The Limits of Empathy

December 16, 2019 5:27 PM

Why the Burden of Empathy Shouldn’t Rest on the Oppressed: Empathy is useful but we must be mindful of how it can be harmful. There is dialogue and then there is self-immolation. I welcome the former, but I will never embrace the latter as a way forward. I am no one’s sacrificial lamb, the altar of White Liberalism will finally have to learn to do without.
posted by Conspire (18 comments total)

I live by the maxim that the oppressed don't have any burden but to laugh in the face of their oppressors.
posted by dmh at 6:19 PM on December 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

Cisgender and heterosexual people are never asked to empathize with struggling queers.

This is stated so baldly, so straightforwardly, that my mind immediately rebels. "Of course they're asked to empathize with us, aren't they? What about--" And then I go blank, because I can't think of a single time. Pity, sure. There's plenty of pity for queer struggles, if you ask the right straight people. Poor us, we are tragic. But...empathy? Putting oneself in the mindset of, okay, to survive this conversation intact, here are the parts of myself I will have to hide, or make palatable, or translate, or excise? Of course not.

I love this vision of weaponized empathy. Because, as the author points out, the oppressed are always, always, having to enact a certain kind of watchful empathy, the empathy the deer has for the hunter, that the rabbit has for the hawk. The only way to survive is to understand the mindset of the person who is going to make your life harder. Which gives the irony of being told to set one's Identity Politics aside, and empathize with the plight of the people voting your rights away, the most bitter flavor.

Great piece, and I wish it were ten times longer.
posted by mittens at 6:56 PM on December 16, 2019 [24 favorites]

Centrist white liberals are confused because they put Obama into office. He failed to fix the problems of neoliberalism, so now they don't know what to do. Buying Gilette razors and learning pronouns doesn't seem to be working, so maybe putting Kamala Harris into office will do the trick.
posted by Brocktoon at 7:09 PM on December 16, 2019 [6 favorites]

It's not so easy to laugh when you have children who want an explanation, as Martin Luther King Jr. describes in "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" :

[W]hen you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?" ... when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

A life spent dealing with someone else's insults, however you may choose to do so, is still a reactionary existence that centers the actions of your unworthy oppressors.

From the linked article:

As a marginalized person, I am expected to connect with and explore the inner workings of those who deny my very right to exist. This is not a shiny new kind of labor. I have long been knowledgeable about the inner workings of Whiteness and heterosexist society. People like me usually don’t get to live this long without that kind of expertise. ... I am no longer interested in trying to reach people that have decided that their comfort is worth the cost of my personhood. How do we enact meaningful change with stakeholders beyond our affinity groups if their very beliefs prevent them from listening to us?

There's a passage in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide series where Marvin the Paranoid Android casually points out that he can see the "question," a key piece of information that the main characters are supposedly desperate to discover-- and he gets ignored while the shaggy-dog plot rolls on.

I feel more and more like that these days. (The article is from three years ago, by the way, hence the "President [-Elect]" talk that turns out to have been pretty solidly prescient.)

Aaand this post hit a nerve for me, it seems, so I'll have to step away and think for a while.
posted by tyro urge at 7:31 PM on December 16, 2019 [7 favorites]

I think that us ciswhities need to sholder some of the burdens the author rejects. The idea that you’d ask a minority group person to emphathise certainly sounds ridiculous though.
There’s a lot of stuff she goes into that I’d want to discuss, but the context is wrong. And frankly, I wouldn’t really blame anyone for dropping the weights of political struggle these days. It all feels gridlocked, impossible, and weaponised to the point where it’s torturous to engage. I’m sure everyone feels the same. To different degrees. Some may feel empowered. I certainly don’t.
The idea of not trying to understand or convince feels kind of nice.
Thanks for the read, It’s good food for thought.
posted by svenni at 8:01 PM on December 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

The project for white people IS to understand and to convince their fellow white people to understand. They must step into the empathy gap.

The thing about that is, though, that my white skin doesn't give me some kind of convincing-a-fuckwit superpower.

The kind of white person who is absolutely committed to their own white blindfold - the kind of white person who tells me with a complete lack of irony that Kipling makes some good points - isn't interested in having the blindfold removed and will go to extraordinary lengths to fend off all attempts to do so. At some level they know what they're doing but they just don't care; as long as they've got somebody they can feel superior to, that's them well satisfied.

There's a distinct worldview at work there, which says that if I'm not dominating you then I must by definition be submitting to you. The idea that people can actually be peers is just completely inaccessible to these people. Somebody always has to be Up, and somebody else must therefore have to be Down, and Down is damn well not going to be me. That's the mindset.

