Thursday, September 15, 2005
Best of Web Goodness
Need to read Taranto every day.
"Of course it is human nature to empathize with people who are "like us," which is why people care more when a disaster strikes their country than a foreign land. Thus it's perfectly understandable that black Americans would respond with a heightened fervor to the sufferings of fellow blacks after Hurricane Katrina.
But it makes no sense to expect nonblacks to empathize with blacks because they are black. Transracial empathy must be based on what people of different races have in common: that we are fellow Americans, or fellow human beings. The use of a natural disaster as an occasion for racial grievance is a hindrance, not an aid, to national solidarity and empathy."
"Of course it is human nature to empathize with people who are "like us," which is why people care more when a disaster strikes their country than a foreign land. Thus it's perfectly understandable that black Americans would respond with a heightened fervor to the sufferings of fellow blacks after Hurricane Katrina.
But it makes no sense to expect nonblacks to empathize with blacks because they are black. Transracial empathy must be based on what people of different races have in common: that we are fellow Americans, or fellow human beings. The use of a natural disaster as an occasion for racial grievance is a hindrance, not an aid, to national solidarity and empathy."
