Thanksgiving

A Thanksgiving argument changes a family's future.

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  When We Disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. 

How does arguing, the build up, the process, the aftermath, affect your life? Have you ever had a disagreement that you thought about, ruminated over, even celebrated, long after it had ended? This show is about stories of arguments.  Ones we won, ones we lost, and one whose outcome was unclear or even confusing. 

I'm Michael Lee, Professor of Communication and a Director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. Today's guest is Heath Hoffman, a Professor of Sociology. Heath, tell us an argument story. 

Well, thank you for having me, Mike. I am not directly a participant in this argument story, but I have been profoundly impacted by it.

So, in 1989 at Thanksgiving, I think most people  can relate to there being some family conflict over the holidays. Um, my brother had been recently married and showed up with his wife at Thanksgiving, which the holidays had never been always happy in the Hoffman household, uh, but this particular holiday, the dinner, I think was Three or four hours late.

And by the time my brother and his wife arrived, my parents were in a very sour mood and proceeded to blame my brother for a whole host of family problems, resulting in a big blowout. My sister in law crying.  I ran.  Out of the house, down the street, because my sister in law  grew up two or three houses away from where my parents lived.

So, lifelong neighbors and friends, so I went out and, as I usually did, handled the conflict by shooting some baskets in front of my sister in law's house. She came down in tears and joined me, and that led to a rift in my family that continues today.  

If you don't mind sharing, what were the accusations, what was the kind of back and forth in what sounds like a pretty disputatious

it was, so I won't go into specific details about the accusations, but they were  unfair and  Um, ultimately, I think that, that I grew up in a household with very uncivil discourse. And I think that fight was a, an example of a larger pattern in which my parents would  yell at neighbors,  uh, I would get in trouble and the people whom I had harmed would get yelled at by my parents as a means of addressing the conflict because their son couldn't do no wrong.

And so for me, there was a.  It was a powerful lesson in terms of,  it was just a lesson in uncivil discourse,  and  so my brother still does not speak to my parents, so every Thanksgiving is a little bit challenging because there's that really unhealthy memory, and  I don't talk to my parents to this day. So 

thus far I've heard you sketch two models about your approach to argument or your approach to disagreement.

One was your parents who sound, to be frank, antagonistic. I think that's a good word. And then yours,  to put a label on it that you might reject, would be more evasive or avoidant, you leave and go shoot basketball.  

I think when I was younger, um,  that I was more avoidant. Now I think I unfortunately do still have some of that uncivil tendency, so I can be more aggressive and more, Irrational and antagonistic. 

Let's stay with the argument over Thanksgiving and then I want to come back to the kind of long term dispute because what you're describing is something I can very much identify with. Um, so the dispute over Thanksgiving, how does your brother handle this? How did your new sister in law handle this? Did they, I mean, your sister in law came to shoot basketball with you, what did your brother do? 

He stayed behind, continued the arguing, and I think eventually left. And they, you know, they were very sweet to me. I was in my teens, so I wasn't, you know, a little kid. But they comforted me, because I was really upset by that. My brother was the world to me. So, to see my brother treated in a way that I felt I mean, I could visually,  I could see it, I could hear it, that my brother was being treated unfairly, and so,  but didn't have the power to counter the parents, but my brother and his wife tried to console me and make me feel better.

Um, eventually my sister in law convinced my brother to re engage with my parents and that resulted in,  you know, a brief moment of, hey, it's good to see you. We love you. And then another big blow up where my brother was accused of being too big for his britches in short. And  

I'm, as you're telling the story, I'm realizing that ineffectiveness of some communication strategies to overcome conflict.

Communication is a way to resolve conflict. So,  as you're telling the story and talking about years of not talking to your parents, or your brother not talking to your parents,  some part of me is coming up that's thinking, why couldn't somebody just, quote, be the bigger person and get through this? Why couldn't the hatchet just get buried, to borrow a phrase? 

And I'm anticipating you saying, well it just wouldn't have worked, and eventually we just had to give up on that strategy.  

I think my parents are too stubborn to admit that they made a mistake. I mean, they have never, not that I'm treating this like Dr. Phil, but they have never really admitted that they're wrong in any aspect.

I mean, there,  there are other conflicts with me directly where I was a participant, where I, I did make mistakes. Some mistakes, but they were  clearly as the adults should have  behaved better and been better role models in terms of dealing with things that  I was directly involved in, um.  But they didn't and that's just a pattern of behavior that  they've engaged in.

I think that reflects the behavior of their parents and very dysfunctional. I mean, they're probably better than what they grew up with. So I guess there's been progress.  But I do think that some uncivil discourse that I can point to in my adult life is I didn't  didn't just stumble upon it. I grew up surrounded by it.

Stay with that for a second if you don't mind. When you have felt antagonistic, either justifiably so or unjustifiably so, do you then reflect on it after the fact and feel like, well, here I am just recreating the quote unquote sins of the father, sins of the mother, as it were? With shame and regret, yeah.

And then what do you do?  I think I've gotten better. better at apologizing, but then sometimes that's too little too late that there's harm done. I think especially with colleagues, there have been instances professionally where I have not responded or handled conflict in a way that I'm proud of.  I've always,  with a few exceptions, gone back and apologized to those folks.

Um, some I don't think deserve an apology, but, um, even in some cases where I've been in the wrong and I haven't handled things the way I want to,  the way I think is right, different than how my parents did. Um, I will still apologize. With a few exceptions, I have apologized and, but that's still, you know, it,  to know that that's in you is unsettling. 

Do you think that because it is, as you say, within you, that there's some part of you that's overly critical of your style of conflict or argumentative combat and is quick to shame, quick to regret? Or do you think that you've got a pretty fair assessment of when, where the line is and when you've crossed it?

I think I have.  I think I am very critical of myself. I'm my own worst critic. I think it's true of most of us. I think when  we talk about civil discourse, I feel like I would not be a model for civil discourse. I don't know that that is my strength,  especially in a context where I  We have a significant percentage of the American population that doesn't believe in facts and, and science and that seems like a really important starting point is to have a shared set of beliefs and values on which to have a discussion.

Yeah, so I am very critical of myself. The kind of last topic I want to broach is It's fundamentally the opposite of what we've been talking about. We've been talking about these sort of sins of commission. The errors we make through speech, antagonistic, aggressive speech, the regrets we have because of what we've said.

But you've also sketched something that has a powerful impact on all of us, which is silence. What's totally unsaid. You've sketched years of silence between yourself, your folks, your brother, your folks, and this kind of icing out strategy. How does silence stick with you?  

I think it's really uncomfortable because I think as a, you know, for that family argument in 1989, Um, I think a frustration is I don't have power.

I didn't have power and I don't have power to express how it impacted me. And so I, I'm uncomfortable with silence now when there's a disagreement because,  I think because of that event in 1989, and even other instances where I can point to disagreements with my parents as having a profound impact on me, where I didn't feel like there was a much power or value in my voice to affect change, or that it was valued.

And so  now when there's silence or  Ignoring a conflict, I get real anxious about that. Like, I want to have that conversation. Perhaps in a, sometimes a compulsive, unhealthy way. Where sometimes silence and letting things go is the right path forward. 

Sitting in silence is difficult in those moments.  Heath, thank you so much for coming on When We Disagree.

Thank you for having me.  

When We Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse Kunz and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at whenwedisagree at gmail. com.