pointers for the interested
Jul. 19th, 2006 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrienmundiIf 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.
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.
