Empathy means “the ability to understand and share the feelings of others” (Miriam- Webster dictionary). Empathy requires that we recognize that other people feel very differently than others and it requires that the pain they feel exists in other people even if we don’t understand why (Pg. 393). Empathy is society’s ability to understand the anger and hurt that is caused by racism. Some examples of empathy can be looked at when we think back to the Travon Martin case. Many white mothers felt empathy towards not only Trayvon’s mother but all African American mothers once the news was announced that the shooter walked free. Many people felt the anger and pain that his parents felt because they have children of their own and understood that his …show more content…
family was a result of racism. Racial justice is defined as a proactive reinforcement of policies, practices, and actions that produce unbiased power, and it is a society without racial oppression (Pg. 392). Racial justice means something different to everyone, for some it means eradicating white supremacy which means that white are superior to others and for others it means that we must grant reimbursements for the people who have suffered from racism. We see examples of white supremacy and privilege when law enforcements consider whites more important such as going about arresting them a different way compared to African Americans or jumping to negative assumptions when they see an African American in a predominantly white neighborhood. Taking the South Carolina shooter as an example of white privilege and white supremacy, the shooter, Dylann Roof, attacked an African church and killed nine people. Authorities put a bulletproof vest on him to protect him from outside people. If this were an African American who killed nine people at a white church than the results would have probably been different where they would have probably shot and killed him because many people consider black men as “thugs” or “gangsters” who are portrayed as very strong and a threat to the authorities. (Pg. 115) We allow these things to happen to certain races because of dehumanization which is when people make someone else feel less of a human and not worthy of basic human rights. Racism is a philosophy that makes us believe that some people are less important than others. There are four steps to take to achieve racial justice which will be further explained throughout this essay. A man by the name of Eric Yamamoto listed four steps to start the path to racial justice and argued that these four steps were the key to begin the process to heal the wrong that has been caused by racism.
The 4 steps that Eric listed was recognition, responsibility, reconstruction, and reparation. It’s important to mention that these four steps have a particular order because without one step, the other steps wouldn’t be possible. The first step Eric addresses is recognition which he defines as “recognizing the harms created by racism” (Pg. 393). Recognition requires us to have empathy and being able to come to terms with the bad things caused by racism because it affects people’s lives and their look on society. Some examples that we can relate to recognition is the Armenian Genocide because many places including the United States don’t recognize it as something bad that has happened in our world. Based on my group projects topic, institutional racism specifically in the educational system, this first step would be focused on the idea that we need to acknowledge and recognize that there is racism throughout the educational system. For example, the college in Missouri had issues with racism and it wasn’t until people started to speak up to defend themselves to say that racism was occurring and it was wrong, that the school started to acknowledge that maybe the president shouldn’t have said what he said because it affected so many people’s lives. Once we recognize that harm …show more content…
was caused, we must figure out who should take the fall for it which leads me to Eric’s next step. The next step to Eric’s path to racial justice is responsibility, which he defines as “acknowledging that someone is responsible for the harms inflicted on racial groups” (Pg. 393). This means that we must find someone to take responsibility for the racist actions whether it be a random person or the United States government. An example where we can see responsibility is through slavery. In 1996, a white manager in Texaco was caught on tape belittling black workers and made plans to destroy the evidence. The black employees took him to court and Texaco agreed to pay the black workers $115 million and the court issued pay raises. In this example, Texaco accepted responsibility for their wrong doings and also fixed the wage gap between African Americans and whites. We need someone to take responsibility for the division in education that is based on our skin color. Before 1954, the United States made many laws that prevented many non-white children from having access to the best educational opportunities (Pg. 207). Between 1896 and 1954 it was legal for states to deny anyone who was not white access to public schools (Pg. 211). So in regards to the educational inequality, the United States should take responsibility for the segregation we still face today in the educational system. After we establish who should take responsibility, it is important to take action in making a difference and fixing the issue. Reconstruction is the next step in Eric’s four dimensions of racial justice which he defines as “acting on the knowledge that harm has been inflicted on racial groups” (Pg.
