New research shows that 99% of us experience "identity threats" in our daily conversations, causing us to steer away from difficult topics. By examining the stark political divide between Multnomah County, OR, and Collier County, FL, in this post I explore ways to move past "cardboard cutout" versions of others to see the "multitudes" within.

A tale of two counties

Our family recently traveled 3,200 miles from Multnomah County, Oregon, to Collier County, Florida. We traded the rain-slicked streets of Portland for a spectacular, red-orange sunset, a warm breeze, and tree-lit palm trees of southwest Florida. We had come to visit my wife’s family who had moved to a home just outside Naples and my mother-in-law who had retired to the area.

Upon first glance, Collier County looks like the mirror-opposite of the county we had left behind.

Multnomah’s moist landscape is shaped by its deep-blue history, a firmly Democratic county in Oregon since 1964. The county has a long-standing reputation for its progressive activism with frequent school walk-outs focused on issues such as climate action and a 100+ day Black Lives Matter Protest (2020) — leading Portland, its largest city, to be labeled “lawless” or a “Little Beirut”.

In Collier County, aside from palm trees and ocean breezes, the scenery is starkly different. On route to our family’s home, we traveled on a road recently renamed for Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder whose 2025 shooting sent shockwaves through the conservative movement. I saw t-shirts for sale outside a grocery store referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” and a street sign for the Everglades Detention Facility (nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz") which remained long after the center was closed last year.

In August, 2020, Collier returned students to full in-person schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic while Multnomah’s classrooms remained dark for a year longer (Sept 2021), facing intense criticism from parent groups and students.

And yet, county records and history reveal close similarities.

Each county is grappling with a lack of affordable housing for its residents. Despite their opposing political reputations, Multnomah and Collier share a history of systemic exclusion, from Oregon’s early "Lash Laws" to Florida’s Jim Crow beach closures. This legacy persists through sharp racial disparities in school discipline rates and housing policies that have pushed minority communities into economic and geographic silos.

On a quirkier note, the county residents have reported occasional sightings of a mysterious, shaggy, forest (Sasquatch, Oregon) and swamp (the Skunk Ape, Florida) creature which appear to be distant cousins of one another.

This family trip to Collier proved to be especially illuminating (beyond our trip to the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters) stemming from a simple question.

My question

A few days after arrival, I was driving around Collier County with my brother-in-law, Kevin. He is a father of 3, a diehard Cubs fan (recently moved to Florida from Chicago), a lifelong Republican, and an avid fisherman. As we passed into the Everglades, I mulled over a question I’d been sitting on for weeks—one I’d heard discussed by pundits & recycled in social media posts.

I tried to make my question seem innocuous, as if I were asking Kevin if there was a Costco nearby.

I hesitated and then asked: “How do you think the Republicans are doing?”

What surprised me was not Kevin’s response, but an overwhelming urge not to ask the question.

Why did I flinch?

In 2019, two researchers from Columbia and UC Berkeley asked a diverse sample of more than 1,500 people about their toughest conversations from the previous week.

They wanted to understand what creates moments of discomfort between people engaged in difficult conversations. Study participants were asked questions like, have you been in a discussion recently where you felt like you didn’t fit in? Have you heard someone joke about “people like you” (questionnaire categories).

The study posed questions to participants perceived as “less threatening” (e.g., a social situation where people are talking about their summer travel plans) to those perceived as “more threatening” (someone assuming their conversation partner owes their success to affirmative action).

The research team then examined types of conversations which participants rated as more upsetting or threatening. Many participants pointed to conversations that included getting assigned to a category they didn’t like or denied membership to a group they respected.

Social psychologists call this phenomena identity threat, or situations where someone’s sense of who they are is being challenged, questioned, or put at risk in their workplace or other shared spaces. Experiences with identity threats have been shown to increase loneliness, lower life satisfaction, and worse self-reported physical health and predict lower workplace satisfaction.

Surprisingly, “over the past week” study participants reported experiencing over 10,000 forms of identity threats (with only 1% of participants not having experienced any of the identity threat situations shared with them).

Here are a few examples:

* “You are not a parent, so how do you know what kids need?”

