Empathy - letter to AJC

I've just submitted this letter to the Atlanta paper in response to a column by Charles Krauthammer:

“Empathy” is a much misunderstood word. It is not kindness or emotional bias but the capacity to temporarily see the world as another person experiences it -- a way of understanding someone who is not like you.

Empathy is not the opposite of rationality; it is the opposite of self-focus and narrow-mindedness. President Obama simply wants court appointees to have empathy to more fully inform their decisions.

Ironically, Charles Krauthammer denounces empathy by using empathy in the New Haven firefighters‘ case (“Empathy a virtue, but keep justice blind,” Opinion, May 29).

Frank Ricci, a white man with dyslexia, studied extra hard to overcome his handicap, only to have his promotion-winning score discounted when the exam was thrown out as unfair to minority test-takers. Latina Judge Sotomayor’s decision favored the minority test-takers; Krauthammer, a white man in a wheelchair, favored the handicapped white firefighter.

Yet Krauthammer claims blind justice and denounces Sotomayor as biased.

Ralph