Difficult Public Conversations and Why We Need to Stop Avoiding Them (Opinion)

For decades we’ve been told “don’t discuss religion or politics” in public, that you’ll just end up being hated by people for having a different opinion. And for decades, we as a society have avoided these conversations, to the point that we stopped communicating with those who disagree with us. The ultimate result of avoiding what is perceived as difficult and contentious topics has been significant political division in recent years, culminating in politically motivated assassination attempts against President Trump, firebombing of Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro’s residence, and the successful assassination of Charlie Kirk and Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman.

By avoiding these difficult conversations, we’ve created echo chambers among political affiliations, further fueling hatred and desire to attack those who we perceive as disagreeing with us, to the point that some feel justified in violently attacking those who break from what has become the “societal norm” of not discussing difficult topics in public. If we’re ever to make progress as a society, we need to start having these difficult conversations, openly and publicly, so that not only can we identify problems and find solutions, but more importantly, understand that we aren’t as different from each other as we believe.

When communities face deep-seated challenges, be it rising crime, homelessness, or drug addiction, our elected leaders often feel compelled to retreat. They form “focus groups,” invite selected stakeholders, and hold closed-door brainstorming sessions under the pretense that candid conversation can only happen away from the public eye. The reasoning is understandable: no one wants to admit failures or float half-formed ideas on a public live stream. However, this approach, while fostering internal comfort, fundamentally undermines the very solutions it aims to create. If we aren’t willing to identify and discuss problems openly, we prevent the general public from achieving the deep understanding necessary to drive meaningful change, guarantee resistance to solutions, and ultimately erode public trust.

The first casualty of secrecy is public understanding. When high-level officials and experts are the only ones privy to the scope of a crisis, the public remains ignorant of its severity and complexity. For instance, if community leaders meet privately to discuss a city’s high crime rate, the residents, who experience the anxiety but may not grasp the alarming data, are left with anecdotal fears rather than factual urgency. Solving systemic issues requires a community-wide consensus that a crisis exists. You cannot ask the public to support a multi-million-dollar, data-driven initiative if they haven’t been shown the data and included in the conversation that diagnosed the problem in the first place. Sometimes the appearance of a problem can be worse than the problem itself, and by withholding the full scope of the problem, many are left to speculate. This sometimes results in wild, unfounded rumors as to the real causes of the problem, distracting from solving the real issues at hand.

This lack of shared understanding leads directly to the second issue: resistance to proposed solutions. Solutions to difficult problems are rarely painless. They require tax dollars, shifts in policing philosophy, or major changes to social service structures. When a fully formed policy emerges suddenly from behind a closed door, it looks like a directive rather than a collaborative strategy. The public asks, “Why this solution? Why now?” without having participated in the dialogue that weighed the pros and cons. We’ve seen, in places like Baltimore, that successful violence reduction frameworks are built on proactive engagement and collaboration, not secrecy. When citizens and youth are involved from the start, they develop ownership, making the solutions stick.

Finally, opacity destroys the bedrock of civic life: trust. Even if leaders meticulously avoid a legal quorum to comply with open meeting laws, the deliberate act of excluding the public cam breed deep suspicion. When the official response to calls for transparency is a concern that open conversation will be “discouraging,” the public is left to wonder who is truly being protected, the conversation’s candor, or the officials’ political reputations. Every time a community is intentionally left out of the deliberative process, they lose faith that their elected officials are working solely in their best interests.

True leadership means having the courage to host the difficult conversations publicly, to have those conversations openly. It means acknowledging flaws, debating uncomfortable truths, and brainstorming flawed ideas in the full view of the people you serve. The perceived efficiency of a private meeting is a poor substitute for the legitimacy and sustained support gained through genuine public transparency. We don’t need fewer voices in the room; we need the right voices, the public, to be heard from the very beginning, and to more importantly hear everything.

I want to be clear here, I don’t write this just to criticize our elected officials for their recent closed-door meetings or accuse them of impropriety, but to provide guidance on a better path. I fully understand and can relate to the desire to not discuss these sensitive topics publicly, as for decades we as a society have avoided these difficult conversations publicly. And I do not personally question their intentions or motives in holding these meetings behind closed doors, as I do believe they honestly think it’s for the public good that these early meetings be kept private. I write this as a better path forward, a path where the entire community can be involved in the process, providing critically valuable input to what they perceive as the problem, and honest feedback on proposed solutions.

The first step in solving a problem is identifying the problem. But if we discuss the problems in private, without those affected having a seat at the table, how do we know that we’re defining the problem correctly in the first place? We all want the same thing – for our communities to become a better place. Now is the time to come together and talk, not trap ourselves in isolated echo chambers.

We need raw, open, honest conversations about the topics that plague our communities. Without those conversations, we’ll never truly fix things.

Opinion article by Ken Buckler, all opinions are his own and do not reflect those of our clients or sponsors.

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