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prusik[BTW, it occurs to me that since this is International Blog Against Racism Week, it may look like this blog post is a reaction to something specific I've read. That's not the case. This is something that I've been stewing on for a while, not a reaction to anything or anyone specifically. If you think this is about you, really, it's not. Please don't take it that way.]
I grew up primarily in settings where pretty much everyone around me was white. On my first day of school, I walked into class to be met by predominantly white faces. This is an experience I share with many people in the United States. I don't know if it's a majority, or even a plurality of people. Certainly, the experience is common enough that few would flag this as unusual enough to be worth mentioning.
Unlike most of them though, I walked into that class permanently darker than everyone else by at least a few shades, and with no knowledge of English. On one hand, I clearly share the experience with lots of people of walking into a class and seeing primarily the light end of the sepia rainbow. On the other hand, I clearly don't. I'm not saying that my experience was harder or easier than anyone else's. It, though, was clearly a different experience, not one shared by most of the students who walked into the same room and saw the same students.
People constantly tell me that everyone experiences prejudice, that everyone suffers. Sometimes, they will regale me with the story of that time when they experienced prejudice. I totally get why they do that. It is an attempt to empathize. It is an attempt to include. It is an attempt to comfort. It's also extremely annoying and it's taken me a long time to work out why.
Whether it's the intended effect or not, it feels like an attempt to normalize my own experiences. It's an attempt to say that my experiences are just like everyone else's, as if the isolation of being the only Chinese person in the building is no different than the isolation from having worn the wrong brand of jeans to school. I'm not claiming that I'm a special snowflake, but I also don't want anyone to treat my encounters with thoughtless, institutionalized racism as normal. Actually, I suspect they are, but I don't want that fact shoved in my face. A thoughtless comment that inadvertently slams my entire culture is not the same experience as a thoughtless comment that inadvertently slams some embarrassing bit of my personal behavior. (I've experienced both. I should know.)
Like I said, I'm not a special snowflake. Obviously, I share experiences, especially of racial discrimination, with lots of people. Of course, as a member of a Model Minority, I miss out on some of the worst of it. (For example, I haven't been physically attacked for being Chinese since high school.) The people from whom "everyone experiences prejudice" would not feel normalizing, though, are invariably never the people who say it.
This is a tricky thing to express because shared experiences are the basis of a community. By saying, "Well, no. Actually, I don't share these experiences with you" I seem to be explicitly divorcing myself. This, of course, isn't exactly the way to integrate into a community composed of a beautiful sepia rainbow of people.
Maybe all I'm saying is that we can be inclusive without implying that all our experiences are equivalent. We can understand each other without implying that we have had the same experience. e.g., I suspect being the only Chinese person in the room is a ultimately a very different experience than being the only woman in the room. In that case, perhaps there are similarities that lead to better mutual understanding, but I still doubt they're equivalent.
The point is, though, that we don't need that equivalence. We can seek to understand each other without telling each other beforehand that we already do (unless, of course, we actually have had equivalent experiences). The all too human urge to homogenize is how we got here in the first place.
I grew up primarily in settings where pretty much everyone around me was white. On my first day of school, I walked into class to be met by predominantly white faces. This is an experience I share with many people in the United States. I don't know if it's a majority, or even a plurality of people. Certainly, the experience is common enough that few would flag this as unusual enough to be worth mentioning.
Unlike most of them though, I walked into that class permanently darker than everyone else by at least a few shades, and with no knowledge of English. On one hand, I clearly share the experience with lots of people of walking into a class and seeing primarily the light end of the sepia rainbow. On the other hand, I clearly don't. I'm not saying that my experience was harder or easier than anyone else's. It, though, was clearly a different experience, not one shared by most of the students who walked into the same room and saw the same students.
People constantly tell me that everyone experiences prejudice, that everyone suffers. Sometimes, they will regale me with the story of that time when they experienced prejudice. I totally get why they do that. It is an attempt to empathize. It is an attempt to include. It is an attempt to comfort. It's also extremely annoying and it's taken me a long time to work out why.
Whether it's the intended effect or not, it feels like an attempt to normalize my own experiences. It's an attempt to say that my experiences are just like everyone else's, as if the isolation of being the only Chinese person in the building is no different than the isolation from having worn the wrong brand of jeans to school. I'm not claiming that I'm a special snowflake, but I also don't want anyone to treat my encounters with thoughtless, institutionalized racism as normal. Actually, I suspect they are, but I don't want that fact shoved in my face. A thoughtless comment that inadvertently slams my entire culture is not the same experience as a thoughtless comment that inadvertently slams some embarrassing bit of my personal behavior. (I've experienced both. I should know.)
Like I said, I'm not a special snowflake. Obviously, I share experiences, especially of racial discrimination, with lots of people. Of course, as a member of a Model Minority, I miss out on some of the worst of it. (For example, I haven't been physically attacked for being Chinese since high school.) The people from whom "everyone experiences prejudice" would not feel normalizing, though, are invariably never the people who say it.
This is a tricky thing to express because shared experiences are the basis of a community. By saying, "Well, no. Actually, I don't share these experiences with you" I seem to be explicitly divorcing myself. This, of course, isn't exactly the way to integrate into a community composed of a beautiful sepia rainbow of people.
Maybe all I'm saying is that we can be inclusive without implying that all our experiences are equivalent. We can understand each other without implying that we have had the same experience. e.g., I suspect being the only Chinese person in the room is a ultimately a very different experience than being the only woman in the room. In that case, perhaps there are similarities that lead to better mutual understanding, but I still doubt they're equivalent.
The point is, though, that we don't need that equivalence. We can seek to understand each other without telling each other beforehand that we already do (unless, of course, we actually have had equivalent experiences). The all too human urge to homogenize is how we got here in the first place.
