Type in “which way home” in Google and you might see one of two things: If you have your home location saved and current location turned on, Google might show you a time estimate and route to your house. If not, you might just see a link to the 2009 documentary of the same name, directed by Rebecca Cammisa. My junior high school Human Geography teacher showed us this film. It was one of my favorites, and it’s still pretty relevant today.
The documentary follows several boys as they make their way through Central America in a fraught journey to cross the U.S./Mexico Border Wall. Some of these boys wish to be adopted, some want to be able to support their families back home and some are fleeing from the omnipresent threat of death. Along the way, the team encounters border security and deportation agencies as well as careful locals who lend support to these migrant expeditions.
Honestly, I’m a sucker for these types of films. They’re clips of lost childhood and appeal to the same crippling empathic side that makes you want to watch sad dog commercials. But is that type of response strictly needed in Trump’s America?
In June 2016, Trump announced his now infamous plan to construct a wall on the U.S./Mexico Border and have Mexico pay for it. That was in the first stage of his campaign. Now, eight months later, Trump’s wall has been examined, criticized in all the ways possible by reason and factually debunked as a fool’s errand … So of course there’s still widespread support for its construction.
The same empathic response that made me want to cry at the stories in “Which Way Home” is the same response that’s made several million Americans fear for their lives in either mortal or economic terms. Threats to their health, employment and a looming sense of danger provoked by Trump’s overgeneralizations fuel the same engines as those provoked by film makers like Cammisa. Empathy is a great strength of human faculty, but it is also a great liability, as it brings a group of people together against the “other.”
That’s why a prismatic understanding of stories is always necessary. There is an inherent danger in what Chimamanda Ngozi Adiechie calls the “single story.” Cammisa includes the story of the deportation agencies that parole migrant routes, making sure to humanize the people who work actively against the lives of the boys in the film. Still, understanding more and more of the story doesn’t do much in practical terms to mollify perceived wrongs. Doing so requires another line of action advocated by Paul Bloom called rational compassion.
Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale University, explains that in politics empathy is a weakness, rather than a boon that helps us help others. In the worst cases, it distorts reasoning and makes us “biased, tribal and often cruel.” Bloom’s explanation of empathy’s pitfalls highlights the effectiveness of Trump’s campaign strategy, stimulating ineluctable dispositions in America’s disillusioned and dissatisfied. Although it may feel removed and cold, Bloom suggests a rational approach towards aid extricated from emotional leanings, leaving people with compassion defined as “feeling for and not feeling with the other.”
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