A Requiem for Empathy?

Zimmerman.2 — Darrsie Jackson with her children Linzey (10) and Shauntina (11) react to the verdict in Sanford, FL. [Courtesy CNN.com]

I don’t think we’ll see a great many people celebrating in the streets over the verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman. No matter whose “side” you find yourself on, percolating beneath the whole spectacle seems to be an undercurrent of weariness and genuine sadness about the state of race relations in America. Let’s be more specific. A great many Americans on all sides today are deeply unsettled about the cold fact that a young man was shot to death, his lone judge, jury, and killer has been exonerated, and it didn’t have to be this way.

Long before the confrontation between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, something beautiful evidently died in the heart of George Zimmerman: the capacity to see another person as a person, as a fellow human being. Unlike Trayvon Martin’s sudden and violent death, the metaphorical dying of George Zimmerman was, I expect, a slow one, the symptom of a cancer lurking in the body of a still highly-racialized American society. The withering of empathy in Zimmerman’s heart is a symptom of the same malaise in the body public.

That’s where the rest of us enter the picture, though we’d rather hide in the background, mere innocent bystanders. Racism is borne by the host of a wounded history and culture that shapes us all. George Zimmerman is me; I am George Zimmerman. “There but for the grace of God go I.”

To say it another way, with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Few are guilty. All are responsible.” Or still again, with John Donne, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”

One wonders if a society so enthralled with the rhetoric of individual and private “rights,” especially of gun-owners and large corporations, is capable of producing human beings who still hear the music of common humanity, a beautiful but demanding music that beckons us beyond our gated, virtual, and privatized bubbles of self-interest. The affirmative answer, the possible shard of good news, is buried in our collective dis-ease with the outcome of the trial.

Zimmerman Trial Enters Jury Deliberation Phase — Sanford, Florida, July 13, 2013.
[Getty Images]

Notwithstanding the claims of Zimmerman’s attorney, this case is unequivocally about civil rights and the common good: the right for any human being, of any color, not to be deemed darkness personified because of how he or she appears to others on the surface of things—a God-given dignity that extends, by the way, even now, perhaps especially now, to George Zimmerman.

But especially to my white brothers and sisters, I want to say this: If you feel troubled by the verdict, I’d like to humbly suggest that you postpone posting your visceral and virtual outrage on Facebook pages and blogs, and first ask yourself, as I am asking myself: How can I help to build bridges of healing and hope across the color line in my own neighborhood and city? To what extent am I ready to leave my habitual comfort zones and half-tied vision of things, and open my heart to people who don’t look or think or believe or worship like me?

How many more arm-chair prophets do we need filling our airwaves with the fog of righteous outrage? The loudest of these occupy our nation’s capital, on both sides of the aisle. What our neighborhoods and cities need—what the world has always needed—are people with hearts of love and feet that move, vulnerable people, willing to risk a great deal more than “the way things are” to rebuild our neighborhoods and cities as shared spaces for celebration, where every child feels valued and can flourish. Surely our times call for a lot less talk and a great deal more courage to act with love, in quiet and hidden ways.

There is a time and a place for protest in the streets, for speaking truth loudly and collectively to power. Ours may be such a time. But political action and rancorous protest via social media won’t touch the deep spiritual malaise that eats away at our sense of responsibility for one another, and which hardens our hearts against loving the stranger, even the perceived enemy, as our very self.

“I am George Zimmerman. George Zimmerman is me.” “I am Trayvon Martin. Trayvon Martin is me.” Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

Go pray with somebody who doesn’t look like you, whose life experiences, culture, income, clothing, way of speaking, likes and dislikes, hopes and disappointments, are different than yours. Have a conversation and a meal. Share your story and listen, really listen, to theirs. Give your time and talent, but above all give your self, your beautiful, imperfect self, to people especially on the margins.

It may not seem like much, but I promise you, it will help keep the cancer at bay. It is the only thing that finally does. It may even fill your life, and somebody else’s, with surprising joy.

A closing word inspired by Pope Francis:

“The body of your wounded brother, because he is hungry, because he is thirsty, because he is naked, because it is humiliated, because he is a slave, because he’s in jail, because he is in the hospital. Those are the wounds of Jesus today.”

“We need to touch the wounds of Jesus, we must caress the wounds of Jesus, we need to bind the wounds of Jesus with tenderness, we have to kiss the wounds of Jesus, and this literally….”

“All we need to do is go out into the street.”

We – and George Zimmerman – still walk “among the living.” As the Pope reminds us almost daily, in powerfully symbolic actions and words, we still have the chance to live and love joyfully, to repair the world, to forgive. Trayvon Martin is dead, and enjoys no such privilege. Or maybe he does. Maybe he too walks among the living, and beckons us to reconcile.

