pointers for the interested

[adrienmundi]

If I'm talking about my experience, don't tell me to "ignore it", or to "let it go". Even if well intended (which I'll get to), it's just about impossible to read that as anything other than either dismissal or condescension. It's not my fault you don't understand, and while I may choose to attempt to educate, you know what? It's not my fucking job.

But how well intended can a comment like that be? A lot of the time, it smacks of a complacent contentedness, an unwillingness to examine the issue at hand and one's own place in it, at best, and a casual replication of the establishment structures of alienation and othering, at worst. Sure, distancing yourself against me, or attempting to sympathize and then resolve the conflict by convincing yourself it's not really that big a deal may make yourself feel better, but it makes things worse for me.

I talk alot about privilege. I think everyone has it in some way, and everyone experiences the lack of it in other ways. But you know what? If you're stepping into a situation in which you are privileged in a way that I'm not, the last thing you should do is take on the role of the authority and tell me what I'm doing wrong. The first thing you should do is acknowledge your own privileged position, and then listen. It's not your fault if you're privileged, really, but how you respond to that is, totally. I'm not asking anything of anyone that I don't try to do myself, just as I hold myself responsible for failures and missteps.

Comments

[becket.livejournal.com]

This is one of the reasons I most miss being 'up north'. While I can't claim that the entire region is devoid of the anti-conversationalism that I find typical or even rampant in georgia, I definitely never encountered anyone who was as diminishing and disinterested as I find people to be here.

I tend to chalk it up to the weather. In the poconos, when there's 3 feet of snow outside, it helps to get worked up over each other's problems... helps to keep you warm.

Down here, when it's a proverbial 110 in the shade with humidity roughly equal to an indoor pool, people seem somehow afraid that actual conversation might just heat one's brain past a redline, and the needle might get stuck.

I have heard some claim that it's an issue of education. I flatly refuse to accept this. I worked with, drank with, and had sex with people up north who were just as stupid and parochial as the most backwards stars and bars waving georgia cracker, but none of them were as disengaged.

By the by, A, I have weekends off now, for the first time in 2 years. K and I miss you. There will come a gathering. Will you be ready?

[adrienmundi]

I think you're right about the weather; people can,and could, get away from one another, be left alone, and not die due to the elements, so the toxic myth of "rugged individualism" is worse, down here. Add to that the historical ruralism, and people just don't know how to be close and engaged with others, some of the time.

And yeah, I'll be ready.

[k-navit.livejournal.com]

Standing. Fucking. Ovation.

[adrienmundi]

I'm glad to have you in the choir.

[belledame222.livejournal.com]

I think when people say "let it go" what they really mean is "your level of anger (for whatever reason) is making me uncomfortable."

It'd be nice if they'd own it rather than put it on you, yes.

How much angrier I get at that point depends a lot on context.

I do think that (saying this as it's come up recently elsewhere, quite a bit) what people assume is discomfort because of an implicit demand for a sociopolitical privilege check may also (or even instead) be mainly a discomfort having to do with the person's own experience with anger, and angry people. Sometimes.

Not that it makes "let it go" any less not-owning-one's-own-shit, just musing out loud here.

[adrienmundi]

Good musing, and useful: thanks. Anger is a relative unknown for me, so this is new territory.