Whiteness & Empathy
Trump’s America
The idea of “empathy” seemed to take the US by storm in the wake of the 2016 election. We on the left were enjoined to display more of it for Trump voters. I remember the New York Times put out a list of books we should all read in order to understand how a white supremacist maniac could have been elected to the office of the president in the 21st century. I read them all. But over time, it became clear to me and many others that we didn’t exactly have an empathy problem so much as an allocation of empathy problem. That is, there’s more than enough empathy to go around in this world. The election just demonstrated how it is selectively meted out. And in the wake of the ridiculous yet terrifying “Justice for J6 rally” last weekend, it’s hard not to see that one side believes they are entitled to more of it than the other.
I wasn’t alone in thinking this. When a wave of commentators urged us not to ignore the pain suffered by poor whites in this country, journalist Jamelle Bouie pushed back, hard. In a 2016 article for Slate entitled “There’s No Such Thing as a Good Trump Voter,” Bouie pointed out that these calls on the left for empathy for Trumpers were entirely misplaced. People could lose their rights, perhaps their lives, under a Trump administration. We now know that to have been true. As he wrote, “All the solicitude, outrage, and moral telepathy being deployed in defense of Trump supporters—who voted for a racist who promised racist outcomes—is perverse, bordering on abhorrent.” It was as though Bouie was suggesting that one way white supremacy operates is to hoard not just power and resources, but to lay claim to the idea of empathy itself. In Trump’s America, whiteness and empathy are linked.
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What is empathy?
What, exactly, do we mean when we speak of “empathy?” As it turns out, scholars have recently begun to explore the concept in light of what’s been going on in the US. In 2016, psychologist Paul Bloom was just putting the finishing touches on a book called Against Empathy. There, he argues that empathy has its dark sides. The result of the 2016 election only confirmed his suspicions. Summarizing his book’s argument, Bloom writes for Vox that empathy is “biased, tribal, and innumerate,” adding, “it favors the close over the far, the one over the many. It leads to shortsighted and unfair decisions that make the world worse.” The real zinger? “[I]t makes us cruel.” And just like that, Bloom broke the imagined link between more empathy and morally good behavior that had governed my worldview.
Not too long after, and clearly in conversation with Bloom, German literature scholar Fritz Breithaupt published The Dark Side of Empathy. Drawing on French historian Lynn Hunt’s work on the novel in revolutionary France, Breithaupt points out that empathy has a long history in “the West” (whatever that means). Empathy as we now understand it is a concept that developed in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, just as the idea of "the individual" was starting to appear. As we became progressively unyoked from group affiliation on the basis of class, religion, and so on, as we became individuals in the Western sense of the term, the new world that dawned before us required that we have pity, sympathy, and compassion for one another in order to reestablish any social or political attachment ever again. These are the roots of empathy in our modern society, he says, and they may be ill-suited for our twenty-first-century political and social realities.
Breithaupt defines empathy simply as “the coexperience of another’s situation” (10). He insists on what so many of us often thought during the dark years of 2016 to 2020 – that Trump is remarkably talented when it comes to manipulating the empathy of his base. He manages to commandeer all empathy for himself, casting himself as a “persecuted victim-hero” (111). Breithaupt elaborates:
Trump's anger attracts the empathy of his supporters because they too feel victimized by illegal immigration, multiculturalism, feminism, globalism, East-Coast elites, and unfair depictions in the media. During his campaign, Trump promised to speak up for these victims of globalization, political correctness, and the overreach of the federal government. In fact, he made them aware that they could present themselves as 'victims' even though they might be part of the dominant American culture (pages 106-7, emphasis mine).
What Breithaupt describes is similar to Bouie’s own interpretation. Namely, that the politics of white identity have led to claims of white victimhood on the right, and it’s what Trump and his base thrive on. Trump successfully manipulates their empathy and redirects it towards himself. In the process, Trumpers learn to insist that they, too, deserve more empathy in a world that they believe is invested in taking it away from them. For them, it is a zero-sum game; the more other people get it, the less they have. They are angry because they believe they possess the only rightful claim to empathy. They are, in other words, entitled to empathy.
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Entitled to Empathy
Kate Manne’s work on male entitlement has given me a useful framework to think about how white entitlement works these days. In Entitled, Manne explores how misogyny and sexism work together to keep women – and especially women of color – in check. She argues, among other things, that women contend with deeply-rooted social expectations that they owe people, and men especially, what she calls “traditionally feminine goods.” These “goods” include everything from care and attention to sex and labor. Moreover, misogyny – what she refers to as “the law enforcement branch of patriarchy” – also operates to punish those women who refuse to offer up such goods. It also disciplines women who would dare to lay claim to traditionally masculine goods, including power, authority, and claims to knowledge (11).
