, not on "the facts" or logic.
People aren't born hating other people. White supremacists weren't born that way. I will give you two examples of what shapes people's biases and prejudice. I had a dear aunt who died at the early age of 59 and a good friend of mine who no longer speaks to me after Trump was elected. My aunt had a very difficult life. She got married at an early age and lost her first husband to a heart attack in his late 20s. His heart had been damaged by fever when he was a small child and both he and my aunt knew that he might not live very long. But they were in love. A few years after his death, she remarried and life was good for a while, but her second husband died of a gunshot wound. She was not accused of killing him but was accused of having caused his "suicide," even though the medical examiner ruled it wasn't a suicide. Rumors in my small town spread. His family turned against her and blamed her for his death.
She ended up leaving town feeling very angry and bitter about the whole experience as did my entire family. She took a job working as a secretary at an airbase near my hometown. She's doing things that I had never seen her do before such as drinking heavily. She dated some of the officers who I think were quite prejudiced and she took on their prejudices and their hateful behavior. She finally did meet a nice guy and married him, but he was an old boy with his own set of prejudices and beliefs about Black people. I remember when King was killed, he told me it was better that he had been killed since he was a "communist." I had never heard my dear aunt speak one negative word toward anyone or express any racial bias until these changes occurred in her life but she used the "N" word frequently during this time. Things began to change for the better. She settled down with the nice guy from the airbase and got involved with local church that she says "saved my life." She was happy which dampened much of the racism, but not all of it.
My friend who fired me as a friend after 50 years developed a set of prejudices as a young boy growing up in New Jersey. As a child, he watched his father's store being burned during the New Jersey riots of the '60s. This was an exceedingly hurtful experience for him and his family, and one that he never forgot that shaped his attitude toward the black community.
We often develop prejudices by having a negative experience with a racial group or simply by being hurt deeply which was the case with my aunt. And if there's someone around who tells us who to blame, we will often listen to them. Most of us have been hurt quite deeply at times, and to say the least, some politicians have used this hurt and fear quite skillfully.
If we are to change people's prejudices, we must understand them and help them to understand them. That means understanding how they developed and helping the person who has them to understand them since they are the agents of change, not us. Taking a "do-gooder" and an "I know better" attitude doesn't work. Telling people they are on the wrong side of history doesn't work either. Listening and understanding work to change prejudice. This is hard work and takes time.
