Black Lives Matter: Empathy versus Sympathy
by Jan Stephen James Cavanaugh, Ph.D. on 07/19/16
Black Lives Matter: Empathy versus Sympathy
Let Us Awaken
July 19, 2016jsc
In empathy I can walk the pain that helps me understand why young black men trained for war “over there” returning “over here” facing grave injustices and seeing no serious effort, no collective will on the part of “we the people” to correct what is so wrong, feeling hopeless, take justice into their own hands.
Blue men vs black men are but pawns in a bigger struggle. Law enforcement and young black men the cutting edge of this conflict between those who have and those who do not. That 1% of us has more than the other 99% of our shared wealth, unjust. This state of nation is anti-Constitutional by standards of the Preamble. The consequence is “war” between the disenfranchised and the franchised that unaddressed will continue to grow and could be our future. Marx and Jesus on the same page in this matter.
In sympathy I cannot support black anger directed at ambushing and killing law enforcement officers. An eye for an eye is not the way of love … no good will come of becoming the thing they protest.
That such a high percentage of officers step outside just law enforcement is a police force feeling under manned, under trained and under assault … jittery men with jittery fingers … puts us all in danger. Just law cost what it costs. Our policing, best practices to maintain the peace, must become the most advanced in the world.
Resolution found not in a more militarized police patrolling ever more poor areas, err we become a police state, but rather resolution in opening our hearts and wallets. Ending poverty and providing neighborhood policing the most cost effective way of keeping everyone safe from the terror of war both locally and globally. A lot of young men with nothing productive to do to earn a decent living and little change of chance for mobility … are the fodder for war.
Our enemies rejoice at our turning our violent natures onto one another. War and more war "as far as the eye can could see" as Tennyson wrote.
Black Lives Matter the cutting edge of our consciousness. Let us Awaken.
