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Ponderings
Mar. 7th, 2009 04:33 pmBecause of RaceFail 09, I've been thinking about the visibility of folks -- let's not make them the negative of white, middle-class, heterosexual, Christian males, but individuals in their own rights, as they are.
Over the years, television commercials and print advertisements have grown more colorful and diverse, although a random check reveals that white and male still outnumber the rest. "The Andromeda Strain" is playing, and has an occasional person of color in the supporting cast (mostly non-speaking parts, with one brown woman in a subservient role), and the highest ranking female is still lower-ranked (i.e., less important than the guys), wears glasses (indicating that she is (a) not desirable, (b) probably a lesbian, and (c) smart but not smart enough), and has a bad attitude. Oh, yeah. She's cranky and annoyed, and "difficult" to get along with, and if she wasn't so smart she wouldn't be there at all. I'm cheering her on, although I know she'll be dead too.
Then I check my email, and a friend of mine is dealing with issues at her employer, and it's clear that someone else would like to be helpful (or at least presents the appearance of wanting to help), but has done so in a way that clearly indicates that sexism is still raging. After all, why tell a grown woman that her presentation was very "grown-up" and "professional"?
I can't imagine what kind of hell she'd be in if her skin wasn't pasty white like the majority of the men causing the problems.
And I think about my work environment, and realize something: I'm very lucky here. This is an incredibly diverse place. The brown man in the hall could be a section chief, a department head, a firefighter, an IT guy, a college student, or the director of the entire institute. The brown woman in the office next to me is an IT specialist, but she could be a veterinarian, a medical student, a housekeeper, a police officer, an administrative officer, a department head, a facility manager, or a veterinary technician. I have two technicians; currently they are a brown woman and a white woman. Previously the brown woman shared the office with a brown man; previous to that he was sharing with a white man, and before that it was two different men, one white and one brown, and so on. I work with two other veterinarians, one brown and one white. The important concept here is that no one can tell where someone works, or how important someone is just by looking at the color of his/her skin -- not here. There's too many high ranking people with more than just pink in their skin.
This is good. It's a start.
I look back on where I've lived, who I've shared house and office space with, hung out with, dated, and lusted after, and I've been very lucky it's all been multicultural. We learn more from each other when we share those times and those spaces -- how else would my brown housemate have learned that white women wash their hair and then leave the house? My hair dried faster than hers, something neither of us knew until that we lived in that house.
Of course I'm not perfect. I've been guilty of not paying attention to the lack of color in my readings, or in my authors. I've accepted the tone argument without realizing it, and apologized for people "being rude" when they were just being blunt. That's why I appreciate having the new communities on LJ, like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
verb_noire and 50books_poc, because now I can find new and exciting books to read, or stumble over books I'd read before and forgotten I'd enjoyed. It's also why I spend my time reading the links in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rydra_wong's posts, and not posting much: it's my turn to keep quiet and to pay attention.
So many people are speaking up and making their voices heard that it's wonderful. It's the silver lining to this dark cloud, and if more of us could spend time paying attention to those voices, we'd all be getting to a better place.
I think in the past 40 years, life has improved -- we've taken care of the obvious problems, the visible racism, sexism, and homophobia -- but that just means the stuff that's left is the hard part. It's the sticky, hidden, convoluted, twisty, intertwined, nasty stuff that remains. We've got to dig at it, follow the roots all the way back to the hidden source, blast it out, and reseed -- ok, it's springtime, and I've got gardening on my mind -- and then we move on to the next plot and do it all over again.
I think the next generation is in better shape than we are, but only because our parents did some work in their day, and we'd better get to it ourselves or our grandchildren will be ashamed of us.
Over the years, television commercials and print advertisements have grown more colorful and diverse, although a random check reveals that white and male still outnumber the rest. "The Andromeda Strain" is playing, and has an occasional person of color in the supporting cast (mostly non-speaking parts, with one brown woman in a subservient role), and the highest ranking female is still lower-ranked (i.e., less important than the guys), wears glasses (indicating that she is (a) not desirable, (b) probably a lesbian, and (c) smart but not smart enough), and has a bad attitude. Oh, yeah. She's cranky and annoyed, and "difficult" to get along with, and if she wasn't so smart she wouldn't be there at all. I'm cheering her on, although I know she'll be dead too.
Then I check my email, and a friend of mine is dealing with issues at her employer, and it's clear that someone else would like to be helpful (or at least presents the appearance of wanting to help), but has done so in a way that clearly indicates that sexism is still raging. After all, why tell a grown woman that her presentation was very "grown-up" and "professional"?
I can't imagine what kind of hell she'd be in if her skin wasn't pasty white like the majority of the men causing the problems.
And I think about my work environment, and realize something: I'm very lucky here. This is an incredibly diverse place. The brown man in the hall could be a section chief, a department head, a firefighter, an IT guy, a college student, or the director of the entire institute. The brown woman in the office next to me is an IT specialist, but she could be a veterinarian, a medical student, a housekeeper, a police officer, an administrative officer, a department head, a facility manager, or a veterinary technician. I have two technicians; currently they are a brown woman and a white woman. Previously the brown woman shared the office with a brown man; previous to that he was sharing with a white man, and before that it was two different men, one white and one brown, and so on. I work with two other veterinarians, one brown and one white. The important concept here is that no one can tell where someone works, or how important someone is just by looking at the color of his/her skin -- not here. There's too many high ranking people with more than just pink in their skin.
This is good. It's a start.
I look back on where I've lived, who I've shared house and office space with, hung out with, dated, and lusted after, and I've been very lucky it's all been multicultural. We learn more from each other when we share those times and those spaces -- how else would my brown housemate have learned that white women wash their hair and then leave the house? My hair dried faster than hers, something neither of us knew until that we lived in that house.
Of course I'm not perfect. I've been guilty of not paying attention to the lack of color in my readings, or in my authors. I've accepted the tone argument without realizing it, and apologized for people "being rude" when they were just being blunt. That's why I appreciate having the new communities on LJ, like
verb_noire and 50books_poc, because now I can find new and exciting books to read, or stumble over books I'd read before and forgotten I'd enjoyed. It's also why I spend my time reading the links in rydra_wong's posts, and not posting much: it's my turn to keep quiet and to pay attention. So many people are speaking up and making their voices heard that it's wonderful. It's the silver lining to this dark cloud, and if more of us could spend time paying attention to those voices, we'd all be getting to a better place.
I think in the past 40 years, life has improved -- we've taken care of the obvious problems, the visible racism, sexism, and homophobia -- but that just means the stuff that's left is the hard part. It's the sticky, hidden, convoluted, twisty, intertwined, nasty stuff that remains. We've got to dig at it, follow the roots all the way back to the hidden source, blast it out, and reseed -- ok, it's springtime, and I've got gardening on my mind -- and then we move on to the next plot and do it all over again.
I think the next generation is in better shape than we are, but only because our parents did some work in their day, and we'd better get to it ourselves or our grandchildren will be ashamed of us.
