Empathic Knowledge Is Empowering For All

I had been telling my wife Amy a story about my day, when our oldest child called me a racist.

"So, there was a man standing there, an Asian man, and then..."

I don't even remember the exact context of what I said, but the story wasn't really about the Asian man. It was simply an identifier of those around me in my story as I told my story. I mean, he wasn't White, or Black, or Hispanic. He was Asian. 

"You're a racist, Dad," our oldest Beatrice said to me.

"No, Beatrice. I'm not. You're not using that word correctly. I'm just describing the race of the person he was," I said.

"Still a racist," she said.

"Nope."

This has happened more than once. Sometimes when I say something innocuous about Amy, or I tease her about something, and Beatrice is in the room, I hear her say: "You're being sexist, Dad."

"I don't think you know what that word means, Beatrice," I answer.

But maybe her and her younger sister actually do. I used to challenge my own parents all the time when I felt they said something inappropriate, offensive, sexist, and/or racist. We want our own children to challenge us while being compassionate about all people regardless of who they are. Not get in our face and call us a racist challenge us, but ask us questions about why we think what we think challenge us. 

And no matter how self-aware and antiracist I think I am (antiracist meaning actively working to dismantle racism), it doesn't mean we're not without fault. It's hard not to have racist and sexist ideas growing up in a world that devalues and degrades others because of skin color, gender, religious beliefs, sexual preference, and the list goes on and on, so that one group can be in power and reap what they want. So, I'm sure that there's some truth to Beatrice calling me out when I don't think I'm saying anything wrong. Subtle racism and sexism are still racism and sexism.

What I don't understand is how when we elevate those who have historically been underrepresented and suppressed, those in power feel like it's at their expense. That they're the ones now being discriminated against. Equality is hard to accept when the benefits of inequality for those in power have been embedded systemically for such a long time. Which is why we want our children to learn all sides of our history in school and to speak up and challenge others who don't want to acknowledge the realities of racism and sexism.

Again, we have our own racist and sexist beliefs no matter our background and it's important that we recognize that and work to upend them. We recently took our family to see Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and Nic Stone speak about their new collaborative book titled How to Be a (Young) Antiracist based on Dr. Kendi's previous work How to Be an Antiracist. Both of them acknowledged their own racist beliefs growing up and how they worked to dismantle them and now help others to do the same. It was exciting to hear that copies of their book were distributed to schools throughout our county.

Amy and I especially liked when Dr. Kendi talked about how we’re not taught how to be compassionate. How we’re taught to hate and judge other people. Compassion and empathy are things we should learn as young people, including the relationship between being compassionate and making social change.

That's definitely something we've done with our own children, to teach them compassion and empathy and to be the social change we all want to see. We want them to learn that from us and in school. And when all 1,300+ attendees at the event were asked to give a big round of applause to all the educators and students in the room, the rousing standing ovation was awe-inspiring. Knowledge may be power, for good and for bad, but empathic knowledge is empowering for all. 

Actionable Blessings

For me, the hardest part has been mitigating the painful absurdity of purposeful misinformation and how it impacts the truth and our children. Cobbling truths together based on verifiable but fragmented facts isn't easy anyway, but when we mislead ourselves and our children due to our reactive beliefs and confirmation bias, we lead them down a dangerous path. The double-speak path of power, control, and suppression.  

Which is why we've always wanted our children to understand the realities of our country's history, our human history. From slavery to Indigenous people to the Civil War to civil rights to women's rights to the Holocaust to 9/11 to COVID-19 to the U.S. Capital insurrection to Russian invaded Ukraine and more -- we've talked about it all, especially when they've asked about it. 

Sure, we have our own political and ideological prejudices that taint our objectivity, but we try to give our children as much information that they can process that's age-appropriate. Because in the years to come, they'll begin to form their own ideologies and perspectives about the world around them and the people around them. 

What I really hope for our daughters is that they can perceive the double-speak of power and control when it discriminates against and suppresses others. That they can perceive the painful absurdity of equating pandemic public health safety mandates to making Jews wear stars during the Holocaust. 

That they can perceive the difference between the hateful violence at the U.S. Capitol and legitimate political discourse. 

That they can perceive the danger of praising of a relentless dictator with a murderous history as a talented and savvy leader. A leader who has now displaced over 360,000 Ukrainians by invading their homeland, a sovereign nation since 1990. 

Imagine that happening here in the U.S. Just thinking about all these things and the many other absurdities that continue to be perpetuated angers and exhausts me. 

We're not going to flee from history with our children's eyes and ears closed, or let them drown in Orwellian and Atwoodian double-speak of power, control, and suppression. We're going to talk about what's happened and what's happening around them in their city, their state, their country, and their world, with as many objective and verifiable facts we can find. We'll give them the opportunities to ask questions, understand as much as they can, and eventually formulate their own perspectives and world views. 

