NAACP not the problem; a failure to empathize with the ‘other’ is

Here’s another way of looking at the issues raised in the angry letter to the editor about the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People recently published in The Sun News.

First, let’s get it very clear that while I’m a long-time supporter of the NAACP, I don’t automatically genuflect to anything they say, do, or stand for. In the likely lexicon of the op-ed’s authors, what I have to say would undoubtedly be how an “outsider,” or a squishy liberal Democrat, would react to their tirade and jump to the defense of the NAACP.

Sorry folks, it’s neither.

My family settled in the Eastern Carolinas nearly 300 years ago from Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and I’m a lifelong, card-carrying conservative Republican.

The headline on the letter said, in bold print: “Racism in Myrtle Beach is not the problem ….”

That’s true in one very important area. Racism has been purged from the political institutions and almost all of the social infrastructure in our nation. But as Martin Luther King Jr., and others – both conservative and liberal – have pointed out, that’s only the first step, and a baby one at that. To them the next step, and the only one which will be fully and truly transformative, is to “change hearts,” as King said over and over.

The soil which needs to be prepared to grow that important seed very simply consists of empathy toward and understanding of the “other.” That is, for whites, a reaching out to a people we don’t know very well, who by any definition have been terribly mistreated and exploited – not that others, including whites haven’t.

That nettle is terribly hard for whites – or blacks - to grasp, whether politically, socially or, in the case of our churches, spiritually - because for more than 400 years in this country, all of us have inhabited, nurtured and tolerated separate cultures.

Of course, blacks were forced into that reality. But the coercion is gone. Now comes the tough part, evolving to look at the “other” as “us” and not “them.”

That’s what empathy means, and we do it every day with those we do know – and love and understand. And because of that, we’re disinclined to go as quickly for the anger button as the authors of that letter so obviously did.

About a century and a quarter ago, the noted black scholar and writer W.E.B. Dubois said that the biggest barrier to meaningful black-white dialogue and understanding is black rage and white guilt. While some of the NAACP’s behavior the authors of the letter to the editor criticize could arguably be attributed to black rage, their elaborate and extreme defensiveness in staking out their own position smacks of nagging white guilt.

The Rhodes Scholar, Hall of Fame NBA Basketball star, and two-term U.S. Senator, Bill Bradley, said 25 years ago that the biggest issue blocking real racial reconciliation is that we just don’t know how to talk to each other.

That’s what empathy is about.

That’s what trying hard, really hard, to understand the “other” among us is about.

Let’s put the public grumbling about each other and the yelling and the blame game aside for a while and try going for that.

The writer lives in Myrtle Beach.

This story was originally published June 11, 2016 at 11:10 AM with the headline "NAACP not the problem; a failure to empathize with the ‘other’ is."