Race, class, and my place in the world

[mother_beech]

I've been doing a lot of thinking about race, class, and how I fit into the world. In case it's not painfully obvious: I'm a white middle class 20 something from rural NH. There were 6 black kids in my entire high school, and we had a thousand kids. NH is really, really white. My parents had no friends of color. None. My uncle is black, but we only

Comments

[vordark]

I'm stuck figuring out if I need to make more of an effort to understand and participate in Black or Latina culture, or if I should simply accept that there are going to be imponderables. Does accepting the existence of imponderables mean I'm not trying or am not culturally sensitive? Or does it mean that I am noting and respecting differences and maintaining professional relationships/friendships regardless? Does trying to understand and asking about things upset/offend people? I ask so that I can know, so that I can be helpful, or at least not clueless the next time a similar situation comes along. I also understand that by simply asking these questions I am inviting backlash, and that I am asking these questions from a position of privilege.

Understanding other cultures in more than a passing/layperson way is an entire field of study on its own (cultural anthropology), so I'm fairly certain that what you are asking to be able to do (interact as your colleagues do with your clients) is impossible.

As an example from my own experiences, I studied Japanese culture for several years, read books, began learning the language and even had a friend from Japan that I was tutoring in English in exchange for the ability to ask him all sorts of questions about his culture and have him explain things to me. He was a brilliant guy who was actually going to become a Buddhist monk but had decided to honor a friend who had died instead (long story).

The bottom line is that I now know we will never understand the Japanese and they will never understand us. However, that fact did not preclude my having a great friendship and our interacting because there was enough common ground and patience for both of us to "meet in the middle" so to speak.

Also, while it may be true that the American white middle-class can be considered a culture of privilege, it is equally true that it is also a culture of guilt. Guilt for colonial expansion, slavery, small-pox, civil inequality, etc. It's actually been pointed out by some cultural anthropologists that this guilt might be the single most common component of our interactions with any perceived minority. The guilt informs our behavior, so to speak, even at a subconscious level.

A great example I came across once was how if a white person needs to cross to the other side of the street while they are walking down it, they are more likely to continue down the wrong side if there is a minority walking toward them for fear of making the minority person think they are crossing the street to avoid them. It's this nutty sort of "I'm not racist, but if I do this they might think I'm racist so I have to avoid doing that and do something that is obviously not racist." thing.

I believe in doing my own thing and interacting with people on those terms. I think there is a better chance of having a successful interaction if I acknowledge cultural differences and work around them, as opposed to trying to force my way through by creating a false middle ground.