As nice as it would be if it weren’t, empathy is finite. From family, outward to strangers, from our neighbours to the rest of our city or town, from our country out to people on the other side of the world, we care more about problems that affect “our tribe” than we care about problems that don’t. This doesn’t mean that we’re mean or heartless or selfish, just that we’re human. But it also means that if we stopped thinking in terms of tribes, we’d have more empathy for problems which, at first, don’t seem to affect us.
His accusatory use of the word "appease" says it all: he is at war with white people and anything from a fellow black person that does not signal battle mode is "appeasement" of the enemy. Yikes. Thank you for your solid, sane replies. I hope a seed was planted. It still surprises me how often empathy is misconstrued as weakness when it is in fact the key to human connection. Our path to peace.
"But human beings are not the aggregate of the experiences of everybody who has ever looked like them." <<Thiiiiiiiiiiiis. Once I realized how insane this is, I couldn't help but notice how often we ALL do it. "White people" and "Black people" are not two monolithic metaphysical essences that transcend space and time.
I’m an old white guy. I have a best friend of many decades who is African-American, raised in very poor circumstances between Chicago and Gary, now a very successful businessman. In comparing our life’s experiences, I can tell that I shouldn’t be granting myself a lot of opinions about racism in America. During the George Floyd unrest, I remarked to him about the unjustified destruction and looting of so many businesses in inner cities. His response: “They’re angry.”
So, this is why I so appreciate Steve QJ. Yes, black Americans have every reason to be angry about racism past and present. But I take heart when Steve QJ has an answer to this anger; the path forward can only be the human kindness that MLK promoted.
"Two people going back and forth saying, “yes, you’re right,” doesn't make for very compelling reading." This comment you made makes sense, but I wonder if there's ever conversations you have where perspectived anf nuances differ… and you agree to disagree. That might be interesting once in a while. Just a thought. I admire your patience in bantering with Daniel and others in your articles!
This is _exactly_ the kind of racism I faced as a kid—the idea that there was something uniquely evil about people who looked like me. My family struggled economically, and I carried both shames, feeling like we were broken as a family. A Black man on the radio once described this same experience and the moment when he rose out of it, realizing his genes weren’t the problem but the circumstances his people found themselves in, and I felt a kinship with him.
One question that never seems to get asked of slavery: How many black Americans *aren't* slaves today because their ancestors were dragged here in chains? How many black American women today enjoy sexual freedom and sexual enjoyment because their families didn't stay in Africa, where even to this day they rip out baby girls' genitals for the crime of being born female?
Africa has been a slave-trading, slave-owning continent for many centuries. It's going on even *today*. It's a hellhole for many African women and that's *without* white people.
I don't deny the sheer hellishness of the African slave trade and how Americans injected new levels of degradation, humiliation and inhumanity likely never before seen in any other slave-owning society, but the overemphasis on how much American slaves suffered ignores they weren't exactly dragged from Shangri-La into New Orleans. Especially the women.
“But the proportion that will ever be subjected to that human-cancelling experience at any time in their life is so negligible, as to be unworthy of mentioning. It just doesn’t happen, and if it did, they have access to resources that they have carefully stashed in case of such an eventuality. “
Wow. Just wow. Thanks, Daniel, for negating the experiences of many children subjected to bullying and awful acts of vicious race-driven violence based on their parents pain after the horrific conditions of Jim Crow.
How are we humans supposed to react? Our parents tell us of terrible injustice, we feel it, we want to protect them. So, we do what we can. There’s a white boy on the bus to school…let’s spit on his hair. There’s a white girl in gym class…let’s laugh at her pale legs.
And so it goes. Perpetuate the negative. Build more bastions of hateful behavior.
What things were “stashed”? How to run, how to deflect, how to walk with eyes down to avoid any hint of confrontation. Learn what humiliation tastes like. Nod acquiescence when the one black girl who kinda befriends you in your majority black / Asian school asks you to use the back door to her house so no one will see the white girl go in the front door.
Daniel is blinded by his own hate. He’s demonized others. He is, in short, a bigot.
When will we confront the fact that doing this to another person irrespective of their skin tone is just wrong. Just stop. Be people first.
Fantasizing about emptying a gun into a white person’s head and thinking you’ve improved the world…what level of hate do you hold? What kind of remorseless Old Testament vengefulness are you embracing here? Guilty unto the nth generation?
It’s a sad and sorrowful filled time when so many use newfound skills and abilities to foment revenge for slights they never experienced. No one alive today experienced slavery. No one alive today in American owned slaves. How do we heal this?
The most radical of the SJWs don't appear to want equality or fairness. They seem to want dominance so they can exact revenge on people in the hear and now for the past. We are not in the past. I don't know who to attribute it to but there is a saying, "The reason your windshield is bigger than your rear view mirror is because what’s in front of you is much more important than what you’ve already passed by."
Some of my family have done extensive genealogy research on the family. There is no evidence of any slave owners and those who fought in the civil war fought on the side of the union. One died in battle, one died as a POW in Andersonville. Does that give me one ounce of virtue over someone whose ancestors were slave owners? Not an ounce. That was them, not me.
As awful as slavery was, if we could change the past so transatlantic slave trade never happened should we? A super racist white person might want to since none of the ancestors of African Americans would have met and therefore no African Americans would exist. The past is the past.
