Empathy Works: Respect, Dignity, Humanity

Every time we dehumanize another, we lose a piece of our own humanity.

That's from Ryan Dowd; context for the quote follows. Dowd works with and advocates for one of the categories of humans we're most likely to dehumanize: the homeless.

Dowd has recently started using his expertise to train librarians to be better at serving their homeless patrons. He has a website, a collection of videos, and a book, The Librarian's Guide to Homelessness: An Empathy-Driven Approach to Solving Problems, Preventing Conflict, and Serving Everyone. His key concept, the thing that shapes all the advice he offers in his training, is that empathy is the most effective approach. Empathy works. If you want to make a pragmatic choice, choose empathy.

Why is an expert in homelessness, the director of one of the largest homeless shelters in Chicago, taking the time to share his expertise with librarians? I'll share a bit from the introduction of his book; he gathered a diverse group of homeless people from all walks of life for a conversation:

This motley crew was a focus group I was leading in our homeless shelter. We needed to pick a new legislative advocacy goal for the volunteers and we wanted the opinion of the residents.

I had prepared a list of issues for them to pick from. . . . I quickly lost control of the conversation, though. There was one injustice that they kept coming back to, no matter how often I tried to talk about my list of topics.

They wanted library cards. . . . 

And for the first time in my life, I fully understood libraries. Libraries are at the center of community in a way that no other modern institution is. Libraries are indifferent to race, creed, color, religion, political affiliation, or socioeconomic status. A library card is one of the few attributes that fully defines who is a member of the community. Every single inhabitant in your community can use the library.

Except sometimes homeless people.

As a librarian, I of course love reading his description of our core values. He gets it. We see ourselves as a cornerstone of democratic society. And he also points out that sometimes our rules and policies become barriers to our ability to embody those values. So he is spending time advocating for his clients, helping us learn how to do better.

That's part of my introduction to his book. The other part comes from one of his videos, the one applying his principles for working with homeless library patrons to, as he calls them, "ornery teens." Near the end, during the Q&A section, he responds to the question, What should we do about staff who always seem to assume teens are troublemakers and who only treat them badly?

So, yeah, what do you do with your coworker who's a jerk to teenagers and only teenagers? I mean--selfishly--have them take this training, and I say that tongue-in-cheek, but kinda not. . . .

So, I catch a lot of flack from people who say, "Hey, Ryan, all your questions should be tied to, like, how to be compassionate to homeless folks and whatnot." And what I've learned is that a lot of times people, they don't want to be compassionate, but they do want to have fewer problems. And what I basically teach them is being compassionate creates fewer problems. We get both, but you want to appeal to their desire to have fewer problems versus appealing to their desire to be compassionate. 'Cause they're showing you that they don't particularly want to be compassionate to teenagers. But if you can show them that if you treat teenagers this way, you will have fewer problems. Many of them, unless they are truly everyday sadists, will happily go along with whatever works better.

(That's my transcription.) If you want to have fewer problems, be compassionate. Because empathy works.

Empathy fuel that recently came across my feed:

In med school, I took an elective called "Stress," foolishly thinking I was going to learn about meditation and yoga. Instead the professor spent 6 weeks proving that being poor or a minority literally destroys your health on a molecular level, and I think about that every day.

Here's my very lengthy review of Ryan Dowd's book, The Librarian's Guide to Homelessness: An Empathy-Driven Approach to Solving Problems, Preventing Conflict, and Serving Everyone.

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This is a parenting book.

Yes, the details and particulars are about libraries serving homeless patrons, and for that it is great. I think all librarians and library employees should read it. Even if they have have no homeless patrons. Because the guidance in this book should be applied to all librarian-patron interactions.

And this book's guidance should be applied to all parent-child interactions. So it is a parenting book. And a teacher classroom-management book. It is a management and leadership book. It is a customer service book. I would daresay it is a policing book.

The core substance of this book is how to most effectively enforce rules. In libraries with homeless patrons, yes, but really in all situations. So this book is for anyone who enforces rules.

And what is the most effective way to enforce rules? With empathy (as opposed to punishment). Ryan Dowd, the author, has spent his career working from volunteer to director of Chicago's second-largest homeless shelter, and he has found the most important tool for running a homeless shelter is empathy.

