‘Walk a mile in his shoes’’ is a bromide that’s easily offered — and just as easily disregarded. Empathy is where most solutions begin regarding problems that are thought to be too abstract or formidable to confront. But empathy requires imagination, and the American psyche insists on seeing imagination as, at best, an indulgence, a side dish, a dreamy distraction from hard work, practicality, and all the assorted verities associated with making, and keeping, a living wage.
Is it any wonder, then, that we often get tongue-tied, stressed out, or reduced to blurting lame cliches whenever race and class prejudice come up? Both these American-as-cherry-pie phenomena were even more present in the public arena this presidential campaign year, given veiled (and not-so-veiled) bigotry among supporters of Republican candidate Donald J. Trump and, most especially, the ongoing furor surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement, which has been seeking greater accountability connected with a series of police shootings of unarmed African-Americans.
Insisting that “black lives matter’’ doesn’t seem too complex or too dire a request. But the shooting deaths of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, though disavowed by the BLM movement, only amped up reaction by police and their self-appointed advocates, such as former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Even well-meaning white Americans summon the response, “Don’t all lives matter?’’
The answer, perhaps not surprisingly, comes from works of imagination — specifically, novels. Hollywood movies of 2016 mayhave been more loud and escapist than usual, but the American novel has reasserted itself as a socially conscious art form, vitally, even urgently engaged in post-millennial economic, political, and racial transformations, with strong foundations in both history and current events. One need look no further than Colson Whitehead’s National Book Award winner “The Underground Railroad’’ and Paul Beatty’s Booker Award winner “The Sellout,’’ both of which take creative license with the notorious heritage of slavery, or Joe McGinnis Jr.’s “Carousel Court,’’ about a troubled Southern California couple in desperate straits resulting from the post-millennial economic crisis.
One of this year’s best novels is by a white Kentucky woman named C.E. Morgan, whose “The Sport of Kings’’ is, as its title implies, about horse breeding and racing, but even more about race, sex, and class. Its three main characters are a wealthy, imperious, racist, sociopath scion of a Kentucky dynasty who is trying to breed the next Secretariat; his daughter, whom he’s trained to help run the family business; and a young African-American ex- convict from the Cincinnati underclass who gets to use the training he’s received from prison to help them raise and train this superhorse.
There are many passages of intense passion and daring ingenuity as Morgan’s novel weaves through decades toward the 2000s while reaching far back into America’s antebellum days. But there are a couple of moments in particular that most directly address today’s racial agenda. Before his date with prison, the convicted man argues with his invalid mother that “you don’t know who you are if you don’t know where you come from.’’ His mother believes this to be (to desalinize her language) poppycock: “You show me a black man who knows a single thing about real pride and I’ll give you a million dollars! Always thinking everyone hates them, acting like thugs. Most white folks don’t hate you . . . . They just don’t care about you.’’ And she thinks to herself, “Maybe that’s worse.’’
This admonition comes back to haunt the ex-con when he is compelled to make a Faustian bargain with the wealthy white breeder. “You really hate me, don’t you?’’ the ex-con says. “Hate you?’’ the horse breeder responds, “I don’t even remember your name.’’
As noted, the woman who wrote “The Sport of Kings’’ is white. Yet she shows here that she is mindful of what many other whites keep forgetting about Black Lives Matter: It is neither a bid for supremacy nor a vehicle for revenge. It never was. It was a plea to Not Be Ignored — for consideration, for a measure of empathy that evades easy, facile judgment.
This is what empathy — and the imagination — are for. There are no “how-to’’ guides to get better at it. But there are great novels — and they’re not all from the past, but being written and published in, and for, the present time.
Gene Seymour writes about film, music, books, and other distractions for various publications. He is working on a collection of essays.
