I’ve been musing about how I would order the world once I am in charge of it. Which will be never, by the way. Yesterday, I veered into family dysfunction and empathy, which were related (hah), but not the main point I wanted to talk about.
In my ideal world or my diversity town, I would come up with a way to show people how they are privileged. I mean, that’s the whole point of diversity town. For those in a position of privilege to realize that what they consider normal is, in fact, privilege.
One thing I remember was being in a diversity training (not as the trainer) in which we were talking about how people of minority are treated on the daily. Microtrangressions, if you will. I mentioned being followed in stores plus other microtransgressions, and several white people tried to argue each incident and why it might not be racism.
One incident I mentioned was that at the Cubs I’ve been going to for all my life, I was once asked to show identification when writing a check (yes, this was in the Stone Ages), and I watched the next several people after me check out. One, a white woman, wrote a check, and she was not asked to show ID. Yes, I made sure to test this because I wanted to make sure the hunch I had was right. I wasn’t going to do anything about it, but I needed to check it for my own sanity.
In the training, a white woman trotted out the tired excuse that maybe the checker was having a bad day or maybe she was checking everyone. I mentioned that I had watched her NOT check a white woman, which shut down that vein of conversation. While maybe the checker was having a rough day, it’s not a coincidence that she chose the Asian person to exert a bit of power on. As I said, I had been shopping there for several decades and had never been asked for my ID before. It was racism, pure and simple.
One thing that is so frustrating about any ism is when a person of the majority simply will not believe the words of the minority. I am not saying never to question someone who is speakng on the topic, but the first thing a non-minority person should do is listen. This is something that is emphasized more these days, much to my appreciation.
Still.
It’s so hard to get people to examine their own privilege in a nondefensive way. It’s human instinct to hunker down and deflect when you perceive someone is attacking you. Just because we are more civilized in general, it doesn’t mean we’re not animals underneath it all. I know when someone points out something I’ve done wrong, my impluse is to say, “No, I didn’t do/say that!”
In my case, it’s also because I grew up having to defend every little thing. If I seemed at all grumpy, I would get scolded for that. If I got anything less than an A, I would be grilled about it. If I read all day long (which was my favorite thing to do), I would be questioned about why I was not going outside. But if I ran around outside, well, that wasn’t very ladylike, was it?
In general, there wasn’t anything I could do that would make my parents happy. Or rather, my mother. My father wasn’t there enough to really matter–nor did he care to lower himself to actually talking to my brother and/or me. He never went to any of the many activities my brother and I participated in unless my mother made him.
Now, however, I am amenable to being told I’m wrong. Yes, I will have a momentary flush of embarrassment and grumpiness, but I can wave that aside when the correction is actually one I need to hear. It doesn’t seem like other people are like that, though. Even when a correction is couched in the softest terms possible, the person responds angrily. I have noticed that the more they are in the majority, the more angrily they tend to be when they’re corrected.
In my ideal world, people would not be allowed to automatically bark back when something is pointed out to them (in terms of discrimination). If someone who is in the minority has something to say about an ism, then the person in the majority has to listen. It does not mean that they cannot ever answer, but not for a good minute. In fact, I may make the rule that they have to sit with it for a day before having a conversation about it.
It reminded me of a thread on Ask A Manager about female AI in which a man insisted for several comments that a female AI would not get hit on, despite the many women and other non-men telling him that it was entirely believable. The letter was about that, and he kept saying it was a fake letter. It took the letter writer entering the comments and stating most emphatically that they were real in order for him to back down at all. And he still didn’t completely bac k down.
He’s said other sexist shit and held to it because he just cannot grasp that maybe, maybe he might be wrong. It’s infuriating as fuck, especially when he had dozens of non-men taking time to educate him.
At this age, I just don’t give a shit. If someone else is really interested in learning, then I may take the time to have a discussion. However, they have to show a legit interesting in having the discussion. If they just want to challenge me because they are firm in their belief that they are right, then they can jog on, mate. Sorry, that’s from watching all that Brit content.
It’s fascinating to me (when it’s not actively angering me) how a nondescript mediocre cis het white dude can be so confident that his unformed opinion is 100% correct. And he cannot be dissuaded. I wish I had that unfounded confidence, but I don’t have centuries of everything being centered around me in my corner.
That’s it for today. More later.