On being the majority.
Jun. 12th, 2020 08:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bladesparkA friend of mine, who is white, but also queer and I guess "progressive", whatever that means these days (words have lost meaning, time has lost meaning, life is a mush of undifferentiated madness) brought up that it feels bad to hear POC say that all white people are racist, and that she knows they mean the systemic kind of thing, not something personal, but it still stings.
Thing is, just given my...let's say wariness towards cis people in certain contexts, I actually suspect those folks may mean it personally and individually, they just mean something slightly different by "racist."
I was reminded of a discussion I saw in Ursula Vernon's journal, years and years ago, where she said she'd met a POC who she thought was gorgeous, and was very tempted to comment on her skin tone, (and I think perhaps compare it to coffee?) and hadn't, it felt like maybe a bad idea? But maybe she could if she saw this lady later? And the black ladies of the internet, some very gently and some much more vehemently, explained to her that this would be super fucking racist, do not say it. At the time, even with the ones that explained things about the long history of disgusting comments on black women's skin tones, I still didn't quite grasp why it was "racist." I mean, it would be a compliment, from a woman! And I know Ursula Vernon is a good person, not a racist, so how could it possibly be racist?
But after spending the last decade or so slowly getting more, and more and more and more fucking fed up with weird, gross things about "best of both worlds" that were totally about my flipping genitals when that shouldn't even have been something somebody was bringing up, and oh my god at this point I don't care if you think that's a compliment, it's disgusting, shut up!!!! *ahem* After that, I suddenly get it.
It's the "not getting it" that means all white people are racist. Not all white people are bigots not all white people have any conscious bias, many white people are trying really hard and doing really well at that! But it is really, really, really hard for a white person to "get" what things are part and parcel of a life-long string of bullshit a POC has had to deal with. A white person hasn't grown up with it, it hasn't been part of their life experience, there are going to be things that just don't cross their minds. Not out of malice, hell, not even out of subconscious bias against black people, though that's also a thing, but just because they don't have the experience to hear "coffee" and know that this black lady has probably had a thousand weird, creepy white guys use that word at her, and so to her it cannot possibly be innocent.
Discovering I was trans and starting to be out as a trans person has also gotten me to fully understand things like "Black people can say the N-word and you can't." The above "best of both worlds" thing, for example. I can joke with other trans men about having a great cock and a great vagina at the same time. When I'm comfortable and safe and around people I trust, I get to talk about my own body however I damn well please. That doesn't give any other person but especially not cis people, who have no idea where the boundaries of my experience might lie, the right to talk about my body. It's none of their fucking business.
And the sheer rage I feel sometimes at this point, the "oh god, this bullshit again????" frustration, after barely a decade of dealing with this shit makes me think that POC are probably entirely fed up well before they reach adulthood.
So yeah. I think every white person is "racist" in the sense that at some point, if they're around POC, they're going to do something that pushes one of those "oh god, this again" buttons. And so is every cis person, and every straight person, and every majority person out there, when they're around a minority. That's just how brains work. You can't know what it's like to be in those shoes when you have no comparable experience yourself. Even myself, understanding what the minority is like, when it comes to those micro-aggressions that pile up, don't know the exact shape of them for a black person, so I have done, and doubtless will do again, something that was racist. There's no amount of "woke" or whatever that you can be that substitutes for a lifetime lived in different skin. There just isn't. (And the majority cannot experience "reverse racism" or whatever in that sort of way, because by literal definition, there's not enough of the minority around to provide that day-in-day-out BS raining down on you experience.)
What's the solution? Well...I'm also reminded of a comment I read years ago about how intentions don't really matter that much, you just have to stop doing the thing you're doing, when somebody points out you're doing it. It was in the context of sexist and "creepy" behavior of men towards women, but it applies to this kind of thing pretty well, I think.
Black people are protesting right now because they want white cops to get off their necks, in a horribly literal way. But all us white people need to also work on getting off their feet.
Thing is, just given my...let's say wariness towards cis people in certain contexts, I actually suspect those folks may mean it personally and individually, they just mean something slightly different by "racist."