We don't want them to feel bad about being human, but we do want them to be better humans throughout their lives, always with more love, compassion, and actionable blessings.

Today, we send our actionable blessings to the people of Ukraine. 

The Part Where All Lives Matter

The meme is militant. It's angry. It's resentful. It's disrespectful. It's patriarchal and patronizing. And so many people love it. Probably because it represents how so many people feel about their own lives growing up and the next generation's fighting against this norm. It echos that sheriff's sentiment about how we've grown into a mouthy, mobile phone wielding, vulgar, uncivil society.

The Roman Empire talked about their younger generations this way (sans the cell phones, of course). Many societies throughout history have. Americans have talked this way about their younger generations since, well, the beginning. Closer to home for those of us alive for the past 50+ years, we did the same thing in the 1960's. And the 1970's. And the 1980's. And the 1990's. And the 2000's. 

And today. The meme I'm referring to is supposed to be shared in the "classroom", in-person or virtual I assume, although the intention is much broader than that. It includes these bits of brutal patriarchal wisdom:

• Being told "no" is part of life. Get over it.
• Life is not fair.
• You are not the boss.
• The world does not revolve around you. 
• The world owes you nothing. Work for it.
• You put yourself here. You need to fix you.

This isn't the entire list either. I admit, I've repeated shades of some of these things to our daughters, just not this exact verbiage. My wife and I really try not to say these things in these ways, because they don't account for our daughter's emotional well-being, or ours for that matter. 

Yes, emotional well-being. It's how we can manage the day-to-day onslaught of life, especially this year with the pandemic, the economic devastation, the layoffs and furloughs, distance learning for our kids, the social and racial inequity injustice, fires and hurricanes and more. Granted, the perception of fairness in life is subjective, and there are those who have the proverbial cards stacked against them more than others. No matter what, though, we need to focus on our emotional well-being, and help our children do the same. To empathize with others. To learn how to be personal responsible for our behavior and to be safe in all our relationships. Everyone should be entitled to these.

Why would we want to continue to say the above things to our children, though? At any age? What exactly does that accomplish? Why do we continue to equate shaming, fear and loathing to positive discipline? They couldn't be farther apart in what they actually address and how they impact kids and adults. Positive discipline is how we teach our children important social and life skills that encourages mutual respect for every life stage. Not saying "get over it" because "life isn't fair." That's bullshit and sustains the hate cycle we certainly are rapidly spinning out of control in today. 

And by the way, what if your child is bullied, harassed or sexually assaulted? 

You put yourself here. You need to fix you. 

Mercy me, if my parents would have treated me this way with all the things I went through, who knows what kind of shape I'd be in today. I don't think I'd be married to my lovely wife or have two amazing daughters, that's for sure. I probably would've ended up like Jerry, my birth father, an abusive, womanizing alcoholic. Thankfully my parents didn't, and I didn't either. 

We also keep confusing entitlement with coming of age in today's highly judgmental and polarized culture, trying desperately to understand what's right and wrong and questioning the status quo when it adversely affects ourselves and others in our society. We shame little boys for wearing masks and we still shame little girls from speaking up -- and by God, our girls will always speak up. We shame people who peacefully protest injustice and intolerance. We boo people of all colors linking arms at a football during a moment of unity the night before the anniversary of 9/11. Jesus Christ, what have we become?

Now, if the above statements are really talking about trouble-makers and law breakers of yesterday, today and tomorrow, I would still say they're brutal and unnecessary. I certainly don't approve or excuse lawless destruction we're seeing today, but now I know better than ever why the "the world does not revolve around you" sentiment is still so prolific. 

We think of our societal problems through such a limiting biased lens. Through extremes played out in politics, the news media and social media memes. But our biases are driven by so many more every day moments; it's about the everyday indignities we experience, and the ones we unabashedly pummel others with. That is something Leeno Karumanchery, PhD, one of the speakers we had at my organization's last virtual conference, shared with the attendees in the context of how racism and sexism are perpetuated. 

But it actually applies to all things and all lives and I just can't get it our of my head. Because it's so true, and these things we continue to say to each other, to our children, the shaming and belittling have made it nearly incapable for us to come together on anything. 

This morning when my wife and I meditated, the mantra was I am compassion -- Karuna Hum. The centering thought was, when I have no judgment, I see everyone with kindness. Ephesians 4:32 says, Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

This is the part where all lives matter. Where all of us can learn empathy and compassion for one another, to really listen and understand the everyday indignities we experience and perpetuate. So that we may undo these indignities, one at a time, and our children will learn in kind. Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away last week, had said, "Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time."

