i grew up in a pacific northwest town where the hispanic demographic was around 40% of the population but climbing to 50%. there were also many arabic and asian families in town, brought in by the large corporation in town. we were a mostly white but pretty mixed group. it's one of the most liberal areas in the country and, at least as a white (albeit white and mormon) person, it felt extremely accepting.
still, i remember my parents complaining loudly on several occasions that the schools printed everything double sided, with english on one side and spanish on the other. "if they're living here they need to learn english" i heard them say so many times and have heard other people say and have come to loathe with a disgusting pit in my stomach. gangs were also one of the administration's biggest problems (with a relatively calm sea of students), but i don't ever remember anyone, including the administration, defining them racially. mostly i've heard as racist comments as any come out of my parents' and grandparents' mouths and the others that are close to their age. i've always told myself this was an insular mormon and a generational thing, but maybe racism was always more prevalent, even in the northwest, than i understood.
gay's arresting essay focuses on two things: racism as a self-fulfilling prophecy and the unbearable disproportionate responsibility of having skin that's not white. rather than using the term "stereotype" he describes the idea as a "phantom". he describes the way these imagined phantoms affect the white people around him as well as everyone else, and that even a potentially dangerous situation that wasn't dangerous at all had a physical effect on him: "this nonevent took up residence in my body and wrung me out like a rag." i'm very familiar with this feeling of dread and stress from my toxic work relationships--like the other person might as well be threatening or actually attacking you because your physical response--based on an imaginary or unspoken phantom--was that strong.
i also empathize with the blatant disregard and stupidity of the ones denigrating you. "the white kids, some of whom were my close friends, told nigger jokes to my face," gay says, a feeling i'm familiar with as people make sexist jokes and comments to me day in and day out in the office. he recalls how his white friends would explain to him ""the difference between a 'black person' and a 'nigger.'" as a woman, men and other women feel free at any time and at their discretion to determine the type of character a woman has, based most generally on her overall sexual activity and even appearance. i think one difference between the constant subjugation in racism and sexism is that many happily and passively and unknowingly (or disbelievingly) participate in sexism, not believing the power structure to exist, while the existence of racial differences are plainly spelled out on the skin and in history. racism is such an unashamed, unapologetic phantom that wears everything on its sleeves. one story gay shared was particularly poignant:
Don told me he had been at the bookstore, where a young white woman had asked if he needed any help, and he’d snapped, “Do I look like I need help?” I’m sure this behavior didn’t make sense to the poor woman trying to assist him. Don thought he was being perceived as a criminal. “Can I help you?” twisted in his ear into “Are you stealing something?” I tried to tell him that I’d seen the clerks at that store ask everyone who walked in the same question. Don held his head in his hands. “I’m just so tired,” he said.after a feminist awakening in an inherently skeptical community, i know something of that tiredness. i think that's the same tiredness (which begets impatience and a level of bitterness) that many feminists feel, especially in mormon circles where the community is inherently and at its roots skeptical.
again, i don't know what it feels like to be a victim of racism. gay's words brought these feelings and memories rushing back, but in the end, i know nothing of his plight. i love his words: "We all think the worst of each other and ourselves, and become our worst selves." he describes the creation of this essay a a way to see "how I’ve been made by this. To have, perhaps, mercy on myself. When we have mercy, deep and abiding change might happen."
i think the reason some people kick their spurs against the word "privilege" is because it's disarming. if you recognize that you have privilege, you are recognizing that you are in some way (probably) not of your own choice given an inability to help solve a problem without potentially being condescending, diminishing, dismissive, or even violent. everyone wants to believe they are a good person and everyone has to believe their intentions are good and pure so their life can go on, but racial privilege is like a built-in hubris, an irremovable mote, a characteristic you had no say in having. and this essay leaves me no choice but to say that, as a white person, i am compelled to "help" but that compulsion is also part of the problem, for me to think that it's my problem to fix. i'm grateful to have read gay's essay to have to face my own privilege, not really having to have faced it growing up, and contemplate that i could be part of the problem.
i'm reminded again of the powerful idea of the other, and that in my day to day walk, and when i have opportunities to serve people at large, i need to give away compassion, allowances, trust and the kind of mercy gay talks about, which is the benefit of the doubt and the willingness to let people articulate, negotiate, and fully scale and own where it is that they come from.
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