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The Audacity of Empathy_ Redefining Humanity _ Chas Moore _ TEDxBotham Jean Blvd
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The speaker discusses the concept of empathy and argues that society has been practicing it incorrectly. They emphasize that empathy requires going beyond sympathy and actually understanding and feeling what others are going through. The speaker believes that practicing empathy can lead to connection, solidarity, intersectionality, and transformation. They highlight the story of Viola Liuzzo, a white woman who was killed while supporting the civil rights movement, as an example of audacious empathy. The speaker challenges listeners to prioritize empathy over self-care and take action to create a better society. Good morning. Oh, come on Dallas. I know y'all get louder than that. Good morning. What if I told you that we've been doing empathy wrong? What if I told you in today's society where everything is about likes and shares and talking points and insights, that we've quite literally been doing empathy half-mast at best? You see, empathy literally requires us to go further than what we think is required. At best, we've been doing sympathy times two times three, right? We have people that make six figures. They give a thousand-dollar check and say, I gave to the cause, right? You give the unhoused person on the street some water on a really hot day. I understand what they're going through. And while all those are really good things, that's not quite empathy. And that's why we're not actually quite getting to where we need to as a society at a faster pace. I call this the audacity of empathy, which is kind of paradoxical because empathy in itself is audacious, right? Audacity, root word being audacious, which means the willingness to take bold risk. Empathy, unlike what we choose to believe about it, means that we are willing to get uncomfortable and quite literally taking the ability to understand and feel what another person is going through. So the reason that a lot of the problems in the world continue to arise and continue to come out year in and year out is because we're not choosing to quite actually empathize with other people. And if we can choose to take the audacity to practice empathy, I think we can get to where we're trying to go a whole lot faster. There are a couple of things that happens when we actually try and when we actually choose to do empathy, not just hashtag, not just black squares on Instagram, but when we actually do empathy, there are some things that can happen. One of those things is connection. The moment you decide to do empathy, the moment you decide to empathize with somebody, you are choosing to connect with this person, stranger, friend, sister, brother, whatever. You are choosing to be intimately connected to this person to say, you know what? I don't quite understand what you're going through, but I can feel it. I don't know anything about your story. I don't know your past. I don't know who you are, but I'm choosing to stay connected and get connected to you so we can get through this together. Another thing that happens when we practice or when we try to deuce empathy is solidarity. The moment you decide to do empathy with somebody, the moment you decide to say, you know what? I don't quite get it, but I'm willing to help you with this. I'm willing to put myself in your shoes. You are in that moment deciding to do solidarity. In solidarity, I don't care who you are. I am the most Capricorn of Capricorns. I think I can do everything by myself. But we all need solidarity. We all need people to help us to advance, to get us to where we're trying to go. Solidarity is how we get our movements, is how we get change to happen. You can't do anything by yourself. There's no Black Lives Matter without white allies. There's no LBGTQ movement without straight allies. There's no women's liberation without men. We quite literally need people from other sectors of communities, other sectors of society to quite literally be in solidarity, be willing to march with us as we progress forward, hopefully. Change also comes through empathy because another thing happens, and that's intersectionality. Intersectionality is so important, especially like as a Black cisgender man, right, like I empathize with our LBGTQIA plus brothers and sisters, because although I don't understand what it's like to be disregarded and treated badly just because of my sexuality or who I choose to love, I do know what it's like to be disregarded and othered because of what I look like. Just because of my skin color, I know what it's like to be pushed to the side and disregarded and told that I'm not important, that I don't matter, my life is not important. So although I don't quite understand the walk that they're walking, it's the intersectionality there of humanity because I can relate from just being a Black person in American society. And the last thing that happens, the most important thing in my opinion, is transformation. I think when we actually do empathy correctly, or when we even do it a little bit, transformation can happen, especially in today's society where everything is all about you, don't worry about anybody else, and it's all just you, you, you, your likes, your Instagram page, your TikTok, your whatever. When you literally are deciding to get in somebody