The High Road

Kathy's Christian faith and commitment to showing respect for others are tested during a disagreement with her daughter. 

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Transcript

Michael Lee: [00:00:00] When We Disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. What is the form or style of a persuasive argument? Let's say you want to persuade someone that they need more protein in their diet. How should you make that case? With big, sciency sounding words?

Lots of peer reviewed studies? Long, fancy sentences with complicated arguments? Or with a more bare bones, scaled down, plain spoken, personalized approach. Or, more poetically, with memorable turns of phrase and vivid metaphors. Teachers of public speaking, poetry, and writing spend lots of time on these questions, and communication consultants turn decent profits answering these questions.

But we can go back way further than William Shakespeare to show how timeless these questions of style are. In [00:01:00] fact, style is one of the five canons of rhetoric from the oldest surviving book on persuasion, the 2000 year old rhetorica ad herrenium. The author writing what is now the oldest persuasion textbook in the world, distinguished between a grand style, which is formal, intricate, and geared towards moving an audience emotionally.

A simple style, conversational every day, great for informing and instructing. And a middle style, a blend of the two designed to please an audience. I'm Michael Lee, professor of communication and director of the civility initiative at the college of Charleston. Our guest today on when we disagree as Kathy black, she's originally from Savannah, Georgia, and now lives in Jacksonville, Florida.

She works for the guardian legal network who represents those who have been hurt by corporate negligence. Kathy, tell us an argument story. 

Kathy Black: Well, good morning. I just wanted to talk about a situation that happened with my [00:02:00] daughter right after Mother's Day. Uh, she, I called her to say happy Mother's Day and I went by, I was, I went by to see her the day before, but she wasn't there.

She was out of town with her children, uh, at Jekyll Island and we missed each other. So when I got back home in Jacksonville, I called her and wish her happy mother's day again and find out, you know, how everything went with their trip with the Children. And she told me that the kids, her two oldest Children, one is 16 and the other one is 14 going on 15.

And she said, The two of them never said, Mom, happy Mother's Day. You know, they didn't give her a gift. They didn't give anything, you know, drew any pictures or anything. But the youngest baby, he's eight years old. His name is Brayson. She said how he was more affectionate, more concerned, drew something for her, talked more passionate with her about Mother's Day, how much he loves her.

And so I was saying to her, I said, well, since the other two didn't have a conversation with you or do anything for [00:03:00] you, I said, I would be more than happy as a grandmother to talk with them. The first thing my daughter said was, no that's okay mama, you don't have to do that because if you talk with them you're going to sound like you're arguing.

I said it's not the point of arguing, I just want to talk with them and let them know the importance of reverencing their mother. And the different, um, sacrifices she makes for them on a daily basis. But my daughter became a little more combative. She was like, well, I don't want to do that. I just prefer not for you to talk to them.

And I said, well, I'm a grandmother. I should be able to have the opportunity to do that. And she was like, no, you know, sometimes you and I have disagreements. I said, well, how do we get over from talking about the children, trying to, for me to help them? be more understanding with you to you now coming at me in a, in a decisive way and trying to be negative.

I just think you don't have time. I said, well, he said, well, you know, our relationship is not good. I said, well, I've tried to, uh, get something set up for us to have counseling and you backed [00:04:00] out of it. So I did my part to try to, to rectify what the problems we may have had in the past to bridge over and correct it and go forward.

She kept talking negative. Everything came out of my mouth was negative and I realized I had to keep my voice at a very, uh, monotone level because as she was escalating, I had to make sure I stayed calm in the whole situation. I had to remember. who I am. I represent the kingdom of God. I'm a born again believer and I do not believe that I was going to let my witness be tainted because of how her reaction was.

So she just kept going on and on again and say, well, you know, I just don't want to talk, have you to talk to them. And you know, you just don't understand me. You don't understand the children. I have three grown children. My oldest is 40 going on 45. My middle one is 38, and my youngest one just had the baby, the one I just spoke to you.

