Brene Brown: Empathy Vs. Sympathy

In the Ted Talk called Color Blind Or Color Brave, the speaker Mellody Aboso speaks about race. She talks about if people are not color blind, but instead color brave in society and businesses it will be stronger and better. First, the speaker Melody Aboso defines color blindness as a behavior that pretends that someone doesn't notices race. She believes that if you don't deal with the discomfort of different races, than it’s going to effect the next generation of people by recognizing or discriminate different races, genders, etcetera. Next, she speaks about being color brave. She also defines color brave as being willing to have proactive conversations about race in a honest manner. Mellody Aboso also speaks about that by being color brave

The importance of empathy in any helping profession, medical or social, cannot be overstated. The workers that exemplified it in their practice did the best that they could with their limited resources.

In his documentary Tim Wise explains; how it is easy for whites to assume that they are not racist, that they are "post-racial." White Like Me also shows how these "colorblind" racial attitudes should not be the end goal or embraced. Instead, we as a society need to be “color conscious.” The goal of the video is to help individuals understand that racism is an issue faced by our whole society, not just by people of color, he also makes point that while many whites remain oblivious to racism, others have courageously challenged it.

Furthermore, Christina Judith Hein, in Color-Blindness vs. Race Matters claims that a common goal cannot be that every individual is treated the same, regardless of their race, gender, or age, but rather, these differences require different responses within the social framework with certain norms and values. Reactions to an individual must be specific to that individual’s needs.

When discussing race, having the right intention is not nearly enough to ensure progress in racial tensions; as such, only positive, tangible action can be the catalyst for change in race discourse. This general rule can help when looking at the concept of colorblindness as a supposedly well-meaning myth, which realistically only serves to continue racist attitudes and systems. Using a critical lens to determine the harm caused by colorblindness can diminish the impact and eventually eradicate a source of racist microagressions. Patricia Williams explores the inherently harmful idea of colorblindness in her book Seeing a Colorblind Future: The Paradox of Race, through exemplary anecdotal evidence. This paper aims to analyze one such anecdote to fully explain the pervasive and malicious way colorblindness is employed in everyday life.

Today the dominate etiquette around race is colorblindness. It has a strong moral appeal, for it laudably envisions an ideal world in which race is no longer relevant to how we perceive or treat each other. (77)

“Stop trying to be good people.” It is only human to be biased. However, the problem begins when we allow our bigotry to manifest into an obstacle that hinders us from genuinely getting to know people. Long time diversity lawyer, Verna Myers, in her 2014 Ted Talk, “How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly toward them” discusses the implicit biases we may obtain when it comes to race, specifically black men. Myers purpose is quite like the cliché phrase “Face your fears.” Her goal is to impress upon us that we all have biases (conscious or unconscious). We just have to be aware of them and face them head on, so that problems such as racism, can be resolved. Throughout the Ted Talk, Verna Myers utilizes an admonishing yet entertaining tone in

Being constantly put down or verbally abuse can build up a person confidence over time leading them to improve, do a risk, or change the negativity to positivity for themselves or the people lives around them. The book The Help by Kathryn Stockett best demonstrates the theme of being segregated makes the individual gradually become stronger and bolder. The book demonstrates the theme because it shows how the main character Aibileen started to show confidence gradually throughout and willing to go out of her comfort zone to take the risk of writing the book The Help. She was tired of being treated unequally and to see other coloured folks suffer, which lead her to motivate herself and be bold of what she is doing for the benefits of coloured

Prior to taking this course, I was taught, and therefore was under the impression, that prejudice is a preconceived notion about a group and that racism is essentially the same thing, except that racism also encompasses the idea that the group is lesser. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva states that “for most whites, racism is prejudice; for most people of color, racism is systemic or institutionalized” (Bonilla-Silva, 2010). Quotes like this force me to reflect, both on how I see myself and how others see me. Reading that quote, I felt like I related more to ‘most whites’ because I believed that racism was essentially prejudice for so long. I remember once while doing a cross the line activity, I hesitated before moving when the facilitator said “step forward if you are a person on color.” Technically, yes, my skin is pigmented in a way that would qualify me as a person of color but there is a connotation with that phrase that I felt didn’t relate to me. My first reaction to that phrase is the thought of someone who has struggled, someone who faces racism on a regular basis, someone who is treated differently because of the color of their skin. In my opinion, the more others acknowledge a part of your identity, the more apparent that part of your identity is to you, and I don’t often feel that people acknowledge my identity as an Asian American. I’ve been called a coconut more times than I can count. Brown on the outside but white on the inside. Sure I look brown, but I don’t ‘act

