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Conventional wisdom suggests avoiding hot-button topics like sex, religion and politics at dinner. It would follow that you shouldn’t discuss Portland at all with your out-of-town relatives. We’re famously unchurched, sex-positive and LGBTQ-inclusive—and our robust protest culture has been misrepresented by right-wing media and the president to suggest Portland is a war zone in dire need of military discipline.
But you can’t control the pointed questions your most difficult uncle will ask you at the dinner table. And sometimes it’s necessary to have hard conversations, even at the holidays. Take a cue from our neighbors across the pond: At Christmas, you can tell the truth.
We asked Matthew Ellis, a media studies professor at Portland State University who studies right-wing culture, how to handle tough conversations about the Rose City. He left us with three takeaways:
Don’t try to rebut bad facts
“Just remember that beneath every apocalyptic vision of a smoldering skyline is a person who is legitimately afraid, and that feeling is ambiently shared by the vast majority of people living in this country these days!” Ellis tells WW via email.
But, per Ellis, if you try to counter those claims with stats about declining crime rates or a careful explanation of Portland culture, you risk getting trapped in a “never-ending feedback loop.” Instead, he says, you should simply “disarm them without qualifying your praise for the city and your love for living here.” That is: keep your loved ones’ feelings in mind, and respond by telling them how you feel.
Be honest about your feelings
“Look, I know it’s tempting: Your smartphone camera roll has a screenshot of a graph depicting declining crime rates next to that video of a cute dachshund wearing a scarf at the PSU farmers market,” Ellis writes, alluding to a social media trend of responding to claims about a city on fire with images of Portland’s more idyllic side.
“But as Freud reminds us, fantasies are not always mistaken beliefs; they are psychological mechanisms that allow people to work out their unconscious desires in a safe place, almost like a scene in a play. Just make sure you aren’t also performing on a stage of your own design!” Ellis warns.
In keeping with the above advice that these conversations are really about feelings, not facts, it’s easier to have tough emotional conversations if you know what your feelings are. You can love Portland and still admit that some aspects of life here are either annoying or deeply concerning. Once you’ve sorted those feelings out, it gets easier to deal with opinionated or nosy out-of-towners without feeling defensive.
Remember your audience
Different people come to their beliefs for different reasons and at different times. Use your best judgment as to who is reachable and how best to reach them. While, as Ellis points out, someone spouting Fox News talking points is unlikely to be swayed by statistics (especially from a news source they don’t trust), your “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” brother-in-law might. If your parents ask why someone would wear a frog costume to a protest, they may be doing so out of hostility—but they also might be truly curious.
Even if the person you’re speaking to is someone you see only rarely—a relative who shows up only for the holidays or a friend you haven’t seen since high school graduation—you’re the best judge how to approach a conversation about our beloved but embattled city. You probably won’t persuade anybody in the course of a single conversation (have you ever changed your mind that quickly?), but you might get someone to consider a viewpoint they hadn’t before.
And at the end of the day, if a loved one responds to your effort to talk things through—or simply keep the peace—with insults, directed either at you or your town, you don’t have to tolerate that. Definitely not if you’re hosting them in your own home. And especially not if they don’t even go here.