Update: A powerful reflection on racial profiling and the presumption of guilt posted in US Catholic this week by Fr. Bryan Massingale of Marquette University.

7 Responses to "A Requiem for Empathy?"

Jim Bradley says:

August 18, 2013 at 3:12 pm

Your remarks regarding something dying in George Zimmerman’s heart are asinine and disgraceful. How in the hell do you know what’s in his heart? You don’t. You ask about his empathy? Where was Trayvon Martin’s empathy as he pounded George’s head into the pavement? If this case has racial overtones it’s only because people like you have mythologized and sensationalized it. You have trumped up a case of self defense into some epochal, Emmett Till-like moment. Shame on you.

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1. Christopher Pramuk says:
  
  August 18, 2013 at 9:52 pm
  
  Jim – thank you for your comment.
  
  Of course you are correct. I don’t know what is in George Zimmerman’s heart, and any such presumption would be dangerous. Yet please notice my careful language: I suggested that something beautiful “evidently” had died in his heart. I would say so again based on his actions, the concrete choices he made to judge, to follow, to pursue, even when admonished by the authorities not to. I would say the same thing about Adolf Eichmann, the men who killed Emmett Till, and a host of other perpetrators of racist violence. “By their fruits you shall know them.”
  
  Where was Trayvon Martin’s empathy? Put yourself for two seconds in the place of a young man being pursued by an armed and belligerent stranger. (Please don’t say Trayvon was “armed” with the concrete pavement.) You seem far more eager to grant Zimmerman the right to self-defense. What would you have Martin do in that situation? Had Emmett Till fought back successfully would you have defended the mob’s right to “self defense”?
  
  I raised the question of empathy following the verdict because it is something we can and must cultivate in ourselves long before the encounter or confrontation with the stranger. Empathy is not easy. It presumes the most demanding kind of inner spiritual work. Note also that if I accuse Zimmerman here of profiling (categorical lack of empathy) I also accuse myself, insofar as my heart may already be hardened against whole classes of people irrespective of knowing anything about them. “I am GZ; GZ is me.” Ask not for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee.
  
  You may call such musings mythological if you like. To my Catholic sensibilities a “myth” is not a patent falsehood but a symbolic story that tries to make sense of something beyond our grasp, in this case, the mystery of evil. By his actions Zimmerman appears to have bought into the “myth” of the young black male who is darkness personified; I subscribe to the “myth” of racist profiling in a still highly-racialized society. But I also believe in the mystery beyond-our-grasp of empathy and love, God-given, that lies beautiful and dormant in all of us, without exception. In the face of the bare facts some would call that a patent falsehood.
  
  Maybe the bare “facts” are not enough to say which myth, in this case, is more right than wrong. Moving forward, I do think it is essential to ask what the case means, beneath and beyond the bare facts, and can teach us about ourselves – before it happens again, and again, and again.
  
  BTW you and I still enjoy the privilege of doing so. Trayvon Martin doesn’t. In death he symbolizes the myth, the terrible mystery, the bare fact, of all the other disposable young black men in our society. (A statement I expect you will reject categorically.)
  
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Jim Bradley says:

August 19, 2013 at 2:35 am

Did you really just put George Zimmerman, a minority himself, in the same class as Adolph Eichmann and Till’s murderers? Another revolting, nonsensical remark. You are truly blind if you think Trayvon Martin is in any way similar to Emmett Till.

What I know is Zimmerman’s mere following of Martin did not warrant him being beaten up. You’re damn right I grant him the right of self defense. I grant that right to everyone, regardless of color. By the way, even the FBI, having investigated, said race played no role in this case. Of course you don’t believe that, viewing everything through a prism of race and class.

You want to talk facts? The fact is a young black man has more to fear from another young black man than anyone else. This is not 1865, or even 1965. Here’s what I categorically reject: I am not responsible for black men indiscriminately killing each other, joining gangs, selling drugs, or having multiple children out of wedlock. I would mention the term “personal responsibility,” but I have a feeling it wouldn’t mesh with your dreamy musings.

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Christopher Pramuk says:

August 19, 2013 at 1:46 pm

Yes – Zimmerman, Eichmann, Martin, Till, Pramuk, and Bradley – Jesus, Gandhi, King, Mother Teresa. I put all of us in the “same class,” namely, human beings. I can’t explain why some people choose love, some choose hate, some choose to seek understanding, some react to the world with cynicism and violence. Of course most of us choose both, at different times, in part from personal responsibility, and surely in part due to the environments that shape us, for better or worse. (I write about black-on-black violence and other endemic social problems at length in my book, but never abstracted from our collective history, as if such problems emerged in a vacuum.)

