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Is It Time To See Each Other's Tears?

By Michel Martin
Published July 17, 2013 at 11:00 AM CDT

As I was heading home the other day, I was thinking about a situation I encountered a while ago when I landed back in the Washington, D.C., area after a trip.

I was hungry and saw that one of my favorite lunch spots had opened an outpost at the airport. So I ducked in there and was just about to order when I realized that a young woman standing next to me was having some sort of confrontation. It was loud, and getting louder.

I turned to look at her. She was a "big girl," as my parents would say. Tall, stout, and she had one of those wigs or weaves that — if you were having a mean moment — you might be asking, "Why is she wearing that?" If you must know, she actually looked a little bit like a certain star witness in a recently concluded trial. So I had to decide what to do. I could have walked away and gotten my sandwich somewhere else, but I decided not to. I did the kind of thing that makes my husband — a former prosecutor — crazy, but I insist on doing anyway. I asked her, "Are you OK? Can I help?"

And you know what happened next? A big, fat tear rolled down that girl's cheek, and she ducked her head and told me what happened. Somebody behind the counter, who was supposed to be making her sandwich, had made fun of her hair. It hurt her feelings, and she felt humiliated. And, this is me talking now, she had no words for her hurt feelings. But she did have words for her anger. So she started yelling.

Can I just tell you? This is where we are right now. Now, we have to choose. We can listen to the shouting or we can choose to see the tears. So if by now you have decided that story of what happened between Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman is all just media hoo-ha, engineered by professional agitators who have nothing better to do for a living, then you certainly have that choice, but you are choosing not to see the tears. You are choosing not to see the tears of parents and siblings and friends — your neighbors, maybe the guy in the cubicle next to yours — who see their loved ones threatened, hurt and even killed, and then come to believe that those deaths count for nothing.

We brought you a story last week that may explain even a piece of this. Jason Silverstein, a doctoral candidate at Harvard, wrote in Slate and told us about a university study demonstrating that people do not respond equally to the pain of others. Researchers actually showed this by analyzing the brain responses of subjects. They found that when viewers saw white people receiving a painful stimulus, a needle prick say, their brains responded more dramatically than they did for black people. He called it a racial empathy gap, and Silverstein wrote that the problem isn't just that people disregard the pain of black people; the problem is they think their pain isn't even felt. And yes, since I am sure you want to know this, even black participants assumed that black people felt less pain than whites.

Why would this be? Silverstein told us the research suggested that study participants assumed blacks are somehow impervious to pain because they've felt so much of it. In his words, "because they are believed to be less sensitive to pain, black people are forced to endure more pain."

I tell you this not to re-litigate this painful trial that has just concluded. This is not a suggestion we all leave our car doors unlocked and our handbags gaping wide when we leave the house. We've all developed our gut instincts for better or worse. But it is a plea to reconsider those gut instincts, and what they are based on. Think about the conversation we'd be having now if, instead of thinking, "These __ always get away," a certain neighborhood watchman had stayed in his car with his gun tucked in his waistband, and asked a teenager visiting an unfamiliar subdivision, "Are you OK? Can I help?" Then he might have learned that a 17-year-old was trying to find his way back to his little brother, armed with skittles and iced tea. Instead of, well, you know the rest.

To tie a bow on the rest of my story, I asked for the manager and suggested he apologize to the young lady, which he did. I asked her if I could hug her, and I did. And I told her she was beautiful, no matter what anybody else thought. And you know what? She is.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Michel Martin
Michel Martin is curious about many things. "I wonder what it's like to leave everything and everyone you know for the promise of a better life, to run for President, to be a professional athlete, to parent children of a different race," she notes. "I am fascinated by people who live lives different from my own. And at the same time, I feel connected to all of these lives being a journalist, a woman of color, a wife and mother." All these topics — from immigration to parenting in a multicultural family — are part of Tell Me More, the one-hour daily NPR news and talk show that made its national premiere on April 30, 2007, on public radio stations around the country. Martin, who came to NPR in January 2006 to develop the program, has spent more than 25 years as a journalist — first in print with major newspapers and then in television. Tell Me More marks her debut as a full-time public radio show host. "What makes public radio special is that it's got both intimacy and reach all at once. For the cost of a phone call, I can take you around the world. But I'm right there with you in your car, in your living room or kitchen or office, in your iPod. Radio itself is an incredible tool and when you combine that with the global resources of NPR plus the commitment to quality, responsibility and civility, it's an unbeatable combination." While working on the development of Tell Me More, Martin also served as contributor and substitute host for NPR newsmagazines and talk shows, including Talk of the Nation and News & Notes. Martin joined NPR from ABC News, where she worked since 1992. She served as correspondent for Nightline from 1996 to 2006, reporting on such subjects as the Congressional budget battles, the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, racial profiling and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. At ABC, she also contributed to numerous programs and specials, including the network's award-winning coverage of September 11, a documentary on the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas controversy, a critically acclaimed AIDS special and reports for the ongoing series "America in Black and White." Martin reported for the ABC newsmagazine Day One, winning an Emmy for her coverage of the international campaign to ban the use of landmines, and was a regular panelist on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. She also hosted the 13-episode series Life 360, an innovative program partnership between Oregon Public Broadcasting and Nightline incorporating documentary film, performance and personal narrative; it aired on public television stations across the country. Before joining ABC, Martin covered state and local politics for the Washington Post and national politics and policy at the Wall Street Journal, where she was White House correspondent. She has also been a regular panelist on the PBS series Washington Week and a contributor to NOW with Bill Moyers. Martin has been honored by numerous organizations, including the Candace Award for Communications from The National Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Joan Barone Award for Excellence in Washington-based National Affairs/Public Policy Broadcasting from the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association and a 2002 Silver Gavel Award, given by the American Bar Association. Along with her Emmy award, she received three additional Emmy nominations, including one with NPR's Robert Krulwich, at the time an ABC contributor as well, for an ABC News program examining children's racial attitudes. A native of Brooklyn, NY, Martin graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College at Harvard University in 1980 and has done graduate work at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.