Prejudiced remarks can be defused by acknowledging the shared longing behind them

Evidence

You can’t let them dictate the topic of discussion. I don’t talk to someone who is prejudiced against foreigners about foreigners. I talk to him about anything, but not about this. For example, someone grumbles about social parasites, “They do nothing and get everything, and I have to work.” Now I can respond with statistics and say, look, this is what migrants pay in, and this is what they get out. It’s also important to have those arguments present and to know that, but in conversation it’s more important to have the ability to see what’s behind those statements. The repressed desire to be lazy and taken care of. I respond, “When you say it like that, it occurs to me, I have a desire to be cared for like that too. How cool would that be, to not have to get up in the morning and to get everything served in bed.” And you notice how the other person’s eyes light up. Then we talk for an hour, not about social parasites, but about the difficulties in the achievement-oriented society, the elbow society, of dealing with such longings in a different way than suppressing and repressing them and then projecting them onto others. That’s what I mean by the detour. There is no point in opposing on this other level. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 406

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the motivational-interviewing technique of joining rather than confronting; relates to the addendum article on sacrifice as shared vulnerability.