If I put myself completely in the shoes of Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown, or even a black man denied the opportunity to board a taxi cab, I must accept the reality that my world and my America isn’t their world and their America….
one reason it’s difficult for any person to truly empathize with another human being, let alone with millions of people, is that empathy requires questioning one’s reality….
For many citizens, especially certain white conservative voters, such empathy would lead to an emphasis on questioning the status quo, and doing so might also mean facing the prospect of our nation being less than exceptional…
Another reason for such lack of empathy is that empathy inevitable leads to a myriad of unsavory emotions.
With empathy comes responsibility and culpability, self-reflection, sometimes guilt, oftentimes anger, and almost always a certain amount of regret; …