As I noted above, you and I ascribe to different myths. Both myths reflect larger truths in our society to some degree, yet neither can explain the “facts” in every particular case all of the time. That’s the problem with myths – they tell a story, a grand narrative that helps makes some sense of our limited view of things – yet very often they don’t square with the particulars of a case or a particular person’s life story. (A problem too often lost on race “sensationalists” on every side.)

Given what we know, to link GZ’s actions with race profiling is not, in my judgment, sensationalist, nor is it outrageous to link such profiling with the kind of distorted thinking that was quite “normal” in Jim Crow south or in Nazi Germany. That profiling couldn’t be proven on strictly legal terms in this case (see FBI) without reasonable doubt does not demonstrate that it wasn’t present. But here I grant the “myth” I ascribe to is vulnerable. Maybe GZ just didn’t like the way the kid walked?

Your myth breaks down in this particular case, it seems to me, at several points. For example instead of acknowledging Martin’s right to self-defense you trot out the litany of social problems in the black community. Your myth thus renders Martin guilty simply by association. (That’s called profiling.)

Our starting points are clearly so different it seems unlikely we’ll change each others’ minds. Which of our myths better illumines the truth in this case we’ll have to leave to God. And there again we have more in common (our flawed humanity) than what divides us. Where we fail or refuse to see may God have mercy on us both.

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1. Jim Bradley says:
  
  August 20, 2013 at 7:03 am
  
  Perhaps you need to stop talking so much about myths and start talking more about facts. I said I grant the right of self defense to anyone, that includes Trayvon Marin. The fact is George Zimmerman had visible injuries. The fact is a witness said it was Martin who was “grounding and pounding” him. Unlike you, however, I will be fair to the other side. If indeed Zimmerman started the actual physical confrontation that led to Martin’s death then he should have been convicted of a crime.
  
  Also, you are a hypocrite to say that I render Martin “guilty by association.” I’ve actually read your latest book, and that’s exactly what you do to white people. The term “white privilege” is simply code for collective guilt. The liberation philosophy that you subscribe to does not heal race relations; it inflames them. Furthermore, you do not write “at length” about black social problems in your book. You mention them in passing only. You make it clear in your book that it is still mostly the white man’s fault.
  If you choose to wear the hair shirt of collective guilt, that is your choice. I will not. I will be judged by my actions alone, my “fruit.” So should everyone else.
  
  Reply
Christopher Pramuk says:

August 21, 2013 at 12:47 am

Jim – this will be my last comment to this thread, but feel free to add your final thoughts. Your comments have challenged and stretched me. At the same time you reduce my nine chapters to a couple of thinly polemical soundbytes. Nevertheless I will try to respond to your critique in good faith.

As you ought to but don’t acknowledge I take some pains in my book to both accept the reality of white privilege and also offer a careful critique its categorical usage. Like any construct it risks ignoring the small stories that don’t conform to its neat lines, thus “obliterating the persons in the room,” as I write on p. 3-4. I’m also careful throughout the book (as a number of reviewers have noted) to avoid the liberal white man’s “guilt for guilt’s sake” in favor of the (religious/mystical) call to kinship and shared responsibility for one another. Citing Baum’s distinction between “guilt by personal implication” and “guilt by common heritage,” I write: “To assume a share of culpability is not always about guilt in the proper sense, though it may be that; often ‘it is more aptly described as grieving or sorrowing,” the readiness to mourn and “a keener sense of personal responsibility.” (Page 169, n. 5)

As is also clear throughout the book the Catholic tradition to which I adhere has always maintained a strong sense of the reality of collective guilt, by the name of original sin, “structural” or “systemic sin” and “structural injustice,” identifying racism as one of many social evils that we all participate in, even where I may not be personally “guilty” as such for individual racist thought or actions. We are not culpable in the same way for structural sin as we are for personal sin. Yet as part of the people of God, not just individuals, we share responsibility for one another’s flourishing and freedom.

And so yes, in faith, I choose to wear “the hair shirt of collective guilt” for such sin – though I would prefer to call it “shared responsibility.” While “few are guilty, all are responsible.” I willingly share the burden of American history with respect to African American and Native peoples not for guilt’s sake or misguided self-punishment (to what end?) but for the sake of love and Christian discipleship, ownership and responsibility for the society in which I participate and from which I and my family for many generations has benefited.

