Finding Grace: the meanest part of empathy

Empathy is all squish and softness. Connection, listening, tapping into another’s emotions. When I think about the work of empathy, there is so much reward in it: humans are pre-programmed to seek connections with others, we get that oxytocin high when we are connecting, and empathy conjures the idea of being heard, hearing others, creating safe space. When someone is in need, hurting, or even experiencing joy, being empathetic just feels good. In addition to all the rewards of empathy, I can almost feel my halo glowing brighter—it feels righteous to be truly empathetic and just fully present with and for others.

Which is why empathy with and for others across diversity—true empathy, true diversity—is so hard. To truly be empathetic, as nursing scholar Teresa Wiseman notes, is to withhold judgement , and we seldom do that with our halo in tact. Most of our halos are predicated on judgement and just how far we hold ourselves away from those whose views diverge from our own. But neuroscientists who have examined the inner workings of our empathetic circuitry support Wiseman’s premise: we don’t get to empathy when our brains are engaged in judgement of the other. If my positioning in engaging someone is to ultimately change their mind; if my headspace throughout an exchange is focused on what I need to say back rather than just immersing myself in hearing: allowing myself to be carried away by the emotional and intellectual state of the other, than I am not actually empathizing. Hearing someone’s side is not empathizing. “Letting him finish” is not empathizing. Empathy is being completely engaged in the other’s experience so that I cognitively understand their reality but also share their emotional state. Empathy is cognitive and emotional synergy. There is no space in that connection to compare it to my own experience or judge it. Empathy is so easy to do with someone we find ourselves on the same page with, someone whose experience, perspective, beliefs we share. But the real power is in empathizing with people very different from us. So how often do we actually empathize with diverse people?

Diversity literally means “people from a range or variety of social and ethnic backgrounds, values, and/or identities, which may or may not include gender identities, social classes, race, sexual orientation, regional affiliation, linguistic origin, religion, political affiliation, and any other number of interests or identity markers.” What we know about the danger of withholding empathy across diverse people is that when we don’t take the time to fully empathize with others, we infrahumanize. Infrahumanization is the critical first building block to all genocides and is the process of stripping a people, by a people, of their full complex humanity. This means a group of people with a common characteristic (a race, a religion, a region they are from, a belief they have) start to see another people, grouped by a common characteristic (a race, a religion, a region they are from, a belief they have) as less complex/more simple than other humans as a whole. We decide they are less capable of intelligent thought, less interested in moral decisions, less complex, less feeling, etc. This moves them to be processed in our brain in a different place than people we see as “one of us” (this is a physical thing proven in recent studies by fMRI images, which have shown folks process a person they see as “their people” in one place in their brain, and a person they have infrahumanized, such as a homeless person or someone they disagree with politically, in the same place they would a cup or plate). What is hard about this is moving those people to a different place in our brain makes their hardship easier for us to swallow—it might even make it something we see as justified. This is how propaganda can convince a whole society of neurotypical people to allow and even participate in a genocide. This is how an individual can justify hurting people they disagree with politically. And this can raise some real questions when we look in the mirror about things we say and wish upon people with whom we disagree. People are quick to talk about some of these radicalized kids who commit violence as evil. Simon Baron-Cohen, an empathy researcher, would tell you that they are acting on inanimate objects they have been taught to infrahumanize. We are all vulnerable to this neurobiology.

Empathizing across racial identities, religions, nationalities may not truly be empathizing across diversity if there are shared values and foundation—if it feels easy to find that common ground. Consider empathizing with people across diversity of political ideologies. Or across beliefs about a specific topic you find schismatic, like gun ownership, reproductive rights—pick your favorite contentious cause that makes you really hot. What about empathizing across two groups that feel at cross purposes? If empathy can close gaps in infrahumanization, than with whom would you have to empathize to really effect change?

I am a parent of two kids who attend a school I don’t trust. It’s a longer story than the blog, but now that we are in pandemic times and family members are disallowed from entering the school building (and communication between school and home is fractured at best), that broken trust is even more challenged. Empathy across diverse people. What does it take for me empathize with the teachers and staff at my children’s school on a day when my kid comes home crying? Forget empathizing with people I love and care about, what about empathizing with people who make me furious?

Fucking Grace. Which is I why picture Grace of the Jones variety, the one I grew up with. Smoking, edgy, in your face Grace. Not something biblical. The Grace it takes for me to have empathy for people I truly find myself in a jam with is vicious. Grace is the giant pause I have to take before I send a furious email about something the teacher said to my kid. In my head, I have already infrahumanized this teacher. She is less smart, less interested in being a good person. But I know, intellectually, this cannot be true. I channel Grace (Curious, too cool to be furious about everything, unbothered by Small Shit). Grace is knowing that everyone is flawed (Grace would make art from it) and Grace is knowing I have screwed up, too, when I was a teacher (I did totally teach graphic Dorothy Allison excerpts that should have gotten me fired: I know I said the wrong shit plenty). Grace is imagining what it must be like to teach in this context—masks, the risks of COVID, the ridiculous demands, not knowing the families or having the support—and letting go of demanding something from someone else that I am not doing right now and have never done. I can make my kids brownies, I can teach my kids about Grace, I can take care of them, but I also have to model what it looks like to have Grace. To allow space for things to be imperfect, for there to be disagreement, for there to be hard days, and to know that a teacher is still smart, trying her best, and still (granting Grace) cares.

Fucking Grace. Grace is believing that people with whom I disagree also have morality, intelligence, seek out sources of information to support their arguments, want good things for their children, are trying to make the world a better place. Grace is the humility for me to accept that I don’t always have the right answers and some people I think are absolute fucking idiots might. Grace did so many things in the 80s that were so complicated because they were art, because she was curious, because it was interesting, because she was open to learn. Grace is uncomfortable and edgy and never tidy or clean. It’s never clearly even right. It doesn’t make you feel like you earned the halo. Shutting down someone with whom I disagree, making the valiant stance, dropping the mic—it feels like a halo moment every time, especially once I get high off all the likes and the applause, and the smug look on my own face. But it is always wholly lacking in Grace. Because no one learns anything. And no on grows. And the divide persists.

Grace was a hero to me, as a kid, because she borrowed from everything. She spoke French over Jamaican beats, she was “feeling like a woman, looking like a man,” she wore extreme make-up—I remember an image of her with a whip and this man on the floor like a dog—I can’t imagine that Grace being easily offended. Crossing much off her list. Running home to write an angry letter. Grace is not a long pause or benefit of the doubt so much as earnest curiosity about the other—in empathy, we must believe there is something worth being curious about in the other. I must believe you have a feeling, an idea, some source of good in you worth learning more about and worth connecting to. In those times you seem least reasonable, hardest to understand, Grace is the curiosity that prompts me to grant space to earnestly ask to learn more, without judgement (a la Wiseman). Grace is the belief there is more worth knowing and an interest in knowing it from someone fundamentally different. Grace is integral to empathy, and she is the hardest, but coolest, part. But Grace for people who are different from us is critical to breaking down the divides we have in our society. You want to fix systemic oppression? Teach our kids to create a more equitable world? You can repost that Baldwin quote on Facebook all day, but Grace and empathy with people with whom you disagree, to break down infrahumanization, will actually make that change. Grace. Fucking Grace.