This is a reactive diary. I'm reacting to the excellent privilege checklist on the rec list, and the many (many) responses. I'm reacting to my own life and the way people exclude me. I'm reacting to the entire discussion about racism.
It would be easy to say that the wankers are in ascendance. Someone puts up a diary just mentioning the idea that privilege is real, and its like y'all were accused of making meatloaf out of babies. I'm not a racist! I'm not one of those people. How dare you? My heart is pure! I am a good person! Or, conversely, I hate everyone grumble grumble fuck you and your PC 'tudes.
Well, I have to say my sympathy is entirely with the folks calling out racism in its subtle and privileged forms. Our country has a long way to go and this has been excellent illustration of the fact.
I read a lot of blogs that are all about privilege this and privilege that, and while the rhetoric can get kind of old after awhile, I'm in great agreement. Most of us choose not to see that the criminal justice system has created an entire class of human beings, along racial lines, who can't get jobs or apartments because they were arrested and convicted by the courts. So they're bad people and we don't have to think about them. Our country is full of poor people, who can't get jobs or educational opprotunities, and those exclusions pile up and pile up and are pretty much invisible to those of us with more bennies. But the poor will always be with us, and we don't have to think about them, either.
I'd just like my fellow white folks to consider a few things (others welcome to consider them as well -- I'm pretty sure no group is without some people who should think about this). One, I'd like you to consider how very very many bad things we sign off on every day. How many small acts of consent go into the world as it is. You pay taxes because you don't want to go to jail. Me too. Those taxes pay for the world's largest army and bloody military adventures without end. You eat food prepared by an industrial system, live in an apartment or house built by an unsustainable, exploitative economic system, and run your wheels on oil shipped in from some of the poorest, most bitterly oppressed places on the planet.
So what, you say. I knew that.
So why is it so damn hard to hear that you may be a wee bit racist, or transphobic, or abelist? That some of our culture's inescapable and toxic assumptions have crept into your thinking? Our culture has this narrative about racism. You're either Bull Connor or you're a saint. Well, most of us are neither of those things. If you are a racist, well, the only solution is public repentance and conversion. (Americans are like that). We try our best to see our assumptions, we catch a lot of them, and we miss others. We're people. Works in progress. Every damn one of us.
If someone points out the ways you're prejudiced...if that prejudice or privilege creeps into your speech...it isn't about you, my friend. Or me. It's about what you said. It is about one of those small ways in which you just contributed, in a small way, to some of those crappy things in the world. It does not mean you have a bad heart. It does not mean you are a bad person. It does not mean you have to defend yourself. Shame is a horrible, toxic thing. It kills people. Being shamed sucks, and angry, hurt people sometimes resort to shaming to make their point. There's a whole discussion about how the privileged should ignore that and suck it up. It's very PC and I've said it myself. But it's not true. You should never take shame and eat it, that shit will kill you.
But you shouldn't let it keep you from hearing what the person has to say about your speech, your behavior, or your assumptions. You have to sit with the reaction to the shame long enough to hear. Because, y'know, the person who told you gets the same crap all the time, and they cared enough to tell you. Even if it came out angry and harsh and hard to hear, they took a huge risk by confronting you. They poured time in their life that they will never get back into it, and they virtually guaranteed that they will have to play educator to you for at least a little while, in one of the most painful areas of their life. And...no matter how strange their take on your language might seem...they are an expert on how langauge speaks to their humanity, or denies it, and they have paid for that knowledge dearly. So listen! It's a priviledge, not the unearned nasty kind, but the good, human sort.
End rant. Thanks for reading.