* “So, as a college graduate, you think everyone needs to go to college to be successful?”

I think identity threat helps explain why as a Democratic voter from a “blue” county, I had hesitated to ask Kevin a simple question about Republican politics.

My draft collides with lived experience

Conversation is a partner activity, so after reflecting on the research, I did something I don’t usually do, I asked Kevin to read an early draft of the post to see how well I was representing his county.

Kevin’s response wasn’t political, it was a helpful course correction. He offered feedback based on someone living in Collier which led me to make edits to the introduction you just read.

Kevin: “Not sure there is any data to suggest a MAGA base. Do you consider us MAGA?”

Kevin: “I’ve never once heard Collier called ‘Freedom Town, USA’ in-person. Where is that coming from?”

Next, we jumped on a phone call. I wanted to learn more.

As we talked, I felt a shift from defensive to inquisitive. I also realized that by relying mostly on online sources to describe his home county, I had fed into a form of “identity threat” by making assumptions about Kevin and his home. My political identity shaped from living in Multnomah County made me hesitate — not the question itself. Research has found how much you care about parts of your identity (e.g., liberal or conservative, blue state/red state resident) can make identity threats feel more intense.

The labels I chose to include in the first draft of this post referring to Collier County as “Freedom Town” or a “MAGA base” were not how Kevin saw his home. I was reminded how it feels when I read about Multnomah County described as a “lawless wasteland” or an “Antifa stronghold.” These aren’t just descriptions, they signal someone has already decided what a place or its people represent, often without spending any time getting to know its residents.

On the phone and in texts, Kevin added a few other thoughts:

I think our counties are way more alike than they are different.

Do we not share many of the same concerns? Jobs, family, caring for our parents?

I think people get paid to divide us. They get paid to segregate us. There is so much grey area, but grey doesn’t get the clicks. Grey is boring—but it is also unifying.

We contain multitudes

After I got off the phone with Kevin, I looked up Walt Whitman’s poem from Song of Myself, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” It’s a simple line, but it reminded me of another way to approach conversations in what feels like an increasingly polarized time.

In the car that day, I reduced Kevin to my idea of a “Collier Republican,” a single-dimensional character, who couldn’t possibly share anything in common with his brother-in-law’s blue county, political leanings. I became a cardboard cutout of a “Multnomah liberal” who believed I was going to provoke an argument just by asking a question.

After talking to Kevin about this post, I realized as a brother-in-law, a golfer, a fisherman, a Cubs fan — the beliefs I harbored about our political identities or views were just a small part of a much larger, sturdier tapestry we shared, not a defining feature. I also discovered many of my ideas about Collier County I had were not grounded in Kevin’s lived experiences.

Embracing the Grey

Study participants reported experiencing over 10,000 incidents of identity threats over a single week, revealing this phenomenon is the norm not the exception in many conversations. My reluctance to ask Kevin my question reminded me how identity threat can be triggered as much by environmental cues as by anything I say or do. It felt much more visceral when 3,200 miles became just the 3 feet that separated Kevin and me in the car that day.

“Grey is boring—but it is also unifying,” Kevin observed.

To see more of the grey, I want to engage more with people who may not share my political views or vote the way I do. Here are a few, simple ideas that emerged from our family trip to Collier and my car ride with Kevin.

* Asking for the “Multitudes”: Instead of asking for someone’s opinion on a headline, ask about their roles. Instead of “What do you think of the border?” try “How does your lived experience as a father/veteran/business owner shape how you see this?”

* Shifting the Environment: Identities shift depending on where we are. A conversation in a principal’s office or a loud bar can feel different than one on a hiking trail or over a quiet meal. If a conversation feels stuck, try changing the scenery.

* Leading with Your Own “Novice” Status: Admitting you don’t have the full picture is an invitation. By telling Kevin I was struggling with my own biases over the phone, I think I gave him the space to share his own.

I hope these small steps will help me see my questions less as threats to avoid and more as invitations to engage in better conversations. In a time that seems to demand I pick a side, I’m eager to find new ways to embrace the grey.

Special thanks to Kevin for his willingness to help me with this post and offer his perspective (he showed the patience of diehard Cubs fan)!

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