Ugh
It's almost 1a and I feel like shit. No, it wasn't the Cubs. No, I'm not sick. I'm just emotionally drained. Today in 801 we dealt with the obligatory book on race. Only it was about Whiteness. It was about how white women didn't realize they were racist. And then the class reenacted the book in front of my very eyes.
I feel sick.
I feel so drained right now. Class ended 8 hours ago and I'm still in shock from what happened. I felt completely disengaged and shut out of class, that doesn't happen to me. I fucking hate it.
Maybe they finally began to understand that something was possibly wrong when I let this line fly, "Yeah, well I've waited all my life to read my own name in a book. I've waited 24 fucking years to read my own name in a book. And this was the book. Only in this book, I was an adulterous, abusive husband. On top of that, I read my brother's name in this book as well. Guess what, he was abusive and adulterous too. I don't want to read my own name in a book anymore."
What follows under the tag is what I started writing in class to make me feel better. My classmates aren't bad people. Not at all.
Do white students feel disenfranchised, disconnected "othered" by colored discussions of race and the construction of "Brownness?" Why then do I want to disconnect from this discussion of "Whiteness?" Why am I disengaged? Is it because the space I inhabit is being threatened? I'm not entirely sure.
I look around and am reminded of why the brown kids always sit together. There is safety in numbers. In these numbers there is safety and engagement and the feeling of empowerment that comes when people HEAR you. I'm feeling increasingly that when it comes to certain topics, people don't hear me. They listen, but they don't hear.
Imagine living in a world where people acknowledge that you are making sounds but that you are not saying anything. It is as if I've forgotten how to speak. In this forgetting I have lost my will to speak. When you can no longer express yourself, you lose what little power you had. That must be the tragedy, then. When an entire race of people have given up their only chance at true power.
I've been told over and over again that I need to have a thicker skin. I need to reconstruct and reconstitute the way I've positioned myself, to distance myself and my psyche from any injury that might be incurred in the way and places I choose to live out my life.
This makes me angry. It makes me want to ask the questions that I know will place me forever on the outside, alone as a minority in this world. So instead I sit here silently, hearing the words of those who can only listen to me.
I guess it's my own fault. In many ways, I chose this life for myself, I chose to embrace my otherness. I could have passed, I could have pretended that my name and my complexion aren't what they imply me to be. Lord knows that most folks would never have been able to tell the difference, were it not for my stupidity in pointing it out to them.
Such is life, I guess. That's time. Class is over, my friends and I can now leave this classroom. My friends can stop thinking about race and the uncomfortable implications it brings with it.
I really hope I can forget about it for a few minutes. Just a few minutes rest would be really nice right about now.
Most white students (heck, most white people in general...and I am generalizing, not sterotyping...simply generalizing for the sake of argument/discourse)...uh what the fuck was I saying...yes, most white students feel disconnected when it comes to discussions like this because they simply have never had to deal with such a grave issue their entire lives.
Like you said, they aren't bad people. Take for example, my boss- she's the most wonderfully liberal pc woman. She's a dem, she has a genuine understanding and respect of things er, "not white," and....well, she's a damn nice person. She also has a poster of Breakfast at Tiffany's on her wall. She told me it's her favorite movie, it's a classic, and I should rent it. Now, I've never seen the movie before, so I paused when I saw it while flipping through channels a few weeks ago. After a while the horribly sterotyped "Mr. Yunioshi" made his way onto the screen with his bucktoothed, loud-mouthed Asian self. I remember seeing a clip of it on Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, and I reacted pretty much the same way Mr. Lee did- I was crushed. It hurt. It's pretty uncomfortable watching an ugly caricature of what people think represents you. And even though it's over forty years old, it doesn't make it right......but my point is my super-duper nice liberal boss has a poster of this movie on her wall, and while she's seen it dozens of times, she probably never thought of Mr. Yunioshi as offensive. Even while recommending the movie to me.
And thats just the way it is. Good people will always have good intentions, but they may not always understand where you're coming from. You know, I go on rants like this all the time...and I always notice how quickly my white friends shut up. They either don't know what to say or are afraid of disagreeing with me for fear that I might turn on them. Sometimes I wonder what they would do if a lynch mob came to take me. Would they try to stop them or would they stand idle as the mob takes me away?
Consider yourself fortunate that you can walk into a crowd and blend in without anyone knowing. I cannot do that. I'm always going to look different. True, you are an outsider. But I'm not sure if you really need to reconstruct or reconstitute anything. Keep doing what you do. Keep asking questions. I don't think it's supposed to be easy.
But then, that's how I live. I need it. It keeps me sharp. But hey, that's just me...
You're right Red, I can blend into a crowd. Provided, of course that the observers in the crowd aren't that astute at knowing what a Latino can look like. But all the same, I can pass and that bothers me. In moments such as last night, it makes things worse.
It's as if I chose to be this sensitive. I can pass, I can be white. But it's only an appearance, so my ability to pass is maybe more painful since I'm privy to insider information that cuts that much deeper.
I'm not going to change anything, I'm not going to be anything different, and this isn't the first thing this has happened to me. This is all just a bit unsettling, I thought things would be different this time. I know, I know, what did I expect, I'm in Kansas. But I honestly try to go into things without letting preconceived notions disturb my impressions of a place.
Now I see how it's going to be, how it can be and I'm much better prepared for these things, now. I went on a rant this morning about the California gubenatorial election last night. It went something like this.
"California elected a guy named Schwarzenegger over a guy named Cruz. WHATTHEFUCK. . ."
It just went downhill from there. But I felt a lot better, and more myself. I think I'd been walking on eggshells since I got here, and now. . .I don't care anymore. Nenie is in fulle effect, y'all.
In addition to that, I've found an additional support network, which is nice. Word, yo. Things are looking up.
Life seems to be a seesaw between being deathly afraid of losing one's individuality and being deathly afraid of losing one's attachments. Actually, forget seesaw -- it's a weird kind of synergy of the two. Anyway, I think a lot of the action/reaction that goes on over this kind of stuff is a manifestation of that. And ultimately, here's why I'm confident we'll hang on:
>Nenie is in fulle effect, y'all.