STARKVILLE – Two years ago, a political disagreement ending in harsh words nearly cost Buddy Stubbs a friendship of more than 40 years.
“We disagree a lot on politics, but about once a month he’ll come by and we’ll sit down and have a cup of coffee and talk about issues,” Stubbs told Rotary Club of Starkville members Monday morning at Hilton Garden Inn. “He’s far over here. I’m far over here. … A couple of years ago, we sat down, and I don’t remember the topic now, but I do remember what he said. He looked at me and he said, ‘Buddy, you’re just stupid.’”
That moment pushed the longtime Republican-leaning Tupelo resident to seek better ways to talk across political divides. It eventually led him to Braver Angels, a national cross-partisan group dedicated to fostering healthier conversations about divisive issues.
Stubbs called his former fraternity brother Richard Babb, a left-leaning attorney in Tupelo, to see if he would help start a local chapter. Since then, the chapter has met on the first Thursday of every month at First Presbyterian Church in Tupelo, drawing between 20 and 25 community members across the political spectrum. Each meeting begins with members voting on what topics they want to discuss.
“We haven’t shied away from difficult subjects,” Stubbs said. “We’ve talked about banning books. … We talked about student loan forgiveness a couple of years ago. We talk about misinformation and disinformation a lot. We’ve talked about birthright citizenship. We’ve talked about guns in schools and churches.”
But the goal, Stubbs stressed, is not persuasion.
“A lot of times when we get up and talk on … one of these topics, you’re trying to persuade the other people in there to believe the way you do,” he said. “That’s not what Braver Angels is about. … We’re not here to change your mind. We’re here to change the way we talk to each other.”
A key part in fostering that communication is learning why someone holds their political beliefs, a question they ask at the beginning of each meeting.
“One of the things I’ve learned from this Braver Angels group is that we all come from different places, and it has been really interesting to me to look into yourself and ask yourself, ‘Why do I have the political beliefs that I have?’” Stubbs said.
For Virginia Toliver, a retired librarian and a member of Braver Angels, that reflection began early in life. Growing up in a segregated community in Lee County, Toliver didn’t attend an integrated class until graduate school at the University of Illinois.
“One of the things that this did for me was to actually shape my belief system,” Toliver said. “… One of the advantages of that was getting an opportunity to talk to someone and have a really engaging conversation with someone who looked different from me and to see how their background shaped them, how they thought, why I thought the way I did. Those kinds of things were very helpful to me (and) have been helpful to me throughout life.”
Those kinds of conversations are still essential today, she said.
“I’m very concerned about the partisan divide that exists in this country now,” she said. “I think it’s more than disturbing. I think it’s very destructive, and I think that one of the things that I found out early in life is that I have to understand where you’re coming from, and you have to understand me if we’re going to resolve anything. … That is very much needed in this country, and that’s one of the things Braver Angels stresses. … I really wish those kinds of discussions, or even the willingness to have those discussions, existed at a higher level of government. Hopefully we can reach that one day.”
Babb said he believes the nation is seeing a widening political split, fueled in part by technology platforms.
“Let’s face it, somebody (has) a YouTube channel or whatever, they want as many views as they can get, and so the way to get that is to come down hard on one side or another,” he told The Dispatch following the meeting. “There’s that aspect to it. At the end of the day, I tend to think that the truth generally tends to fall in the middle somewhere.”
Ultimately, he said, the goal is simple: to get along with one another.
“We need to be able to do that to get anything accomplished,” he said.
Starkville does not yet have its own Braver Angels chapter, but anyone is welcome to attend the Tupelo group’s meeting, held on the first Thursday of each month at First Presbyterian Church in Tupelo.
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