The Limits Of Empathy

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2020

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In matters of race and justice, empathy is often held up as a goal unto itself. But what comes after understanding? In this episode, we're teaming up with Radio Diaries to look at the career of a white writer who put herself in someone else's skin — by disguising herself as a black woman — to find out what she learned, and what she couldn't.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Code Switch from NPR. I'm Shereen Marisol Maraji.
0:03.6	And I am Jean Dumbi. And Shereen, I just want you to think all the way back to like the early to mid-Auts.
0:10.2	Like about a few six.
0:11.9	Feels like yesterday?
0:13.3	It really does. You were probably wearing like some fallore sweatsuit.
0:18.2	Yes, I was actually.
0:19.2	Tell me about this fallore sweatsuit, brother.
0:21.8	First of all, I was the queen of fallore tracksuits.
0:26.0	Yeah.
0:26.4	Never juicy.
0:27.6	Never juicy.
0:28.7	Why? Because my butt speaks for itself.
0:31.2	Jean.
0:32.7	I know how it.
0:35.9	But truly?
0:38.8	Well, while you were doing that and the rest of us were wearing like throwback jerseys,
0:42.4	Taur Banks, she was wearing a fat suit.
0:46.2	She did. And I looked up one of her quotes about this experience.
0:50.2	And she said, quote, it was one of the most heartbreaking days of my life.
0:55.6	I started walking down the street and within 10 seconds,
0:58.4	a trio of people looked at me, snickered, looked at me right in the eye,
1:02.4	and started pointing and laughing in my face.
	...

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