Dowd has also learned that the homeless value libraries highly, so one of his recent ventures has been sharing his experience and knowledge with librarians. Thus this book. I think he could have just as easily distilled his wisdom in a presentation for parents or teachers or supervisors or anyone else responsible for enforcing rules--which is almost everyone. And it is easy to extrapolate and transfer what he shares to almost any situation. So librarians might have the most to explicitly gain from this book, but it is for everyone.

He even offers this in a sidebar at one point:

Question: Does empathy-driven enforcement work with patrons who are not homeless?

Answer: Yes, absolutely! The principles of empathy-driven enforcement work better than punishment-driven enforcement with just about everyone. They are just especially important for homeless patrons because punishment is counterproductive with them. The best way to make sure that you use water tools with homeless patrons is to use them with every patron.

Dowd is a casual, entertaining writer with a strong personality and voice. He draws from psychology, sociology, and other sciences to start the book with a general exploration of homelessness, class culture, relationships, and why empathy is such an effective tool. He then shifts to how those dynamics play out in libraries. The bulk of the book is his explanation of a multitude of "tools" demonstrating how to use empathy-driven enforcement in different situations.

Here's an example from the early part of the book:

The 5:1 ratio--Dr. John Gottman has studied the ultimate relationship, marriages. His principles apply to less intimate relationships too, though. Gottman discovered that in order for a relationship to remain healthy, the ratio of good to bad interactions must stay above 5:1. In other words, for every one bad interaction you have with someone, you need to have at least five good interactions. If you are going to offer a criticism, you better have offered at least five compliments already. The higher the ratio, the better, but 5:1 is the minimum. Anything below that and the relationship implodes on itself (which usually leads to divorce in a marriage). Applying this to a library, if you want to maintain a healthy relationship with your patrons, you should maintain a ratio of at least five good interactions for every one negative one. Since you never know when you will have to have a negative interaction (like enforcing a rule), you want to "store up" positive interactions preemptively.

Then, later, that information informs one of his key tools:

Tool: The Cup of Pennies

I need you to remember two concepts from chapter 3 about empathy:

• Psychology of relationships--In order to maintain a healthy relationship, you must have at least five positive interactions for every one negative interaction. Relationships are built with compliments, questions, deeds, and touch.
• Reciprocity--We feel obligated to repay kindness 1:1. Our vengeful selves want to repay rudeness, though, with more rudeness than we received (e.g., 1:5).

Combining these two concepts, you need to build up lots of "positive" credits in order to avoid having someone try to punish you for a negative interaction. The minimum ratio you should be looking for is 5:1.

It is helpful to imagine that you have an empty cup in your hand. Every time you do something positive for a homeless patron, you add one penny to the cup. Every time you do something negative, you remove five pennies. Anytime you have zero (or fewer) pennies in the cup, you are more likely to have problems with that patron. You want to build up a healthy reserve of pennies that you can use later to solve or prevent problems.

He explains more from there. Since I'm sharing tools, to give a sense of Dowd's style and substance, here are snippets of a few more:

Tool: The Marijuana Plant

You want to be calm when talking to homeless patrons. I don't mean "not frantic." That isn't calm enough. Imagine you just got an hour-long massage. That's not calm enough. Imagine you just took a lavender bubble bath with jasmine candles. That's not calm enough. Imagine you just smoked a marijuana plant. Even that is not calm enough. I want you to imagine that you are the marijuana plant. Now, that is calm.

You want to be calm because your discomfort is contagious (through mirror neurons) to the people you talk to. If you are uncomfortable, your patrons will be uncomfortable (and uncomfortable people do dumb things). If you are mellow, though, your patrons will be more mellow. You are the leader. Lead them to mellowness.

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Tool: The Limbo

The trick is to accept that an angry homeless patron will always be louder than you, so you have to speak more quietly than you want him or her to speak. . . .

I find it helpful to speak absurdly quietly when someone is shouting at me. If someone is shouting at me and I respond with a whisper, it can be very confusing to someone who expects me to shout back. More often than not, they whisper back without me having to ask them to talk more quietly.

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Tool: The Oprah

Since I live in Chicago, I have several friends who have worked for Oprah Winfrey. They all talk about how Oprah is an amazing listener. . . .

