On the obligation to educate the uninformed.

[draegonhawke]

There's something I see a lot in discussion of race, of gender, of any sort of marginalized group, really - someone who isn't part of that group will come up to someone who is and say "Wow, I didn't know. Could you tell me more?" And the person they're asking will say "No

Comments

[rachel_swirsky]

I can has this as reprint on alas, please?

[draegonhawke]

Sure! (It was originally posted over at magistrate on DreamWidth, which is where Srs Linkage should probably go, but.)

[rachel_swirsky]

also, i want to talk to you about some cw stuff. maybe we can set up a phone call?

[draegonhawke]

Phonecalls work. I can't promise coherence for a couple of days as my head is full of mucus and ache, but I, you know, have a phone and a functional set of ears and vocal cords, so. Yeah.

[rachel_swirsky]

additionally (because two once sentence comments on one post is not enough), you are *very* good at stating 101 stuff in simple, easy-to-understand language.

[draegonhawke]

Heh. Thankye. Possibly part of it is because I'm in the process of learning so much of it, myself. (How, precisely, an asexual agendered biracial kid in Nebraska manages to wind up with this much privilege is something I'm still in the process of figuring out. Possibly I just had a very sheltered life, and was cushioned from a few harsh realities by honors programs, general obliviousness and the Unitarian Universalist church.)

[rachel_swirsky]

Class privilege (at least one of your parents was a prof, yes?) seems to do a lot of work in this sort of thing. Not for all people or all situations of course, but...

[draegonhawke]

Yeah. Dad was a professor of English at UNL.

[squeemu]

Thanks for posting this. I've never been in that position myself (...either position, actually) but it's one of those good things to hear and keep in mind for later.

I don't know if I've talked to you about this at all, but last semester I took a Women's and Gender Studies intro course and loved it. BUT THE POINT IS, it definitely raised some questions and ideas I hadn't really thought about before, and I left with the opinion that it should be a required course. Because I suspect that there are a lot of people, especially in Nebraska, that never have to think about those kinds of issues.

Also also, I vaguely recall you mentioning having opinions on the Avatar movie issue? I, at least, would be interested in reading them.

Also also also, note to self: check DW more.

[draegonhawke]

Society isn't really structured in a way which demands that people examine privilege unless they fall victim to it. :/ It's not an issue that comes up a lot in my personal interactions with others, but it is something I see around a lot, and which recently came up in a discussion linked to by a friend of mine, and... well, it's important, and the more people do say about it, the more likely it is to be heard.

I took Introduction to African American Religions this last semester, and had a similar experience. People really should be educated in this, especially in something like a liberal arts college. One of the effects of any sort of privilege is to provide a safe space where you can ignore the concerns of non-privileged folks, and that is A Problem. (It's like the people who complain about having Black History Month, because "Where's White History Month?" The answer, of course, is Every other month of the school year, but white privilege is invisible. Society is trained not to notice it, and because it's invisible, people

[sethrenn]

I am having a crappy time with reading comprehension right now, but are you talking about something kind of like this? (We also replied in the discussion thread further down, with more on our views. There is another post somewhere else on the same blog where we wrote a reply about the different kinds of attitudes people can take when asking to be 'educated' and the different variations we had seen on multiplicity, and the difference between a respectful/polite question and the "please be my science project so I can get an A in my psychology class" type and people who didn't understand why their attitude got the response it did, but I can't find it right now.)

[draegonhawke]

Many people believe, however, that the story of my life should be public property. The boldest will tell me outright that it is my obligation to provide them as much detail as possible about my life, that anything else is pure selfishness and avoidance of responsibility.

Yes. This. The idea that people exist, even in part, for your education; that's it right there. And I... feel like I should have something more to respond to this with, but it's not coming at the moment. If I think of it, I'll... append.

[sethrenn]

BTW, I did finally find the blog post where we went into detail in the comment thread about okay questions vs. privacy-violating/massive entitlement complex questions, here: http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=172 The comment I'm talking about is about halfway down. (But there's a lot of other kinds of interesting comments and discussions on the topic surrounding it.)

[draegonhawke]

Heh. "Self-narrating zoo exhibit" is one of the pithiest ways I've seen it put. Though that's something I think might be more prevalent in neuroatypical/gender-related communities than race ones (for the most part, and sadly likely not in entirety) - public sentiment has mostly shifted race and some aspects of sexuality onto the Our Sadly Historically Maligned Brothers And Sisters shelf, where people can be polite and civil about pretending that things aren't a problem rather than undercutting their sense of someone's worth as a 'functional' human being.

I guess it might be the fine shade of distinction between being regarded as someone who needs to work for their own advancement and someone who needs to allow themselves to be studied.