So yeah, I've done the work I need to do to understand how the political majority thinks in the district where I live, and what I've learned from that is that they are simply too frightened by the complicated and confusing world around them to contemplate any change in the way they view that world, even though it's exactly the rigid and stratified way they view their world that's the foundation of their worst fears.

It drives me mental watching people torture themselves like this, especially when they pass that torture on to their kids. Which are, it seems to me, where all the hope of genuine social change has to be. If my fellow white people are looking for effective ways to promote genuine cultural change, I think your best bet is being as scrupulously and consistently excellent to other people's kids as you are to your own.
posted by flabdablet at 8:54 PM on December 16, 2019 [4 favorites]

The thing about that is, though, that my white skin doesn't give me some kind of convincing-a-fuckwit superpower.

You are wrong. If it feels hard to you, convincing white people who don't think like you? Imagine how it feels to be trying to convince them as someone who obviously has a stake in the game and can then be written off.

You are wrong. The work is hard. That is true. But it being hard for you does not mean it is not easier for you to do than for someone else to do it.
posted by sciatrix at 9:06 PM on December 16, 2019 [16 favorites]

We are being undone by our inability to talk about two things at the same time, let alone the multitude that brings our lives into full Technicolor focus.

This part gets me. This is what Sarah Kendzior talked about when she wrote us a letter after the U.S. election back in 2016. I have an ongoing Twitter thread where I've been trying to remind myself and anyone else who will listen of this on a regular basis. The people who want to destroy marginalized people will continue to try to make us choose between causes—between standing up for black and brown lives, being visible for Pride, fighting for health care, protesting concentration camps, etc. We—white people, especially—must double down on empathy and radical compassion and resist the impulse to choose one identity, one cause, over any others.

Now I'm trying to find where I did the math on this—I think it was on Facebook a few years ago—but essentially everyone is ultimately affected by these policies. If that helps one have empathy, then think about that. I'll try to post it when I find it.
posted by limeonaire at 9:11 PM on December 16, 2019 [3 favorites]

You are wrong.

I suspect that you and I have different evaluation criteria for the success:effort ratio that would mark a power as a superpower.
posted by flabdablet at 9:17 PM on December 16, 2019

Mod note: Public service announcement - If you're a white person or a dominant-group-member, before commenting in this thread, please take extra care not to make it about you or about understanding white people's feelings (that'd be pretty ironic given the subject of the essay).
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:23 PM on December 16, 2019 [10 favorites]

I suspect that you and I have different evaluation criteria for the success:effort ratio that would mark a power as a superpower

Well, we certainly had a white person in the room who was not willing to be convinced. Fortunately, we also had another white person in this room who was willing to put up the hard effort of trying, even if changing hearts or minds were unlikely.

I was feeling very dejected and angry earlier in the thread, but I feel more seen now. Thank you, sciatrix. Because you seem to understand that sometimes, speaking up is not about white people, as much as it is about who else is in the room, and I appreciate that. Your efforts are not wasted.
posted by Conspire at 9:57 PM on December 16, 2019 [11 favorites]

Marginalized people have to be empathetic and practice emotional labor every day in order to survive because living with the non-marginalized demands it. If their efforts are seen as insufficient they are deemed difficult and punished. It is unfair and exhausting*. So if one is not being oppressed along some axis of identity, it is really important to mimic that radical empathy and deal with oppression bullshit along that axis and try to work through the fear of others, as slow and agonizing as it is, because ultimately engaging is a choice and having the option to not have to engage all the time is a luxury. I think truly, truly fighting a culture of oppression means not taking advantage of that luxury. It sucks and it is very hard, and it is much more satisfying and comforting** to blow up at people and dismiss the difficult cases as lost causes, but it's not as hard as not having that choice at all.

*Which ties back to that post about the importance of POC-only spaces--there is simply less bullshit to deal with.

**"Satisfying" because we can assure ourselves we are not like them because they are simply impossible to relate to; "comforting" because believing the hard cases in our day-to-day lives cannot be reached relieves us of the burden of trying to reach them.
posted by Anonymous at 3:06 AM on December 17, 2019

Or like the article said--empathy is about power. The choice to not empathize is a exercise of power. The marginalized theoretically can make this choice--but the repurcussions are immediate and severe. Like, to the point your life may be considered forfeit. If you are not white and you walk into a white space, you are immediately called to adapt, to empathize with white people in order to exist in that space in a way white people are not.
posted by Anonymous at 3:25 AM on December 17, 2019

If it feels hard to you, convincing white people who don't think like you? Imagine how it feels to be trying to convince them as someone who obviously has a stake in the game and can then be written off.

So here is what I don't understand about this: What is that "convincing"? What exactly is the work that is expected to be done?