She's the baby girl. She just had a birthday on yesterday, [00:05:00] so she's 34. For her to say that to me. Like, I didn't understand because you didn't give me the opportunity to talk with them. You already closed them off and held them to yourself. You don't let them be around a lot of children for whatever reason.

Instead of me getting nasty and, and trying to be combative with her, I let her talk. I let her say what she had to say. And then when I had a word to come in, I let her know how I felt and what I was here to do and not for you to turn the tables on me. She ended up hanging up the phone on me. And when she did that, I sent her a nice text and let her know, it's not good to be disrespectful for your parents.

I said, because number one, the first law that's given in the land is honor your mother and father and your days will be long upon the land that the law that God has given you. So that's the first law of promise is when you respect your parents. That causes your life to go longer. [00:06:00] And to be, you know, won't be as, as difficult as we see things going on in today's society when you honor your parents.

And I'd let her know, I love her, but I'm not going to let you disrespect me the way you did. And I hope things get better for you. I still love you. I'm still here. Love, Mama. That was the end. She never called me back. I never called her back until yesterday to say in the text, Happy birthday, Johnny. And I love you.

I did my part. Instead of me being nasty and negative, I could have took that road, but I chose to take the high road instead of the low road that normally everybody's used to having a word for word, back and forth, wanting to talk negative, which you didn't do with you. We have done a lot of things in our lives.

Children do not come with manuals. None of them do. That's what my mother taught me when she was living. Children do not, I don't care if you have Dr. Spock books or not. [00:07:00] Children do not come with manuals. You have to learn how to deal with them on an individual basis. All three of my girls have three different personalities.

None of them the same. So I have to deal with them accordingly to who they are and not to compare the two. That's where we, as parents get into trouble when we try to compare how the other one is treating me better than this one. And I never went there. 

Michael Lee: Let me jump in quick. I want to ask you about. Your experience of wanting to talk to your grandchildren about respecting their mother by wishing her a happy Mother's Day or doing something nice for her, and then your daughter stepping in and saying, no, I don't want you to do that.

It's got to be kind of frustrating to be in that position on your part where you're trying to step in and have a kind of teachable moment here about what respect looks like. From a parent, from a child to a parent, but then your own [00:08:00] child who you're encouraging your grandchildren to honor doesn't want you to do that.

Kathy Black: That's very frustrating. It was very frustrating and disappointing to me as a grandmother. Because you want to be able to mold your children, your grand, you know, your, your, your descendants going forward with, with, uh, you know, the way that you were raised. I was raised my, um, Michael with under the golden rule doing to others as you have others doing to you.

I was raised that way and I came out a single parent home. My father and I did not reconcile until with each other relationship until right before he passed away. My parents died three days apart. 16 years ago in October, my parents died. My mother died on a Friday. My father, um, she was dead in her home.

Um, went two days later, called my, I called my dad the same day to see if he heard about the [00:09:00] situation. He didn't. I've talked with him. The last words I had on the phone with my father that day, um, tell him that my mother passed. He said, I could tell a dead silence. I said, Daddy, you okay? He said, I'll be all right.

That was the very last conversation he and I had. So, that was very tough, and I'm the oldest of both sets of my father and mother's children. So, I have to set a precedence for them to see the godliness in me. To be able to strive to do the right thing and put them in the right direction. And, um, that's something that my grandmother and my mother taught me.

That's how to make sure you respect others. You demand respect because you give respect. And that's what I was trying to tell my daughter. I wanted for her to hang up the phone on me. You didn't, you didn't respect me because you disrespected me. Uh, first of all, Saying the things you said and not let me not understanding what I'm trying to do here to help you and your Children and for you to hang up on me and not respond [00:10:00] back after you said everything you had to say.

There wasn't necessarily true. We all have issues with our family that we try to do better with every day. I may have made a mistake this day, but before the day is over, I want to make sure I learn from that mistake to do better. And I was, and I think all of us strive to do that each and every day. It's to do better than we did the day before, or the moments before.

