Urban Refuge

The following is a cross post from This Life Lived that I wrote a few days ago. I realized afterward that I wish it had been posted here! Trigger warning: it contains the explicit use of racist expletives. ::

Last Friday, my beau (who is Taiwanese American) and I headed down to North Carolina to enjoy the lovely beaches of Ocean Isle. During an attempt to get gas at the cheapest (and therefore busiest) station on our second stop, as Kevin tried to unstick the car from a hairy spot, the white guy who had boxed us in proceeded to block us from getting gas. The details of how he did this are unimportant.

As he blocked us, I caught the eye of the young white man who was sitting in his passenger seat. I'm almost certain the two of them were relatives. And the look I saw was unforgettable -- he looked proud of his pa. He looked clearly pleased to have aggravated the chink and the nigger.

How do I know? Perhaps I don't. But like too many Black people, I'm familiar with this facial expression. I remember it very clearly from almost 15 years ago when I attended a New Years party with a couple of white friends, only to be thrown out because the hosts "didn't want niggers in our house." We walked a couple of miles without coats during what turned out to be the coldest night of the year in the Washington, D.C. metro area.

For months after that incident, I was terrified of white men my age. I was anxious that no matter what they said to me directly, they were thinking, "nigger nigger nigger," when they looked at me. Although I probably still suffer from some residual anxiety related to this incident, I clearly got over it. I've dated various white men, lived with several, become best friends with many, trusted my life to a few. I know that the acts of a few are not a judgement on the many.

Going back to the young man at the gas station, my response to him was one of sadness. I was angry at how we were being treated. I was scared. In fact, I even proposed to Kevin that we get back on the freeway and find a different town, instead of just going to a different, more costly, gas station. But I was also saddened that this young man who was clearly just at the start of his life had been taught to hate. I realized a few minutes into my lament that if I would be sad about him, I had to feel the same way about his pa, who also had to be taught. He wasn't just the teacher, he had been a student.

Paying attention to racism is really hard for me, emotionally. That is not to say I don't do it. I do it all the time. I don't really have a choice about it (something I wish my white peers would pay attention to a little more often). It's exhausting (also something that people should pay attention to). It's tiring noticing all of the awful things that people do to each other or the myriad ways that people use structures to attack certain ethnic groups (see the recent state immigration laws which legalize harassing Latinos and anyone who looks Latino about their visa status). 

For me, the most incredibly exhausting part is dealing with privilege and unconscious bias. People who don't realize that by virtue of fundamentally -ist (racist, ableist, classist, homophobic, sexist, misogynist, xenophobic, you name it) structures in society, they have positions of power that they may be unintentionally abusing. Why is this the worst part? Because, as I learned for the nth time last Thursday when dealing with a (white) scientist who had written that he was so glad to see "Black people doing X," people generally don't really like to have someone pay attention to the inherent meaning and impact of their words and their actions.

When I told this scientist that I found the way he phrased things offensive, he told me he'd change his words because he was supportive of the Black community, but he didn't understand why I was accusing him of being anti-Black. I was stunned by this because I had done nothing of the sort. I had proposed that his words were not supportive ones, but that was a giant distance away from judging his entire attitude. 

I bring up this example not because I want to relive it (lord, No, please!) but because I think it provides a good example of how difficult it can be to pay attention to our privilege. The scientist went on to argue to me later that his race didn't matter. As a Black woman, I long for a day when it doesn't. As a white man, he has the privilege of acting like it doesn't. As a Black woman, I don't. I wish I could help him pay attention to that, so I could perhaps pay a little less.

Anyway, for the moment, how do we get through it? Derailing for Dummies is one way. My friends and I joked that the scientist I had been talking to was clearly Mr. But I'm Not Like That - Stop Stereotyping!. My friends applauded me for even bothering to engage in the conversation -- sadly, many of them had had exhausting conversations like this one, and they had decided that it wasn't worth the trouble trying to befriend, in a real way, white people in their working environments because it was too dangerous professionally and emotionally. 

As much as I want to say that's unsustainable, I can't fault them for wanting to have careers and for wanting to get through the day relatively unscathed. Coming back to humor, I eventually managed to joke to Kevin, "I really wish I had a shirt that said, 'I'm not a slave! Neener neener neener SUCKAS!'" I'm trying more and more to pay attention to the humorous side of what's truly ridiculous about racism. It's a serious and painful experience, and I don't want to ignore that. But I also want to laugh a little in this life.

So, as much as this is an exploration of how I can help myself confront the reality of oppression in this world, I hope it is also a call to pay attention: to privilege, to the way we intentionally and unintentionally wield it, to the way we ignore the emotional and physical experiences of others. For me, I know part of that is focusing on the humanity of the men and women who might, in another era, have joyfully lynched the men in my family. The men and women who wear the Confederate Flag proudly, lamenting for "a better time." That's hard for me sometimes. But it's essential.

But if I am going to do that work, I hope people on the other side will meet me half way, recognizing that this is hard work that has been foisted on me and on people like me. It's time for the load to get lighter.