else's shoes, when you're literally willing to tell somebody, you know what, I don't get it, but I see you, I'm with you. When you're just willing to be nice to somebody and kind to somebody in today's society, you are quite possibly transforming the lives of that person and everybody around them. We live in a society today that tells you that you don't need anybody. Go get the bag. You can do it by yourself. Pull yourself up from your bootstraps. All this nonsense, all this jargon that is so far from the truth. Just the simple task of being kind to somebody can transform somebody's entire life and maybe generations down the line forever. Empathy is something that is so simple yet so profound that if we do it, we can quite literally move mountains. When I think of the audacity of empathy, I think of this crazy story of this white woman that was in Detroit, mother of five and a wife, in Detroit, Michigan, during the 60s. She caught on the TV in Detroit one day and saw that black folks were getting treated terribly down in Selma, Alabama. She was so moved by the mistreatment of black people in the South that she decided to get in her car from Detroit. White woman, mother of five, wife in Detroit, decided to get in her car, drive down to Selma and try to empathize with the plight of black people. This white woman was so moved that she became one of the most top flight volunteers during the Selma-Montgomery movement that she was driving black folks and volunteers back and forth from Selma to Montgomery to make sure that they were safe. Keep in mind, this was a white woman in the North in the 60s. I'm pretty sure she was living a comfortable life, but she was willing to get uncomfortable because that's what empathy requires you to do. She was willing to get outside of her own comfort zone. She was willing to get outside of herself to go help some Negroes in the South because it wasn't right. Again, a mother of five, a wife in Detroit, the North, came down to Selma, Alabama and started to get involved with the civil rights movement so much so that on one of those trips back from Montgomery, after they marched to Montgomery, she was ambushed by the KKK and she was killed. Ironically enough, she was killed and the black passengers were still alive. They managed to escape. This white woman's name is Viola Louisa, and I hope you do your research. I hope you go read about it. Her name is not lifted up enough in these spaces, the civil rights spaces, but that woman is, to me, the pinnacle of what empathy looks like. Nowadays, we talk about self-care. We talk about Self-Care Tuesday and I need to make sure I'm good and all this, which is critical, which is critically important. I'm not saying don't do it. Please take care of yourself. If you can't take care of you, then you can't take care of nobody else. However, if the first thought that comes up in your mind in helping somebody else is you, you're doing it wrong. What if Jesus had boundaries? What if our ancestors had boundaries? Would we even be here today? So in such a self-care society, in such a me, me, me society, I'm challenging each and every one of us to get uncomfortable, to be audacious enough to actually do empathy outside of your phones, outside of just putting yard signs in your yard, outside of just talking points at the city council meeting. What are you actually willing to do to move us toward the society that we all truly deserve? Empathy is not just a hashtag. It's not just a slogan on the back of my shirt. It's not just putting your fist up at the march and the rally. It's actually the bold willingness to put yourself sometimes in harm's way so that somebody else's tomorrow can be a little bit better than their today. Sometimes it's about leaving the comfort of your home and your kids and your spouse to say, you know what, this isn't right. I have to fight for something greater than me. That's empathy. And that's how we get to the place where we all deserve. That's how we get to a place where black people can actually be free. That's how we get to a place where women are finally paid for doing the jobs that they do 10 times better than men, but they get paid like a half, if that. It's how we get to a society where there are no borders. Empathy requires us to understand this one simple truth, my truth at least, as I leave you today. We, you, me, all of us in here, outside of here, we are all we got. Not the politicians, not the basketball players, not the movie stars, us. Each and every one of us have to understand that we are all we got. And once we are willing to understand that, once we are willing to understand and comprehend Once we are willing to understand and comprehend that you, my brother, my sister, my person, are my greatest resource. And I don't have to understand your whole context of who you are, I don't have to understand your whole backstory, but I do understand that you are a human on this earth, and you are my only resource. That's how we get to where we want to go. That's how we embody change. So I ask you today, whatever, when you leave here, I don't know what your plans are, but what are you going to do? How are you going to practice audacious empathy in the coming weeks? How are you going to make yourself uncomfortable so somebody else can be comfortable? Are you even willing to practice audacious empathy? Are you willing to truly embrace change? Like I said, we all we got.
