The other side of empathy

How do we talk to each other in 2020, as we grapple with global turmoil and a socio-political divide that continues to grow? How do we engage in meaningful, difficult arguments with curiosity and with empathy while also advocating for the minority voices which have been silenced for too long? 

For the most part, I am surrounded by people who share my worldviews, who agree that some things are right and other things are wrong. It’s a space I’m comfortable in, because it’s one I have cultivated. I, like everyone, am entitled to choose who I want to interact with and who I want to keep in my circle. I am also entitled to not interact with those who promote ideas that I find abhorrent. But I’ve been struck recently by the fear that this may not be all that productive, that by remaining in the familiar, I’m missing out on an opportunity to learn. 

This is something that Zac Wood, an African American student from Williams College in Massachusetts, spoke about in an episode of the NPR Radio Hour podcast. During his time at the College, Wood was involved in a student organisation that would invite provocative figures to speak on campus. This included John Derbyshire, who, in 2012, published a column advising children to avoid black people and to accept that white people are more intelligent. Within five minutes of announcing Derbyshire as a guest, Wood was inundated with negative comments and Derbyshire was promptly uninvited by the College Dean. This poses an important question: should those who spread incendiary ideas have a platform? Many would say no, that by giving these individuals a platform, you’re legitimising their views, or putting those whose safety and wellbeing are most affected by those views at risk. But, according to Wood, ‘tuning out opposing viewpoints doesn’t make them go away, because millions of people agree with them, and it’s not safe to assume we know why.’ He argues that it’s actually about building resilience for those who might be affected, and an opportunity to find common ground, if not with the instigators of the controversial views themselves, then with the audiences they may attract. It’s also a chance to develop our own rhetorical skills: to pay attention to the evidence (or lack thereof) that people provide, to the questions that make them fumble or pause for thought, and to assess or even expose weaknesses in their logic.

Then there’s acclaimed sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, who in 2011 left her liberal outpost at the University of California Berkeley and relocated to Louisiana’s conservative bayou country, where she spent five years in a pre-Trump America. There, Hochschild engaged in hundreds of in-depth interviews with her neighbouring Louisianans, which culminated in her 2016 book, Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. 'I realized there were two ways I could go about it,’ Hochschild told Vox in 2016. ‘I could go in and say, ‘I’m going to find out more about the enemy. I’ll grab the facts and marshal my side.’ Or I could say, ‘You know what? There are things I just don’t know about this part of the country. And I’m going to have to open my heart to them. I’m going to have turn my alarm system off and actually listen.' As it happens, Hochschild found a commonality between most of the white residents she surveyed – a sense of victimhood that they identified with, without necessarily using the vernacular to communicate it in such terms. According to Hochschild, ‘they feel almost like a minority group, forgotten and set aside, displaced.’ Critically, she says, they felt as though the Federal Government had forsaken them, that it was against them at every turn, denigrating their cultural values and beliefs. It’s here that Trump found fertile ground with his appeal to blue-collar white men.

Hochschild’s book doesn’t offer a prescriptive plan to unit America, as you might expect. Rather, it’s ultimately about the value of listening, as she urges us to ‘scale the empathy wall’, which she defines as the ‘obstacle to the deep understanding of another person, one that can make us feel indifferent or even hostile to those who hold different beliefs or whose childhood is rooted in different circumstances.’ Indeed, Hochschild’s methodology is oriented toward overcoming the empathy walls that she believes segregate communities (particularly in the U.S.), so that we lose our ability to empathise with people outside of our chosen circles and grow more polarised as a result. 

However, it strikes me that any benefit to be gained from ‘climbing the empathy wall’ relies on a choice to do so, and an understanding of the consequences that might result. Because there are consequences. Perhaps not for white, educated women like Hochschild or me, but for a myriad of other people who don’t benefit from the privilege to engage in these discussions and to challenge reprehensible ideas while remaining unscathed by the outcome, without fear for one’s emotional or physical welfare. With that in mind, I’m advocating for those of us who feel safe enough to make that choice to do so boldly and without hesitation, to learn to get comfortable with that shaky, angry feeling that comes from encountering opposing views. We should be willing to develop our beliefs, to build resilience, to listen, to understand the importance of civil discourse, and to open ourselves to the idea that what we need lies just beyond reach, on the other side of the wall.