I’m a privileged asshole.
“Welcome to the party. That’s been everyone else’s experience all along.”
Foof. That one stuck. And by “stuck” I mean that I finally got it—the “it” being that I understood. What had been missing fell into place. The amazing thing about what Rae said is that she was able to say it in the most non-judgmental way that allowed me to say, “Oh. Got it.”
The context isn’t easy to share. I’ve been reading bell hooks the will to change in an effort to contextualize a form of masculinity that embraces feminism and especially the feminism of black women, and my conversation with Rae found a safe enough space for me to make a confession—and not an easy one at that. I knew that in confessing I would hear my own brain yelling “Yuck! You should NOT say that!” But I had to, and the reason I had to is that I knew it was yucky—IS yucky—and in need of perspective. So, I did.
“Being a white, cis-gender male feels like arriving at a party only to discover that you’re the punchline.”
Another way to say it: I find it hard to be a white dude. Yeah, the cringe-factor felt off the charts, but I wanted perspective—another perspective—and the only way I could get it was saying it aloud, hear the grotesqueness and petty privileged-ness of it, and hear someone reflect back to me what she was hearing. In a safe space.
It’s really hard to learn without being up-front and candid about your own ignorance.
As I’m writing this, I realize that I’m having a hard time remembering the exact details of how we got to the lightbulb moment, but I know the conversation included a couple of things. I heard from Rae that she’s never gone a day in her life without at least one moment of feeling out of place, unwelcomed, or afraid. And I shared at one point that I know my perspective is not always welcomed, that because of my demographic my perspective isn’t considered. The difference I realized is that what she shared is a well-known, usual, daily. Mine feels new. Some time around this realization came the invitation, “Welcome to the party.”
I call it an invitation for this reason: feeling uncomfortable, out of place, and—in some cases—not invited to share my opinion are good things because they have been the experience of minority groups forever. It’s good for me to feel what they have felt—feel, excuse me—because at the very least it makes me more aware of what it feels like to be disregarded, excluded, and perhaps even discriminated against.
There’s been a lot of discrimination, Michael. Welcome to the party.
And I’m curious, though, if there’s not a lot more here to learn from. Learning to be more empathetic is low-hanging fruit, and with the current popularity of empathy as a corporate and civic virtue the danger is that I’ll gloss over it with the arrogance that only white people—and white men in particular—are capable of. But what is it?
In the same way that I wasn’t able to gain a different perspective without confessing the abominable, I doubt that I will be able to offer a worthy answer to what is beyond empathy and (hopefully) advocacy that’s so obvious.
So, here’s to courage to ask the grotesquely ignorant questions for the sake of learning.
