I think I have gone from being completely ignorant to what it’s like being a “have-not” in a disadvantaged community to being completely empathetic. It’s not until you go into these neighborhoods and meet the people, talk with them, look around and see the lack of opportunity, the propensity for gang violence, etc., that you realize just how impossible it is for the people born into those communities to simply lift themselves up by their boot straps. After all, you have to have boots to do so, right?
Most people I run into with a lack of empathy live in very sheltered (mostly suburban or small-town bubble) communities. They’ve never once spent time in Lawndale or Austin, yet they are confident in their judgment of those citizens’ “lack of drive, laziness, and appetite for government assistance”.
