You can definitely reach people, 100%. That’s what our work on the left is all about! I do want to preview that you should steel yourself for potential negative outcomes as well, though.

You may discover that they’re actually not fundamentally good, or at least that’s no longer how you can think of them. This is a difficult and painful thing that we all eventually contend with.

The nice granny that you chat with every day might be a vehement racist that cheered lynchings. She’s very nice and friendly. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Babysat you. And she’s a vehement racist and you didn’t know that until you were 32 years old. When you go to fight against racism, she will be your enemy. She might call the cops on you. She might take information you told her about your beliefs and use them against you. Reason number 7468 to find ride-or-die comrades, but I digress.

People that are particularly ambitious can sometimes be appealed to, but they can also see you as getting in their way and attacking them even if you’re being relatively passive or appealing to empathy. There are people who might as well be entirely unreachable by normal strategies because it would take a serious trauma to even begin changing their minds. There are people I’ve known who say they are guided entirely by “empathy for people they’ve never met” yet dehumanized South Asian people when I pointed out that something they saw as building their career was casteist. They then isolated and got someone fired for being dalit. The driving factor there was getting in between them and ambition and they rationalized it entirely through their self-identity lens as a “progressive”. They think they’re right.

So, with all that said, when approaching people about this the key is to build shared ground and empathy first. You want to break down any walls that would be present if you levvied the criticism directly and immediately. There are a lot of ways to try this out. I think some of the most effective are to slowly chip away in the orbit of the topic. Let’s say they want to be a cop. I might talk about involvement in BLM and how cops targeted me with violence that can kill and disable just for being at a protest against them. I’m using the fact that my friend wants me to be healthy and alive to hopefully build a common ground that they shouldn’t have done that. If wet can establish that, I can start talking about how they were acting like a gang and I’ve been reading about these incidents where cops see bad things done by their coworkers and then get harassed. Maybe they’d like to watch somr videos with me? I’ll order takeout for us. That kind of thing.

Basically, the thing I focus on is providing them with a pathway for a slow retreat. People can get very defensive, so creating a situation in which they can eventually present the change of opinion as being their own idea and development is valuable. They probably won’t change their opinions for months. But the seeds of doubt can help them make those changes on their own in situations where they don’t have to admit they were wrong.

In contrast, it is also sometimes effective to just plain give people shit. It depends on your relationship with the person. Some relationships expect direct complaints and others expect roundabout conflict aversion.

I’m sure you’ll do a good job either way. Remember, it’s not your fault if they don’t come around right away, or ever. It has taken years for some people I know to abandon their fundamentally imperialist career ambitions.