I find that word--convincing--so frustrating, because it's not like there's some effective technology of anti-racism out there, which, if carefully and lovingly applied, converts a white person away from racism. There just...isn't. In a million years, I would never think of asking my straight friends to try convincing other straight people that I have a right to exist, unhidden and unharmed, not because I don't think my friends would want that, but because I've never seen a shred of evidence in my life that someone's mind can be changed away from hatred. Tamped down, made latent rather than overt? Sure. Made to change behaviors? Maybe, in certain company. But actual change of mind?

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what "convincing" means here? That's certainly possible.
posted by mittens at 5:15 AM on December 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

sometimes, speaking up is not about white people, as much as it is about who else is in the room

Conspire, that is well put. Thank you for spelling it out (seriously).
posted by ropeladder at 6:14 AM on December 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

There is a social component to this problem. Even though one may not be able to convince a bigot to be a better person, by standing up you're drawing a line in the sand. You are giving space for others to do likewise. "Allyship" is something that is done.

Silence implies approval. You don't speak up to change his mind. You speak to for the other people in the room.

I mean, hypothetically, at Christmas, when your uncle starts busting out homophobic slurs, what if your cousin is still in the closet? How does he feel about the rest of his family? What does that say about the rest of the family of they don't do something about it? It may say "we all know it's best to let it run its course" (is it?), that silence also speaks volumes about everyone else.

I mean a lot of this is just, super basic. If you're a centrist, doesn't it make sense to give as much empathy to the left as the right? As a liberal doesn't it make MORE sense to do empathy to those in the same wing? Why is there so much handwringing over giving empathy to bigots in the media, but never the other way around?

Look. There will be a time for that, but it will be after they have done the necessary work; and it will be up to each community and each person to figure out what that means. It's certainly not owed.
posted by jonnay at 6:26 AM on December 17, 2019 [6 favorites]

So here is what I don't understand about this: What is that "convincing"?

So there's this poem by Alice Duer Miller, who was a very clever suffragist and writer, that I think of in response to your comment:

Said Mr. Jones in 1910:
"Women, subject yourselves to men."
Nineteen-Eleven heard him quote:
"They rule the world without the vote."
By Nineteen-Twelve, he would submit
"When all the women wanted it."
By Nineteen-Thirteen, looking glum,
He said that it was bound to come.
This year I heard him say with pride:
"No reasons on the other side!"
By Nineteen-Fifteen, he'll insist
He's always been a suffragist.
And what is really stranger, too,
He'll think that what he says is true.

It's very hard to see "convincing" happening at any point in Mr. Jones' evolution of viewpoints, right? Especially at the end, when he's like "well, I always believed this!" But his changes of views aren't at any point happening in a vacuum, especially since he doesn't entirely notice these changes happening over this course of years. Those changes of views will have happened because public opinion is changing, and because many people have spoken with Mr. Jones over those five years and shoved at him and eventually dragged him into a pro-suffragist mindset.

The most effective people to do that are other men. Women can be written off, you see--see the "they rule the world without the vote!" line, for example, where he's insisting that women really have enough power without having to advocate for the political power brought by having access to democracy. You can say that women are just acting in their own self-interest and that's why they want the power of the ballot. But if a man says "no, women should have this power," he's not advocating for himself, so ah! he must be speaking from a place of objectivity! his opinion is worth taking into account and considering!

Each of these nudges that any given Mr. Jones receives is inherently incremental. No single nudge will change his mind overnight, but in the aggregate, they can change his mind and convince him it has always been changed. But not all of these nudges are equal: some can shove him farther than others, even if it doesn't seem to be the case at the time, even if it doesn't trigger a conversion at the moment of the nudge. That's what I mean about "convincing:" all the little interactions that, in the aggregate, can trigger this kind of conversion across time.

So too with any axis of marginalization.
posted by sciatrix at 8:53 AM on December 17, 2019 [12 favorites]

At the very least, you can make racists, sexists, and queerphobes afraid to share those views in public. When they gripe about political correctness or that people can't get along "despite politics," that's their euphemism for the very real fear they have that they'll face consequences socially and in their work if they keep being openly bigoted. If I tell a cis person they're being transphobic, and that transphobia is an ingrained view of theirs, they're not going to care that I said it. But if another cis person tells them off, they'll get nervous.

This isn't empathy, either. But it's something that works. Something they dread and want the rest of society to think is rude. I don't think there's a way to magically make a bigot an ally unless they sincerely want to change. But we can make this shit so unacceptable they think twice about showing their bigotry if they want to keep friends and stay out of trouble at work.
posted by ikea_femme at 7:41 PM on December 17, 2019 [6 favorites]