Fragments – Personal Culpability and Identity Differences
By thisnik | August 11, 2010
We’re talking about cultural, ethnic and religious differences in one of my classes, and these are some fragments of my participation in that conversation. Thoughts/input/whatever is, of course, more than welcome.
RE: Hate speech and biases
It seems to me that one of the more sobering aspects of fear-motivated hate speech is how often we don’t hear it, but people are really thinking it. If someone tells me they are without bias, I will ask what planet they’re from, because the truth is that we all have prejudices, we all have fears, we all have hates, even if we don’t express them in ‘civilized’ company. We are all products of our culture to some degree or another, and it takes a lot of conscious, ongoing, open-minded work to get past gut-deep reactions of hate and fear. It is not the responsibility of Muslims, or Arabs, or any other people who are perceived as different to live exemplary lives so that we can get over our individual biases. It is our responsibility, as individuals, to own our weaknesses and work them out ourselves – and saying things like “I like [insert minority demographic here]! I have one of them as a token friend [and proof of how open minded I am, despite their obvious differences]. I don’t have a problem with them, so long as they don’t have a problem with me.”
The thing is that it doesn’t matter if they have a problem with us, individuals, majorities, whatever. If you’re a majority, chances are there’s going to be someone or some group who has issue with your majority identification. What does matter is that we each, as individuals, take responsibility for ourselves, and work to be as compassionate and conscientious to others as we would ask them to be to us – both to other individuals and large groups.
RE: Feeling sorry for people about them living in a society with a knee-jerk reaction of suspicion about their perceived differences
Well, here’s the thing – we can all feel sorry for people, but we can also work to change our personal attitudes and ways of approaching things. When I was growing up, I always felt guilty for being born white, because of the endless list of atrocities light-pigmented people have done to people perceived as different “races”. When it comes down to it, we’re all ONE race – the human one – and our differences are cultural and ethnic, NOT so notably DNA-deep that we can, scientifically speaking, be classified as different species. So as a white person, I can either feel guilty for being born white and feel sorry for people who don’t have the immediate privilege that having so little pigmentation grants me, or I can work to be mindful of what that privilege grants me and work to level the playing ground so we’re all operating from a similar base of privilege.
I was in a class recently where I mentioned being queer (crazy, that) and a person came over to me on the break, squatted down at my desk, and said “So I wanted to check in and see if you’re using a male affectation. That is a male affectation, right? I know you said LGBT – I’ve worked with those people, and I wanted to let you know that I have no problem with those people.” While this person was trying to show how open-minded they were, all they did was annoy me and reveal how closed-minded they were. I don’t need the approval of an upper-class, mainstream, cisgendered, monogamous, christian, heterosexual white guy who has (to my perception) only ever experienced life from an axis of privilege in order to live my life with integrity. I don’t need nor want his misuse of terms, his false camaraderie, or his tokenizing of me (and my identity as a visibly – and openly – trans, queer, and so on person). What I do want, and what I suspect most other people of whatever identity want, whether it be a minority or not, is acceptance of me, as I am, as another human being worthy of respect and to be valued for my experiences and input. Which means not going out of the way to make a big deal out of how much a person ‘tolerates’ facets of a person’s identity, or tokenizing the person, or mindlessly misappropriating cultural identifiers in an attempt to fit in.
All of which makes for a big damn order, and is something that I’m still figuring out how to do for myself. In the end, I think it comes down to personal responsibility, authentic listening, and an openness and authentic desire to accept (not tolerate) each person as they are, right now, and value them for who they are, not some of the things they identify as.
