Empathy and sympathy are two different things. However, in conversations about race and injustice, they can be conflated. I live and go to a school in an affluent neighborhood of the Bronx. My peers and I rarely witness the injustices that so many people experience on a daily basis. We are in a bubble of privilege. I find that in conversations about issues involving race or amongst my friends on social media, there is a lack of empathy.
When students of color express their personal experiences regarding racial oppression, sometimes white students will respond by saying that they too have been discriminated against. While attempting to be an ally, this student has completely undermined the experience and story of the student of color and has done the opposite of empathizing.
I believe that empathy means understanding by listening. While a white person may claim to understand the racial injustices that people of color must deal with on a daily basis, they fail to show empathy by not listening to the people who actually experience oppression. This is not to say that white people do not face discrimination or are unsympathetic to discrimination; rather, it is to say that white people will never experience racial oppression because racism in the United States is the systemic discrimination of people based on the color of their skin.
Many American institutions were designed in ways that benefit white people. For example, the education system that we have in place today was originally created for the advancement of white people in society. The criminal justice system, through its use of bail and fines, directly targets people of color so that they remain in jails and prisons. The intentions of these institutions was and is to keep white people as the dominant race of America.
Sympathy implies a sense of passivity. It is the idea that one person feels bad for another but does nothing to change the state in which the other person feels pain or discrimination. Empathy requires those in positions of privilege to take a step back, which is often very hard for those who are so used to being at the center of important conversations.
When a white person understands that he or she will never experience racial discrimination, he or she has come one step closer to being empathetic. The next is to actually listen to the people who are judged by the color of their skin daily.
Another point of frustration that a lot of my friends of color feel is the obligated role of “teacher.” When their white counterparts do not listen the first time around and do not fully understand oppression, they ask the question “So what am I supposed to do?”
People of color shouldn’t have to be teachers, but rather white people should to be able to sit down and listen to the experiences of people of color, because for almost all of history, we have been listening to the stories of white people. We have been conditioned to believe that white people discovered America, even though Native Americans lived in North America long before colonists imposed their religion and way of life on them.
It is time for white people who care deeply about these issues to not make these conversations, but rather to approach this difficult discussions with empathy.