Amen. Here we go. 

Other "Days of Coronavirus" posts:

The Clarity Bridge for Homelessness

Stars to Shine

Loving Community Wide Shots Abound

A Foundation Worth Saving

This Hit-And-Run Thunderstorm

Help Prevent the Back-to-School Bullying

Memories Now and to Come

Especially Our Kids

This Old "No" Guy Jedi

Choose Eyes of Love

The Morning Work

We Shared Blue Genes

Agree to Disintegration

The Teacher Parade

All These Things Can Lead To Grace

Our Freedom Is Always Welcome

A Well of Strength

This Bad History

No Shirts, No Shoes, No Problem

The Iceberg Underneath

The Healing Hope We Can Give

Donate Your Date Nights and Help Feed Families

About All The Things

Dad, Our Family's Computer Guy

The Newest Normal

Where Our Troubles Are All The Same

This Is The Life

When There's Nowhere to Go

Jenny, Jenny, Who Can I Turn To

Like Pinches of Empathic Cinnamon

She touched Angel Cakes and cried out. She had tried not to touch her by pulling her sleeve down over her hand, but her hand slipped out as she grabbed the elf named Angel Cakes from a shelf to move her to a chair.

"Oh no!"

Beatrice froze after she said it.

"What's wrong?" asked Bryce.

"I touched Angel Cakes!"

"Are you sure you did?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Dad, I need cinnamon!"

"Why?" I said.

Now, at this point I was in the middle of something semi-important on my computer and not really paying attention.

"Because I touched Angel Cakes. She'll lose her magical powers if I don't sprinkle cinnamon around her!"

Again Bryce tried to make her feel better. "Are you sure you touched her? Maybe you didn't."

"I did, Bryce! I did!"

"Beatrice, look up where the other spices are for the cinnamon," I said.

She looked. "Dad, I don't see it. We have to hurry!"

"Bea, the elf will be okay, just keep looking."

Of course, Mom had to be the one to come downstairs and find the cinnamon, which was actually in a place neither of us would've looked, which I realized afterwards was where we always kept it and I should've known. But again, I was doing something semi-important on my computer (making a new Christmas music playlist actually -- hey, that's important).

We had just gotten back from Thanksgiving at my sister's house and the shelf elves had appeared again in our house, coming out of elven hibernation at the North Pole since last Christmas. According to shelf-elf lore, or our daughters' version of the lore, you can't touch the red shelf elves with your hands or they'll lose their magical power. The others you can touch with bare hands, just not the red ones. Which is why you have to sprinkle cinnamon around the red elves, so they can get their magical powers back. The cinnamon is like a super-vitamin. After a little research, though, I didn't tell the girls that they must also write an apology letter to Santa Claus if they touch one of the elves. It's stressful and creepy enough that the elves move around every night with all our shelf-elfing shenanigans. No need to stress out the girls about being in hot water with Santa.

Even after that semi-traumatic shelf elf event, what I'm the most happy about are two things. The first is the fact that my family loves the holidays and we're all in with decorating and the festive and loving sentiments of the seasons. Even Bryce who fights it a little here and there when she'd rather be playing Minecraft, Roblox or watching silly YouTube videos. And I even broke our decorating tradition this year by hanging lights outside before Thanksgiving. Mercy me. That nearly caused a rift in the space-time continuum, but then we sealed the deal, or unsealed the universe, by listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving in addition to decorating early. Also, Beatrice just calls out to Alexa, "Alexa, play classic Christmas music!" Right on, Bea. In my defense, however, we're having a string of winter storms now, which we need, and I wouldn't have been able to decorate outside right after Thanksgiving like we usually do. They both also helped pick out gifts for a family experiencing domestic violence that we're again adopting this year.

The second thing I'm most happy about is the fact that our girls long to be with extended family and friends, to share continuous friendship, love and gratitude without selfish agenda or emotional baggage. Well, sometimes there's a selfish agenda when gift-getting is involved, but hey, they are still kids. However, they don't have the purposeful and painful distancing that comes with time and experience, when relationships can and do go awry and forgiveness is conditional. And although we are those adults with those experiences, we continue to foster positive growth and compassion for all, to be aware of our own feelings and their fluid context, as well as those of others, and encourage our girls to do the same. Our daughters remind us to look at extended family and friends and see wonderful human beings, people doing their personal best or trying to (including us), even if we don't always see eye to eye (and we sure as hell don't always see eye to eye), and every day our hearts and souls are a little fuller with them in our lives.

Even if it's only in little dashes year after year, like pinches of empathic cinnamon to keep our magical powers intact.