Crossing the Empathy Chasm: Unpacking a Knapsack Full of Unearned Advantage

As demand for diversity, equity and inclusion workshops has risen sharply this past year, I'm not the first to observe that the burden for finding solutions, ironically, gets inordinately placed at the feet of people of color. Ironic, of course, because changing the hearts and minds of Whites is a challenge that needs to be met by Whites. McIntosh's White privilege scale has inspired a growing number of other scales that help us examine our unconscious bias, privilege and advantages from our lived experiences. Deepening empathy for people of color is a prerequisite to being of any use whatsoever in a profession committed to health equity. An obvious way to cross the empathy chasm is to be sure those who are accountable for finding solutions have a deep affinity with those who are most directly affected by the problems. In my continued work to cross the empathy chasm, the space I take needs to be as someone intent on listening to, learning from and supporting those with empathy to spare.