scenicroutes:

in susan sontag’s essay regarding the pain of others she writes about sympathy. she writes that as noble, as well-intentioned, as appropriate as sympathy is, it also has the power to distance us from our own responsibility.

“so far as we feel sympathy,” she says, “we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence.”

and i guess what i want to say, to fellow white people, is that sympathy is not enough. not even close. this is not our sadness. this is not our disgust. not our anger. not our pain. not our children lying dead in the street. our emotions literally could not matter less right now.

we need to set aside our sympathy and, as sontag puts it, “reflect on how our privileges are located on the same map as their suffering, and may – in ways we might prefer not to imagine – be linked to their suffering, as the wealth of some may imply the destitution of others.”