Yesterday

[christmaseyes]

Yesterday was a funny day.  It started out with the back of my pants splittingin the middle of dance class in the morning.  One fully exposed bare bum for all my classmates to see!  Fortuitously, I was at the back of the class and near the door, and in the one part of the room not fully visible by mirrors, so I don't actually think anyone knew...

Comments

[babyslime]

Unless he was just being a random asshole (and let's assume he wasn't for the sake of this comment) I can sort of see why he would have said that, and it would be a misunderstanding rather than you actually doing something racially insensitive.

Lots of black-Canadian and indo-Canadian people have to deal with the idea that they are dangerous. Particularly youth. So when they're walking down the street, people often move away from them, or move their purse to the other side, or stare uncomfortably. If you got that every day, 25 times a day, you'd start to feel really angry and upset every time you saw someone YET AGAIN move to the side to give you more than ample room to pass.
You may have just been being polite, but it'd be hard to tell the difference between, "I'm giving you room to run" vs. "I'm making sure I'm out of arm's reach of that dangerous black youth".

That would be my guess at what happened, anyway.

[babyslime]

PEE ESS.
I tried to find that fantastic, "What to do if you've been accused of racism" essay, but unfortunately I can't. :( It was a really good read about how to not make it all about you and your guilt, because that hurts the cause of anti-racism, and how to always stop - look - listen because you have to be open to the idea that you did do something racist. Again, I'm not saying that's what happened here... but we did grow up in a very UN-diverse area and we picked up a lot of "ignoracist" behavior and thoughts that took me years to even identify a quarter of because we're so into this, "we're so accepting on SSI!" thing.

Anyway... This is an awesome place to start with knowing about your white privilege: http://tamago23.livejournal.com/565302.html
http://paradox-dragon.livejournal.com/52963.html

[christmaseyes]

I see what you mean. It was mostly just that I didn't realize that the kid was a different race in the first place that caused the comment to surprise me as much as it did.