White People

Photo By: A National Acrobat

My head hurts.

I'm at that spot where I'm at a loss for words. Well no, there are always words but my thoughts and what I'm thinking aren't coalescing neatly. I can't spit them out like I'd like.

Here's the back story.

I'm the white half of an interracial couple. No, I don't expect that to get me any awards, but what it does give me a little up close observation on the affects of race on us. I'm also a lesbian. Again I'm not looking for any acknowledgement of being different but in the journey of figuring it out, and it did take some figuring because it's not like it was assigned visibly at birth, where people could instruct me. As in, "Girl, you like the girls. That means the dirt covered ones, who like sports and swagger a bit are going to curl your toes. What you need to do is...."

But when I did find my like minded girls it was, dear god this is cliche, in a Women's Studies class at college. Whatever, bring on the revelations, I don't care how cliche they may be. And it was in that same class where I was introduced to the concept of privilege.

Privilege as a concept is some heady stuff.

Mind you this spawned a long and dark period of humorless political correctness which was all the rage at the time too. We are talking circa 1988. But some things took hold. You know, things such as really looking at the power dynamics of most uncomfortable situations. As I've matured, and I have, I can actively choose to act or not react to what unfolds around me. I can label and analyze and decide where I might have impact. Then move or not move. But usually, not being shy, I move.

At any rate there's all that. There's also Womanist Musings to which I subscribe because she's genius. (Just read it and get your mind blown.) Who clearly and recently brought to the forefront of my thinking again, that if you ain't it, then shut the hell up about who they might be. She was talking about a trans person. If she feels she is a she, then who is anyone else to say otherwise. No one else walks around in her skin. Call her she/her/hers. It's not complicated. It's not mine to determine. It is hers. Period.

Period. That's for emphasis.

So to tie this rambling together I encountered a white woman today who took it upon herself to define just how unblack another person was. She used ridicule and snarky language to deride this person and how she chose to represent herself. And I did use my words to say, "touch not", which is very ASL, and that she was out of line, in English, but white woman continued. Not Black Enough Woman was mean to her, thus it was her excuse to shred her apart.

Actually, call Not Black Enough Woman all kinds of things that were pertinent to the conversation where mean things were said. But do not ever, feel you can define what or who someone else is. Because you can't and to assume you can or that you even MAY is just the height of privilege racist ego.

Did I say this hurts my head?

Now what pisses me off more than not being heard when I said "shut up" is that I don't think I can encounter white woman again without explaining the whole house of privilege, again, which won't sink in, again, and I'm going to have to write her off. I explain things twice; a few times if you're paying me to, but otherwise if you can't get it we're done.

I'm disappointed.