Whenever I say, "Hating someone's politics is a good reason not to be friends with them," someone always brings up Daryl Davis, the black man whose friendships with racists were so powerful they left the KKK.

Except: What he does is not what we think of as friendship.

Most of us don't choose friends who hate who we are. We choose people who like us, and we like them

We don't voluntarily spend time with people who innately despise us, then invest heavy emotional labor to change their awful opinions of us to something more positive.

Furthermore, most of us don't choose friends based on the goal of "This person's messed up, so I'll mold them into someone better." Healthy friendships have some friction points, but they're not designed around the hope of transforming someone into their opposite.

Now, what Daryl does is valuable! But his outreach to racists is not friendship as most of us define it (even if it can become friendship at the end, once he's finished his work).

What he does has a different name:

Deprogramming.

I think the people who say, "You should look to Daryl Davis for how you conduct your friendships" are ACTUALLY saying, "Your goal in life is to perform emotional labor for the benefit of others."

And again, that's a useful reformative tool.

But friendships shouldn't be labor.

Friendships should be based on a certain level of core compatibility. Deprogramming is trying to alter someone else's core compatibility.

Friendships should be based on who you like NOW, not the potential of their likeability if you're successful in changing them.

And politics are, like it or not, a reflection of your core values. At best, they show the issues you're comfortable ignoring, as in, "This guy's economic policies are so good, I can shrug off his hatred of minorities."

It's okay to defriend someone because of politics.

And if you want to take on the labor of deprogramming someone to the point where they're worth being your friend, that's fine.

But being friends with someone who inherently hates you isn't a friendship. Not yet. It merely means you might MAKE it into a friendship. Some day.

And if you don't feel like treating every friend as a fixer-upper, where you have to rip out their foundations to get them to see you as a human being, guess what?

Friendships should, in general, be a bonus to your life and not a net drain.

So yeah. Deprogramming is vital work. I support anyone who wants to do it, even to laud them.

But the people who conflate "deprogramming" with "friendship" are trying to normalize some VERY toxic behavior, and they are definitely not your friends.

Fini.