394). Once we recognize that something bad as occurred and who is responsible, then the next step is to take action such as an apology. In 1995, a church apologized to African Americans for overlooking and prolonging individual and systematic racism in this lifetime (Pg. 394). In educational systems, we must give an apology to the children and parents who have been victims of the segregation within the schools system. Before 1954, children who were not white were prevented from attending white schools under a policy called “separate but equal” (Pg. 208). During slavery, many African Americans were forbidden to read and write by laws and the slaves who were considered free were not allowed to enroll in public schools (Pg. 208). In this case, the children would get an apology from the United States for not allowing them to read and write and for not allowing the free slaves to have access to an education. This apology leads us to Eric’s next step where we actually make something happen in fixing the
issue. Reparation is the final dimension that Eric states and he defined it as “repairing damage and providing restitution for past harms against racial groups” (Pg. 394). A man by the name of William Darity argued that there are three types of injustices that helped reparations towards African Americans, they include slavery, legal segregation, and discrimination. Reparations, in regards to African Americans, should not only argue slavery but should include Jim Crow to present-day racism (Pg. 394). An example of reparation is the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 that acknowledges that there has been massive incidents of injustices against Japanese Americans, which as a cause of the act, congress payed each victim a total of $20,000. (Pg. 394). Some of the ways that we can repair the damage done in the educational system is by funding for free tutoring and educational programs that will help fix the educational gap. Other ways we can help is by granting students of minorities’ scholarships that will help kids further their education. The most interesting lesson I learned was from chapter thirteen which talked about immigration policies and the reason I found this to be most interesting is because my father came from Mexico himself. Although he wasn’t apart of many of the operations that occurred, it is interesting to know that my ancestors were probably involved in things like Operation Wetback. Operation Wetback was the roundup of many Mexicans by the U.S. border patrol that occurred from 1950-1954 (Pg. 365). I will use this knowledge to further educate my family and also to find out if I have any family members who were impacted by immigration policies.
According to Arianna Huffington in the article “Empathy: What We Need Now”, during hardships and instability of society, empathy is needed to find solutions to those issues. Huffington writes about how empathy is needed in our country in order to produce a positive social change. She begins by giving an example of a movement that Martin Luther King created and how empathy was a part of this movement. King as well spoke of how empathy is the sign of living. To become involved in the situations of humanity in order to improve it, displays that empathy is the core of a human’s existence. After reading this article, I do agree with Huffington about how individuals need to fully understand and put themselves within the situation to fully comprehend the issue to solve.
Empathy is used to create change in the world by reaching out to the emotions of people and attending to them. It is used to help others learn and decide on matters that would not be reasonable without feelings attached to them. Empathy helps bring together communities that would have long ago drifted apart, but instead welcomed all who were different. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. This attribute of human-beings really allows us to not only attend to situations as if they were our own, but it allows us to feel most of what others feel because humans are very much alike in some ways. In many of the articles and novels that we have read this quarter, characters from different pieces of context have portrayed empathy whether it was toward
“Simple Justice” was written by Richard Kluger and reviews the history of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregation, and African America’s century-long struggle for equality under law. It began with the inequities of slavery to freedom bells to the forcing of integration in schools and the roots of laws with affect on African Americans. This story reveals the hate caused the disparagement of African Americans in America over three hundred years. I learned how African Americans were ultimately acknowledged by their simple justice. The American version of the holocaust was presented in the story. In 1954 the different between how segregation and slavery were not in fashion when compared with dishonesty of how educating African American are separate from Caucasian was justified by the various branches of government.
Empathy is imperative to teach kids from a young age in order to help them recognize mental states, such as thoughts and emotions, in themselves and others. Vital lessons, such as walking in another’s shoes or looking at a situation in their perspective, apprehends the significance of the feelings of another. Our point of view must continuously be altered, recognizing the emotions and background of the individual. We must not focus all of our attention on our self-interest. In the excerpt, Empathy, written by Stephen Dunn, we analyze the process of determining the sentiment of someone.
Robert Coles, a psychiatrist, wrote an essay called “Children of Crisis.” He focused on an interview that involved a young boy who was caught in the midst of desegregation in the South. The author’s thesis was as follows; “I think we tend to overlook the fact that Negroes—not only those from the skimpy Negro middle class – have had a widespread interest in education, though to be sure it has necessarily been education of a special kind.” The young boy interviewed, John, explained his troubles he encountered while dealing with desegregation within school. I think Negroes should have the same importance and treated the same as whites are. I do not agree with the other race having to live their life knowing they will be tormented by whites.
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. Compassion and empathy inspire change in a society whether it be changing individual’s usual way of thinking, uniting, or accepting those who are different. Individuals can use their compassion for something to cause a change in someone else’s thought of that thing. Several people have used empathy to bring others feelings together. People can also use empathy to show others to have acceptance towards ones who may not be like themselves.
