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.
"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."
I think you're right, but I also think it's more selfish than this. I think the real problem is that my point of view doesn't validate his desire to see himself as an "acolyte of God" (I swear, you can't make this stuff up😅).
It's not just that a humanistic world view doesn't attack white people, it's that it *does* attack his view of himself as a victim who has the right to use hateful rhetoric. If white people are all evil, he's righteous for thinking this way. But if demonising people for their skin colour is *always* wrong, well, then he's just another bigot.
He may indeed be selfish. Or emotionally immature. Someone who has allowed the pain of his own life to harden him in unhealthy ways. He does sound determined to cling to blame and bigotry, wears it like a shield to deflect every idea that might prick his awareness, crack open and soften his perspective. What a miserable place to dwell.
"Someone who has allowed the pain of his own life to harden him in unhealthy ways"
I'd be very interested to know exactly what pain he's experienced in his life as regards racism. People like Daniel like to imply that their lives have been a constant torment of racial discrimination, but I'm not convinced at all that this is true.
I think so much of this is just learned victimhood, just as with white racists it's learned hatred. It's very rarely based on personal experience, especially for people in younger generations (which Daniel may or may not be). They've just been taught to see themselves, and "the other side", in a certain way.
"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.
You might find Kwame Anthony Appiah’s “The Lies That Bind,” on this topic, pretty interesting. Dry in places but illustrates how we humans just can’t shake our addiction to identitarian essentialism.
Thanks for calling this out. I was going to highlight it as well.
I just finished Simon Schama's series on The History of Britain and he concludes: “But history ought never to be confused with nostalgia. It's written not to revere the dead, but to inspire the living. It's our cultural bloodstream—the secret of who we are. And it tells us to let go of the past, even as we honor it; to lament what ought to be lamented; to celebrate what should be celebrated.”
We don't need to ignore or forget the past. In fact, I would argue that we should allow it to inform us. But, it shouldn't dominate the present. It's not constructive and we need to focus our energies on creating something new.
And, yes. I believe that we are all much more alike than we are different, in spite of our conceits otherwise.
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.
"I can tell that I shouldn’t be granting myself a lot of opinions about racism in America"
I think a lot of white people feel this way, but it's not true at all. You should (and it seems that you do) recognise that you may have blind spots. You likely won't fully understand the challenges black people face in America because you haven't experienced them yourself. But if you care (and again, it seems that you do), then that's what matters.
You can learn about the challenges black people face. You can read about racial history and talk to your friends about their experiences. Just as you might do if you wanted to better understand the struggles of women or the LGBT community or heck, just a friend of yours who's been through something you haven't.
Empathy is the key to all this. Not keeping your mouth shut or invalidating your own opinion unless you look exactly like the person who is suffering. This *reduces* the number of people who can engage and help. The idea that only black people should have an opinion on racism or only women should have an opinion on sexism is completely backwards
"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!
Haha, I'm not really an "agree to disagree" kind of guy 😁. I like to talk things out until we really get somewhere. But, there are definitely some conversations where there's good-natured disagreement. This one's a good example:
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.
"How many black Americans *aren't* slaves today because their ancestors were dragged here in chains?"
Hey Nicole! Nice to see you here! Hmm, that's an interesting question. I mean, first, I think we need to be clear that slavery is very rare in the grand scheme of things today, and impacts people (again especially women) all over the world, certainly not just Africa. The Atlantic slave trade, particularly in scale, doesn't compare to anything in existence today or back then.
So while I'm sure the answer to your question isn't zero, the answer is far, *far* less. I'm also sure that if you'd given the choice to those people, very close to if not 100% would have chosen to stay in Africa. As you say, the American brand of slavery was very different to and far more brutal than African slavery (not to mention that millions of Africans died on the way to America, so we'd also have to ask how many of their descendants would be alive if they hadn't been dragged from their homes in chains).
I think you're on incredibly thin ice if you ask a question that can easily be construed as "why is nobody thinking about how slavery *helped* black people?", and the larger point as far as I'm concerned is that there's no need to. The Atlantic slave trade is one of the greatest evils in recent history. Nobody should deny this. But it ended over a hundred and fifty years ago. I think there's very limited value in continuing to talk about how awful it was or comparing it to other horrors.
Instead, we should be focused on repairing the damage done, primarily by what came after slavery, in the form of Jim Crow and the insidious belief that racial groups are meaningful.
