Jessica Krug & "claimed a Black identity throughout her career."

[Kind of Blue]

9. Yes, indeed, irisblue! And the other one, Against Empathy

I'm particularly interested in this...

Demby: You are skeptical about how useful empathy can be in the context of racial justice. What do you think empathy can accomplish, and what can it not do?

Gaines: It's a question I'm still wrestling with, so I have more questions myself than really conclusive answers. I think that when we wholeheartedly embrace empathy as a solution to racial justice, that's not enough. We often don't talk about the power dynamics that happen when you're trying to stand in someone else's shoes or, in the case of Halsell, Griffin and Sprigle, literally staying in someone else's skin. That empathetic impulse can be useful when it mobilizes an action or actual solidarity. But when it's just, "Oh, wow, I really feel deeply about that thing. I'm really trying to understand. And now I do." That's the failure to me.

Robin Kelley: Part of the problem is that empathy itself doesn't always produce a moral response. Paul Bloom wrote this book called Against Empathy, [in which he argues that] we have limited capacity for feeling the pain of others. We tend to identify not with the collective, but with individuals, which then reinforces exclusion. Part of Bloom's argument is that we're not able to literally step outside of ourselves or our subjectivity to become someone else. So what we do is we glom onto those people we identify with.