Grace Halsell was a journalist in Washington, DC, in the late 70’s and early 80’s who had earlier done some books about various racial and ethnic groups in which she walked in their shoes and tried to learn what it was like to be within their skin. One of those books was “Soul Sister” in which she takes drugs that turn her skin black. Another was “Bessie Yellow Hair” about a Native American. It was presumptious to think that she could educate the world about what it is like to be Black or Native American by pretending to be so for a short time. NPR dealt with this in March with a piece entitled “The Limits of Empathy” (See: https://www.npr.org/2020/03/06/812864654/the-limits-of-empathy.)
But what that piece missed has not escaped her biographer African American scholar Robin Kelley who, after doing a biography of Thelonious Monk, found in Grace Halsell’s life “my life’s work, the perfect subject to tell a profoundly American and global story about four forces that shaped our modern world: race, sex, war, and empire. A committed journalist thoroughly schooled in Cold War liberalism, Southern paternalism and domesticity, Grace Halsell grew distrustful of Cold War ideology and deepened her liberalism when most American liberals did just the opposite. She came to see racism as her country’s most vexing problem. As she moved from simply reporting and interpreting the world to seeking to change it, she came to believe that we needed more compassion, an empathetic world rather than more conflict and struggle. This revelation drove her to cross boundaries, enter dangerous territory in order to understand the race wars, sex wars, and imperial wars of pacification and occupation.”
Grace’s story is a complex and interesting one that includes working for LBJ in the White House and moving among other movers and shakers, but, as her biographer notes: “Palestine was her turning point, her moment of truth when empathy became solidarity.” Robin Kelley tells an abbreviated version of her story in an AMEU issue. It’s an interesting and worthwhile read. (See: http://www.ameu.org/Current-Issue/Current-Issue/2014-Volume-47/In-Search-of-Grace-Halsell.aspx.)