Yea, good point, I wasn't trying to suggest that slavery was *good* for black people...or anyone! I should have thought that one out a little more. My point is that bad as it was for black people (kind of the 'evil apex' of human slavery the way the Holocaust is the 'evil apex' of genocide) probably many aren't stainless of the institution themselves. They may have slave owners and traders in their genealogies who looked rather a lot like themselves.
Yeah absolutely. Slavery certainly isn't a uniquely black problem. I also agree completely that we should be make society better for everyone. I think race in America gets special attention because it also got special attention (in the wrong direction) for many, many years. But yes, given the vast gulfs of financial inequality in society, racial disparities shouldn't be anybody's top priority.
“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?
Yeah, I also thought this line in Daniel's reply was telling. It's that old fantasy about how life with white skin automatically brings access to a "stash" of infinite financial resources, stress-free interactions with the police, and a 100% success rate at job interviews.
If you're taught to blame all of your problems on the colour of your skin, it's easy to convince yourself that people whose skin is a different colour don't face any problems.
But again, the Daniels of the world are not the majority. Not even close. Just as the white people who say the same and worse about black people aren't the majority. We *are* healing. But it takes time and a willingness to look beyond our own experience. It takes uncomfortable conversations. And it takes action. Sadly, the impact of racism in America goes far beyond slavery. All of this is happening, just slower than any of us would like.
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
"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"
Spot on. I honestly don't understand how so many people seem to miss this. There's never any willingness to engage and debate, just name-calling and vitriol. Never any talk about solutions that might help people, just complaining about problems (usually from a hundred years ago). And worst of all, they have no actual concern for the people the claim to defend. If a black person or woman or trans person who thinks "the wrong thing", these same SJWs don't hesitate to turn on them.
Though I must say, if we could change the past so there was no slavery, my answer would be a resounding yes. Not only because we'd save generations of people unspeakable suffering and save many people today from the lingering effects of that suffering. But maybe we would have so deeply absorbed the idea of race (and therefore racism) into our psyche. Slavery certainly isn't the only conceivable way we have African-Americans today, just as there are black people in every other country in the world.
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.
"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."
I think you're right, but I also think it's more selfish than this. I think the real problem is that my point of view doesn't validate his desire to see himself as an "acolyte of God" (I swear, you can't make this stuff up😅).
It's not just that a humanistic world view doesn't attack white people, it's that it *does* attack his view of himself as a victim who has the right to use hateful rhetoric. If white people are all evil, he's righteous for thinking this way. But if demonising people for their skin colour is *always* wrong, well, then he's just another bigot.
He may indeed be selfish. Or emotionally immature. Someone who has allowed the pain of his own life to harden him in unhealthy ways. He does sound determined to cling to blame and bigotry, wears it like a shield to deflect every idea that might prick his awareness, crack open and soften his perspective. What a miserable place to dwell.
"Someone who has allowed the pain of his own life to harden him in unhealthy ways"
I'd be very interested to know exactly what pain he's experienced in his life as regards racism. People like Daniel like to imply that their lives have been a constant torment of racial discrimination, but I'm not convinced at all that this is true.
I think so much of this is just learned victimhood, just as with white racists it's learned hatred. It's very rarely based on personal experience, especially for people in younger generations (which Daniel may or may not be). They've just been taught to see themselves, and "the other side", in a certain way.
"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.
"'White people' and 'Black people' are not two monolithic metaphysical essences that transcend space and time."
It will never cease to amaze me how many people don't understand this simple fact.
You might find Kwame Anthony Appiah’s “The Lies That Bind,” on this topic, pretty interesting. Dry in places but illustrates how we humans just can’t shake our addiction to identitarian essentialism.
Thanks for calling this out. I was going to highlight it as well.
I just finished Simon Schama's series on The History of Britain and he concludes: “But history ought never to be confused with nostalgia. It's written not to revere the dead, but to inspire the living. It's our cultural bloodstream—the secret of who we are. And it tells us to let go of the past, even as we honor it; to lament what ought to be lamented; to celebrate what should be celebrated.”
We don't need to ignore or forget the past. In fact, I would argue that we should allow it to inform us. But, it shouldn't dominate the present. It's not constructive and we need to focus our energies on creating something new.
And, yes. I believe that we are all much more alike than we are different, in spite of our conceits otherwise.
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.
"I can tell that I shouldn’t be granting myself a lot of opinions about racism in America"
I think a lot of white people feel this way, but it's not true at all. You should (and it seems that you do) recognise that you may have blind spots. You likely won't fully understand the challenges black people face in America because you haven't experienced them yourself. But if you care (and again, it seems that you do), then that's what matters.
