White men can’t sympathize

“See. if I’m thirsty. I don’t want a glass of water, I want you to sympathize. I want you to say, ‘Gloria, I too know what it feels like to be thirsty. I too have had a dry mouth.’ I want you to connect with me through sharing and understanding the concept of dry mouthedness.”

– Rosie Perez, as “Gloria Clemente”

Image credit: 20th Century Fox

Perhaps I shouldn’t be taking cues in DOC behavior from a movie. Perhaps I shouldn’t even be quoting a movie that was released — oh my God, I just looked it up, and boy do I feel old! — twenty-two years ago. But that scene plays through my head a lot as I read of the tough times that some of my fellow PWDs are going through. I see someone struggling, and I turn to a movie about basketball and hustling for advice.

(White Men Can’t Jump is a really funny movie. You should go out and rent it. Or maybe they have it on that newfangled Netflix thing. Unfortunately, I can’t find a video clip of the scene, but there’s an audio clip here; it’s the second one from the top.)