When Worlds Collide

Last updated on: December 5, 2016 at 12:47 pm by Jason M. Brown

When Worlds Collide 2016-12-05T12:47:47-08:00 Jason M. Brown

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Tomi Lehren on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah

I enjoy watching the Daily Show with Trevor Noah when I eat lunch. Even though of late it has been mostly Trump meltdown segments, the show has some good commentary, and some good humor.

On November 30, 2016 Trevor interviewed conservative social media darling Tomi Lahren. She has gained a massive following on social media for the content and tone of her no holds barred style of “calling out” liberals and the left through her Final Thoughts segment on the Blaze Network and Facebook. After the interview liberal media was quick to call it an “evisceration” or a foray behind “enemy lines.”

As the interview unfolded, both Trevor and Tomi stayed composed, but struggled to remain within each other’s frames of reference. The audience was obviously sympathetic to Trevor, and hostile toward Tomi, and Trevor tended to interrupt her, talk over her, and squirm away from her main points and arguments. But on the whole it was a very interesting conversation, because it featured two people speaking from such different points of view. Tomi stood her ground, and knows her stuff. Trevor was mostly even handed, and patient. But neither of the two agreed on anything, and each stalemate simply moved on to a new frustrating topic.

The conversation starting with Trump’s degrading of women and moved on to several other topics, but the most interesting was their conversation about Black Lives Matter and Colin Kaepernick. Tomi has compared Black Lives Matters to the KKK, and blasted Colin Kaepernick for disrespecting the National Anthem.

Trevor was quick to distance the BLM movement from the actions of the shooter in Dallas who killed six police officers, and Tomi was quick to distance Donald Trump from the actions of the Alt-Right Movement or the KKK, who recently held a victory parade in his honor. When we are in opposition to a group, the actions of the few speak more loudly. If the KKK supports Trump he must be racist; if a Muslim from Ethiopia goes on a rampage, all Muslims must be terrorists, etc. We have an endless supply of nuance for our own group, and none for the other side.

The most revealing moment was when a visibly frustrated Trevor asked if taking a knee during the National Anthem, or protesting in the streets was not an acceptable way of protesting, how then, should a black person bring up their grievances in this country? Tomi replied: “I would like him to further explain what he’s talking about when he’s discussing the black oppression in this country.”

It was as if Tomi assumed the troubles of black folk ended when the Civil War did. Having not experienced life as a black person, Tomi, like most white people, has no idea what it means to live in the US as a black person, and that lack of understanding leads to her own frustration with BLM and Colin Kaepernick’s protest. She claims that black people are more likely to kill police officers than the other way around, that ‘Hands up Don’t Shoot, a BLM slogan is a “False narrative,” and that BLM is telling people to go out and harass or kill white people.

So, yes, I wish people like Tomi would sit down with people like Colin, and listen to each other. Still, I am not sure listening is enough to extract us from our bubbles, from our comfort-feeds, that tell us the world is exactly as we expect it. Even my own Father, a person I love and respect, and I, cannot come to agree on just about anything when it comes to politics. As humans it seems too easy to believe that ‘we’ are the good guys and ‘they’ are the bad guys, and if there isn’t enough evidence to support that narrative, we will just hungrily click on the headlines, fake as they may be, that do. I know I am guilty of this self-censoring sometimes, though I try to pay attention to sources, and argument, and values and bias.

Perhaps we need a news feed app that features topical commentary by conservative and liberal points of view on a given topic, that links to fact checks by a third party organization? But even that would appeal to those who want to balance their perspectives.

I think we are in a difficult place right now in this country. The single narrative, if there ever was one, is cleaving down the middle into two different worlds, and I am not sure they can coexist.

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