-->
I know I am a white girl. I know that to others and to society I have a
lot more privilege than I really have.
And I know that this is not my call, or my fault or anything I had
anything to do with. I know all of
this. And because I know this, I work really
hard to disseminate my privilege whenever and wherever possible, appropriately,
and sometimes even inappropriately. I am
not Lady Bountiful. I am just a blue-eyed
Southern chick who grew up in two really great small towns, poorer than some,
not as much as others.
So when friends of mine who are of
a different background (and there are a lot of those), say something weird, (and
it happens a lot), I simply accept their cultural differences as they accept
mine. Mostly these are just quirks and
we all have those. (I introduce everybody to everybody, more than once, just in
case, and I have been known to call people a coon dog).
Sometimes, though, what they say
about their own social group shocks me.
My friends who are Jewish will make jokes about the Holocaust. My Hispanic friends make a bean joke, and so
on. They see it as being at ease with
their heritage. I often walk away
feeling run over. I call it getting
Chappelle’d.
What Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock and
even Jeff Foxworthy don’t seem to understand is that when you make a racist
joke, it is still a racist joke even when you are a member of the group being
made fun of. But when you are not, it is
a double whammy. Especially when you
come from a culture or a family, like mine, whose core cultural values is to
make other people comfortable, as often as possible. And when you are in my home, doubly so.
Here is the dissonance for me: If I laugh at the joke, and they are often
very funny, then I am a racist, because I am NOT a member of that racial or
social group. And if I do not laugh,
then I am rude. To a guest. In my home.
This is, to me, JUST as horrible.
I have plenty of friends from many
different cultures who have a similar cultural value. To make a guest welcome is above all, the
height of graciousness. I have seen this
in my Armenian friends, my Indian friends, my Latino friends and so, so many
others. Thus, I cannot for one minute
imagine that these friend were raised to go into another person’s house and do
or say something that makes the host feel uncomfortable, or place them in
dissonance.
And yet it happens all the time,
this phenomenon. Maybe I am just too
sensitive. I hate it when people
suffer. I hate the casual reference to
catastrophic suffering. I know that often humor defangs the severity of a
situation, and maybe I should just lighten up.
I have thought about this a
lot. Even when Chris Rock or Dave
Chappelle are on television, I still can’t bring myself to laugh wholeheartedly
no matter how funny the joke is. Maybe it is just a privileged guilt that I
feel, the white girls burden. I cannot
find a way to disseminate the argument except to politely pull people aside and
explain that hate is hate, even when it is self-hatred disguised as humor. And this is SO self-righteous and goody goody,
and often provokes a defensive discomfort that I do not want in the other
person, so many times I don’t.
I have wrestled with this since I
entered college and discovered the idea of privilege. I cannot find a solution and wonder if it
just my White Girl cross to bear. I am
opening it up. What do you think?