Because once you, once things have happened, you can't take them back. But I learned how to be careful with the words that come out of my mouth, because I want them to be seasoned, and not to be able to say, Say all the time was on my mind as we say give it. I'm gonna give you a piece of my mind Well, if you keep giving pieces of your mind, you won't have no mind left If you think about it I'm learning y'all don't give a piece of my mind.

I'm like, I'm gonna keep this mind I'm gonna be able to give you some ways that I feel about situations and let you know how I [00:11:00] feel But I want to do it in a respectful manner and and I also want to make sure it's always with love You Because that makes everything much, much better. 

Michael Lee: That's what I wanted to ask you about as a follow up too.

You mentioned being a born again believer. You mentioned wanting to model godliness in your interactions, whether with the children or with others. And I'm curious about how these, your beliefs, direct you towards specific styles of conflict? You talked about the high road and the low road. How does your belief structure, direct, orient you towards some kinds of conflict and other kinds of conflict?

And if I can just put it directly, if you had gotten angry in this interaction or other interactions, how would that not model godliness for those you're talking to? 

Kathy Black: If I, because of the fact that I have God, I'm God centered, I have Him in the center of my life and I have Him ahead of my life. The [00:12:00] Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit inside of me lets me know, now don't say that word.

Don't go that route. Because that's not going to be fruitful. There's all kinds of fruits that we can have. We can have contaminated fruit, we can have negative fruit. fruit, we have good fruit that's good to pick upon. You want to be able to have good fruit that's healthy and that's going to be nourishing, that's going to be beneficial and not something that's going to be contaminated fruit, where it will cause someone to, to be injured or, or, or have a negative way of how they eat that from then on, or if it hurts them.

I want to make sure my food is always positive. It's always good so that anybody can look at Kathy and they can pull a photo off of me where our food is going to be nourishment to them. It's going to be loving. It's going to be caring. And I have to be very careful what comes out of my mouth because the Bible says, Life and death is in the power of the tongue, and you will eat the fruit thereof.

So we have to be careful what we let come out of our mouths, who words do manifest. [00:13:00] 

Michael Lee: Does that mean for you that if you have an opportunity to, you feel an anger rising up, you feel like this could be a circumstance in which I could lose my temper, that it would bear poisoned fruit for you to express that anger?

Kathy Black: It would, because what I have to do is re evaluate in my mind what would benefit what I'm thinking when it comes out of my mouth. One of my, the things that, the thoughts that I have, I want to make sure I keep thoughts that are pure, that are healthy, that are a good report. These are good thoughts that I want to make sure I keep in my mind.

So I have to keep renewing my mind daily with the Word of God. The more I have the Word of God in me, it shows me how to be more productive and be more Christ like in the way I handle situations such as confrontations. 

Michael Lee: In, in a confrontation, in a hypothetical confrontation with somebody or in this confrontation with your, with your daughter in a situation in which you were frustrated, my question [00:14:00] is how do you separate the times when a confrontation is actually necessary to remove poison from a relationship?

In other words, we need to have this out. Because the status quo is growing poison trees. The fruit that we were all eating is because we're not having a fight. We need to have this fight versus times in which you try to take the high road and stay at an even keel and a good temper. 

Kathy Black: I believe this, Michael, that we have to learn how to pick and choose our fights.

Every fight is not today. We have to pick and choose the wars that we deal with, and that deals with anger as well. I have to remember, it may be not the good time, even after the person has already escalated 1, 000 above on the, on the Richter scale, and you're staying calm, they're not going to hear what you're saying anyway.

So this is not a good day for me to go and say the things that I, I really want to say. So I have to let that, let that day [00:15:00] go and come back and, and allow the, you know, the Lord to speak to me and say, you know, now this is what you need to do when you talk back with them. But this is not the day because they're not hearing.

I even learned that even in my marriage, you know, with my husband. Uh, my husband is, is seasoned and he's about 10 years older than me. So he's more set in a lot of his ways. Um, I have to remember, he can hear what I'm saying of a disagreement. And he's, he's going to say what he has to say back and forth.

