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| 07 Aug 2007 10:24 |
| It's Not About You |
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Quite often in discussions of race somebody pops up his or her head and says, "I know just how you feel! A Hispanic kid once yelled insults at me / I felt uncomfortable at the black table on campus / my Irish ancestors were oppressed by the British!"
There is a difference between visiting Rome and living in Rome. There is a difference between being a member of the privileged class who briefly experiences discrimination and being a member of the class that, every day, is confronted with being Other.
One black kid, once, hit me for racial reasons. [Long story.] That doesn't mean that I really comprehend the feeling of being constantly singled out for race. When I walk into a room at an SF convention, I don't look around and notice that I'm the only white person there. When I'm chatting with a co-worker, nobody asks to touch my hair to see how it feels. When I'm in an unfamiliar neighborhood, people are more likely to say "Can I help you?" than to try to get me out of there as fast as possible. When I screw up royally, nobody holds me up as an example of why you can't trust white people.
When people are talking about the experience of being a POC in a white-dominated society and you pipe in with a personal example of your oppression as a white person you are, consciously or not, trying to derail the conversation onto yourself and your experience in the dominant culture. It's a natural reaction -- it's really uncomfortable being the odd man out in a room that isn't targeted to your experiences. And if you shut up and listen, you might find out what it's like to have that happen every day.
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) nestra |
| 07 Aug 2007 17:37 (UTC) |
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It's a natural reaction -- it's really uncomfortable being the only person in a room that isn't targeted to your experiences.
Fairly often, we'll go to a restaurant and be the only white people there. Good ethnic food is obviously often found in very ethnic neighborhoods, but it's a real eye-opener (for this privileged white girl) to sit in a room full of people speaking Chinese or Spanish or Vietnamese.
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| jonquil |
| 07 Aug 2007 17:37 (UTC) |
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Oh, yeah. And I am ashamed of how nervous I feel when walking into my neighborhood barbecue joint through a bar full of black people. I really suck sometimes.
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| cofax7 |
| 07 Aug 2007 18:09 (UTC) |
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And yet the more often you do it, the more comfortable you get.
(Occasionally I look up from the newspaper on the way to work, and think, "Look, another white person is on the bus!" *g*)
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| neadods |
| 07 Aug 2007 20:40 (UTC) |
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I was more than a little upset at myself for being wierded out that one of the tap dancers in a show I just saw was Asian. But knowing that "I've done x wrong" does mean that you know it, you care enough to own up to it, and you can still work on it...
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| oyceter |
| 07 Aug 2007 22:01 (UTC) |
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This is totally off topic, but you just reminded me! If you ever feel up to it, I want to drag you and Laura and Cofax and others over to a pretty good Chinese place around here and feed you things like shrimp with heads.
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| rezendi |
| 07 Aug 2007 17:48 (UTC) |
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How would you feel about this coming from someone who has lived for extended periods in a non-white-dominated society? (eg China, Nigeria, Thailand.)
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| telophase |
| 07 Aug 2007 17:56 (UTC) |
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I lived in Tanzania for two years, when my dad was a graduate student in wildlife science. Even though my family was in the minority numerically, we were still financially, educationally, and politically privileged, so certainly for me, my experiences in no way compare to the experience of most non-white people in white-dominated countries.
(We were in slight danger of being kidnapped for political reasons - other researchers in the country at the time had been kidnapped - but that was about the extent of the danger for us.)
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| rezendi |
| 07 Aug 2007 18:05 (UTC) |
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I should probably have mentioned that I picked the particular three countries above for a reason - they're relatively wealthy, and white people are no big deal in them. (Less so in both cases for Nigeria, but I wanted an African example that wasn't totally pathological like Zimbabwe or really complex like South Africa.)
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| telophase |
| 07 Aug 2007 18:12 (UTC) |
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True, I was in a much poorer country (although we were in the Serengeti National Park, which is slightly wealthier than your average Tanzanian area, but nothing to compare with other countries).
Starting to speculate here - I think that just because of my U.S. nationality, I'd still be in a financially/politically privileged position if living in one of the countries you mentioned. I can't say what the case would be if I happened to come from a much poorer and less influential but still mostly-white country and lived in one of the three mentioned.
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| aquaeri |
| 10 Aug 2007 09:55 (UTC) |
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I visited Thailand recently, and I didn't experience either that being white was no big deal, nor that there wasn't a huge wealth differential between me (and anyone else who could afford to stay in our hotel) and most of the people there. This was in Songkla province, which is clearly not visited by many white people.
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| oyceter |
| 07 Aug 2007 22:10 (UTC) |
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Um. Sometimes I still sort of roll my eyes. Particularly if the person is American, because given how American culture is disseminated worldwide, it's still not quite the same. And while white people are definitely discriminated against abroad, there's also a cache because they are associated with wealthier countries. That is not to say that the racial exclusion they experience is not hurtful, but it is a very different exclusion in terms of degree and attitude than say the exclusion a Filipino in Taiwan would probably experience.
