Recognizing privilege
I'm not terribly comfortable making posts on Facebook. I rarely hit the Like button, and I don't think I've ever hit the Share button. I don't even comment much. I don't know exactly why this should be, but it's peripheral to this post.
Someone I consider a friend liked a recent post on a page over there, and I felt moved to respond. I don't know the person who made the original post, and I would have considered it rude to comment on that page as a result . . . another personal idiosyncrasy I'm not going to explore right now . . . and in fact I haven't ever met the friend in question face-to-face. Anyway, the post was public; here is the text.
If you befriend a white person and talk to em long enough, they'll eventually ask questions about your culture.
"Is it true? Do all Filipino parents encourage their kids to get into nursing?"
"What's the deal with Black folks and cocoa butter?"
"Hey, taste this. Does that taste like authentic Mexican food? Would your mom approve?"
And they SOO wanna know what you're about and what life is like through brown, Black and yellow colored sunglasses, yet the minute you say that white people are racist and have consistently been racist to you and your people, they FLIP!
"HEY, MAN! Not all white people are racist! You just can't generalize--"
DUDE. You just spent 3 fucking months asking me generalized questions about Filipino culture!!
I swear, white folks will never realize how much their racism impacts POC lives. They'll never comprehend that anti-POC racism is a COMPONENT of being a POC-American. White people never have to wonder what Asians or Latinos think about them, yet WE are made aware -- on a daily basis through white-centric media -- of what they think of us.
What I'd like to say to this person comes in two flavors: simple and complex.
The simple version is just this white person saying "You're right."
The complex version includes elements of "I hope that, if we actually were friends, you'd be sufficiently comfortable with me to tell me when what I do is problematic" and "I want to treat you as a person and not just as a representative of a minority group, and when I make mistakes, I'm sorry" and "We are all made poorer by my culture's belittling of your culture, and in this as in so many other areas your loss is greater than my own" and probably other bits that aren't settling neatly into soundbites right now.
Suffice it to say that I know I have privilege. I try not to abuse it, but I know I'll screw up sometimes, and no small amount of the time I won't even realize I've hurt someone. It's not someone else's responsibility to educate me, and I appreciate it when others can look past their own pain and tell me what's going on.
No witty wrap-up tonight.
Someone I consider a friend liked a recent post on a page over there, and I felt moved to respond. I don't know the person who made the original post, and I would have considered it rude to comment on that page as a result . . . another personal idiosyncrasy I'm not going to explore right now . . . and in fact I haven't ever met the friend in question face-to-face. Anyway, the post was public; here is the text.
If you befriend a white person and talk to em long enough, they'll eventually ask questions about your culture.
"Is it true? Do all Filipino parents encourage their kids to get into nursing?"
"What's the deal with Black folks and cocoa butter?"
"Hey, taste this. Does that taste like authentic Mexican food? Would your mom approve?"
And they SOO wanna know what you're about and what life is like through brown, Black and yellow colored sunglasses, yet the minute you say that white people are racist and have consistently been racist to you and your people, they FLIP!
"HEY, MAN! Not all white people are racist! You just can't generalize--"
DUDE. You just spent 3 fucking months asking me generalized questions about Filipino culture!!
I swear, white folks will never realize how much their racism impacts POC lives. They'll never comprehend that anti-POC racism is a COMPONENT of being a POC-American. White people never have to wonder what Asians or Latinos think about them, yet WE are made aware -- on a daily basis through white-centric media -- of what they think of us.
What I'd like to say to this person comes in two flavors: simple and complex.
The simple version is just this white person saying "You're right."
The complex version includes elements of "I hope that, if we actually were friends, you'd be sufficiently comfortable with me to tell me when what I do is problematic" and "I want to treat you as a person and not just as a representative of a minority group, and when I make mistakes, I'm sorry" and "We are all made poorer by my culture's belittling of your culture, and in this as in so many other areas your loss is greater than my own" and probably other bits that aren't settling neatly into soundbites right now.
Suffice it to say that I know I have privilege. I try not to abuse it, but I know I'll screw up sometimes, and no small amount of the time I won't even realize I've hurt someone. It's not someone else's responsibility to educate me, and I appreciate it when others can look past their own pain and tell me what's going on.
No witty wrap-up tonight.