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Nov. 22nd, 2011 09:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pktechgirlbackupTa-Nehisi Coates, commenting on Andrew Sullivan's video explaining why he never made an It Gets Better Video:
This resonates with me, because as far as I know, I have never been a victim of sexism. No one ever told me "girls can't do that", except my parents teaching me how to respond. I have, on the other hand, heard a lot of anti-sexism. Somehow I was always the representative to the empowerment seminars. One published a book with essays from all the attendees. Mine said "I didn't learn anything here". I crippled my mom with embarrassment when I called a state official at a career panel on referring to men as boys (my dad was super proud of me, especially because I was motivated in part by specific political criticisms he'd made of her months earlier). I can recall several incidents of being told I was a shoe in because they needed women, and none of the reverse. Which doesn't mean sexism doesn't happen to other people or even that it hasn't happened to me in a subtle fashion, but the lack of first hand experience plus the fact that my life is just extraordinarily cushy means it has no resonance for me. In my personal experience, talking about sexism has caused more problems than sexism.
But I have been a pretty severe victim of racism. Or rather, some combination of classism, anti-nerd bias, and sheer cultural differences that got expressed as racism. I was a white, middle class kid moved from a mostly white, middle class private elementary school* to a poverty stricken middle school where I was the only white kid in the class, and I was tortured for it. I think making me poor, or having gone to a public elementary school would have done more to change how I was treated than changing my skin color.** But this is something I figured out years later: it felt like racism, and to this day I'm a lot more passionate about racial, poverty, and educational issues than feminist issues***.
*I feel like I should note this was a school for the children of aging hippies, not an andover prep school.
**As I heard it, the one hispanic student at my elementary school, who came from a very poor family and was on scholarship, went to one of the best public high schools in the city, and got eaten alive, because even if his home life was tough, he was used to be the scariest one at school.
***Reflected more in my charitable giving than my writing because I maintain a healthy skepticism of my ability to educate Ta-Nehisi Coates about poverty and race. ***
****Actually, I did write him once explicitly to give him new information, on a racial issue, and it was well received. But I assume a key part of this was that I was passing on actual scientific data.
I think one of the reasons I write as I do about race is because I never really saw myself as a direct "victim" of racism. I thought there were many things that would impede my life--but white people never really ranked among them. I understood--and understand--that racism is a powerful systemic force. I understand red-lining, block-busting, slavery, Jim Crow etc. I don't demean them as forces in American history. But there's a difference between understanding how society views your group and being daily taunted as a faggot or a nigger.
This resonates with me, because as far as I know, I have never been a victim of sexism. No one ever told me "girls can't do that", except my parents teaching me how to respond. I have, on the other hand, heard a lot of anti-sexism. Somehow I was always the representative to the empowerment seminars. One published a book with essays from all the attendees. Mine said "I didn't learn anything here". I crippled my mom with embarrassment when I called a state official at a career panel on referring to men as boys (my dad was super proud of me, especially because I was motivated in part by specific political criticisms he'd made of her months earlier). I can recall several incidents of being told I was a shoe in because they needed women, and none of the reverse. Which doesn't mean sexism doesn't happen to other people or even that it hasn't happened to me in a subtle fashion, but the lack of first hand experience plus the fact that my life is just extraordinarily cushy means it has no resonance for me. In my personal experience, talking about sexism has caused more problems than sexism.
But I have been a pretty severe victim of racism. Or rather, some combination of classism, anti-nerd bias, and sheer cultural differences that got expressed as racism. I was a white, middle class kid moved from a mostly white, middle class private elementary school* to a poverty stricken middle school where I was the only white kid in the class, and I was tortured for it. I think making me poor, or having gone to a public elementary school would have done more to change how I was treated than changing my skin color.** But this is something I figured out years later: it felt like racism, and to this day I'm a lot more passionate about racial, poverty, and educational issues than feminist issues***.
*I feel like I should note this was a school for the children of aging hippies, not an andover prep school.
**As I heard it, the one hispanic student at my elementary school, who came from a very poor family and was on scholarship, went to one of the best public high schools in the city, and got eaten alive, because even if his home life was tough, he was used to be the scariest one at school.
***Reflected more in my charitable giving than my writing because I maintain a healthy skepticism of my ability to educate Ta-Nehisi Coates about poverty and race. ***
****Actually, I did write him once explicitly to give him new information, on a racial issue, and it was well received. But I assume a key part of this was that I was passing on actual scientific data.