And speaking in humongous generalities for Taiwan, I think there's still an overall mix of feelings toward the white Western world -- envy and anger and resentment and oneupmanship, all tied into colonialism and imperialism, to the knowledge of what happened to China in the 1800s, to where the political power is. And again, these are huge generalities; obviously the world does not revolve around America for people in Taiwan, and it's difficult to talk about these things without making it "All About Whiteness." So... YMMV?
You may also want to check out Global Hierarchy of Race, which was written by a white man who lived in Hong Kong. tatterpunk has also been writing about her time in China (I think she spent half a year there?) as a white American, and I've found her entries to be fascinating.
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| grodwona |
| 07 Aug 2007 17:55 (UTC) |
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you are, consciously or not, trying to derail the conversation onto yourself and your experience
Not just when discussing racism. It's a very common reaction, when someone is talking about a problem. For example,
"I know just how you feel about your husband, because my cat died this spring"
or "my aunt had cancer and she's fine now." Sometimes it's very difficult to just shut up and listen.
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| jonquil |
| 07 Aug 2007 18:00 (UTC) |
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Yeah. I notice it in my own experience (see! I'm doing it, too!) when I talk about depression and people say "Yeah, I was really blue once."
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I think it's part of how (a lot of) people get trained to talk about things. You give, the other person gives, then you give again. Someone else on my friendslist was talking about this today (locked post, so I can't point it out). So much everyday conversation has a certain inherent flow and pattern, and it can take a conscious effort to interrupt that and just listen, especially if you haven't had much practice in listening well, asking the right questions, etc.
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I couldn't say this better myself. The best thing I can do is listen and learn.
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Here's what I don't get: how is making such a claim even useful to the conversation? It seems so childish. Someone says, "I've been made to feel Other in situation X, Y, and Z over the course of my whole life" and someone else's response is, "Oh yeah? I felt bad in situation M one time. So there." Really??
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Well--it's an attempt to show empathy, I think (most of the time; sometimes it's just misery poker). And that's a useful thing, in that it means that the person who's doing it is trying to connect with the other person. On the spectrum of usefulness, I'd say it's well above, "Oh, don't be silly."
Which isn't, of course, to say that it's the best possible way to show empathy or connect, or that it's even a good one. But the "so there," I think, is not necessarily built in.
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Maybe the problem is that empathy is really hard to express, and really, even harder to feel. People really want to empathize, though. (Or maybe that's just me.)
But the "so there," I think, is not necessarily built in.
You're right.
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>Maybe the problem is that empathy is really hard to express, and really, even harder to feel. People really want to empathize, though.
I totally agree with all of this.
I wish there were better ways to express empathy. I always feel like saying, "I'm listening," or, "I feel for you," or "I'm sorry," and all that sort of thing is so generic that it doesn't mean anything or show any thought (when I do it, anyway, it feels inadequate; I'm usually willing to believe it's sincere from other folks!)...but jonquil's right about the problems with going the show-don't-tell route. It's really tricky stuff.
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| kate_nepveu |
| 07 Aug 2007 19:18 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
| International Blog Against Racism Week |
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Yes, and what you say about conversational flow.
Offering advice is the other thing, and I'm trying to train myself not to do either, but I know I still have a lot of work to go.
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![A good grammarian can outwit any word.: [blackadder] burn more catholics](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/94998734/607580 "A good grammarian can outwit any word.: [blackadder] burn more catholics") |
| cesario |
| 07 Aug 2007 17:59 (UTC) |
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| [blackadder] burn more catholics |
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Well freakin' said, dude.
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| dichroic |
| 07 Aug 2007 18:51 (UTC) |
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Growing up with a Jewish upbringing can mean beng steeped in stories of discrimination - but that's *still* not the same thing, because it's second hand and because you know you can walk out of the house or classroom and still blend in if you choose.
It will be interesting when we move to Taiwan in a couple of months. There I certainly will have the experience of being singled out for race, all the time. However, I'l still be in a somewhat privileged class (expat, guest). I won't have (thank the gods) the full discriminatory experience; I'll be different in a very visible way, but I'll just be "not one of us", not "not quite human".
I've just been reading a couple of Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January mysteries, which are one of the paramount examples of why I think fiction writers are one of the best ways we have to let us feel how it is to walk in someone else's skin for a little while. AFAIK, Hambly is white, and even aside from that was obviously never part of the uneasy free colored class in the New Orleans of the 1830s. But she's a historian and has clearly done *extensive* reasearch - and I noticed on this readthrough she credits Octavia Butler for her help and critique. So maybe I can have some very small idea of what it was like to fear being sold into slavery at the turn of les blanquittes' whim. But as you say, I have only visited Rome. No matter how vivid that vicarious fear is, living with it for the length of a novel must be different not only in quantity but also in never-remitting quality of living with it for a lifetime. (Periodically I pause, do the math, think of the lifespans, and get sniffly at the idea that Ben January would likely not have lived to see all the slaves freed.)
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