Entry tags:
A deficit
I was reading a post about privilege that ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
firecat pointed out, and i was pondering the lack of racial diversity in my life. (This reminds me of how a friend has urged me to think of buying a place in East Palo Alto. That would help. The reasons that's off the table for me are not up for discussion, though.)
Then i realized that there is even less apparent racial diversity in my online life, where the barriers should be lower -- except, of course, for the economic privilege that lets me spend so much time on line, the class privilege i had growing up that encouraged reading and writing as self expression.
My early life was in the Carolinas, where race is binary. I recall with a smile that i was the "white white girl" to some of my classmates. I remember my parents pride at living on a diverse street in Chapel Hill. I still worry that when i was the only white girl invited to a birthday party and i had to go home before it was over, that my hosts might think it was due to race and not to my shyness. (It wasn't the only party i slipped out of as a youngster.)
I remember my first experience of a different view of race when living summers in New Mexico in the late '80s. There, seeing a black and white couple open and comfortable in their expression of coupleness, i was aware by the lack of reaction just how high the barriers were in the southeast. And i also listened to people from New Mexico, one Anglo, one who traced his heritage -- and land -- back to a landgrant from the King of Spain, and heard the prejudice against Native Americans in their expression.
In Philadelphia i was friends with folks who worked around the binary of race i was familiar with (and i'd like to think i grew a little in my awareness of privilege during this time), but my academic life introduced me to a different space of issues around Asia and the Indian subcontinent. There were several Indian students and a Pakistani, whom i remember for their efforts to educate a particularly parochial colleague from New Jersey (who didn't even know North Carolina had a coast line) that Pakistan and India also were in the Northern Hemisphere. (*headdesk*) I learned more about the issues of partition from the Pakistani who new the front lines. I remember the students from east Asia and another Anglo student who gave me a glance that was like a slap when i revealed my ignorance of ethnic and racial differentiation in East Asians. To be honest, i was still coping with the ethnic differentiations of Caucasians in Philadelphia.
Why am i writing this? In part to remind myself of what i am embarrassed about. My friends and colleagues who do not have racial privilege have not had any occasion to talk to me about their experience of their race. Because of that, i've found that when doing work about thinking who is, say, black, in my life, i don't "see" them. And i remember that sick feeling i had when i realized how i mentally create this boundary of Otherness, and the people who i was with on a day to day basis weren't Other, but somehow this mental gymnastic is denying some part of their identity.
Advice, introductions, welcome. Must go to work now.
firecat pointed out, and i was pondering the lack of racial diversity in my life. (This reminds me of how a friend has urged me to think of buying a place in East Palo Alto. That would help. The reasons that's off the table for me are not up for discussion, though.) Then i realized that there is even less apparent racial diversity in my online life, where the barriers should be lower -- except, of course, for the economic privilege that lets me spend so much time on line, the class privilege i had growing up that encouraged reading and writing as self expression.
My early life was in the Carolinas, where race is binary. I recall with a smile that i was the "white white girl" to some of my classmates. I remember my parents pride at living on a diverse street in Chapel Hill. I still worry that when i was the only white girl invited to a birthday party and i had to go home before it was over, that my hosts might think it was due to race and not to my shyness. (It wasn't the only party i slipped out of as a youngster.)
I remember my first experience of a different view of race when living summers in New Mexico in the late '80s. There, seeing a black and white couple open and comfortable in their expression of coupleness, i was aware by the lack of reaction just how high the barriers were in the southeast. And i also listened to people from New Mexico, one Anglo, one who traced his heritage -- and land -- back to a landgrant from the King of Spain, and heard the prejudice against Native Americans in their expression.
In Philadelphia i was friends with folks who worked around the binary of race i was familiar with (and i'd like to think i grew a little in my awareness of privilege during this time), but my academic life introduced me to a different space of issues around Asia and the Indian subcontinent. There were several Indian students and a Pakistani, whom i remember for their efforts to educate a particularly parochial colleague from New Jersey (who didn't even know North Carolina had a coast line) that Pakistan and India also were in the Northern Hemisphere. (*headdesk*) I learned more about the issues of partition from the Pakistani who new the front lines. I remember the students from east Asia and another Anglo student who gave me a glance that was like a slap when i revealed my ignorance of ethnic and racial differentiation in East Asians. To be honest, i was still coping with the ethnic differentiations of Caucasians in Philadelphia.
Why am i writing this? In part to remind myself of what i am embarrassed about. My friends and colleagues who do not have racial privilege have not had any occasion to talk to me about their experience of their race. Because of that, i've found that when doing work about thinking who is, say, black, in my life, i don't "see" them. And i remember that sick feeling i had when i realized how i mentally create this boundary of Otherness, and the people who i was with on a day to day basis weren't Other, but somehow this mental gymnastic is denying some part of their identity.
Advice, introductions, welcome. Must go to work now.