One of the important lessons I’ve taken from childhood is the importance of empathy.
My family encouraged thoughtfulness and generosity. So did my faith tradition.
The old saying shares it well:
Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
From the beginning I was taken with empathy. I always wanted to be responsive to another person’s pain. It has been the backbone of my identity and ministry from childhood.
This particular vision of empathy, of understanding the experience of another person, has always been the nearly highest priority for me.
It is also the most common tool used against me.
Picking and choosing real pain
Over the last few years, we’ve rediscovered this need to listen to the pain of others.
Just not all of us.
Many of us were sympathetic to the pain in Ferguson, Baltimore, and communities all over the U.S.. But not all of us. Some ignored and vilified these communal cries of pain.
Protests all over the country, in cities and football fields, raised the voices of those hurt by corruption, mass incarceration, and predatory police practices. Acts of nonviolent protest were made to seem ugly — they rarely started that way — when the powerful refused them dignity.
That pain was voiced and heard. But it was also ignored and often brutalized. Particularly in large parts of predominantly white communities.
But the pain of white people…now that got everyone’s attention.
Many of us, fueled by liberal guilt and the conviction to listen to the pain of anyone were pulled into acts of constant empathy-building. Our own guilt compelled us and the near constant shame from pundits kept us listening.
We saw coastal elites fly into the “heartland” to learn about the pain of “real Americans”. Rural whites wrote personal stories of growing up only sorta racist. And the mass media focused on the economic pain of the “white working class”.
But what these analyses fail to do is make full accounting of what they are, in fact, studying.
The myth of the White Working Class
In a sparkling review of several of these books, Andrew Perrin explores what is missing from these visions of “the heartland” and “God’s country.”
“It is revealing, though, that each of these books aims to provide liberals with a sympathetic portrait of conservatives. In the context of a deeply polarized electorate, it is certainly helpful to cross political boundaries in the service of mutual understanding. But the traffic here is one-way; to my knowledge, there are no books offering earnest portraits of the Acela corridor to the residents of flyover country. Why not? Perhaps it’s that liberals are more curious in general, more prone to guilt over not understanding their compatriots, or just bigger readers. But I think part of the explanation lies in the jargon of authenticity. To imagine red America as authentic is to label blue America inauthentic: fake, affected, an impostor.
There’s a gap here. An empathy imabalance.
This imbalance reveals their common flaw. Each of these attempts to humanize and empathize with the people the media calls the White Working Class (WWC) seeks to create authenticity, build up a special “realness” to the group and contrast that with the rest of us.
But in trying to establish and elevate this authentic group, it has that clear side effect of diminishing the rest of us. This isn’t a full, honest, balanced accounting it sets out to be. But one that makes a “them” out
It humanizes and divides.
But this empathy imbalance doesn’t tell the whole story. This authenticating a specific group labeled the White Working Class also makes a truly faulty assumption: they are observing a people who never change.
In trying to document something that exists in the present, they create it. And give it a permanent backstory.
In other words, it is to believe that these are
This isn’t just their moment, it is all the moments.
In seeking empathy, we’ve missed, or more honestly avoided the most important message. As Perrin writes:
“The WWC was made, not found; deployed, not discovered.”
The White Working Class is a myth, invented to mollify part of the country and avoid the very real conditions which create inequality: the politics and social developments which link power and poverty. It isn’t the myth that matters, but the economic choices, political decisions, and cultural shifting which effet them.
This division is deployed to distract us, not just from the pain of one group, but from the conditions which cause pain in many groups.
And it did its job, too. The cries of the mythic White Working Class suddenly drowned out the cries of everyone else.
Knowing Southern pain didn’t prevent the Civil War
In the decades before the Civil War, there was a great power imbalance in Washington. The capital was indeed a southern city and the South had more cultural power there. This imbalance was not created through party affiliation or election consequences. But by the S
The South didn’t make better arguments than the North: they exploited their difference. They were willing to fight and northerners, for the most part, weren’t. This allowed the south to regularly bully the north.
We shouldn’t mistake this for simply exploiting a political advantage any more than we would consider Jim Crow one group’s natural advantage over another’s. We must never confuse exploitation
This imbalance must be included in all of our considerations of division.
When we think of the Civil War, we always go to slavery and division. We think of abolitionists in the North and slave owners in the South. Somehow these are two equal sides not getting along.