Each encounter describes acts of dehumanization in ordinary places like grocery store, doctors office, or on tennis court. In some instances, these statements or acts made by others are unintentional or just plain ignorant. For instance, Rankine matter of factly describes the harsh criticism towards famous tennis pro Serena Williams during her tennis match. Her frustration towards the ref was due to bad calls against her that resulted in her losing an important game. You may ask why is this important? It’s important because of one simple word that always seems the be of subject matter and that is race. Everyone in the stadium knew the calls were bad “though no one was saying anything explicitly about Serena’s black body, you are not the only viewer who thought it was getting in the way of Alves’s sight line” (27). The term race has been engraved into the minds of people and giving it definition and meaning when in reality it doesn’t. All people are part of on race being the human race, however the shape it's been given is to divide us by use of its context. To ignore the subject matter of race would be to agree that it’s normative behavior in our society. The Civil Rights Movement has taught people how far we have come from matters of race but that we also have a long way to go. People should learn to come together

As both the documentary and the article convey, the modern concept of being blind to race is not a logical perspective when opposing racial discrimination. In White People, the idea of racial “colorblindness” was described as “not seeing race,” and subsequently being of the opinion that would be “society would be better off if we never acknowledged race” (White People). In the article “What Is Race?” the colorblind stance “appears, on the surface, to be neither positive nor negative” (Moya & Markus 170). However, both media ultimately refer to racial colorblindness as dismissive of modern racism. As a result of the presented facts from both media, I believe that colorblindness

While an ally might be aware of colorblind racism they must realise that being aware without putting in an effort to interact with people of color only perpetuates white habitus. For example, an ally can’t simply say that they’re okay with having minority friends, but when promoted about them say things like “ ‘I’d have to say my three best friends are white girls, but I definitely had an excellent girlfriend that was African American’ “ (127) only to clarify that they never really hung out with that black friend. Statements like these only promote white habitus, leading white people to assume things like there’s no problem with race or how people of color stay segregated in their own communities because it’s their “natural” inclination to do so. By interacting with people of color, an ally can dispel the ideas about race caused by living and interacting solely with only other white folks, thus challenging the prejudices brought upon them by colorblind racism. In addition to challenging colorblind racism in themselves, an effective ally should also educate others in their fight for equality. Many people believe that racism has died out with slavery and while that is true, slavery and Jim Crow racism does not exist in modern day society, a new type of racism does- colorblind

Regardless of our unpredictability on how many Americans sustain to hold racist points of views and perspectives, aside from the exceeding decreases in percentage of discrimination among people, racism continues to have significance in American life. “You see, researchers have coined this term "color blindness" to describe a learned behavior where we pretend that we don't notice race. If you happen to be surrounded by a bunch of people who look like you, that's purely accidental. Now, color blindness, in my view, doesn't mean that there's no racial discrimination, and there's fairness. It doesn't mean that at all. It doesn't ensure it. In my view, color blindness is very dangerous because it means we're ignoring the problem.“ says Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel

Often when using the words of empathy and compassion, many people envision them as having similar meaning. While they may share similar circumstances, they are actually quite different. Empathy is more of an emotional response with an understanding of a person’s particular situation; whereas compassion is an emotion that arouses an active response to alleviate a distressful situation. Nevertheless, these dissimilar expressions are paramount in the way people respond to the individual needs of others and how they reach out to others in their local communities. Barbara Lazear Ascher’s essay “On Compassion” not only creatively offers a very detailed description of the day in the life in New York City, but effectively draws a picture of

The first concept i will be discussing is empthy, which is discussed in Chapter six (Shebib, 2003). Empathy is the ability to correctly interpret another person's feelings to show them you understand. So, empathy is not something we have, but something we do. Empathy is a skill and an attitude and not a feeling (sympathy is a feeling). It is about being able and willing to understand another person from their own point of view, without your own thoughts, feelings, opinions and judgements getting in the way of this understanding. This