In fact, the mere act of listening can convert an enemy into a friend. So few people take the time to listen to homeless people that a simple courtesy like listening can turn a homeless patron into your biggest fan. It is a lot easier to solve problems when someone is your fan!

And since I seem to have slipped into overshare mode, let me give you the heart of the book as well:

Let's look at the differences between empathy-driven enforcement and punishment-driven enforcement:

Culture -

Empathy: Rooted in a culture of assistance and cooperation.

Punishment: Rooted in a culture of domination and legalism.

How It Works -

Empathy: Gains compliance with the rules by minimizing the power imbalance between the rule-enforcer and enforcee.

Punishment: Gains compliance with the rules by maximizing the power imbalance between the rule-enforcer and enforcee.

Mentality -

Empathy: Creates a "partner" mentality in the patron.

Punishement: Creates a "victim" mentality in the patron.

Who Decides -

Empathy: Library staff decide the terms of engagement.

Punishment: Patron decides the terms of engagement.

Benefit -

Empathy: Effective.

Punishment: Simple.

Empathy-driven enforcement has the same ultimate goal as punishment driven enforcement (compliance with the rules), but it goes about achieving this goal in the exact opposite way.

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There are five key concepts you need to understand with empathy-driven enforcement:

1. You need to accept that your behavior determines 80 percent of patron behavior.

In 80 percent of bad situations, if you had handled the situation differently, the bad situation could have been prevented.

2. The secret is to lead, not follow.

There is an old saying that you can't "push a string." If you try to push a string on a table, it will not do what you want. It will bunch up. If, on the other hand, you pull it on the table, you can make the string do anything you want: make a straight line, a circle, even a triangle.

People are like a string: if you try to "push" them into compliance, they will often not comply. Like the string, they will stubbornly refuse to do what you want. If, on the other hand, you lead them into the behavior you want, you can gain compliance much more easily.

Basically, you want to lead your homeless patrons into the behavior you want from them (calm, quiet, respectful) and not follow them into the very behavior you are trying to stop (frantic, loud, rude). This is a very important concept. Modeling appropriate behavior is a much more effective way of controlling behavior than yelling and threatening.

3. You have tools (lots of 'em!).

The biggest difference between a seasoned librarian and a novice is that the veteran librarian has more tools and knows how--and when--to use each of them. This book is my offer to teach you the tools that we use in homeless shelters. . . .

You need to understand that there are two "types" of tools: "fire tools" and "water tools." Fire tools escalate the tension and friction by punishing. Water tools de-escalate the tension and friction by using empathy.

4. Empathy is always first. Punishment is always a last resort.

5. There are three parts to empathy-driven enforcement: your head, your body, and your words.

This from someone who has spent his career getting compliance following rules from addicts, the mentally ill, the desperate, and others society deems unwanted. If it works for him, I'm sure it can work for us. That is this book's gift, demonstrating that empathy works.

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There are two more excerpts I had pulled out that didn't make the review. I think they're valuable, they just didn't quite fit. Here they are:

Tool: The Red and the Blue

There are two types of rules:

1. Rules that should never be broken under any circumstances (Red Rules)
2. Rules that keep things running smoothly, but should be broken when common sense dictates (Blue Rules)

It is impossible to develop guidelines and rules for every possible scenario. It is much more effective to make a few hard-and-fast rules (red) and then a bunch of guidelines (blue rules) that work in most, but not all, situations.

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Respect, Dignity, Humanity

Actually, if I was making a list of things library staff could do to help homeless patrons, it would have 1,008 things on it and the first one through 1,000 would be to "treat homeless patrons with respect, dignity, and humanity." I'm not being trite. It really is the most important thing you can do for homeless patrons, by a wide margin.

All people inherently deserve respect, dignity, and humanity. All people.

Here's something else from my recent feed that eloquently and succinctly demonstrates that the same treatment doesn't necessarily equate with equality and equity.

In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.

Another aspect to Dowd's work is a Facebook page and email newsletter in which he shares weekly tips. This one really stood out to me:

Homeless Training by Ryan Dowd

Our culture tries to separate poor people into two groups:

1. The Deserving Poor
2. The Undeserving Poor

The “Deserving Poor” generally includes:

• Children… but only until they turn 18.
• People with disabilities… unless they did anything to contribute to their disability.
• Elderly people… unless they should have saved more for retirement.
• Women more than men… unless they didn’t leave their abusers fast enough.

