So I’ve been thinking a lot about the word empathy. Activists to kindergarten teachers to Kim Kardashian fans will assert that empathy is a necessity and requirement in caring for someone else and a trait that we should all aspire to, a thread that should be a dissertation:

Well, you might be shocked to know that the word empathy didn’t come into the English lexicon until 1909; translated from the German word “Einfühlung” meaning “feeling in”. Now, by 1909 the transatlantic slave trade and the ensuing global market for Black bodies had technically*

ended in many countries (slavery instituted by white Moors or lighter skinned Arab folks “ended” in Mauritania in 1981, the last country in the world to do so, though it wouldn’t become a crime to own another person until 2007). Similarly in the US, it had lasted for over 300

years and by the 1870s, the US govt instated its second wave of slavery during the Reconstruction period via wage theft/exploitation via sharecropping (look up the Elaine Massacre), then via Jim Crow Laws, then the advent of the prison system in 1891, then came mass

incarceration in the 1980s, then and now—gentrification and redlining, etc (slavery never ended in the US). But it was centuries earlier during the enlightenment period (lowercase on purpose) (1715-1789) when philosophers like Descartes proclaimed “I think therefore I am” that

would set the stage for feelings like love being used to further subjugate Black people. For example, if an enslaved person’s slave owner claimed that they loved them, laws in places like Peru were organized to make it impossible for that enslaved person to be kept in captivity

(Premo, pg 74). In 2017, there was a NPR poll that asked white people if they feel discriminated against and an overwhelming majority (55%) said “yes” and that “discrimination against white people exists in the US today” especially in regard to (wait for it) jobs and education.

The other day a white person told me that they cannot be anti Black because they are an “empath” (this really happened).

When a white cis man created the word empathy, he did not have Black people in mind at all. It was originally intended for white people to “feel in” art,

as in here’s a picture of a lake and some trees I want to imagine myself in that artwork. Yes language shifts over time but I’m wondering if the shift is just another way for white folks to manipulate language to be seen as good. Perhaps we are missing the mark assuming empathy

is the answer considering white people have been abusing feelings for their own benefit for centuries, empathy does not guarantee or assure that someone is going to care enough to do something especially if they need a framework or a word to do it.

Weird or ironic when the comments prove your point?