I realize I am highly privileged, being light skinned in America, fitting into the mainstream, growing up in a limited Democracy with relative peace within our borders, always expecting to get a college degree, having certain lifestyle entitlements, and in other ways too. I try to never take any of it for granted.
As a woman, I have had my freedom threatened and have known fear, objectification and emotional and sexual abuse. But even with these things, I know I will never fully understand what my friends with darker skin than mine have experienced all their lives. I can empathize, and I do, but I can never completely know their realities. Nor those of any of my friends who, simply because of their appearance, experience prejudice often.
I desperately want their experiences to improve, for there to be equity and inclusion for all. For example, it’s time to see skin color for what it is, variations in the pigment melanin. That’s it. Every single one of us on this planet have variations that make us each unique, even among 7 billion people. And melanin is just one of our many variations, like body type, hair color, speaking voice, and so much more.
We all have our own unique cultures too. We certainly identify with various “categories” or groups of people. That’s one of the ways we make sense of our world, categorizing. The key is staying aware of this and reexamining often to avoid stereotyping, pigeonholing, generalizing, and discriminating.
It’s hard on a person when they think they should belong to one culture or another and have to change who they are to try to do so. I suspect most people have twisted themselves into a pretzel at one time or another to “fit in.” I know I have.
We have so many influences, among them our local cultures, neighborhood, schools, work environments, the friends we choose, the people we meet, iconic experiences. The strong influence of family culture is usually most dominant. Ultimately, this all meshes together to become our individual culture. That’s what defines us. That’s what creates our character and how we see ourselves.
And individual culture is not stagnant. We redefine ourselves throughout our lives. We can change our character. We have new influences all the time.
Because of the judgments of society, however, some of us are much more limited when expanding or changing our culture, spreading our wings. When our outward appearance is judged negatively, repeatedly, or continually stereotyped, it’s easy to internalize that judgment. Especially without family or community support, without the ability to move out of a confining situation. Outside influences take their toll: poverty, lack of resources, lack of lifestyle models and possibilities, the lack of education, others’ perceptions of our faces and bodies, being told we’re stupid or ugly or no good, especially by people you trust, like family. It doesn’t always take much for that judgment to become internal, bringing along self-doubt and low esteem, self-disgust, and, ultimately, shame.
Shame sucks. (understatement)
For people that are privileged enough to look like and be identified by others as part of mainstream society, I think it’s essential to our education to experience what it’s like to be the “different” one. Visiting somewhere or living somewhere where we are not the mainstream is one way to do this.
One small but meaningful moment meant a lot to me in this regard. Back in the 1990s, I was out for a motorcycle ride with my friend Erik. I stayed seated on the back of his black Goldwing, a huge bike, while he was taking cash out of an ATM. We were both wearing black leather jackets and black helmets. An older woman pulled into the parking lot and slammed on her breaks when she saw us, stopping her car even before parking. She stared at me on that bike. Very slowly, with a look of distrust and mild fear on her face, she pulled into a parking spot at a short distance from us. She sat in her car, continuing to glance my way nervously, her doors locked, her hands gripping the steering wheel, waiting for us to leave before she got out of her car to go to the ATM machine. To her, we looked like a potential threat.
I was teaching high school at the time. I remember wanting to call out to her and say, “Look Lady, I’m a teacher! I’m a good person.”
Being judged as a threat was something entirely new for me.
It was only one moment—not a lifetime of it—but nonetheless, it gave me some insight. It awoke me more to that experience.
Prior to that, I studied in London for my junior year in college. I’ve written about this in another post. Unexpectedly, I experienced a great deal of negative stereotyping as an American. It happened as soon as anyone heard my dialect or learned where I was from. More than once I heard things like, “Oh, you’re a Yank,” in a dismissive tone and even “Bloody Yank” and “Go Home Yank.” A couple times strangers in shops mocked my accent. Several times, I could feel and hear myself being judged as inferior in different ways to Brits, less cultured, less intelligent. Even my temporary British boyfriend seemed to judge me as less smart. Yeah, of course I could barely decipher a clue in the Sunday London Times crossword! I didn’t grow up in that culture. I didn’t know a lot of the references.
As a defense, I developed, somewhat consciously, somewhat unconsciously, a British accent about half way through the year. I obviously wasn’t native or at least couldn’t be placed geographically anywhere specific in the country. I wasn’t a Brummie, a Geordie, a Scouse. I wasn’t from Yorkshire or the West Country. I didn’t even sound exactly like a native Londoner. People would ask, “Are you Spanish?”
But I never again heard a derogatory comment for being a “Yank.”
It has always bothered me a great deal when people are dismissive of others based on their occupation too, treating the custodian, the gardener, the barista, the bus driver, anyone as inferior or just disregarding their humanity or not seeing them at all. It happens way too often. I try to never be on my phone or dismissive with other people in general. And man, this kind of status play happens all the time! I had a fellow writer, a short story and novel writer once ask, “What are you writing?” And when I told him a young adult novel, he said something to the effect of, “Oh, no literary fiction then?”
I learned a lot about status play between people when I was studying acting in college. You can physically give yourself more status by standing taller, looking a certain way, body positioning, expression, as well as rhetoric. I became painfully aware of how I habitually assumed a smaller status back then. It helped a lot to start to change it. Although it took a while.
The short of it is that we all have to work at staying open-minded. It is my sincere belief that no one is inferior or superior to one another. No one. To say they are is to cast judgment based on certain criteria like money, beauty, occupation, style of dress or melanin, surface things.
We’re all human.