Ruch & Julkunen (2016) further define empathy is attempting to put ourselves in another person’s place to understand their sentiment. This gives us the ability to perceive the service users views and feelings. According to David Howe (2013) if there is no empathy this can this can make it difficult for the conversation to flow consequently the service users’ needs could be overlooked this would make it difficult to sense the service user’s emotions. However Tsang (2016) disputes that empathy can constrain the ability to understand a person or their sentiment due to language, or ethnic differences. These can be barriers making it difficult to understand the person and the empathy can be
Almost every person who has stepped foot in a college classroom has experienced ethnic diversity within the students in the room. This has not always been the case however. Up until 1954 blacks and whites attended different schools and weren’t allowed the same schooling opportunities. It took a young girl, Linda Brown, and her father, Oliver Brown, as well as many other courageous African American families to stand up to the old law of “separate but equal”, decided in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case in 1892, and fight for equal educational rights for whites and blacks. Even though the Supreme Court decided in favor of the Brown family in 1954, this did not mean that everyone was so eager to accept integration so readily. In fact, right away things hardly changed at all, especially at the higher levels of education. It took a man by the name of James Meredith, the first African American student at the University of Mississippi, to further expand what the Brown’s had started and further break the racial boundaries put around education. Presently school integration has greatly improved but there is still definitely room for improvement. Baldwin was accurate in describing his present day conditions of school segregation in that it was almost a joke and that no “progress” had been made but he was wrong to say that, “the sloppy and fatuous nature of American good will can never be relied upon to deal with hard problems” (Baldwin 336). It is American good will and unity that has brought all races together to improve integration in public schools and although there is still room for improvement everyone’s attitudes have shifted to make schooling improved for all students.
Empathy is the term used for emotional understanding. Empathy is a special skill that many characters in To Kill a Mockingbird possess or develop throughout the course of the story. Harper Lee shows the importance of empathy throughout the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Atticus being empathetic, Atticus teaching the kids to empathize or them empathizing themselves in certain situations. Empathy is truly the great gift of humanity.
To be able to understand how empathy works between a certain group of people, it is necessary to know what empathy means. I found an interesting definition of empathy, as a crucial component of the helping relationship, a need to understand people ' distress, and to provide supportive interpersonal communication. Empathy is the ability to recognize the emotions of others. Empathy does not mean that we live other people’ emotions, but it means that we understand other people ' emotions from our experiences. Empathy does not mean to cancel your personality, but to understand how people perceive the reality. It is the ability to read information coming through nonverbal channels. In this
Throughout the article, author Jeffrey Aaron Snyder breaks down the ideology of Carter G. Woodson’s speech “Miseducation of the Negro”. Going into definitive detail, of how the Miseducation of African Americans is mainly controlled by outside sources. Snyder explaining how Woodson described forms of “Outside Control” through harsh laws placed on African American society “a vicious regime of Jim Crow segregation. To read Miseducation as a progressive text is to recover a richer, more expansive history of progressive education, one that addresses the color line in addition to the ‘social frontier’” (277 pg. 5). Further explaining how much of an influence these “outside sources” had on the “miseducation of a negro”, where as to black organizations
Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone’s shoes, and see a situation from their perspective, and be able to speak their language, instead of just sit back and feel sorry for them. In the books, The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon, empathy is demonstrated by two characters who are able to not only sympathize for another character, but understand situations they are in, and try to act accordingly to the problems at hand. In The Housekeeper and the Professor, Root demonstrates empathy for the professor by understanding his memory situation, and acting maturely
The American society, more so, the victims and the government have assumed that racism in education is an obvious issue and no lasting solution that can curb the habit. On the contrary, this is a matter of concern in the modern era that attracts the concern of the government and the victims of African-Americans. Considering that all humans deserve the right to equal education. Again, the point here that there is racial discrimination in education in Baltimore, and it should interest those affected such as the African Americans as well as the interested bodies responsible for the delivery of equitable education, as well as the government. Beyond this limited audience, on the other hand, the argument should address any individual in the society concerned about racism in education in Baltimore and the American Society in
If people showed empathy towards others, then the world would be a better place in which to live. Empathy is the ability to identify with and understand the experiences, thoughts, or feelings of another person or animal. Despite empathy having a complex definition which may be difficult to understand, it is still regularly shown throughout the world. Showing empathy can help the world become a better place for many reasons.
Empathy is when I am able to feel or share feelings with another person. In order to do this, to truly do this I would have to had live through exactly they did or had some telepathic emotional connection to them. Only, our minds aren’t designed this way, we can’t truly ever feel real empathy. I can’t even begin to imagine know what it would take to really feel empathy and the emotions it would give me. Empathy doesn’t really doesn’t really exist; there is no way to actually feel what another person is going through, the closest we can come to empathy is visualizing another person’s perspective, in other words, I don’t agree with Wallace that empathy is the most important thing to learn in college, how to care is.