Things That Make Me Feel Guilty (very late) Blog Against Racism Edition
1. I don't think I've ever personally met an indigenous Commonwealthlandian
2. I don't think I'd ever met anyone who was jewish before coming to the US, either
3. writing 1. and 2. above - I sound like I should go out and find someone just to change that...
4. not loudly declaring my disgust at the doctor who tested my antibody titres in lieu of vaccination records when the only comment he made upon learning I was going to the US to study was "are you going to come back with a black boyfriend and shock your mother? ha ha!"
5. There were 2 black students in my section when I was a TA. After the first midterm I gave student 1's exam back to student 2.
6. I scored as biased towards white people over black on the implicit bias test
7. I immediately retook the test and managed to score as almost unbiased
8. When I was in Singapore and realised I was the only caucasian in the train carriage, I felt uncomfortable (for being an obvious, monolingual tourist, or something else?)
9. I couldn't readily articulate to my German labmate why painting his face black to dress up as a rap star for halloween was bad
10. being so concerned about not being racist
posted by Lucy @ 2:18 AM
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3 Comments:
On #8, I know what you mean. I spent six weeks in India feeling wildly uncomfortable because I stood out for my skin color. Not because I was looked down upon for my skin color -- quite the contrary -- but because I had never stood out because of my skin color before. Incredibly unsettling. I was never more relieved to come back to the States and resume my life of invisibility.
On #2, I just looked it up -- there are only 3 Jewish congregations in your entire home city (and one of them doesn't even have its own worship space, it meets at the uni). My home city, at a tenth the size, also had three -- and it was considered to be a place without much of a Jewish community. Don't blame yourself. It's hard to meet people who, by and large, aren't there!
I was definitely feeling uncomfortable enough in Prague due to my backpack and camera, but not being able to hide even without them was definitely harder to deal with.
#1 was about feeling guilty for living a relatively privileged life; #2 was more feeling guilty for living in such a homogenous society that I never had to even think about race, really. I guess it diverse enough in other ways. Based on the limited statistics I could find, I think the indigenous population is maybe twice the size of the jewish community so numbers probably partly explains #1 too, but I'm perfectly able to feel guilty for things that aren't causally my fault.
#7 and #10 are not negative in my book. They show that you are aware that racial problems exist and that everyone has inherent biases based on their family history, location, past experiences, etc. The fact that you are rationally aware of those biases is a pretty good start. Our biases are less than that of our parents' generation, which is less than that of theirs, and so on - maybe eventually they just fade away?
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