Day 98 - Second Class Citizens - On The Road To Mayor

I think one of the most difficult human abilities to develop is empathy.

Being able to put yourself in another person's shoes is incredibly difficult. Maybe impossible, really.

If you aren't experiencing something it's very common to feel like it doesn't exist.

Women are treated fairly in the workplace.
African Americans are treated equally by the police.
Native Americans (well, I mean who really cares about them any more) just didn't understand that the Black Hills gold rush meant we needed to take that land back from them after we promised it to them.

These are some of the more obvious examples. There might be many of you reading this that agree those examples are legitimate issues.

But it gets more subtle and less obvious.

Full time working women still have to take care of most of the house.
Kids continue to get violently bullied in school.
College educated African Americans have a harder time getting work than probably almost anyone else in America.

The list goes on and on and on.

The issue comes when people don't believe these things are actually happening.

African Americans don't get profiled by cops.
If women didn't have kids they'd make the same amount of money.
Native Americans are just drunks that can't get it together.

We have to stop assuming we understand other people's oppression. We can never truly understand what things are like for someone else.

It's like being in pain. If someone says they are in pain you have to believe they are in as much pain as they say they are. You can't possibly know otherwise.

When we say "that isn't happening," we take away a part of their humanity.

You would be better off saying, "I don't care." At least that would be honest.

The only way we are going to evolve to the next level of humanity is to truly take time to understand what our neighbors are experiencing.

We are getting better at this as a species.

But we can't just let the wealthy and famous people do all the work.

We all must put a hand out some how, some way.

It doesn't have to be hard.

The first step might be to talk to someone you wouldn't normally talk to. Talking is always the first step. If you keep doing that the next steps will reveal themselves.

No one needs to be a second class citizen in America. But as of right now we have far too many of them.