Seek First to Understand
Two books that I have read recently have helped me to examine my own intolerance. The first was Madeleine Albright's The Mighty and the Almighty.

Drawing on her own extraordinary personal history and her broad international experience, Albright cautions that people with deeply held religious beliefs will not change them simply because an outsider tells them that they are misguided. Instead, you have to take people as they are and seek to change them (if you feel you have to) by quiet reason and your personal example.

An example: After 9/11 and the global horror at what had happened, there was every chance of an international alliance to root out al-Qaida terrorism. But then, one of Bush's speechwriters coined "the axis of evil," and the potential alliance crumbled. The U.S. was once again portrayed as Islamophobic and bent on global domination—an egregious error with long-term consequences, and quite unnecessary.

The second book, which is probably far more contentious, was The 1619 Project. This is a series of scholarly essays examining the past 300 years of U.S. history from a Black perspective—and the portrait is horrendous! The authors conclude that, in a nation founded by slaveholders, the resulting distortions have persisted in one form or another to the present day.

I am not a historian and cannot judge whether their conclusions are totally accurate (although they seem well-founded). What is important is that this may be a narrative with which a significant proportion of the population would agree (and which will probably be banned in Utah's schools and libraries as encouraging the study of "critical race theory").

Not everyone in Utah has a heroic "origin story" bound up with pushing handcarts across the plains. But many may have come here with their own remarkable stories, which should receive equal respect.

So please, engage with your neighbors. And if possible engage with them in person, not by tweets, likes or emojis. This wonderful city is full of interesting individuals, not stereotypes.

Since I retired here 20 years ago, I have heard a lot about the "Utah way." Unfortunately, some of it seems to reflect the polarized divisiveness that is tearing the country apart, which may increase as tensions and the threat of wars in Ukraine and Palestine mount.

It is unlikely that the state will lose its Republican and Latter-day Saint dominance any time soon, but perhaps we could learn to "agree to disagree" and respect each other's views a little more?
RICHARD MIDDLETON
Salt Lake City

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