Empathy, not 'race'

The internet and some social media have been buzzing over a New York Times op-ed, “Can My Children Be Friends With White People?”, that was published on Sunday. The author, Ekow N. Yankah, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, I assume is of African heritage. A number of supporters of President Donald Trump were outraged by the statement, that we as a nation are being dragged backwards. 

But the point that Yankah is making is not about race per se; it’s about empathy. And on that score I think he’s right.

Indeed, he wrote, “Real friendship is impossible without the ability to trust others, without knowing that your well-being is important to them. The desire to create, maintain or wield power over others destroys the possibility of friendship. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous dream of black and white children holding hands was a dream precisely because he realized that in Alabama, conditions of dominance made real friendship between white and black people impossible.” 

In other words, he’s not talking about casual friendships where people drink beer, watch sports or in some cases even worship in the same church together. It’s about being able to let one’s hair down and share his or her stories and experiences without being judged or attacked for holding a different point of view.

And as a person of color I would agree that Trump, with his longstanding and documented decades-long racist practices, anti-Muslim and anti-Mexican rhetoric during last year’s presidential campaign and tacit support of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Va. over the summer, has indeed made race relations more difficult by sabotaging the hard conversations needed to repair the breach. 

At the turn of the millennium I was dating a white woman who wanted to marry me but for us as a couple and family — she had three sons from previous marriages — to attend the church that was across the street from her (that was precisely why she chose that church). The trouble was that on a visit I noticed some literature that one of her sons was bringing home that I suspected that was racist, which turned out to be the case; over time I had other experiences that demonstrated to me at least the insensitivity of church members, including another son, when it came to such matters and because I refused to attend that church and she wouldn’t leave the relationship ended up being destroyed.

But when I shared these situations with some people I knew to be Trump supporters I was told, “You were looking for it.” Oh, no, I wasn’t, and that’s the kind of disrespect I’m talking about — the kind of disrespect that causes folks to label "Black Lives Matter" falsely as a hate group and former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick as being divisive for protesting police brutality for "taking a knee" last year during the national anthem, which isn't remotely true either.

One thing I have been privileged to hear over the last three decades is the incessant pain some women friends (and, in some cases, girlfriends) have shared with me over being sexually abused, including raped. Since I’m not a woman I cannot myself enter into that pain, but I can show empathy toward them and like to think I’ve done so. Nearly eight years ago, a singer in one of my bands shared with me some of the details of her abuse, which was why she was in the area in the first place, and I felt the need to tell her in response, “I will never lay my hand against you.”

She responded, “I didn’t think you would.” I can’t tell you how that felt — knowing that I had truly heard someone not like me. 

You see, it’s not enough simply to say that you don’t support racist behavior or have friends of color. They need to hear that you’ll go to the mat with them when push comes to shove, that when an incident happens to them or they feel threatened you’ll stand with them.

As the Rev. R. Loren Sandford, pastor of New Song Church and Ministries in Denver, wrote to white Christians in charisma.com about the George Zimmerman verdict in 2013, “[L]isten compassionately to the hurt delivered by the lingering taint of racism with which our nation still struggles. Nothing can be done now about the verdict, but we can certainly work to bring reconciliation in the wake of it. In fact, this is our commission from Jesus who is Lord of all — Jew, Greek, white, black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American. We must be ministers of reconciliation together, especially now.”