I was reminded of a discussion I saw in Ursula Vernon's journal, years and years ago, where she said she'd met a POC who she thought was gorgeous, and was very tempted to comment on her skin tone, (and I think perhaps compare it to coffee?) and hadn't, it felt like maybe a bad idea? But maybe she could if she saw this lady later? And the black ladies of the internet, some very gently and some much more vehemently, explained to her that this would be super fucking racist, do not say it. At the time, even with the ones that explained things about the long history of disgusting comments on black women's skin tones, I still didn't quite grasp why it was "racist." I mean, it would be a compliment, from a woman! And I know Ursula Vernon is a good person, not a racist, so how could it possibly be racist?
But after spending the last decade or so slowly getting more, and more and more and more fucking fed up with weird, gross things about "best of both worlds" that were totally about my flipping genitals when that shouldn't even have been something somebody was bringing up, and oh my god at this point I don't care if you think that's a compliment, it's disgusting, shut up!!!! *ahem* After that, I suddenly get it.
It's the "not getting it" that means all white people are racist. Not all white people are bigots not all white people have any conscious bias, many white people are trying really hard and doing really well at that! But it is really, really, really hard for a white person to "get" what things are part and parcel of a life-long string of bullshit a POC has had to deal with. A white person hasn't grown up with it, it hasn't been part of their life experience, there are going to be things that just don't cross their minds. Not out of malice, hell, not even out of subconscious bias against black people, though that's also a thing, but just because they don't have the experience to hear "coffee" and know that this black lady has probably had a thousand weird, creepy white guys use that word at her, and so to her it cannot possibly be innocent.
Discovering I was trans and starting to be out as a trans person has also gotten me to fully understand things like "Black people can say the N-word and you can't." The above "best of both worlds" thing, for example. I can joke with other trans men about having a great cock and a great vagina at the same time. When I'm comfortable and safe and around people I trust, I get to talk about my own body however I damn well please. That doesn't give any other person but especially not cis people, who have no idea where the boundaries of my experience might lie, the right to talk about my body. It's none of their fucking business.
And the sheer rage I feel sometimes at this point, the "oh god, this bullshit again????" frustration, after barely a decade of dealing with this shit makes me think that POC are probably entirely fed up well before they reach adulthood.
So yeah. I think every white person is "racist" in the sense that at some point, if they're around POC, they're going to do something that pushes one of those "oh god, this again" buttons. And so is every cis person, and every straight person, and every majority person out there, when they're around a minority. That's just how brains work. You can't know what it's like to be in those shoes when you have no comparable experience yourself. Even myself, understanding what the minority is like, when it comes to those micro-aggressions that pile up, don't know the exact shape of them for a black person, so I have done, and doubtless will do again, something that was racist. There's no amount of "woke" or whatever that you can be that substitutes for a lifetime lived in different skin. There just isn't. (And the majority cannot experience "reverse racism" or whatever in that sort of way, because by literal definition, there's not enough of the minority around to provide that day-in-day-out BS raining down on you experience.)
What's the solution? Well...I'm also reminded of a comment I read years ago about how intentions don't really matter that much, you just have to stop doing the thing you're doing, when somebody points out you're doing it. It was in the context of sexist and "creepy" behavior of men towards women, but it applies to this kind of thing pretty well, I think.
If you step on my foot, you need to get off my foot.
If you step on my foot without meaning to, you need to get off my foot.
If you step on my foot without realizing it, you need to get off my foot.
If everyone in your culture steps on feet, your culture is horrible, and you need to get off my foot.
If you have foot-stepping disease, and it makes you unaware you’re stepping on feet, you need to get off my foot. If an event has rules designed to keep people from stepping on feet, you need to follow them. If you think that even with the rules, you won’t be able to avoid stepping on people’s feet, absent yourself from the event until you work something out.
If you’re a serial foot-stepper, and you feel you’re entitled to step on people’s feet because you’re just that awesome and they’re not really people anyway, you’re a bad person and you don’t get to use any of those excuses, limited as they are. And moreover, you need to get off my foot.
Black people are protesting right now because they want white cops to get off their necks, in a horribly literal way. But all us white people need to also work on getting off their feet.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-12 05:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-12 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-12 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-12 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-12 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-12 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-12 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-12 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-12 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-12 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-14 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-15 12:17 am (UTC)I've experienced some recent examples of situations where the apology was close to, of not all the way over in centering the guilt feelings of the people apologizing rather than committing and getting down to the work, so now I have a better picture of what that looks like in concrete rather than abstract.