I'm not sure what it was, but I walked out of high school wondering why I was being discriminated against. In college, when I first thought I was gay I thought I'd found Mecca - finally a group that I could belong to and identify with who would protect me... of course it didn't work out that way, and I realized that whatever the source of discrimination, it couldn't have been an identity I wasn't aware of and didn't act on (In fact, it turns out that I'm bi... but I didn't become actively non-straight until I was 36, or 27 at the earliest, if you count poly as non-straight.)
The best language I've found to describe the way in which I was discriminated against is the language of 'white privilege.' I could not depend on being treated like a human being, with rights that should be respected. Instead, others could make a basic assumption that I was an outsider, required to defend and justify not only my actions but my existence.
Of course I can't use that language, without stirring up a racial fire-storm, because I'm light skinned. So mostly I behave, and sit silently in a corner, still wondering all these years later why I walked out of high school feeling the way I did, and unable to acknowledge that when xiphias talks about the possibility of his losing white privilege (in his case because he's Jewish) it resonates with me; like him, I experience white privilege as something that only applies to me provisionally, and which could, and occasionally has, been taken away from me, and something which I fear, and possibly even expect, to lose, not just on a case by case basis, but as a permanent condition.
And I regret that the language is such that I can not use it; and even more that it implies, simply because of the color of my skin, that I'm in a position of safety that doesn't, factually, exist.
Perhaps, xiphias, when you talk about the state of being treated the way a human being ought to be treated, you could call it something besides white privilege? Maybe cromulent privilege, where cromulent would refer to those who belong to, or are assimilated into, the dominant cultural group / gender; but certainly something that acknowledges that attaining such a state in our culture requires more than just racial assimilation.
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Date: 2010-08-24 02:47 pm (UTC)The best language I've found to describe the way in which I was discriminated against is the language of 'white privilege.' I could not depend on being treated like a human being, with rights that should be respected. Instead, others could make a basic assumption that I was an outsider, required to defend and justify not only my actions but my existence.
Of course I can't use that language, without stirring up a racial fire-storm, because I'm light skinned. So mostly I behave, and sit silently in a corner, still wondering all these years later why I walked out of high school feeling the way I did, and unable to acknowledge that when
And I regret that the language is such that I can not use it; and even more that it implies, simply because of the color of my skin, that I'm in a position of safety that doesn't, factually, exist.
Perhaps,
Kiralee