As a fellow straight white middle-aged dude, what I've finally come up with is that people are often angry, both for justifiable and not-so-understandable reasons, and like it or not I'm the holder of a tremendous amount of privilege in our society. I was born into it, I didn't ask for it, but it's still mine to do with as I wish. I strive to keep putting love out into the world, learn from my (and others') mistakes, and practice tolerance and forgiveness, especially for myself. :)
Which is NOT to say that it's not aggravating being called a ___ist when I feel in my heart that I'm not. I guess I'm just saying that I try to understand where it comes from.
I try too, and I admit I fail. Most of my friends know that they can poke me about when I fail, so I can understand not just when but how I failed. How else can I learn unless people who understand explain it to me? To borrow a metaphor from a friend, my straight-white-guy-ism is like water to a shark; I've lived in it forever, so I need people to explain it so I can think about water in a new way.
Yeah, that's a good metaphor. I think the whole key is in being open enough to accept that they're right sometimes. The trouble happens when people are just knee-jerk defensive because they're afraid they're going to lose something.
Second: Gahh, I can see so many sides of this. I agree with you, and I also agree with lynnindenver and paradisacorbasi. By that I mean, I understand and relate to the anger of people in less privileged groups. And at the same time it really doesn't help to get angry about being discriminated against, except to the extent that you can channel it into some kind of change. But at some point you can't help it
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It is a tremendously complicated issue, and I admit that I may not, in fact, have explained my troubles with the way people address it entirely well. It was more a wish that people could discuss it instead of screaming at each other, a tendency I've watched get worse and worse over my lifetime.
The thing is that discrimination in so many cases is invisible.
I remember in one of my cross-cultural psych classes hearing it described as having an eyelash in your eye in some cases... not earth-shaking, but THERE and impossible to ignore.
The thing is, and here's where the "position of privilege" part comes in, why is it any more the responsibility of the guy in you example to think before getting angry than it is your responsibility to think before saying something callous? I realize you didn't mean something racist by it, but I feel that it's part of our responsibility as people who enjoy white privilege to think before we open our mouths and say something unfortunate
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Clearly, something about what you said to him-- your word choice, or your inflection, or body language, really upset him. None of us can demand other people change without first taking the responsibility onto ourselves to do our share first. We each only have the ability to change one person, so that's where we need to start.
And maybe there was background noise that dropped out some of your individual words. A lot of people have mild hearing loss or comprehension issues that are worse in complex noise environments, like crowds or around loud motors such as are common in rush hours or on busses and ferries. Maybe he heard "back" and a short word starting with b and the rest got filled in incorrectly.
Giving people the benefit of the doubt for good intentions cuts both ways. He may have legitimately misheard you, just like you legitimately had nothing racial in mind when you spoke.
You were cold and tired. Odds on he was too. Sounds like a common precondition for cranky and impatient to me.
I'm not trying to invalidate your complaint, merely point out how things might have looked from the other side.
Here's the thing. I am a big fan of teachable moment and all. when i was teaching, I couldn't count how many times i took the educational approach to "fag" and "that's so gay." You know I have an open door policy on questions over on my journal
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I agree with you... to a point. At that point, I have to say, if you feel justified in taking out your anger on other people then you're just being part of the problem, not the solution. Being "tired of being polite" rarely gives anyone an excuse to act like an asshole, which the guy on the bus clearly was doing. That's not to say his anger wasn't valid (it clearly was, if I understood what the man was supposed to have misheard) but one of the more subtle points of this entry is reflected your comment: sometimes POC feel they have a right to be jerks just because someone else was a jerk to them. And they don't. I don't think that's an aspect of privilege, or that anyone really has to "suck it up" or always teach or even stand idly by while others spout hurtful things (unless they're working in customer service and want a paycheck, heh). Taking personal responsibility for your actions is something we all have to do in order to improve our society. Even when we've had really shitty weeks full of good excuses.
And yet, people in a position of privilege generally aren't asked to be polite. For example, it's considered completely reasonable for able bodied people to cut ahead of people like me in line because the time of abled bodied people is considered more valuable and by extension, they as human beings are considered more valuable. Similarly, they routinely step on me, push me, kick my crutch out from under me without apology because being able bodied, they aren't expected to be polite to people like me. Yet I'm supposed to be polite and apologetic when calling them on it, because i'm meant top be sorry for taking up space
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I liked this piece a lot.
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I fail plenty, myself. :)
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Second: Gahh, I can see so many sides of this. I agree with you, and I also agree with lynnindenver and paradisacorbasi. By that I mean, I understand and relate to the anger of people in less privileged groups. And at the same time it really doesn't help to get angry about being discriminated against, except to the extent that you can channel it into some kind of change. But at some point you can't help it ( ... )
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I remember in one of my cross-cultural psych classes hearing it described as having an eyelash in your eye in some cases... not earth-shaking, but THERE and impossible to ignore.
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Giving people the benefit of the doubt for good intentions cuts both ways. He may have legitimately misheard you, just like you legitimately had nothing racial in mind when you spoke.
You were cold and tired. Odds on he was too. Sounds like a common precondition for cranky and impatient to me.
I'm not trying to invalidate your complaint, merely point out how things might have looked from the other side.
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