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Terms
Hochschild defines an empathy wall as “an obstacle to the deep understanding of another person, one that can make us feel indifferent or even hostile to those who hold different beliefs or whose childhood is rooted in different circumstances.” Her research methodology is carefully oriented toward overcoming the empathy walls that she believes segregate American communities into echo chambers—people lose the ability to empathize with people outside their own political community and polarization accelerates. Hochschild’s goal is to understand the Americans whose political beliefs are most radically different from her own, and accordingly her hard-won friendships with the Louisianans she encounters demonstrate the dangers and rewards of building “empathy bridges” to climb empathy walls.
Empathy Wall Quotes in Strangers in Their Own Land
The Strangers in Their Own Land quotes below are all either spoken by Empathy Wall or refer to Empathy Wall. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Preface
Quotes
We, on both sides, wrongly imagine that empathy with the “other” side brings an end to clearheaded analysis when, in truth, it’s on the other side of the bridge that the most important analysis can begin.
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Chapter 1
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Looking out the window of the truck, it’s clear that Mike and I see different things. Mike sees a busy, beloved, bygone world. I see a field of green.
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But first, the people.
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Chapter 10
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“I don't mind somebody being gay if they want to be gay. Just be a regular person, go to work, mow the lawn, fish. You don't have to be shouting it from the mountaintops. Don't make me change and don't call me a bigot if I don't.”
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Chapter 13
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Without a national vision based on the common good, none of us could leave a natural heritage to our children, or, as the General said, be “free.” A free market didn't make us a free people, I thought. But I had slipped way over to my side of the empathy wall again.
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Empathy Wall Term Timeline in Strangers in Their Own Land
The timeline below shows where the term Empathy Wall appears in Strangers in Their Own Land. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1 – Traveling to the Heart
Hochschild suggests that her confusion might stem from an “ empathy wall ” between her and Mike. (An empathy wall is “an obstacle to deep understanding of...
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Chapter 4 – The Candidates
...deep story” by noticing what that story excludes. She is clearly not yet “over the empathy wall ,” even though the Tea Party members she met surprised her with their warmth and...
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...Honoré (who is black Creole but popularly known as the “Ragin’ Cajun”) as an “ empathy wall leaper.” When Hochschild asks him why Louisianans do not “ask politicians to clean up their...
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Chapter 5 – The “Least Resistant Personality”
...does not give Louisianans enough credit for what they do believe. Hochschild suggests that “the empathy wall was higher than I’d imagined” and resolves to explore the cultural institutions that her subjects...
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Chapter 16 – “They Say There Are Beautiful Trees”
...this interdependence, Hochschild remarks that she “was humbled by the complexity and height of the empathy wall ” throughout her research. However, she notes that Louisianans’ “teasing, good-hearted acceptance of a stranger...
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