No Hierarchy of Suffering
“There is no hierarchy of suffering,” says psychologist Edith Eva Eger. “There’s nothing that makes my pain worse or better than yours, no graph on which we can plot the relative importance of one sorrow versus another.”
Eger was imprisoned at Auschwitz by the Nazis, so she knows about suffering.
She is empirically wrong, of course. The suffering she endured in the Holocaust was worse than anything most of us will ever endure. And yet her words carry powerful wisdom. It isn’t helpful to place one person’s pain above another’s. All wounds need attention and care…even though some wounds are worse than others.
Ever since I first read Eger’s words, they’ve helped frame my view of conversations on race with my fellow white people. I used to hold a “hierarchy of racial suffering” in my mind that resembled an inverted social hierarchy: the most oppressed people suffered the worst, so I placed their feelings at the top and considered their suffering most important. Any suffering by those at the bottom—white, straight, educated, wealthy men—was immaterial.
I am a white, straight, educated woman, so I often brushed aside my own suffering, as well. I reasoned that my privilege exempted me from much sympathy, especially in conversations around race.
But Eger’s words helped me understand the toxicity of this mindset. They brought to mind a time when an inner hierarchy of suffering had once caused me harm. Even though this memory doesn’t relate to racism, I’ll share it, because it demonstrates how the hierarchy of suffering prevents healing.
The Little Word That Helped Me Heal
At age thirty-five, after diagnosis with ulcerative colitis, I felt like my knees had been swept out from under me. Out of the blue, I had lost my health, and with it, countless abilities I’d always taken for granted: eating without pain and fear, working full time, traveling easily, spending much time with friends, even having children. Each of these losses was devastating.
And yet, whenever I began to mourn them, I chided myself for self-pity. I was keenly aware of my privileges, and I would list them to myself: good health care, my whiteness (which made me more likely to receive quality care), a loving husband, a good education, wealth to buy a home…
Comparing myself to many others with my disease, I was fortunate. So, I thought, what did I have to complain about?
Then I sought counsel with a minister from my Unitarian church. I told her about my disease, then hastily said it wasn’t that bad, ticking off my privileges on my fingers so she’d know I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself. (In retrospect, if it wasn’t that bad, I wouldn’t have needed to speak to a minister.) She listened to my self-admonishments, nodding. Then she said one small, simple word:
“And?”
And in the pause that followed, my mind shifted. I suddenly understood that I could be aware of my blessings and be heartbroken at the same time. Despite all my privileges, I had lost a great deal. The minister’s simple word had given me permission to finally grieve what I’d lost. I began to weep.
Over the following weeks, I felt like a weight had lifted. I found a new acceptance of my status as a chronically ill person, and my health even improved a bit, perhaps because I was happier. Honoring my grief had helped me move on to a more constructive mindset.
Years later, when I read Eger’s words, I knew just what she meant about the hierarchy of suffering. Constantly reminding myself of my privileges had once prevented my own healing, even though those privileges were real. Yes, some people’s suffering is worse than others’, but emotional wounds can only heal when they’re treated with compassion. The hierarchy of suffering can get in the way.
Just as I needed to tend to my grief after diagnosis, I believe that to bring about our collective healing from racism, we need to tend to our various wounds—even the wounds of the privileged. We can learn to embrace the minister’s “and,” holding two truths at the same time: people of color’s suffering, voices, and feelings must be centered in many conversations on race; and, especially in more private conversations among white people, white suffering, voices, and feelings are still worthy of care.
To hold both of these truths, it helps to understand where each comes from.
The Stifling of Black Anger
“I am so glad that you are not some angry black man!”
These are the words a white woman says to Dr. Alex Gee, a black reverend in Madison, Wisconsin who has just given a talk about mass incarceration to the woman’s Rotary group. In response to her remark, he corrects her: “I am an angry black man. Why would you think I wasn’t angry over what is happening in and to my community?”
Gee relates this exchange in a powerful 2013 article entitled “Justified anger: Rev. Alex Gee says Madison is failing its African-American community.” He voices his frustration with not only his city’s racial inequities, but also the way he feels discouraged from expressing anger about them.
In one incident, police question Gee for lingering in the parking lot of his own church because he fits the profile of a thief they’re tracking. He relates his struggle to stay calm until after they have left:
As they drove away, a flood of emotions which had been dammed up during their questioning began to flow. I could not afford to become emotional or outwardly upset during my interrogation out of concern that my burning anger would betray me and cause me to look guilty of some real crime, warranting a search, a ride downtown or further professional embarrassment.
Gee’s article illustrates how society has long treated black people’s anger as threatening rather than as an appropriate response to injustice. The smothering of black feelings originated centuries ago during slavery, but it has continued in insidious forms up to the present day.
Brett Kavanaugh and Donald Trump can throw temper tantrums about their “persecution” and still come across to many Americans as fit for public office. But black men, who often have far greater claims about unwarranted persecution, have no such luxury.
