For people coming from unprivileged positions, running always feels like running into the wind. You're well aware of the wind, and you have to work hard at making progress. It often feels like you expend a lot of energy without actually moving forward. For people in privileged positions, running always feels like the wind is at your back. The running feels easy and you don't even notice the wind helping you along. It feels like it's all you and it feels good.
That got me thinking about my own position vis a vis privilege. Sometimes I am in privileged categories. Sometimes I am not.
I'm sure that I don't notice how easy it is as a white person to go places, to be heard, to be accepted, or even recognized. Certainly walking into a business, an office, a classroom, an English department, the post office, a public park, or any other myriad places don't cause me to pause for a moment. I never wonder if I will be accepted, if I will be able to conduct business, or if I will meet with a racist who will ignore me, not take me seriously, or even insult me.
I know I take these things for granted. I know how blind I am to how my experience is different than for others because friends have told me they don't experience the world the same way I do. When I have a rude waitress, I assume she's just rude to everyone. It doesn't occur to me that she might just be being rude to me because of the way I look.
But I have friends who wonder about it all the time. Because they don't look like me. And they have had rude waitresses who were only rude to them. It really makes you think when you're confronted with someone else's experience like that. But it's also very easy to forget those things when the wind is at your back and you feel like everything's fine.
The one thing that does remind me that the wind isn't always at my back is my gender. Although as a white woman, my colour doesn't affect the way people interact with me (for the most part anyway), my gender sometimes has, and that's when I really have gotten a taste of running into the wind.
There are two times that really stand out in my mind when I think about having problems getting things done, getting my voice heard, as a woman. One happened just a few months ago. I was introduced through work to a subject matter expert who was going to provide us with some content for a course. During our initial meeting, I had a great deal of difficulty making and holding eye contact with him. At first I thought it was a cultural effect, or perhaps because I was the new person in the room. But then the second time we met, I had to reintroduce myself because he had forgotten my name.
Now I've got a bad memory for names - not faces so much - but certainly names, so I can understand lapses. Problem is, he didn't have any problem remembering all the men's names at that meeting. I still didn't think much of it until the third time we met. I had exchanged emails with this man several times, met him twice, and now we were scheduled to meet at an office to do some work. We both approached the (locked) office at the appointed time. He turned to me, without an ounce of recognition in his face and said, "Do you know when this office opens? I'm supposed to meet some people here". I responded that I too was supposed to be here and introduced myself for the third time. He didn't seem the least embarassed that he hadn't recognized me.
I felt absolutely invisible at that point. In fact, I wished I was invisible and didn't have to go through with the rest of the meeting. But then I got angry after we went inside and started working, only to find that he hadn't read the document I'd sent him ahead of time so that he could be prepared. He hadn't bothered to learn my name, and he hadn't bothered to read the document I'd created that he needed for the meeting. We spent two hours together that day. I wonder if he'll remember me when we meet next time?
The other really distinctive time was a double whammy - two men ignoring me for the price of one!
I was serving as chairperson of a residents council and we had decided we wanted to erect a new playground for the kids in the area. This was going to be a big undertaking; we had to raise money, and we had to get all kinds of permissions from various interested parties. It was a bigger project than we'd ever undertaken before, so it required a lot of planning.
One of the first steps was to get some permissions. I contacted the appropriate gentleman and left a voice mail message. And then a while later I left another. And another. And another. I even popped in unannounced at his workplace to try to catch him. No luck. Reporting my failure to gain permission back to the council, I was told this wasn't surprising because this man didn't like talking to women.
The council secretary called him, got a coffee date within a week and permission during that initial meeting. The secretary was a man.
I was angry. But we had our permission.
Next step was to generate funding. We had already received two generous donations, but we still needed to do some fundraising and throw our own money into the pot as well. During one meeting, we discussed our current financial situation as well as fundraising options. We knew we'd been running a surplus for the last few years, so we made a motion requiring the treasurer to provide a report on how much surplus we had.
During the meeting the next month, we anticipated a report from the treasurer. He refused to give it. I was shocked. I asked if he had misunderstood the motion of the previous month. He replied that he had not. But he did not feel that he should reveal how much surplus we had. He did not think we would be satisfied with spending just the surplus but that we would dip into the contingency fund as well. The council as a whole reassured him we knew the importance of the contingency fund and would not dip into it, and re-stated the request, asking for the report the next month.
Well, next month came and we awaited the report. I really had thought that the previous month had simply been a misunderstanding, and with the entire council reaffirming their desire for a report, it would be produced. It was not. The treasurer again refused. This time it got personal. He said he would not produce a report if I was the chairperson, suggesting that if the secretary or one of the other male members of the council were chair, he would produce it.
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It's a very frustrating feeling to know that you're smart, capable, and doing a fairly good job in this volunteer position but that someone else thinks you cannot possibly understand accounting principles simply because of your gender. It's as if the person who discounts you because of your gender is lying, saying things about you that aren't true, and in a sense, when someone says you can't do something because of your gender, even though you know yourself capable of it, it is like a lie.
But it's mostly frustrating because you know there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot reason with a person who is prejudiced, particularly if they are prejudiced against you, because they won't listen to you. You have nothing important to say. In this case, it also disrespected everyone else on the council and in the community who voted and said, "yes, she's capable of doing this job".
It's hard to describe how horrible it feels. In this case, I knew he was wrong. And there was some consolation in that. But it still rocks your core sense of who you are, this realization that some people can't see past the surface.
I've probably been lucky in having very few experiences like that. But if you ran into the same prejudice time and time again, when it seems that everyone is telling you the same thing... that you're not capable, or not trustworthy, or invisible... well, wouldn't you just start believing it after a while? If you think so highly of yourself but everyone else around you seems to disagree, wouldn't you start to doubt yourself? Might you not start to believe that what all those people are saying must be true?
That's the danger of continuing to let people struggle and run into the wind. Because running into the wind is hard. And if it never let up, if you never get the chance to feel yourself running under your own steam, never get to see how good you can do without being encumbered by the wind, you'd just give up after a while. Why spend so much time and energy for so little gain? Collectively, we lose a little everytime someone drops out of the race.
That's why every time I hear someone complain about reverse discrimination, I don't worry too much. Sure, any kind of discrimination is bad. We should not encourage it. But when someone who's been running with the wind at their back suddenly turns the corner into the wind, they get a small taste of what it's like for other people. And maybe that's not a bad thing.
I'm not saying I run into the wind all of the time, or even most of the time. Mostly the wind is at my back and life seems good. But those times when the wind shifts and blasts me in the face, making it hard to make any progress are good for me. They remind me that the wind is always there, even if I don't feel it very often. We all need to run into the wind once in a while, to remind us what it feels like to do so.
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