He's not hearing me. He's not hearing anything I'm saying, because he's already told in his mind what he, what he wants to hear and what he's going to hear. And that's about all of us as humans. If we get in our minds, we not look at that person eye to eye, having contact, eye contact is so important that I learned that from a little girl.

for my mother. Because when people look down and look around, they're not paying attention to you. Sorry. No, that's, we're not even [00:16:00] having a conversation. We, you're not even listening. So, so body, body, body gestures and body, um, the way we look and the way we act and, and the aura, it makes, it makes a big difference when it comes down to conflict.

Because a person's wailing and throwing hands and rolling eyes and, you know, rocking their head and they're walking away and they're turning their back, they're not listening to you. So it, it doesn't make a sense for you to exhaust all your energy and trying to get your point across when they're not listening.

So 

Michael Lee: if, if you were kind of teaching the Kathy Black school of conflict, you would say, Step one, kind of assess your demeanor, right? Assess the extent to which you feel activated before moving ahead. And can you take the high road? Right. Is it physically possible for you to take the high road or are you just, is it too much right now?

And this is a conflict for another day. And then two, [00:17:00] assess the person across from you. Are they looking at you or are they stuck in their own ways? Are they listening to you or are they stuck in their own ways? Are they twisting your words or are they actively hearing what you are saying? 

Kathy Black: Exactly. And, and just the fact that some people when they, when you confront them about something that can possibly benefit them and they can look at themselves in a different light, a lot of times when people turn and look another way, that lets me know they're not interested in what you're saying.

Because they already tuned you out. When a person starts talking, and while you're talking, and I always learn, even in conflict management, um, I'm not going to talk above you, and I'm not going to talk while you're talking, because you're not hearing me. I learned that in con when dealing with conflict, when my children's father was in the military.

We didn't have that class. You know, a military person is totally different because they have different sets of, um, uh, things that they deal with on a regular basis. Military personnel. I learned that when [00:18:00] I was married my two youngest father and we were military. So we had to go through this conflict class because of some things that happened.

I learned that we, both of us can't talk at the same time. Because we're not going to hear each other. So we have to give each other respect to listen and to have that space. And that's more important in this day and time is that we learn how to listen and not be able to think, I got to get my two cents in, no matter how you feel.

Sometimes it's just not at a time. You say what you have to say, but you have to revisit it later on. It's nothing wrong with revisiting. 

Michael Lee: I've heard a term come up for you several times that I'm interested to hear you talk a little bit more about as we close. And that word is respect. You mentioned respect a lot, respect for your elders, respect for your parents, just basic human respect that we give one another when we share a space and have a conversation like you and I are having right now and try not to talk [00:19:00] over each other and hear what one another is saying.

Yes. What, why is respect such an important value for you? And then second, and the real thorny one is, can you respect somebody? And confront them, give them a piece of your mind at the same time. 

Kathy Black: Well, the go back on the importance of respect because it allows one another to each, each one of us to be able to know what is important in life.

There's foundational ways that we are raised up and a lot of us was raised with making sure that Miss Jefferson down the street. When you go by her, you speak to her is how Miss Jefferson. My children are grown. They, to this day, they never call grown people by their first name. Why? Because I train them to let them know that you respect your elders.

So that's where I learned that from, from my parents, from my mother and my [00:20:00] grandmother. Um, when it comes down to knowing about conflict when dealing with respect, I realized that if we don't, And we don't, as a people, know how to honor one another and how we feel, whether it's maybe something you may not care about or not, but at least have that type of respect for one another and letting that person voice how they feel.

It's nothing wrong with you voicing how you feel. I mean, I'd agree with it, but I can, I've learned one thing I always say, and I taught my children, I can agree to disagree without being disagreeable. 

Michael Lee: That's a great line. And Kathy Black, thank you so much for being on When We Disagree. 

Kathy Black: Thank you so much. I appreciate your time.

You have a wonderful day. 

Michael Lee: 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.