I think this model works well to describe white entitlement, as well. White supremacy has long created expectations that to be white is to have unlimited access to certain prerogatives that other groups of people do not and should not. These goods include a variety of rights, benefits, and privileges that social justice struggles over the last fifty odd years have contested. In Trump’s America, white entitlement claims a monopoly on power, on freedom, and on violence. What else was the January 6th insurrection about if not that?
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White Entitlement & DEI
Given my preoccupations, I couldn’t help but think of the many ways that white entitlement to empathy manifests in higher education environments. For example, most position descriptions for Chief Diversity Officers (CDOs) emphasize that candidates must be able to demonstrate “civility” and “flexibility” as well as “diplomacy” and “empathy.” I find it odd that senior leaders would feel the need to name these attributes for DEI candidates when, in fact, they ought to be considered competencies for any position in any workplace. To me, these read as defensive, as though they aim to hold DEI leaders in check before they even begin. Ultimately, these words broadcast to DEI candidates: “Preserve white psychological comfort at all costs.” And the best way to do that is for us to show ever more empathy.
Empathy, we are told, is the only way we will get things done. We’re constantly responsible for cultivating empathy among our white, white-passing, and white-adjacent colleagues who might otherwise act as obstacles in the pursuit of institutional equity. And when they become defensive and volatile, we must remember to respond with empathy because their reactions are to be expected. Their (mis)behavior is thus normalized; the expectation that we soothe those misdirected emotions, naturalized. It is ironic that we, as DEI practitioners, are expected to produce precisely the empathy that we ourselves are so often denied in the workplace.
Based on my own experiences, I’ve often thought that lack of emotional self-management in the workplace is another good conferred by white entitlement, as though they get to operate by different rules that the rest of us. I’ve had white men – some colleagues, some supervisors – explode at me in the workplace, and expect me to take the abuse. Sometimes it’s as a result of white guilt, a sneaking suspicion that they might be in the wrong which is wholly inconsistent with their self-image as a “good person.” I understand that feeling. But I do not understand the white eruption that follows it. Could it also be that they see me as a good obedient brown girl who can and should serve as a receptacle for their rage? They’ve only relent when I started to cry. My performance of weakness soothes their fragile egos. And I am left with the shame of knowing that I resorted to tears – the weapon of weak women – to find a way out of that room.
To be clear, I’m not saying that empathy is an empty value. It’s critical if we wish to be a functioning society, to be in right community with one another. But I do wonder why empathy seems like such a one-way street right now, why some of us are asked to produce more of it than others, why it is that empathy is a requirement for some, an entitlement for others.
I’ve written elsewhere about my thoughts on the current state of DEI in predominantly white institutions. But I never mentioned one of the dirty little secrets of our industry, the one thing that’s left out of the job description. Oh, sure, they want “visionary leaders” who can enact a “transformative agenda” including “a far-reaching strategic plan.” But what they don’t say is that, if DEI practitioners really expect to get things done, they will have to bear the brunt of white rage. They will be mistreated and they will be expected to take it. They must give and give until that well of empathy runs dry, and then they must give some more.
If I had it my way (and I won’t), I would like to see the following position description when predominantly white institutions seek out DEI practitioners, especially CDOs:
Our predominantly white institution seeks a Chief Diversity Officer who, with the firm backing of the entire senior leadership team, will undertake the challenging task of leading anti-racist and anti-bias efforts within our institution. Critically, we recognize that new efforts aimed at creating institutional equity may come as a culture shock for members of our community, including staff, faculty, and students. We as senior leaders commit to working supportively and collaboratively with the chosen candidate in order to navigate the challenges of institutional whiteness that we recognize exist at our institution, as at so many others. In order to ensure that the successful candidate can enact the bold agenda we hope to see, we intend to hold all members of our community to the highest standards of professionalism – including humility, empathy, and respect.
Actions must follow words, of course. But if I saw a position description like this, I would know that institutional leaders have engaged in critical reflection and that they mean business. I would know that not only would I likely receive the requisite support to do my job, but that the institution recognizes the steep barriers I face. I might even believe that, for once, I had found an environment where abuse against DEI practitioners is not tolerated, where community accountability matters, where no one group or person is entitled to more empathy and respect than any other. I might believe, in other words, that I had found an institutional home.