Congressman Paul Ryan, who has been spending some time in the last 18 months visiting urban black neighborhoods, says that he’s often the first Republican the people he talks to there have ever met. Ryan, who came to TIME’s office to do an interview for the magazine’s 10 Questions page about his book The Way Forward, says that folks are excited to see him mostly because he’s listening to them. When asked if his experiences in urban neighborhoods had given him any insight to what’s happening in Ferguson, he sounded a few words of caution about rushing to judgment.