(no subject)
Apr. 5th, 2007 02:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
holliI left a comment on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
witchqueen's *excellent* post about the current SGA brouhaha and issues of race-- especially issues of *talking* about race-- in fandom, and one of the things I said was:
This is that post, as well as I'm able to make it. Which isn't very: it's astonishingly difficult to resist the impulse to just say auuuuuuuugh, this is too hard, I don't wanna talk about it. But I should, so I will.
So here's the thing: growing up Jewish in a place where a lot of other people were Jewish, and anti-Semitism is effectively gone, and everyone I interacted with knew plenty of other Jewish people-- well, sometimes I kind of forget that I'm a member of a minority. I shouldn't, because this is a pretty recent development, and my parents remember swimming pools they weren't allowed in and realtors who wouldn't rent to *their* parents. But I do forget. Because I'm privileged, and I have the luxury of doing so.
This is why privilege sucks, you know? Because I know I have it, because I'm a white girl from an affluent family, who went to excellent schools, for whom racism is an abstract thing. But I don't have a choice about having it: it is, as Anya would say, a gift with purchase, never mind that I didn't get a choice about what I bought.
And, hey, I've already got that horrible cringing stop-talking-about-it feeling, because who the hell am I to whine about the privilege I have? Having it is an awful lot better that *not* having it, that's for sure. No one gets to opt out of privilege; no one even gets to decide how much they have. The only thing we can do, most of the time, is be aware of that fact, to have our eyes open, to think about the ways it makes our lives-- and the lives of those around us, and the lives of the characters we write-- easier or harder.
Which, I guess, is where I lose sympathy for the people who just don't want to talk about it, who want to deflect the conversation or change the subject. No one says you have to think about this stuff 24/7. But when someone asks you to open your eyes and pay attention and *think* about how it affects you, just this once, just in this situation, it's rude as hell not to.
witchqueen's *excellent* post about the current SGA brouhaha and issues of race-- especially issues of *talking* about race-- in fandom, and one of the things I said was:"And, okay, there's a whole post I should be making about how while I am technically a member of a minority, I always feel wildly unconfortable with claiming that status in any discussion of race, because anti-Semitism in my part of the country is virtually nonexistent. So I feel like I haven't quite earned the right to participate in the conversation as anything but another privileged white girl. And hangups like that are probably part of the reason why everyone gets so damn uncomfortable around these conversations. Augh."
This is that post, as well as I'm able to make it. Which isn't very: it's astonishingly difficult to resist the impulse to just say auuuuuuuugh, this is too hard, I don't wanna talk about it. But I should, so I will.
So here's the thing: growing up Jewish in a place where a lot of other people were Jewish, and anti-Semitism is effectively gone, and everyone I interacted with knew plenty of other Jewish people-- well, sometimes I kind of forget that I'm a member of a minority. I shouldn't, because this is a pretty recent development, and my parents remember swimming pools they weren't allowed in and realtors who wouldn't rent to *their* parents. But I do forget. Because I'm privileged, and I have the luxury of doing so.
This is why privilege sucks, you know? Because I know I have it, because I'm a white girl from an affluent family, who went to excellent schools, for whom racism is an abstract thing. But I don't have a choice about having it: it is, as Anya would say, a gift with purchase, never mind that I didn't get a choice about what I bought.
And, hey, I've already got that horrible cringing stop-talking-about-it feeling, because who the hell am I to whine about the privilege I have? Having it is an awful lot better that *not* having it, that's for sure. No one gets to opt out of privilege; no one even gets to decide how much they have. The only thing we can do, most of the time, is be aware of that fact, to have our eyes open, to think about the ways it makes our lives-- and the lives of those around us, and the lives of the characters we write-- easier or harder.
Which, I guess, is where I lose sympathy for the people who just don't want to talk about it, who want to deflect the conversation or change the subject. No one says you have to think about this stuff 24/7. But when someone asks you to open your eyes and pay attention and *think* about how it affects you, just this once, just in this situation, it's rude as hell not to.