Gee asks: “Why was it so important to this Rotarian, and perhaps to so many others, that I not be angry?”
The Stifling of White Voices
The double standard about black vs. white feelings has begun to change in modern times. Many progressives today are working to uplift and center black voices, and to teach white people that their sensitivities about being labeled “racist” aren’t as important as the justified anger of black people over racism. That is progress.
But the earnest effort to center black voices crosses sometimes into outright dismissal of white people’s feelings, or into hostility towards opinions deemed not antiracist or progressive enough. This attitude is based on a too-rigid hierarchy of racial suffering, in which black people’s feelings are seen as not only more important than white people’s, but as the only important feelings.
The resulting “liberal intolerance” has been criticized by folks on the right, center, and even the left.
One outspoken critic is John McWhorter, professor of linguistics at Columbia University who writes for The Atlantic. McWhorter, a black Democrat, likens modern antiracism to a religious movement in which logic is shut down and replaced with faith:
Where Christianity calls for people to display their moral worth through faith in Jesus, modern [antiracism] calls for people to display their moral worth through opposition to racism…
A friend wrote on Facebook that they agreed with Black Lives Matter, only to have another person—a white one, for the record—post this reply: “Wait a minute! You ‘agree’ with them? That implies you get to disagree with them! That’s like saying you ‘agree’ with the law of gravity! You as a white person don’t get to ‘agree’ OR ‘disagree’ when black people assert something! Saying you ‘agree’ with them is every bit as arrogant as disputing them! This isn’t an intellectual exercise! This is their lives on the line!”
This objection seems studiously hostile until we compare it to how a devout Christian might feel about someone opining that he “agrees” with Jesus’ teachings, as if the custom were to think one’s way through the liturgy in logical fashion and decide what parts of it makes sense, rather than to suspend logic and have faith.
The Practical Need to Respect White Feelings
Other critics of “liberal intolerance” point out that the problem isn’t just about freedom of thought and expression. Respecting the sensitivities of white people is the only way to get many of them on board with antiracism efforts.
In a 2018 letter to the editors of Yes! Magazine, psychologist Linda Buzzell writes that calling people “white fragile,” even if the label is true, just makes them more resistant to changing their behavior:
Those who have been truly traumatized by racism may find it difficult to understand how merely being called a racist may affect an individual student at a training. And, of course, this pain is tiny compared to what people of color have endured for centuries and continue to endure. But such labeling can be just painful enough to make some white students or employees resistant to any change. People who feel criticized or attacked don’t tend to change or learn; they just go into defensive mode and resist whatever message is being conveyed.…
Those on the receiving end of racism may balk at this sort of ‘coddling’ of recovering white racists, but the goal here is surely to lessen the number of racists on the streets and in workplaces…and grow the number of anti-racist allies.
Dr. David Campt, a self-described “black racial dialogue specialist,” delivers this same message in a Medium article called “White Allies: Your Anger Belongs in the Streets, Not at Home:”
Don’t dismiss, demean, or minimize [your fellow white people’s] distress, it will only antagonize them. You can address the question of whether their fears and anxieties are disproportionate to reality later….
You’re angry. Good. I’m angry too. But you can’t let your anger at racial injustice get in the way of being an effective force for change. Your white friends and family are racist because America is racist. Getting mad at them personally won’t change that. Instead, find some compassion, tolerate your discomfort, and do the work to persuade them that change is needed.
Helping someone understand the realities of systemic racism, and helping them become antiracist, requires first meeting them where they are. Their initial defensiveness, anxiety, or grief are understandable parts of that process. White allies can give them space to explore these feelings, which will make them most likely to keep listening and learning about racism.
Reframing With the Power of “And”
To those of us working to heal centuries of racial injustice, the curtailing of white voices can seem like an improvement over the past. At least black voices are finally being heard, and isn’t it our turn to just listen? And in heated debates about “white fragility” vs. “liberal intolerance,” it can seem like there are only two options: supporting people of color by dismissing white sensitivities, or abandoning people of color by advocating “free speech.”
But there’s no need for such binary thinking. There are kernels of truth and wisdom in what both sides of this debate are saying, and on close examination, the devaluing of white feelings mirrors the injustice we’re working to heal. It traps us in the same flawed, hierarchical thinking where only one group’s suffering is worthy of attention. True healing will come not from inverting the hierarchy, but from dismantling it.
The minister’s simple word, “And,” is key to this dismantling. We can reframe the struggle and soften our rigidity: black people’s suffering is worse, and white people’s wounds are real too. We don’t have to choose between these two truths.
Occasionally, it is important to interrupt white voices, especially when they’re bullying or degrading people of color in public spaces. But often, especially in private conversations among white people or in less heated situations, we can treat white voices with more compassion. We can let go of the hierarchy of suffering, recognizing that to heal the country’s racial wounds, all of us must be transformed.
