Equating Hudson and Rankin is quite a stretch. Hudson was merely appropriating something that liberals abhor to link it to something liberals advocate. No attempt at empathy from him. Based on your representation here, it’s also hard to read Rankin’s statements and understand the criticism. He actively worked (at some personal risk I ass…
Equating Hudson and Rankin is quite a stretch. Hudson was merely appropriating something that liberals abhor to link it to something liberals advocate. No attempt at empathy from him. Based on your representation here, it’s also hard to read Rankin’s statements and understand the criticism. He actively worked (at some personal risk I assume) to help people escape enslavement. I didn’t see how he used his thought experiment to serve his own goals at the expense of the people he’s empathising with.
Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote in a piece in the NYT today about the importance of using « moral imagination « to understand what life is like for trans people if you aren’t trans. I don’t see how that is different from Rankin. But, I only know of him what you wrote.
Agreed that making oneself the story rather than others is egregious, as is judging others based on what you think they should do. I don’t think the empathy label works to serve the points you make in conclusion.
Well, it's Hartman's reading, and her argument is that the move he makes is to put himself in the place of the people he's supposedly helping. That's the same move Hudson makes, and it can go really bad places. Abolitionists like Rankin had very specific, racist ideas about what freed people should do and be, and Hartman argues—quite persuasively I think—that their belief that they could speak for free people led them to harm them.
Equating Hudson and Rankin is quite a stretch. Hudson was merely appropriating something that liberals abhor to link it to something liberals advocate. No attempt at empathy from him. Based on your representation here, it’s also hard to read Rankin’s statements and understand the criticism. He actively worked (at some personal risk I assume) to help people escape enslavement. I didn’t see how he used his thought experiment to serve his own goals at the expense of the people he’s empathising with.
Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote in a piece in the NYT today about the importance of using « moral imagination « to understand what life is like for trans people if you aren’t trans. I don’t see how that is different from Rankin. But, I only know of him what you wrote.
Agreed that making oneself the story rather than others is egregious, as is judging others based on what you think they should do. I don’t think the empathy label works to serve the points you make in conclusion.
Well, it's Hartman's reading, and her argument is that the move he makes is to put himself in the place of the people he's supposedly helping. That's the same move Hudson makes, and it can go really bad places. Abolitionists like Rankin had very specific, racist ideas about what freed people should do and be, and Hartman argues—quite persuasively I think—that their belief that they could speak for free people led them to harm them.