Why are liberals so quick to defend some people’s terrible behavior yet refuse to understand or seek out explanations for others’? I have found that, especially in recent months, liberals have become less and less willing to try and understand peoples' circumstances.
Liberal Mistake #3 — Selective Compassion
Some demographics of people are apparently more deserving of defense and empathy than others.
For example, liberals will immediately jump to explain why a black gang member should not be held completely responsible for murdering someone in a drive-by shooting.
“He grew up in a poor family, caused by systematic racism and decades of economic disenfranchisement. He did not have a stable childhood and his emotional development was stunted because he lacked a father figure and his mother worked 80 hours a week. The school system he was in did not provide him the opportunities he needed to escape his situation. Joining the gang was not an option in his neighborhood, and it provided him with the sense of belonging and acceptance that society did not.”
A white Appalachian KKK member, on the other hand, is pure evil, deserves no compassion, and basically deserves to die.
It doesn’t matter that he grew up in extreme poverty and an abusive household. They don’t care that his father took him to Klan meetings every week since he turned four, involuntarily indoctrinating him into their system of beliefs. It is of no importance that he had little exposure to the world outside of his closely-knit town, or that his community had been ravaged by economic disparity and government neglect. They could give two shits that he suffered from an array of mental health problems that never got treated, or that the only place in the world where he felt wanted was among his fellow KKK members.
After the New York Times wrote a piece profiling a neo-nazi, people absolutely lost their shit.
“This normalizes white supremacy.”
“We don’t care about the background of a Nazi.”
“The NYT should write about people of color instead of this bigot.”
Please then, explain to me how ignoring that these people exist among us and refusing to try and understand why they are the way they are is ever going to fix anything.
If you stop acknowledging their existence, do you really think they are just going to cease to exist?
If you refuse to see the value in analyzing their backgrounds, how are you ever supposed to intervene in or prevent the formations of the types of scenarios that create them?
Liberal Tip #3
Next time someone spouts something abhorrent, attempt to step into their shoes, reflect on their development and their circumstances, and try to figure out what factors led to them being the way they are today.
You do not need to respect everybody’s opinions or beliefs, but you do need to try and understand why they believe what they believe if you ever want to create any sort of lasting change or prevent more people from developing those same thoughts.
