Empathy Revisited

Someone told me recently that I was not as upset as she is about the attack on women's reproductive rights because I am a man.

Initially, I was very hurt by this statement. While I know that I can be condescending to people at times, and that I often use (or try to use) humor to offset difficult or stressful situations and experiences, I was of the opinion that I possessed a fairly advanced sense of empathy for others. That I recognized that "do unto others..." was not just a nice moral guideline, but a trait that advanced society as a whole, or at least did not allow us to easily descend into depths featuring such horrific events as the Holocaust.

However, the fact remains that I am a white male and that I have had the advantages of that simple description (other than the occasional prejudices in the labor market which I experienced when I had mid-back length hair) throughout my life. 

I have won the birth lottery by being born in a country with as much opportunity built into its systems as any other, and being born a white male to boot, a two word category that includes a virtual lock on the power and resources of this very fine country, especially during the first 150 years of its inception. 

Even today, the percentage of the rich and powerful white man, whether in politics or business, exceeds by many times the actual percentage within the entire population.

So, is she right? 

Before answering that question, I thought I would provide links to the other times when I posted about the Birth Lottery. The original, in spring 2010, the revisit in May 2013, and a commentary about indigenous children in June 2023.

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2010/04/birth-lottery.html

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-birth-lottery-revisited.html 

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-birth-lottery-and-native-americans.html 

--- 

So, I think the answer is that she is right, but also wrong. 

I think that in the aggregate, history shows that it is possible for white men to have empathy for other demographics. After all, the 19th Amendment, which recently celebrated its 125th anniversary since passage, was passed by white men in America's Congress. As was the Civil Rights Legislation, although there were some women and people of color representing the electorate in Congress by then.

Do those accomplishments erase the decades of suppression, the years of brutality? Certainly not. But perhaps those actions, while tacitly endorsed by the majority by the power of not seeing, were only perpetrated by a small percentage of individuals. That in general, white men were able to empathize, to improve life for people not like themselves, despite the actions of some very horrible individuals.

Sadly, that would have been my answer in the past. Perhaps even the recent past, but past nonetheless.

Now, however, I believe that the script has flipped. With the advent of Trump's white man victimization tour, it no longer feels that in general we are capable of putting ourselves into the shoes of our fellow Americans who are non-white and/or non-male, let alone the vast populations across the planet who are also deemed less than human. 

There are certainly specific white men, millions of them in fact, who have not lost touch with their ability to empathize. But whereas I believe it was a small set of men who were responsible for the rampant prejudice and withholding of opportunities for women and people of color, too many white men today accept that undocumented immigrants should be rounded up and incarcerated, and that women should not have the choice to carry to term or abort their pregnancy. 

We should know better, but have chosen to fail to recognize that what is going on is the exact opposite of what our alleged Judeo-Christian ethic teaches, what Christ's sermons instruct us as to how to behave towards one another.

Men who otherwise love their families, have worked hard all their life, pay their taxes, go to church, yet are seemingly incapable of accepting that part of the reason for their success is their race and gender, and the advantages that have come there way, through no effort on their part, but just simply because they won the birth lottery. 

And then discount that advantage when opining about those who didn't.

Now, of course, they don't look at it that way. They prefer to believe that all their accomplishments occurred due to their work ethic, or intelligence, both of which could also be included as traits we inherit, that we are provided by the randomness of the birth lottery. 

The funny thing is, they are right, to a degree, as not every white male achieves success or fame or wealth, so they do deserve credit for "making it". I don't begrudge them that, even congratulate them for their accomplishments.  

But that doesn't change the simple fact that for most of history, men have enjoyed greater benefits simply due to their gender, and that white men in particular, for all of America's existence.

And that the failure to recognize this edge equates to a severe shortage or empathy. 

So, where do we go from here?

Is this just a temporary swing of the pendulum away from the progress that has been made in the last 100 years? 

If we consider the whole of history, the ebbs and flows that have transpired during the course of humanity, then it seems obvious that this is just another blip. 

That, like the horrors of WW1 and WW2, when soldiers as well as civilians were just so many pawns in the struggle for power, and the goal of victory, no matter what the cost, we eventually ended those conflicts, and now countries that were once enemies, are now friends.

That, like the atrocities of the various genocides that have occurred throughout the globe, the killings ceased, just as we hope that they might end soon in Palestine and Ukraine.

That the slow progression of humanity's spiritual growth will somehow get us through these crises, so that one day we might look upon today's horrors with the same rational that allows us to consider past human against human violence as part of our communal growth.

Maybe.

The Atlantic devoted much of the August edition to the history of nuclear weapons. We recently celebrated (is that the right word) the detonation of two atomic bombs over cities in Japan. Since then eight other countries have developed and possess these weapons, and are far more powerful than the ones used in 1945. 

One of the articles discussed a sort of malaise that the writer believes has evolved about the possibility of an actual nuclear war taking place. That, since the days of practicing an attack by diving under our desks at school, and the proliferation of backyard bunkers, there seems to be a belief that since it has happened yet, it won't happen at all. 

Or perhaps it is because there are so many other doomsday scenarios in the public consciousness that seem so inevitable.

Regardless, the articles together remind us that our weapons of mass destruction are vastly more dangerous than in 1945, that the rhetoric of us vs them is no less vitriolic than 80 years ago, and that the time allotted for a president to decide to launch or not is minutes, which means that such a decision about whether a perceived attack is real or not requires an even stronger understanding of the specifics of the widespread destruction that will occur. 

It certainly needs more thought than how can I show how strong a man I am, as the current lodger in the White House seems obsessed with. 

When the leader of our country expresses very little of this trait, it can embolden those with none themselves to lash out at the "others", while tempering those who possess even a modicum of empathy to question whether such a trait is weak, or woke.

Empathy.

For the record then, it is certainly possible that the critique that I am not as upset about the attacks of women's reproductive rights as a woman might be is valid, not because I am not upset, after all, I have a daughter of reproductive age, but because I am not a woman. 

While I can still advocate for pro choice policies, I will never find myself in a position where I have to decide to carry a fetus to term, or abort it. 

Which means that all I have is my ability to empathize; and to assume that such a decision should be left to the person/people most involved.

Similarly, I have never left my home country, traveled hundreds if not thousand of miles to a new land with limited understanding of its language, customs, laws, but I can empathize for those who make such a choice, and give them the benefit of the doubt as to their motives.

In the end then, it is only empathy that allows us to accept someone's decision to do something that we might disagree with, or not understand, or never do ourselves, let alone when that person's religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc, differs from our own.

And is it empathy that I find lacking in the policies and actions of our country under the leadership of President Trump and his allies, a lack that makes me ashamed for America.