The “Undeserving Poor” includes anyone who did anything to contribute to their situation. (Or didn’t pull themselves up by their “bootstraps” quickly enough.)

Rarely do we explicitly talk about the two categories.

The distinction, though, is built into everything:

It affects almost every governmental policy.

Welfare systems ruthlessly seek out the so-called “able-bodied” to expel them.

It affects how we donate.

It is REALLY easy to fundraise for sick children. It is almost impossible to fundraise for drug treatment programs.

It affects how we treat people.

Homeless folks routinely have things thrown at them by strangers in passing cars.

Once you start looking for it, you will see this distinction everywhere you look.

But, guess what?

The separation between the “deserving” and “undeserving” is total BULLSHIT!

It completely misses the messy reality of the human experience.

It ignores the massive systemic factors that contribute to poverty.

It forgets that EVERYONE makes mistakes, but only poor folks are deemed “undeserving” for theirs.

The myth of the “undeserving poor” is probably the most common form of dehumanization that exists today.

So, here is my challenge to you:

• The next time you see a “bum” on the street, try to imagine what that person was like as a child.
• The next time someone points out a “crackhead,” try to imagine the pain that person’s mother is feeling right now.
• The next time someone says, “She is just a prostitute,” try to imagine the terrifying path that led her to this situation.

Every time we dehumanize another, we lose a piece of our own humanity.

Peace,

Ryan

The myth of the “undeserving poor” is probably the most common form of dehumanization that exists today. If we can see beyond the frame of deserving or not, see each person's inherent respect, dignity, and humanity, we will be able to find the compassion and empathy to overcome the barriers that keep us apart.

Dowd writes that the distinction between deserving and not is built into everything and affects almost every governmental policy. Here's an example:

Why Do Republican States Have a Murder Problem?

Why are Republicans so weak when it comes to stopping crime and protecting public safety? 

You are probably not accustomed to seeing the question framed this way. Normally, Republicans attack Democrats on the issue of crime. So, this fact may surprise you: Pro-Trump states with conservative leaders have higher rates of murder, violent crime, property crime and drug overdose deaths than most Democratic states. . . . 

“Republican officeholders do a better job of blaming Democrats for lethal crime than actually reducing lethal crime,” wrote the authors of the Third Way report.

As a result, overzealous incarceration has destroyed many lives – mostly those of poor, Black and brown people. It has also failed to increase public safety, as evidenced by the persistently high crime rates in Republican states that emphasize policing and prison. . . . 

For Republicans, the point of draconian laws and mass incarceration is not to necessarily solve the problem of crime. The point is to punish individuals in accordance with the conservative “strict father” moral code, which holds that people must be severely punished as retribution for wrongdoing. It doesn’t matter whether the approach is effective. It only matters whether conservatives consider the approach morally correct.

Criminal justice reform, which states like California have embraced, takes a different moral approach. It seeks evidence-based solutions to address the roots of crime and increase public safety. It imposes consequences, including prison, to those who break the law repeatedly or violently. But it also takes into account the fact that overly harsh punishments and unnecessary imprisonment for minor crimes can increase, rather than reduce, crime.

Reform embraces the moral position that increasing public safety and addressing the root causes of crime is more important than mere retribution. The reform mindset reflects empathy rather than vengeance, and it values positive results over cruel punishment. Empathy is a key component of democracy (you can’t have democracy without empathy), and a society rooted in empathy rather than cruelty will always have less crime.

That’s because empathetic societies take care of their people, reducing the economic and social factors that drive most crime. On the other hand, societies rooted in cruelty and vengeance appear to produce citizens who are more likely to engage in cruelty and vengeance against their neighbors. . . . 

Governance by empathy tends to increase empathy and care for others in society. Governance by threat of cruelty and vengeance tends to increase cruelty and vengeance — and hence crime — in a society.

That's from George Lakoff, who is all about shifting our frames for looking at issues. His data shows that punishment-driven enforcement of gun violence is much less effective than empathy-driven enforcement.

Empathy is a key component of democracy (you can’t have democracy without empathy), and a society rooted in empathy rather than cruelty will always have less crime.

Empathy works.

Here's more data.

