“Before I go any further, I need to say I am a conservative white male,” he wrote in the second paragraph.

What followed was not what you might expect: a belittling of my beliefs and an extolling of his. This was not that type of email.

This was an extended hand from a man I have come to think of as my politest critic.

We are beginning this year with our country so divided and our leaders so firmly split that the government is partially shut down. Museums are closed. Trash is overflowing in national parks. And people are going unpaid. This should indicate to all of us that conversations are not going to get easier in the coming year, which leaves us with a choice. We can avoid talking to people who make us uncomfortable, even outraged. Or we can try to listen to them and hope they will listen to us, too.

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The latter won’t necessarily change minds — nothing will convince me that a wall between the United States and Mexico is a good idea — but it might improve how we treat one another and, if nothing else, it will move us away from name-calling and snark and force us to analyze and sharpen our own arguments.

I can say this with some confidence, because I recently read through all the exchanges I had last year with readers who sent critical emails. A less masochistic person would have probably deleted them.

This is what I learned from scrutinizing them:

There are some people who want to spew hate at someone for no reason other than their own gratification. Their emails are usually filled with a lot of obscenities and no substance. One man likes to send me pictures of Bill Clinton flicking me off. I can’t tell if that man is a Republican or a Democrat. Another man curses at me in Spanish. I still don’t know if it’s his native language or if he thinks it’s mine.

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There are other people who have grown so used to being ignored, they are surprised when they get a response. Here are highlights from one exchange I had with a man who didn’t agree with a column I wrote about Harvard’s affirmative action case:

Him: “Your article will line the cages of dozens of parrot and small birds but will not have much more of an effect on society than to absorb poop, ironic because that’s what I felt after reading your dumb work — that I had absorbed poop. Ivy League just took away what little sense you had and left you talking like an idiot.”

Me: “It’s obvious from your email that you feel strongly about this issue, which is why I’m taking the time to write you back (and overlooking that you called me an idiot).”

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His reply, after explaining that he felt he was writing into a vacuum, expecting no response or one that painted him as a racist: “This explains my crudity; writing emails to Post authors is kind of like a combination of Orwell’s Two Minutes of Hate and screaming into the Grand Canyon for me. So all of that to say, thanks for writing back with such civility.”

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Then, of course, there is my politest critic.

I have never met him. I know only that he is a 58-year-old father of two who attended one year of community college and has been married for more than 30 years.

In that first email, he wrote that my columns seemed “to at least try to include a look at the perspective from the other side” and suggested that if we ever met, we’d probably have an “enlightening discussion.”

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“While I generally disagree with the liberal viewpoint on what’s wrong and how it should be fixed, I do understand it comes from an admirable place of caring, love and respect for everyone,” he wrote. “I also feel a conservative view can come from the same place, and it’s time we allow that to happen. I would love to be able to be more vocal myself on today’s issues, but it seems any thoughts outside of the liberal view puts you at risk of ridicule, losing friends and/or employment.”

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I wrote him back, because I try to reply to everyone who emails, unless they are blatantly sexist or racist. And even then, I sometimes reply. But I also wrote him back because a line in his email struck at the core of why I became a “reluctant columnist” last year and my hopes for the upcoming year.

He had written, “I firmly believe there is no way we can move forward without reasonable acceptance of dialogue from other viewpoints.”

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Since then, he has written me more emails, and I have come to expect, and value, them because they have forced me to think harder about my own beliefs and look at issues through eyes outside of my own.

After the column on affirmative action, he wrote to share his own experience of earning a place in a class of new recruits for the fire department, a dream of his, and then having that offer rescinded when someone realized all the top recruits were white.

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“It’s important to remember for everyone who is lifted by any form of affirmative action, there is someone who gets screwed and it affects their life,” he wrote. “Some are able to move on. Some turn Republican. Some turn quietly racist. Some do worse. I don’t know what the answer is, but actions based solely on race are not the solution and divide us. We need to have reasonable discussions with everyone invited to the table.”

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He then added, because he’s polite:

“Thanks for taking the time to read this. Like I said before, even though I believe you and I would disagree on many issues, I do believe you are open to those who do not think like you. I hope I am too.”