"Maybe it’s time to try a little more empathy." -Steve QJ
His accusatory use of the word "appease" says it all: he is at war with white people and anything from a fellow black person that does not signal battle mode is "appeasement" of the enemy. Yikes. Thank you for your solid, sane replies. I hope a seed was planted. It still surprises me how often empathy is misconstrued as weakness when it is in fact the key to human connection. Our path to peace.
"But human beings are not the aggregate of the experiences of everybody who has ever looked like them." <<Thiiiiiiiiiiiis. Once I realized how insane this is, I couldn't help but notice how often we ALL do it. "White people" and "Black people" are not two monolithic metaphysical essences that transcend space and time.
I’m an old white guy. I have a best friend of many decades who is African-American, raised in very poor circumstances between Chicago and Gary, now a very successful businessman. In comparing our life’s experiences, I can tell that I shouldn’t be granting myself a lot of opinions about racism in America. During the George Floyd unrest, I remarked to him about the unjustified destruction and looting of so many businesses in inner cities. His response: “They’re angry.”
So, this is why I so appreciate Steve QJ. Yes, black Americans have every reason to be angry about racism past and present. But I take heart when Steve QJ has an answer to this anger; the path forward can only be the human kindness that MLK promoted.
"Two people going back and forth saying, “yes, you’re right,” doesn't make for very compelling reading." This comment you made makes sense, but I wonder if there's ever conversations you have where perspectived anf nuances differ… and you agree to disagree. That might be interesting once in a while. Just a thought. I admire your patience in bantering with Daniel and others in your articles!
This is _exactly_ the kind of racism I faced as a kid—the idea that there was something uniquely evil about people who looked like me. My family struggled economically, and I carried both shames, feeling like we were broken as a family. A Black man on the radio once described this same experience and the moment when he rose out of it, realizing his genes weren’t the problem but the circumstances his people found themselves in, and I felt a kinship with him.
Thank you for sharing.
One question that never seems to get asked of slavery: How many black Americans *aren't* slaves today because their ancestors were dragged here in chains? How many black American women today enjoy sexual freedom and sexual enjoyment because their families didn't stay in Africa, where even to this day they rip out baby girls' genitals for the crime of being born female?
Africa has been a slave-trading, slave-owning continent for many centuries. It's going on even *today*. It's a hellhole for many African women and that's *without* white people.
I don't deny the sheer hellishness of the African slave trade and how Americans injected new levels of degradation, humiliation and inhumanity likely never before seen in any other slave-owning society, but the overemphasis on how much American slaves suffered ignores they weren't exactly dragged from Shangri-La into New Orleans. Especially the women.
“But the proportion that will ever be subjected to that human-cancelling experience at any time in their life is so negligible, as to be unworthy of mentioning. It just doesn’t happen, and if it did, they have access to resources that they have carefully stashed in case of such an eventuality. “
Wow. Just wow. Thanks, Daniel, for negating the experiences of many children subjected to bullying and awful acts of vicious race-driven violence based on their parents pain after the horrific conditions of Jim Crow.
How are we humans supposed to react? Our parents tell us of terrible injustice, we feel it, we want to protect them. So, we do what we can. There’s a white boy on the bus to school…let’s spit on his hair. There’s a white girl in gym class…let’s laugh at her pale legs.
And so it goes. Perpetuate the negative. Build more bastions of hateful behavior.
What things were “stashed”? How to run, how to deflect, how to walk with eyes down to avoid any hint of confrontation. Learn what humiliation tastes like. Nod acquiescence when the one black girl who kinda befriends you in your majority black / Asian school asks you to use the back door to her house so no one will see the white girl go in the front door.
Daniel is blinded by his own hate. He’s demonized others. He is, in short, a bigot.
When will we confront the fact that doing this to another person irrespective of their skin tone is just wrong. Just stop. Be people first.
Fantasizing about emptying a gun into a white person’s head and thinking you’ve improved the world…what level of hate do you hold? What kind of remorseless Old Testament vengefulness are you embracing here? Guilty unto the nth generation?
It’s a sad and sorrowful filled time when so many use newfound skills and abilities to foment revenge for slights they never experienced. No one alive today experienced slavery. No one alive today in American owned slaves. How do we heal this?
The most radical of the SJWs don't appear to want equality or fairness. They seem to want dominance so they can exact revenge on people in the hear and now for the past. We are not in the past. I don't know who to attribute it to but there is a saying, "The reason your windshield is bigger than your rear view mirror is because what’s in front of you is much more important than what you’ve already passed by."
Some of my family have done extensive genealogy research on the family. There is no evidence of any slave owners and those who fought in the civil war fought on the side of the union. One died in battle, one died as a POW in Andersonville. Does that give me one ounce of virtue over someone whose ancestors were slave owners? Not an ounce. That was them, not me.
As awful as slavery was, if we could change the past so transatlantic slave trade never happened should we? A super racist white person might want to since none of the ancestors of African Americans would have met and therefore no African Americans would exist. The past is the past.
"Maybe it’s time to try a little more empathy." -Steve QJ
Your thoughtful dissection of these issues from a humanitarian, long-term perspective never ceases to impress me. Thank you again.
Good Morning!!! I'm awake now. You're better than fresh brewed coffee to wake me up.