Two or three times in quick succession, a writer whose work I admire (Son of Baldwin), has written about Black apathy in the face of White injury. In Let them F--king Die - written after the mid-June shooting at a Virginia baseball diamond; Palindrome - written days later on the return from North Korea of Otto Warmbier; and I Don't Give A F--k About Justine Damond - written in the shadow of the Minnesota police officer shooting of the 'most innocent victim' Justine Damond, he explores this idea of the withholding of empathy. Son of Baldwin has made a single point (which you can probably glean from the titles): "I'm done witcyall. I have no tears to shed."
I see myself as a decent human being and I know that decent human beings feel and express empathy but just about now, I gots nothin'. Sadly, in the case of Justine - her name is NOT Damond - Ruszczyk, all I can summon by way of response is emptiness. There's simply nothing there.
Perhaps it is that this has occurred in the same Minnesota that quite recently managed to find Philando Castile's murderer not guilty? Is it that these very same Minnesotans not a month ago, watched the Castile dashcam video and managed to determine that the shooting was reasonable and yet now, without dashcam proof, find themselves of one accord? Is it perhaps that the convenient White rage that appears now on Justine's death was entirely absent at Philando's? I don't know which of these it is, but what I do know is that the well of empathy from which I would normally be filling myself, is running quite dry and I'm already parched. Can empathetic death be far away?
Clearly, if Son of Baldwin's writing (and his readership) is anything to go by, Black wells of empathy are nearly as dry as the Mo-ephing-jave Desert.
I read each of those three Son of B pieces carefully. I was very uncomfortable as I read the first but by the third, I knew what to expect and I had no trouble with the conclusions I was sure he would draw. They were now close to my own. And anyone who knows me well, knows that in all things, I lead with kindness. For me, this is a long (and previously unimaginable) emotional distance to have traversed.
When I was no more than 13, a dog was run over by the car in front of us. Both of my siblings and I were in the back seat. My mother, driving, shouted immediately, "Elle, don't look!" I don't like the word 'tender-hearted' but that's who I've always been. It's who I've always been known to be. In that moment, my mother's first thought was, "If she sees this thing, she won't sleep for weeks." She wasn't wrong.
The me of even three weeks ago, would have had something, even some little tickle over this latest death. I am sorry Justine is gone. But rage? Despair? Grief? They, as Son of B puts it, are all quite busy: Aiyana, Tamir, Jordan, Richard, Renisha, Michael, Sandra. My grief is busy. I swear to you, it is absolutely at capacity. I have nothing left over.
That I could reach this point of simply having no emotion with which to respond to so awful an event, is - or was previously - unthinkable.
Here's what my transition tells me: none of us is inured to the violence in our surroundings. None of us is unaffected by it; none of us escapes the consequences of the dehumanization of others. This shouldn't need to be said, but apparently it does. We cannot be surrounded by toxins and maintain a pure system. It is not possible. Science won't allow it.
I read this thought on a Native American history page once, [paraphrasing and unable to give credit because I didn't save the link, foolishly]: colonization is as harmful to colonizer as it is to colonized. Do we think, as a nation, that hundreds of years of mistreatment and willfully selling a narrative that some people are not worthy; years of holding a belief that "the Black [and brown, and Native] man had no rights that the White man was bound to respect" (Dred Scott decision, Chief Justice Taney's opinion), has had no effect on the soul of this nation? It's just not possible.
I've written about this before, but it's worth restating. We cannot escape the consequences of our history: soulless is who we are; empathy-less is who we are. Black folk may just now be catching up but you know how it is, what with racism and exclusion, we're always last to the party. Our invitation may have been lost in the mail, but we're here at last!!!!!! We have arrived. Let the soulless party begin.
What will we do when Black empathy dries up? When Native empathy evaporates? When Chinese empathy is withdrawn? When Hispanic empathy goes 'Poof!"? When every excluded or brutalized minority's empathy shrivels like a raisin in the sun? Who will we be then, as a nation? WHAT will we be?
My guess? We will be precisely the thing that some nations already know us to be.
The phrase from Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan) keeps coming to mind,
I have an empty hole in my gut over this killing and I'm sorry for that but I have nothing. There is a space where empathy should be. There's no emotion, neither disgust nor a lack thereof. Just nothing. Zero. I would say that America broke me, but that's bound to get me in trouble.
