Empathy is what happens when racist white parents discover their child’s best friend at school is black, and they begin to revisit their prejudices. Empathy is what happens when a homophobic woman finds out that male coworker she really likes is gay, and she begins to reconsider all those biases she’s held for so long. Empathy is what happens when real life, real people, prove obviously, demonstrably wrong all those conservative bedtime stories about gays and immigrants and castrating feminazis that go bump in the night.
Empathy is what happens when good conservatives, who have long mistaken patronizing pity for compassion, suddenly realize that being white, or male, or straight, or cisgender, or Christian, or rich, or thin, or able-bodied, or USian, or educated, or in any other way not Other, doesn’t make them better people; it merely makes them privileged people.
Empathy is what turns people into progressives.
”- Melissa McEwan