A Major New Study Shows a Promising Solution to Gun Violence—That Doesn’t Involve Police

University of Chicago researchers looked at a mentoring program that serves men with extensive rap sheets who are at a high risk of shooting someone or being shot. During the 18-month READI Chicago program, the men, many of whom have been shot in the past, are paid $15 an hour to join daily job training and counseling sessions, activities that can get them off the streets and help them support their families without throwing them in jail.

The results have been impressive. The researchers followed 2,500 men who participated in the intensive program. This group was two-thirds less likely to be arrested for a shooting or homicide than a similar group of men who didn’t participate. The results were even more astonishing for guys who’d been recruited to the program by outreach workers: Their arrests dropped nearly 80 percent. And they were half as likely to be shot and killed themselves. That’s a lot of impact for a program that costs about 1 percent of what the city of Chicago typically spends on policing.

The study is particularly exciting because of the rigor with which it was conducted. It was a randomized trial, which means it was the first one of its kind to examine a large group of men from an anti-violence program with the same degree of statistical precision that you’d see in a study to evaluate medical treatments. “These are significant results,” Roseanna Ander, executive director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, which conducted the study and helped develop the READI curriculum, told the *Sun-Times*. . . . 

When I saw the Chicago study, I couldn’t help but think of a similar mentoring program in Oakland, California, that I examined in 2020. . . . 

Empathy-driven enforcement is more effective than punishment-driven enforcement.

Yet many in society will never be convinced. As Lakoff says, they have a moral frame that won't all it.

I live in a (metropolitan suburban) county library system, which means I work for a county government. I was browsing the results of the county's most recent resident satisfaction survey and one of the things that jumped out at me on this graphic was what showed up at the bottom.

The two categories with the most red, the ones that the largest number of people see as not important, are "Social Justice/Equity/Inclusivity" and "Public Transit System." The people who responded that way weren't just saying they were neutral on those topics, but that they hope the county doesn't invest any resources in them. These are just numbers, but I feel confident that most of those respondents believe the poor are "undeserving" and, because they are, shouldn't be helped.

It reminded me of the recent mayoral race in my city, the largest one in my county. Here is a response from the second-place candidate, the one who beat almost everyone in the primary and nearly got elected:

Mayoral Candidates on the Issues: Affordable Housing

It’s unaffordable for many low-income residents to live in [City] near their jobs. Would you support changes to zoning to allow for denser and more affordable housing options in [City]? What specific types of residences would you like to see more of? If you do not support denser housing, are there other policies you think would help more residents afford to live near their jobs in [City]?

[City] was developed as a suburban community primarily, and until recently, comprised mostly of single family homes and planned neighborhoods. The recent trend to spot-zone high density developments is contrary to the character of the community in which residents have invested considerable capital to provide a strong quality of life free of congestion for their families.

The metro area is easily accessible throughout, with often no more than a 30-minute trip to reach most parts of the city, whether by car or public transportation. Therefore, the suggestion that people are not able to live within a reasonable commute to employment in [City] is simply not as dire as the premised question would imply.

Ideally, the employment offered in [City] is such that after working hard and prudently saving, as families have for decades, couples and families desiring to do so can transition from apartment and urban living to single-family home neighborhoods in suburbs like [City]. Building endless, dense developments squeezed in alongside established neighborhoods is driving many longtime residents from those neighborhoods to flee to [south and outward].

[City] has sought to extend its borders in a defensive maneuver to capture the rural areas to the south by leap-frogging annexation in a haphazard manner to control various interchanges and future potential commercial areas, with little plan or resources to properly serve those areas. [City] would do better to focus its attention and resources to be the best suburban community for its residents it can be, rather than trying become an urban city failing in its quest to be all things to all people and responding to every planning fad of the day.

[City] was never meant to be New York or even Kansas City, nor is such a congested lifestyle desired by [City] residents. Safe, maintained and peaceful neighborhoods, along with ensuring strong schools should be the priority focus.

He didn't want affordable housing in our city because he didn't want poor people living in our city. Working here, providing the cheap labor, yes; but staying after work hours, no. He believes that if they are poor it's because they deserve to be poor, which means they are morally undeserving of our empathy, respect, and community. And many, many voters agree with him.

That's why, like Ryan Dowd, I hope that if they won't be convinced by moral arguments, they'll be swayed by effectiveness evidence.

Empathy works.