This Don’t Taste Right: White Empathy in a Space of Black Mourning

• In Event: 3483 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 08. Advances in the Sociology of Emotions

Abstract

This paper is an exploration of genuine White empathy colliding with its own pervasive legacy of White privilege surrounding a traumatic moment at a liberal California university in the Spring of 2017. When a Black student was murdered in a mostly remote White college town, students of color at the university were shocked, angry and scared, but it was the outpouring of visceral emotions by the White community on campus and how Black students, in particular, responded to those extended feelings, that caused confusion and increased social tension. In this paper, we argue that moments like this (when well-meaning White engagement crosses racial boundaries) test the safe boundaries of liberal rhetoric and force White "allies" to question their individuality within the glaring broader legacy of exclusive Whiteness. We observed that Black students at the university simply accommodated White sorrow rather than allowing it to blend with their trauma and lived experience. When asked why, many of them pointed to the obvious, at least to Black students, which was the ubiquitous legacy of Whiteness. A legacy so pervasive that it even deluded White folks on campus to make them believe they could escape its horizon and actually be seen as an empathetic individual.

Authors

• Michihiro Clark Sugata, Humboldt State University

• Kirby Moss, Humboldt State University