It is said that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. I'm not quite there yet, but I see it in the middle distance. I'm trying to slow my rate of approach, but if there are brakes on this train, they ain't working.
I'm just trying to brace for impact at this point.
I see myself as a decent human being and I know that decent human beings feel and express empathy but just about now, I gots nothin'. Sadly, in the case of Justine - her name is NOT Damond - Ruszczyk, all I can summon by way of response is emptiness. There's simply nothing there.
Perhaps it is that this has occurred in the same Minnesota that quite recently managed to find Philando Castile's murderer not guilty? Is it that these very same Minnesotans not a month ago, watched the Castile dashcam video and managed to determine that the shooting was reasonable and yet now, without dashcam proof, find themselves of one accord? Is it perhaps that the convenient White rage that appears now on Justine's death was entirely absent at Philando's? I don't know which of these it is, but what I do know is that the well of empathy from which I would normally be filling myself, is running quite dry and I'm already parched. Can empathetic death be far away?
Clearly, if Son of Baldwin's writing (and his readership) is anything to go by, Black wells of empathy are nearly as dry as the Mo-ephing-jave Desert.
I read each of those three Son of B pieces carefully. I was very uncomfortable as I read the first but by the third, I knew what to expect and I had no trouble with the conclusions I was sure he would draw. They were now close to my own. And anyone who knows me well, knows that in all things, I lead with kindness. For me, this is a long (and previously unimaginable) emotional distance to have traversed.
When I was no more than 13, a dog was run over by the car in front of us. Both of my siblings and I were in the back seat. My mother, driving, shouted immediately, "Elle, don't look!" I don't like the word 'tender-hearted' but that's who I've always been. It's who I've always been known to be. In that moment, my mother's first thought was, "If she sees this thing, she won't sleep for weeks." She wasn't wrong.
The me of even three weeks ago, would have had something, even some little tickle over this latest death. I am sorry Justine is gone. But rage? Despair? Grief? They, as Son of B puts it, are all quite busy: Aiyana, Tamir, Jordan, Richard, Renisha, Michael, Sandra. My grief is busy. I swear to you, it is absolutely at capacity. I have nothing left over.
That I could reach this point of simply having no emotion with which to respond to so awful an event, is - or was previously - unthinkable.
Here's what my transition tells me: none of us is inured to the violence in our surroundings. None of us is unaffected by it; none of us escapes the consequences of the dehumanization of others. This shouldn't need to be said, but apparently it does. We cannot be surrounded by toxins and maintain a pure system. It is not possible. Science won't allow it.
I read this thought on a Native American history page once, [paraphrasing and unable to give credit because I didn't save the link, foolishly]: colonization is as harmful to colonizer as it is to colonized. Do we think, as a nation, that hundreds of years of mistreatment and willfully selling a narrative that some people are not worthy; years of holding a belief that "the Black [and brown, and Native] man had no rights that the White man was bound to respect" (Dred Scott decision, Chief Justice Taney's opinion), has had no effect on the soul of this nation? It's just not possible.
I've written about this before, but it's worth restating. We cannot escape the consequences of our history: soulless is who we are; empathy-less is who we are. Black folk may just now be catching up but you know how it is, what with racism and exclusion, we're always last to the party. Our invitation may have been lost in the mail, but we're here at last!!!!!! We have arrived. Let the soulless party begin.
What will we do when Black empathy dries up? When Native empathy evaporates? When Chinese empathy is withdrawn? When Hispanic empathy goes 'Poof!"? When every excluded or brutalized minority's empathy shrivels like a raisin in the sun? Who will we be then, as a nation? WHAT will we be?
My guess? We will be precisely the thing that some nations already know us to be.
The phrase from Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan) keeps coming to mind,
"No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."Poor, nasty, brutish and short. For some of us, we're already there. For those of you newly arrived or daily arriving, come on in! Get comfy. You're gonna be here a while........
I have an empty hole in my gut over this killing and I'm sorry for that but I have nothing. There is a space where empathy should be. There's no emotion, neither disgust nor a lack thereof. Just nothing. Zero. I would say that America broke me, but that's bound to get me in trouble.
It is said that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. I'm not quite there yet, but I see it in the middle distance. I'm trying to slow my rate of approach, but if there are brakes on this train, they ain't working.
I'm just trying to brace for impact at this point.
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