But this is all in the book. What your accusation of hypocrisy overlooks is this: There is a crucial difference between my willingness to share in “guilt by common heritage” as a white person in US society and making Trayvon or any black kid “guilty by association” with the litany of social problems afflicting the black community. In the first case I freely choose to “bear the cross” in mourning and solidarity with others. (I can invite but cannot and won’t compel you to do the same.) In the second case, I impose judgment and guilt on the other without any reference to the person or benefit of personal encounter. The difference is also uncovered by any cursory study of power dynamics (i.e. social/political privilege) in US society. I won’t rehearse the arguments of the book or extensive notes here. But to pretend power differentials aren’t real and dangerous in the public square (especially for peoples of color) is illusory.

No doubt racism and racist violence can and does manifest in reverse – where white persons are automatically perceived as “guilty” and therefore as justified targets of mistrust, hatred, violence. Rarely however do the political/legal power structures in US society support, hide, or exonerate such black on white racism. Rather to the contrary. How many whites, white suburban communities, or white policeman have suffered under systematic racial profiling or the “war on drugs”? Most whites enjoy the unconscious privilege of not being so targeted. Because school funding is tied to local property tax revenues we have a self-fulfilling cycle of white flight and “separate” but “far from equal” conditions in our public schools. This is not to exonerate individuals or the black community from responsibility. It is to acknowledge that the playing field in fact is still very far from level. I wish it were otherwise.

Thus I suggest it will take both political-structural solutions and spiritual-personal discipline and responsibility on all sides to address concrete realities that cripple people’s freedom at all levels (see p. 43-45). I grant that I do not treat the internal social problems of the black community “at great length,” however many of the studies and black authors I cite, more qualified than I am to speak about this, certainly do.

Your apparently wholesale rejection of everything I’ve said or ever will say on this subject seems to boil down to the basic tension between individual freedom and shared freedom and responsibility in community. I don’t see these as mutually exclusive but I see the former, in fact, finding its grounding and flourishing (or faltering) in the latter. As much as we like to trumpet individual rights and responsibilities – the self-made man who succeeds in life “all by myself thank you” – your freedom and mine never operates in a social vacuum. Whatever fruits I produce are not just my own but partly the inheritance of gifts (and wounded histories) given me by others, including the society in which I live.

The liberationist perspective seems to me the heartbeat and constant challenge of the biblical and prophetic imagination, from Exodus right through the life and teachings of Jesus. Even so my book isn’t reducible to a liberationist perspective or sociological analysis of power relationships – I appeal no less to the mystical/contemplative experience of grace in unity with all creation (Genesis). We are all creatures, radically dependent on God, the earth, and one another. To deny this covenantal relationship, or worse, to rank the individual (black, white, brown, red, green or blue) above all the rest, is the primordial sin. Signing off, Chris

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Jim Bradley says:

August 22, 2013 at 10:24 am

I appreciate your replies. You say as a white man you freely accept the “guilt by common heritage,” even though you yourself are no racist. On the other hand, you think profiling of young black men is wrong even though that particular demographic commits an inordinate amount of crime in this country. I still see that as a double standard. But that’s ok because one is the oppressed and the other is the oppressor.

I also take issue with this remark. “Rarely however do the political/legal power structures in US society support, hide, or exonerate such black on white racism.” That is patently false. Our corrupt, overwhelmingly progressive media in this country routinely ignores or magnifies the stories that it sees fit. That is why the Trayvon Martin story has become a mythology. On the other had, have you ever heard of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. They were a white couple who were raped, tortured and murdered by some black thugs. The details are horrific, ten times worse that the Martin story. And yet, the major networks never covered it. As another example we have Eric Holder refusing to prosecute the extremist Black Panthers for intimidation at a polling place. I think it’s also interesting that you mention the deplorable schools many blacks attend. Public education in this country is dominated at all levels by progressives such as yourself.

I will also say this. You and I obviously have very different views of Christianity. I see it as a faith of radical personal responsibility. God offers, but does not force, salvation. It is up to the individual to humble himself before God, admit his mistakes and pledge to do better. There are no chosen people, only those who choose God. If you reject this gift or accept it casually, He will reject you in kind. As Jesus says in Matthew, “Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” Each of us has free will. Each of us makes decisions. Jesus again says in Matthew “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.”

Finally, I will leave you with this. I believe you are a good, caring man. I salute you for adopting two children from Haiti, who undoubtedly will have a much brighter future in this country, flawed as it is. As a final critique, however, I think your liberation theology at times comes too close to another creed, one which has caused the death of millions: Godless Marxism. The United States, in my view, became the most prosperous in the world because of individual liberty and capitalism. The former I think you undervalue, while the latter you have decried. Or at least you have decried consumerism. Remember, millions of people are desperate to come here, and it isn’t because the U.S.A. is hopelessly racist and oppressive to the poor. Fare thee well.

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