And why it's the wrong thing to strive for. You're walking a mile, and it's a long one. The scenery is unfamiliar and the shoes you're wearing are too small, or too big. Either way, they are chafing in all the most sensitive spots and you know you're going to be popping blisters three days from now. Just to top it all off, the weather's bad. Maybe it's hot and sticky, maybe hot and dry and you're getting a nose bleed. Or maybe it's raining. I don't know - whatever you don't want it to be, it's that.
You're not sure where you're going - or even if you're going anywhere in particular. You just know that people keep telling you to try walking a mile in their shoes. Well, you're trying it, and it sucks. The heels are high and the streets are filled with predators, and now you finally understand why raping women is wrong/why killing gay people is wrong/why expelling undocumented immigrants is wrong. Good job, you got there. All it took was you to experience a moment of discomfort yourself. But sometimes, that's not good enough. Sometime's there's a monster out there attacking people whose shoes you'll never get to walk around in. And it's not fast enough to wait until that monster comes after someone you love to stop him. This brings two things to mind for me - one is Trevor Noah's response to Republican outrage over Ivanka's Dad's sexual assault comments. To paraphrase The Daily Show's host, "you shouldn't be offended for the women in your lives, you should be offended as a human." The other is a powerful poem by Martin Neilmoller, "First They Came", about German complicity in the Holocaust. Niemoller was a Christian pastor with a nasty streak (later repented) anti-Semitism. After staying quiet while more and more groups were being taken, the Nazis eventually took him, and he found there was no one left to speak out for him. It was impossible for Niemoller to have real empathy for the Socialists, and the trade unionists, and the Jews, because he was not one of them. What may have been possible - and what is still possible for us - is to acknowledge that taking people from their homes, or denying people access to basic resources, or sexually assaulting people, is not ok. It is not ok to grab peoples' pussies, regardless of whether or not you are the one with the pussy. It is not ok to deny people access to a bathroom, regardless of whether or not those people are different from you.
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