On Family And Politics

I come from a conservative family.

Now, that might seem strange to this blogging community who has seen me espouse liberalism these past 8 years but it's the honest-to-goodness truth. My father is a self-described "Eisenhower Republican" who finally turned away from the GOP in 2016. His only brother and his spouse are both Republicans, with the brother having retired early from the corporate world and his spouse having been a lifelong teacher who was more and more disheartened with the "need for political correctness" coming from the left. My mom was always slightly more liberal, but she never truly identified as a staunch Democrat. Her parents were lifelong Republicans along with both of her siblings. On her mom's side, we have staunch Republican family members in Texas and even have a Pfizer scientist who fought tooth and nail to be vaccinated during a deadly pandemic. Needless to say, nobody would have been surprised if I had emerged as a Republican with all these family influences pulling me in that direction. 

But then, something funny happened on the way to the ball.

I left home and attended college 800 miles away at a liberal arts college. I finally had friends of color and LGBT friends. In my time off, I worked at a summer sports camp in a diverse community that brought in international staff and campers. I read books in my field of social studies education learning about educational inequality. I read about income inequality and generational poverty in my sociology course. By the time I was student-teaching at one of the more affluent schools in the district, I knew that I wanted my first teaching job to be in a more diverse school, where I would be needed rather than simply another cog in the machine that maintained the status quo. Despite being surrounded by conservatives my first 24 years, I proudly and unabashedly cast my first vote for a Democrat in 2008 for a man named Barack Hussein Obama and I have never looked back. 

I cannot say the same for the rest of my family.

This past week while on vacation with my mom's extended family, the topic of conversation inevitably turned to politics. But rather than having heated discussions, what we instead had were conversations about the current state of affairs and the Republican Party's slow, methodical push toward fascism and authoritarianism. That's because after 30+ years of going on what has become a yearly sojourn, those family members that now attend the event all tend to be the ones who share the same progressive viewpoints and values and those that stay home are the more conservative ones. Sadly, this trend occurred even before the Trump years but it has now become more pronounced with the politics of the day. While not intentionally ostracized, our more conservative family members have simply chosen to remove themselves from situations where they must interact with the more liberal members of the family creating a situation where those in attendance have their politics align and are actually able to enjoy political discussions without being at each other's throats. That is a rarity, but is one that is welcome nonetheless.

It is telling how this dynamic has played out in my own family and I have reason to surmise that my family is not unique. The truth of the matter is that Democrats have been the actual party of family values for the past half-century. More than that, Democrats have been the ones prioritizing family when times have gotten tough. We saw it throughout the pandemic that it was Democrats who were following health and safety guidelines, masking up while protecting children and the immunocompromised. Democrats have also been the ones most accepting of the changing family dynamics, supporting the integration of interracial and LGBT couples as they become integrated into our own families. While Republicans have focused on their ideal family with a traditional man-woman marriage, 2.5 kids, and a home with a white picket fence, Democrats have come to understand that family's no longer look like this outdated 1950s model and instead are a reflection of our country's growing diversity, a diversity that looks much different than all previous generations.

Nobody has the authority to tell any other person how to react to their own family dynamic. But for me personally, I see what has occurred in my family as telling. It's telling that my family's more conservative members refuse to attend family reunions. It's telling that they no longer reach out to many of us other than perhaps a single call around the holidays. It's telling that they have unfriended some of us on social media. And it's telling that at a time when family should be as closer than ever, they see family as a loose bond, something that was random at best and not something worth saving, not even for the next generation. They'd rather continue their isolation than introduce their children and grand children to their extended family. Their version of family values is to completely isolate the next generation from any diversity: diversity of religion, diversity of culture, diversity of ethnicity, and, most importantly, diversity of ideas.

As I mentioned, this schism was already happening prior to 2016. But at the end of the day, Trumpism was the death blow to my family and millions of others. It's not just politics, but rather an entire ecosphere of values, beliefs, morals, and compassion. Trump supporters showed us who they truly were and they did so twice, once in 2016 and again in 2020. A vote for Trump was a vote against everything we as Democrats care about. But more than that, a vote for Trump was a vote that put our very existence into question. A Trump vote endangered our lives, especially if we were LGBT members, or active military personnel, or refugees, or women wanting to make health care decisions, or Black men being murdered by the cops, or children gunned down in schools, or if we just happened to have a federal ACA plan. To do that, to people you allegedly cared for, who were you family, was simply inexcusable. For us, it was more than a vote but rather an overt declaration that our lives were expendable. Once you go there, once you commit to endangering the lives of your family and friends with your vote, that is a bridge crossed that can never be uncrossed.

It's sad, it truly is. But Trumpism showed us who 74 million of our compatriots are, many of them in our own extended families. Seeing four years of Trump and saying, "yes, I want more of that" was a clear indication that the values of our more conservative family members did not align to ours. While we often are the bigger person and continue to reach out to these family members, some have cut them out completely. There's no right or wrong way to do this. Not since the Civil War have families been so ideologically opposed. At the end of the day, each of us must decide was is right for us. We cannot judge others who may make a different choice. All we can do is know that as Democrats, our family values will always be central to who we are and how we live. Our compassion and empathy will continue to be our guiding light. And we will continue to create a more inclusive world for the next generation. 

With or without our extended family.