You can learn about the challenges black people face. You can read about racial history and talk to your friends about their experiences. Just as you might do if you wanted to better understand the struggles of women or the LGBT community or heck, just a friend of yours who's been through something you haven't.
Empathy is the key to all this. Not keeping your mouth shut or invalidating your own opinion unless you look exactly like the person who is suffering. This *reduces* the number of people who can engage and help. The idea that only black people should have an opinion on racism or only women should have an opinion on sexism is completely backwards
"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!
Haha, I'm not really an "agree to disagree" kind of guy 😁. I like to talk things out until we really get somewhere. But, there are definitely some conversations where there's good-natured disagreement. This one's a good example:
https://steveqj.substack.com/p/no-not-betrayal-disempowerment
or this one:
https://steveqj.substack.com/p/see-some-black-man-gets-it/comments
(hmm, just noticing that both of these conversations are behind the paywall. I should put more of these out front.)
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.
"How many black Americans *aren't* slaves today because their ancestors were dragged here in chains?"
Hey Nicole! Nice to see you here! Hmm, that's an interesting question. I mean, first, I think we need to be clear that slavery is very rare in the grand scheme of things today, and impacts people (again especially women) all over the world, certainly not just Africa. The Atlantic slave trade, particularly in scale, doesn't compare to anything in existence today or back then.
So while I'm sure the answer to your question isn't zero, the answer is far, *far* less. I'm also sure that if you'd given the choice to those people, very close to if not 100% would have chosen to stay in Africa. As you say, the American brand of slavery was very different to and far more brutal than African slavery (not to mention that millions of Africans died on the way to America, so we'd also have to ask how many of their descendants would be alive if they hadn't been dragged from their homes in chains).
I think you're on incredibly thin ice if you ask a question that can easily be construed as "why is nobody thinking about how slavery *helped* black people?", and the larger point as far as I'm concerned is that there's no need to. The Atlantic slave trade is one of the greatest evils in recent history. Nobody should deny this. But it ended over a hundred and fifty years ago. I think there's very limited value in continuing to talk about how awful it was or comparing it to other horrors.
Instead, we should be focused on repairing the damage done, primarily by what came after slavery, in the form of Jim Crow and the insidious belief that racial groups are meaningful.
Yea, good point, I wasn't trying to suggest that slavery was *good* for black people...or anyone! I should have thought that one out a little more. My point is that bad as it was for black people (kind of the 'evil apex' of human slavery the way the Holocaust is the 'evil apex' of genocide) probably many aren't stainless of the institution themselves. They may have slave owners and traders in their genealogies who looked rather a lot like themselves.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/my-great-grandfather-the-nigerian-slave-trader
And yes, I would much rather focus on making society more equitable for *everyone*...not just blacks. Like, say, the 99%?
Yeah absolutely. Slavery certainly isn't a uniquely black problem. I also agree completely that we should be make society better for everyone. I think race in America gets special attention because it also got special attention (in the wrong direction) for many, many years. But yes, given the vast gulfs of financial inequality in society, racial disparities shouldn't be anybody's top priority.
“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?
"What things were “stashed”?"
Yeah, I also thought this line in Daniel's reply was telling. It's that old fantasy about how life with white skin automatically brings access to a "stash" of infinite financial resources, stress-free interactions with the police, and a 100% success rate at job interviews.
If you're taught to blame all of your problems on the colour of your skin, it's easy to convince yourself that people whose skin is a different colour don't face any problems.
But again, the Daniels of the world are not the majority. Not even close. Just as the white people who say the same and worse about black people aren't the majority. We *are* healing. But it takes time and a willingness to look beyond our own experience. It takes uncomfortable conversations. And it takes action. Sadly, the impact of racism in America goes far beyond slavery. All of this is happening, just slower than any of us would like.
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
"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"
Spot on. I honestly don't understand how so many people seem to miss this. There's never any willingness to engage and debate, just name-calling and vitriol. Never any talk about solutions that might help people, just complaining about problems (usually from a hundred years ago). And worst of all, they have no actual concern for the people the claim to defend. If a black person or woman or trans person who thinks "the wrong thing", these same SJWs don't hesitate to turn on them.
Though I must say, if we could change the past so there was no slavery, my answer would be a resounding yes. Not only because we'd save generations of people unspeakable suffering and save many people today from the lingering effects of that suffering. But maybe we would have so deeply absorbed the idea of race (and therefore racism) into our psyche. Slavery certainly isn't the only conceivable way we have African-Americans today, just as there are black people in every other country in the world.
Your thoughtful dissection of these issues from a humanitarian, long-term perspective never ceases to impress me. Thank you again.
😁