Media attention might be zero-sum, but our empathy isn’t.
A lesson from the media coverage of the Trump campaign
The headline of a recent, thought-provoking piece by Jamelle Bouie — Slate’s senior political correspondent — is absolutely correct. “There’s No Such Thing as a Good Trump Voter,” it reads. The problem comes later, in the second sentence of the subhead: “People voted for a racist who promised racist outcomes. They don’t deserve your empathy.”
Of Trump’s supporters, Bouie writes, correctly, that “[w]hether Trump’s election reveals an ‘inherent malice’ in his voters is irrelevant. What is relevant are the practical outcomes of a Trump presidency.” As he notes, the Trump presidency, as was obvious during the Trump candidacy, will mean untold misery for people already suffering — especially for those already-marginalized groups he held up as targets during the campaign.
Bouie makes the case well, with arresting clarity, that we can not forget these Trump voters’ choice; we cannot make them innocent. They are not.
Along the way, he notes, with deserved acid, that while the media rushed to produce “many-thousand-word magazine feature stories” featuring the humanity of Trump voters, they did not, it seems, make the effort to do the reverse. That is, where were the studied, sympathetic portraits of the people in Trump’s crosshairs?
It’s difficult to talk about “the media” because there is not one, single media. Surely, we could find pieces that adeptly describe the misery Trump is sure to cause — that address the fundamental, necessary humanity of those he attacks. But to my eye, there were far fewer of these than there were about Trumpists.
If I am right, this fact should not be surprising — despite its moral abhorrence. American mass media, to the extent you can group them together, are as steeped as any institution is in the America’s racial history, which is to say: they have a hard time imagining the lives of people who aren’t white as being just as central — just as American — as the lives of people who are.
Bouie continues relentlessly. If we face the facts of the consequences of a Trump presidency “and then demand empathy for the people who made them a reality — who backed racist demagoguery, whatever their reasons — is to declare Trump’s victims less worthy of attention than his enablers. To insist Trump’s backers are good people is to treat their inner lives with more weight than the actual lives on the line under a Trump administration. At best, it’s myopic and solipsistic. At worst, it’s morally grotesque.”
Here I am lost. I have watched the harm of the choices I’ve made rush out from me with the force of a tsunami. The sight of the damage my choices caused will never leave me, just as the damage won’t ever leave those affected. This is, I think, as it should be. But the shame I’ve felt — at times, I’ve thought, too strong to bear — is less now.
I know from bitter experience that empathy is not a demand; it is an imperative. It is not given because it is deserved; it is given because it is the price of humanity. Empathy is not a scarce resource any more than love or compassion; indeed, to give it is to create more. The idea that in giving to one, we are withholding it from others is entirely foreign to my experience. Empathy is understanding with compassion. Though it is a necessary component of both, it is neither forgiveness nor redemption.
The truth is, the same force that compels me to empathize with addicts, with the incarcerated, with the sinner, leads me to empathize with Trump’s backers. That is, the selfish knowledge that even when I have made terrible choices, empathy was extended to me.
I don’t quibble with the idea that our primary concern, the focus of our attention, must be with those who will be harmed. In fact, the story of this election is not that the media lacked a sense of Trump’s supporters’ humanity, it’s that Trump’s supporters cruelly ignored the humanity of the marginalized. To be sure, there were instances of callousness from the media, especially the left-liberal journo-pundits. But Bouie’s essential point still stands: these people who voted for Trump did so with all the necessary knowledge that their action would cause misery and hardship for their fellows.
The answer, though, is not less empathy. If empathy cannot be depleted, as I have found in my own life, then there is no risk to — and perhaps much to gain by — extending it toward Trump’s backers. It is a hard thing to demand accountability while also showing compassion and understanding, but, for me, it’s the only thing that has ever worked.
