( CNN ) I recently read seven words that shook me to the core . In a mesmerizing interview in the new Smithsonian magazine , the civil rights historian Taylor Branch describes the three Freedom Riders who were killed in Mississippi 50 summers ago . All three had understood the dangers of going into the Deep South to register black voters . All had been trained in the practice of radical nonviolence . One of them , Michael Schwerner , lived out that ethic as he faced the gun-wielding Klansman who was about to murder him . Schwerner said to the man , calmly , `` Sir , I know just how you feel . '' Then the man shot him and his two friends . Think about that . Put yourself in Schwerner 's shoes . Imagine what it would have taken to summon such stillness , such profound and sincere compassion for one 's killer , at the moment of death . And then put yourself in the shoes of that Klansman . After all , we know this story only because the Klansman later told it to investigators . He was haunted , for the rest of his life , by the depth of empathy that he confronted in that fateful instant . This story has stayed with me too , challenging me to admit it when in my comfortable everyday existence I fail to demonstrate even a fraction of that empathy and self-realization . But it 's stayed with me in my civic identity as well . And it 's made me wonder how much of our political and civic strife could be alleviated if we learned something from a young man who 's been dead a half century but never gave in to fear or hate . Look around our country today . Look at the New York policemen who feel so insulted that they think they must turn their backs on their mayor . Look at the African-American citizens of that city who feel that the NYPD has never shown them the respect those disgruntled officers now demand . Look at the online comment threads after Ferguson and Staten Island . Look at how black men in hoodies and white men with badges are demonized . Look at the escalation of outrage that leads to philosophical hashtag wars about whether # BlackLivesMatter or # AllLivesMatter . Look at the disgust that drips from the lips of Democrats as they brace for a reactionary GOP Congress and from Republicans as they decry imperious Democrats . Errol Louis : There are two sides to America 's policing issues . Look now at the people in your own community . Look at the way we walk past people whose circumstances are radically different from our own . Perhaps they are richer or poorer than you , or more liberal or less , or more self-destructive or less . Look at the way we ascribe moral meaning to those differences . Look at the way we tell ourselves stories about what our selves are . Look at the way those stories always accuse others of faults and excuse us for our own . Look at the way those solipsistic habits , which start with those closest to us , radiate outward . I have been guilty of this kind of self-justification , both personal and political . So have you . And for all of us , this season is an occasion to ask what it would take to earn the right to say these words : . I know just how you feel . To some people , this kind of radical compassion and loving nonviolence seems dangerously squishy , a slide down the slope to moral relativism . They fear that understanding the heart of another person , particularly the enemy , will lead to an obliteration of distinctions between self and other , between right and wrong . But that 's not how it was for Michael Schwerner and for the other Freedom Riders . They had a crystal-clear understanding of the moral differences between them and the last-stand defenders of Jim Crow , between good and evil . Their capacity for empathy empowered them -- not to subdue others but to invite them into goodness and thereby transform them . This power does not come easily . It takes a lot to say truly , in the heat of conflict , that you know how your adversary feels . And to say nothing more -- no letting him off the hook , no further demonstrations of your goodness . Frankly , few of us will ever attain the near-saintly disciplined open-heartedness of young Schwerner . But more of us can come closer . And when few of us even bother trying , we get the political culture of today : polarization for its own sake ; politics as a game of annihilation rather than repeat play ; citizens as bloodthirsty spectators . As we begin the new year , as conflicts over race and class and guns and belonging continue to rage across the land , let 's resolve to learn just how someone feels . And to let that knowledge guide our lives as citizens . ​ .
Eric Liu recalls death of civil rights leader before he was killed by KKK gunman . Michael Schwerner remembers his killer : ' I know just how you feel ' Liu says we must look to empathy as we face today 's problems .