"But if you approach him right, you might start a meaningful dialogue."

By Dashka Slater @ Mother Jones, Nov./Dec. issue, free online now

Last October, shortly before the election, I came across a startling photo from Oakland, California, circa 1969. Two men stood side by side: a black guy in a beret and leather jacket and a white guy in a denim vest emblazoned with the Confederate flag. The white guy was part of the Young Patriots, a group made up of poor white Southerners. The black guy was a Black Panther [....] “It wasn’t easy to build an alliance,” former Black Panther Bobby Lee once recalled. “I had to run with those cats, break bread with them, hang out at the pool hall. I had to lay down on their couch, in their neighborhood. Then I had to invite them into mine.”

After Donald Trump was elected, that photo kept returning to my mind. Amid all the banter about how to reach white working-class voters who defected to Trump—or, conversely, about why progressives should leave those “deplorables” behind and focus on voters of color—I’ve found myself vacillating between these two points of view. I don’t believe in writing people off, and like many journalists I actually enjoy engaging with belief systems different from my own [....]