why can't we be friends?

I’ve been thinking about these two memes, lately. I even shared one of them on Instagram last week; you can guess which one.

I think something is missing in both memes and, well, they’re MEMES, even though the second one is from a guy named Matt Bernstein whose Instagram explainer slides always get tons of traction for their “insight.”

It is true that the people I know who are proponents of “disagree and still be friends” are privileged white people who usually are not considering the very real and material harm that some of those “disagreements” might be inflicting on the people with less power in those friendships.

When I worked for the church and straight white men got mad at me for saying things they didn’t like (this happened ALL THE FORKING TIME because unless they have done some intentional work not to be, straight white men are very fragile creatures), the response from the people ostensibly in charge of me was often to suggest I “just talk to them.” As if these men, who could not imagine speaking directly to me about a disagreement or treating me as a fully autonomous human being, who were tattling to my bosses and doxxing me online, would simply change their tune when we got on the phone together and suddenly learn to treat me with respect and care. That’s what “we can disagree and still be friends” is: yes, I understand that this person has disrespected, harmed and demeaned you, but if you could just TALK to them I think you’d realize that he’s really a great guy. That line, by the way, is nearly verbatim what someone told me after a man sent me a screaming, derogatory, condescending email in all capital letters. “If you just talked to him…”

I do not hear many queer people telling me how great it is that they are friends with bigots or many Black people talking about their spiritually uplifting friendships with white supremacists. The people I know who espouse the “disagree and still be friends” position are people whose material well-being is never going to be threatened by those disagreements. They are not taking into account the harm already done, the ways people with more power have already crossed boundaries and eliminated the possibility of meeting on common ground. We can’t be friends if you refuse to see me as an equal. That’s Aristotle.

And also. Marginalized people know better than privileged ones that we participate, all the time, in all kinds of relationships with all kinds of people, often with people who disagree about our very identity or existence. Not every relationship is a friendship, even though our culture and language would like to shoehorn everybody we’ve ever interacted with into that category.

There are innumerable ways to relate to people I disagree with that do not require me to befriend them. We can easily disagree and still be colleagues, coworkers, neighbors, clients and caregivers, acquaintances, Facebook “friends,” pastor and parishioner. Some of those relationships are more intimate than others, and some will require more negotiation around the disagreement, but none of those relationships are *friendships.*

Marginalized people know this: in order to get through the day, you are very likely going to have to interact and engage in some form of relationship with someone who casually or not so casually “disagrees” with your existence. Black people have racist bosses. Transgender people have transphobic coworkers. Immigrants have to listen to a presidential candidate insinuate they are eating their neighbors’ house pets and then field threats, accusations and violence from some of those very neighbors who believe it. Women have to put up with men who do not believe they should be in the room, much less in charge of them.

You can also - get this - refuse to be someone’s friend, relate to them with very strong and careful boundaries, and still love them. We can disagree and I can still love you. But I can also choose not to be your friend.

I do believe that if we’re going to make any headway in our angry, suspicious culture that we need to soften our hearts, especially toward people we disagree with. I am so annoyed and heartbroken by the name-calling and cruel assumption-making that goes on in every corner of our political discourse. Every corner, y’all. I do think we need to give other people the benefit of the doubt, assume that they are probably doing the best they can, and treat each person with respect and care, because each and every one of us deserves it.

But I also don’t have to befriend them. I don’t have to invite the people who hurt and hate me into the most intimate spaces of my heart. They don’t get to wound me further just because some preacher - or some internet meme - thinks that power dynamics don’t exist and we should all just be able to be friends, anyway.

I will not be friends with the people who defrocked me. I was, prior to the defrocking, happy to be a colleague, coworker and acquaintance with those folks. I worked with many of them on different programs, projects and ministries, sometimes addressing our disagreements and sometimes leaving them alone for the sake of whatever needed to get done. That’s how I worked in the church at large, which is a place of great and deep disagreement.

But those folks choose to sever even those relationships. They chose to exclude me from collegial connection, to end my formal association with them. That hurt, and hurts still. I’m not going to be their friend, probably ever. But I can imagine, maybe, someday, not today but maybe some time down the road, being neighbors or colleagues or coworkers of some kind. I don’t wish them ill (for the most part). I wasn’t the one who wanted to sever our relationship in the first place.

Mine is a relatively small loss, in the scheme of power dynamics: those folks took away a made up credential that I carried voluntarily. Other marginalized people in other situations face so much more violence: the people that the sign-holding guy wants them to befriend are threatening their lives, their healthcare, their identity, their freedom.

So no, we can’t always disagree and still be friends. But we can - and do - relate to each other in one million different ways, ways that make society possible, that create space for change, that keep us tethered to one another in ways both big and small. I don’t have to be your friend to want you to thrive, which is what Thomas Aquinas said love is. With some practice and some courage, we might even learn how to love our enemies, the ones who wish us ill. Maybe.