Historian Tiya Miles: "I am not naïve about race hatred in our country. But I have also found reason for hope."

... I am keeping the faith in Montana and many places like it in the beet-red zone of the election map. That faith, reignited on

Wednesday, was kindled last summer by an unexpected olive branch. In the long weeks of July and August, when black people were being harassed by random white passers-by for grilling in public parks or selling bottles of water and when bad political news was emerging at a blistering, almost incomprehensible rate, I felt especially exposed as a black woman in Montana. In Kalispell, where I was staying with family, I looked over my shoulder while taking walks and avoided running on any street because so many residents carried guns.

When my daughter and I arrived at the dance studio set against the backdrop of rugged peaks, we were not surprised to find that she was the only black girl and one of two visibly identifiable girls of color. We were huddled together, taking stock, when a neatly styled middle-aged white woman started toward us in a determined gait. A man dressed in jeans, a western belt, a plaid shirt, and a cowboy hat accompanied her. I steeled myself, planning how I would defend my daughter against an anticipated racial slight.

“I noticed you two aren’t from around here. Neither are we,” the woman said. They had driven over from Glendive, a town five hours east near the North Dakota border — rural, insular, and white. Bozeman is no diversity hub, but compared to Glendive, it could be California. I watched the husband, bracing for his reaction to his wife’s overture and was stunned when he reached out a hand, introduced himself, and smiled all the way to his eyes. “If our daughters could meet,” the woman suggested, “maybe they won’t feel alone.”

This couple from a rural Republican state saw that our families had something in common, that we stood in this uncertain space together and might join purposes. This was something to reach for, to take solace in, the notion that there could be a “we.”

I am not naïve about race hatred or Montana. The state is home to headline-grabbing white supremacists in Whitefish, the lakeside town where the unapologetic neo-Nazi Richard Spencer is based. My husband arranged to rent a house online in Bozeman, only to be told the place was unavailable immediately after a Native American relative toured it on our behalf. Once when I stood at the sinks in a restaurant bathroom in Havre, a white woman walked in and screamed, exclaiming that she didn’t expect (or want?) to see a black person. And according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, hate groups grew in Montana following Mr. Trump’s election.

But the Glendive couple was working from a different cultural script, not written by the alt-right but perhaps instead by Toni Morrison. In her recent collection of lectures, “The Origin of Others,” Ms. Morrison emphasizes the existential challenge and moral call to sympathize with the stranger.She herself often takes inspiration from a text that used to be heralded in the Republican Party: the Bible. ...