Judge Actions, Not Hearts

You can tell when a person has done something really bad when he says, “You don’t know my heart.”

The implication, of course, is that people should judge their hearts, not their actions. I disagree: What is in your heart does not affect other people but your actions do affect other people. So I think if there’s any judging to be done, it should be on what people do. Yeah, “Judge not lest ye be judged.” Fine, but if people do something terrible, especially if they do it repeatedly, maybe a little judgment is in order.

You see people giving the “but I’m pure-hearted” excuse when they engage in some racism. They might do bigoted things and hurt people, but inside, it’s all halos and choirs of angels singing. (There’s also the “I don’t have a racist bone in my body” excuse. I’m not an expert in anatomy so can someone who is please pinpoint this fabled “racist bone” on a skeletal model?) I think this is nonsense. People in the real world are getting hurt by your actions whether or not your heart is pure. Your mom might care if your heart is pure but everybody else has to live with your actions.

Excusing your assholish actions by claiming a pure heart is just another way of justifying being an asshole using evidence that—conveniently for you—nobody can examine.

That said, when faced with a president who told four non-white congresswomen to go back where they came from and who did not discourage his followers from chanting “Send her back”; who found “very fine people” among the neo-Nazis shouting “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville; who for years spread suspicion that Barack Obama was not born in America; who started his presidential campaign by smearing Mexican immigrants; who called African and Latin American nations “shitholes” and suggested increasing immigration from countries like Norway; whose redlining was so bad that even the Nixon administration sued him; who called for the execution of the Central Park Five and did not change his mind after they were exonerated; who has repeated false crime statistics about black people killing white people; who has retweeted white supremacists; who used a Native American slur at an event honoring Native American World War II code-breakers; and who has received support from David Duke and other white supremacists without any self-examination of why they support him, a reasonable look at the evidence indicates that he is a racist.

In conclusion, if you act like an asshole much of the time, it’s probably a more accurate barometer of your character than the beautiful nugget of gold that shines, unverifiable, in your heart.