Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

by Arthur C. Brooks

A common criticism of this kind of argument is that, in fact, people cannot identify with historically oppressed people and have no right even to try. For example, because I am white and not an immigrant, the argument goes, I can neither understand the experiences of nor say I can relate to historically marginalized people—including the Chinese couple in LaPiere’s study. Under this kind of thinking, it is immaterial that I have met many immigrants and know lots of people of Chinese origin (in fact, my wife is the former and my daughter is the latter). Because of my personal demographic identity and lack of “lived experience,” some would say, I should shut up. It’s true that my socioeconomic, cultural, political, racial, and religious background is not the same as others’, and there are ways in which my understanding of those who are different from me is limited. However, none of that is an argument for keeping quiet and walling ourselves off. On the contrary, it’s an argument for more radical diversity, in which we obliterate the “what” distinctions and strive to understand the shared moral “why” of our lives as brothers and sisters.