But this view isn’t real or full.
The most important difference between the north and south in the decades before the civil war isn’t slavery but the imbalance of power.
The north experienced great pressure for 50 years to compromise with the south. But the south had none of that pressure to compromise with the north. So they didn’t think they had to.
An unwinnable gambit
The north spent years trying to get along with the south and its slave power. From the debates around the constitution to the banning of the international slave trade to preserving the delicate balance between free and slave states; everything was built on a mostly one-sided compromise. The weight of compromise was born almost exclusively on the backs of those who generally opposed the practice.
Westward expansion and increased bullying in Congress eroded even these compromises. Whatever the cause for the imbalance, the south ensured they would maintain their power.
Those so eager to claim “both sides” in every debate can’t tolerate this power imbalance. They don’t want it to work that way. But all of the tension came from somewhere. Not two tangoing with equal responsibility, but one side exploiting the other.
No amount of learning about the white southern man helped northerners prevent the increasing violence in Washington in the 1840s. Because
They tried to understand the southern man, but he kept threatening. Reason wouldn’t work. Neither would silence (there’d always be some speaker to blame). Eventually the system wouldn’t hold it back or ensure their civility.
They’d break the compromise (arguing it was northern aggression). Then they’d blame the northerners for defending themselves. After that, they’d leave the capital and form their own government. Of course, they’d shoot first.
Learning about southern culture didn’t prevent the Civil War because the south was never going to compromise.
Empathy isn’t all that’s missing
Learning more about a person humanizes them. Few things are more important to getting along than that.
But southerners knew all they wanted to about the north and believed conspiracy theories about them. They sowed disinformation and made the existing compromise seem too restrictive on them. The north must be coming for their slaves.
In short, there was an empathy imbalance. And this one-sided humanization project didn’t derail the Civil War because nothing derailed the power imbalance. Nothing prevented the south from demanding one-sided control.
Knowing the reason (excuse) for southern aggression helps humanize their situation. But it doesn’t change the problem.
Southern bullying silenced and demeaned northern congressmen. When northerners eventually stood up to the bullying it was not only predictable but literally the fairest response to their situation.
But southern justification was always about painting a mythic picture. Long before the Lost Cause, they would cast those “defending” the southern cause as passive participants in a violent struggle they initiated.
Attack for defense, war for peace, kill to heal, unity by abandoning the union.
Humanizing the devil doesn’t change his plans.
I am deeply committed to empathy. It is not only the building block of
But empathy doesn’t do the work of creating systemic change for us. Empathy isn’t the end of our action or responsibility.
When Arlie Russell Hochschild “climbed the empathy wall” by moving to rural Louisiana for half a decade to research and write Strangers in Their Own Land, she made friends with people and learned about their complexity. She developed a “deep story” which resonated with them. She came to understand why they are the way they are now.
And then? Did they reciprocate? And have they cleaned up the toxic chemicals in their water supply?
They blame their government for failing them. And they support corporations who are failing them. And their environment, health, and standard of living continue to deteriorate. So…
These attempts at empathy do little to prevent the evil they hope to avoid because they avoid trying to.
These appeals to empathy are like convincing 50% of the population to turn off the faucet when brushing teeth. An important and valuable act to conserve fresh water…which will help effect less than 1% of our total water use.
Yes, this focusing on what we think is achievable is something. It’s just not everything.
And it has another perverse effect. It intentionally avoids our discussing the economic and political factors which govern over 90% of our total water usage.
Dealing with the devil
In scaling that empathy wall, we should recognize that realities are already competing there.
The wall hides that the real enemies of empathy aren’t the people on the other side, but conditions which encourage others to justify fear and exploitation. The more we buy into these conditions as permanent and cultural, the less likely we are to address them.
And then the other thing.
The devil put the wall up to distract you with dozens of books and think pieces telling you to climb a wall nobody else will. He’s busy arming soldiers for the offensive. To strike first and blame you for it.
Of course, he knows you’re coming. So he has thoughtfully laid out some gray shoes for you. And the note next to them reads:
I hope you like them! You’ll find that they fit you perfectly.
This is the second of several reflections on The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War by Joanne B. Freeman focusing on what this period could teach us about today.
Other reflections include:
- How our present moment is like a dysfunctional family system.
- Seduced by Inequality