Mens Sana Foundation

here’s a subtle but significant difference between compassion and racism. And so it’s very easy to confuse the two.

According to Webster’s, "compassion" is "a sympathetic consciousness of another’s distress together with a desire to alleviate it." And "racism" is a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race."

Now it’s clear from the foregoing that for one to feel compassion, she must know the object of that compassion personally. She must be aware of the specific nature of that person’s difficulty. And she must be willing to directly do whatever is necessary to help that person alleviate the distress involved.

On the other hand, for one to be a racist all she need do is believe that all the members of a specific race are limited or defective in some manner, and that because she’s not of that race, she’s superior.

And so I submit that when one’s compassion is directed at individuals she knows personally, when it’s the result of first-hand knowledge of the cause of that person’s distress, and when it’s followed by action specifically directed to alleviate that distress, it’s probably real compassion that she’s feeling.

But conversely, when one’s compassion is directed at all the members of another race, when there’s no first-hand knowledge of any individual member’s distress, and when that compassion is followed by action intended to alleviate the imagined distress of an entire race, then it’s probably not real compassion that she’s feeling. Instead, it’s probably the phony kind of compassion that a lot of people use to mask what is really their own racism.

Think about it.