Privilege

Almost immediately after Jimmy Carter pointed out the racism behind recent attacks on Obama, pundits and politicians everywhere (even Democrats) rebutted the notion. Because it's just oh-so-appropriate for White men to tell everybody else what is and isn't racist.

If you're not a member of an oppressed class you don't get to tell them what counts as racism (or sexism, or homophobia). We don't get to dictate what counts as other people's experiences.

One thing that impressed me about Jake when I first met him was his open nature and his willingness to abandon his assumptions in favor of just listening to somebody else's point of view. It's like he has no ego tied up in being right, so he is free to just...listen. And therefore learn. I guess this is part of what makes him so smart.

I remember one time a friend and I were talking about how his parents had taught him what to do when he got pulled over by police: how he needed to keep both hands on the wheel the entire time, only taking them off when they told him to get his registration, how he needed to be extremely polite, smiling, and friendly, how he needed to call the police officers "sir". Part of my White privilege is that my parents never had to teach me those things. My parents never had to worry about me getting shot by the cops because I might make a sudden move with my hands. Jake was flabbergasted by our friend's experience and the number of times he's been pulled over in our town after having lived here for only 2 years. (He is African American, we are White. I have never been pulled over. Jake has never been pulled over.) I could see so many people becoming defensive and trying to argue that our police officers aren't racist, but Jake just did what we all need to do, which is shut the hell up and listen to what other people go through. I can come home from work and relay an experience I had and hopefully Jake won't try to write it off, play devil's advocate, or argue that it was all in my mind.

I feel similarly lucky right now in the work sphere because my mentor is another person who is capable of noticing and attending to issues of race and gender in a way that I have almost never before experienced when working with my (White, male) seniors.

Shit happens all the time, of course. This ranges from the mundane to the structural. On the structural end, if you're a woman in my department at the same level of achievement and productivity as a man in an identical position, you're going to make less than him. (We have, at least, created a committee to try to rectify this and other salary inequity issues, but we'll see how that plays out). On the mundane level, there are just a million little things that add up day after day to tire me out.

Things like: A student will come up to me and discuss something that my mentor had told him, saying, "Hi Amy, I just wanted to mention that Professor Lastname told me blah blah...". I am Amy. He is Professor Lastname. Or the fact that our school district administrator in charge of research sends written correspondence addressed to my mentor as "Dear Dr. Lastname", but every letter he has ever sent me is addressed "Dear Ms. Lastname". (Yes, he is aware that I have a Ph.D.) Or the fact that earlier this month our department chair sent out a newsletter with congratulations for my mentor for two grants he has received, failing to mention my name at all even though I am a PI on one of those two grants. Or the fact that after 5 years on a committee with the math department, and literally dozens and dozens of reminders that my area of research is secondary math, not elementary, every single time the old math dudes mysteriously keep forgetting and refer to me as an elementary specialist and the male in the room as the secondary specialist, when in fact it is the other way around.

Or the fact that in a project meeting this morning with me and 5 other people, one of the people in the meeting said "Yes, as I recall Mentor saying last week, there is this distinction between proofs that prove and proofs that explain", when actually it was me who had made that distinction, not him.

The thing that makes everything so different now, however, is that somehow my mentor actually notices this stuff and tries to correct it. This morning he pointed out that it was actually my line of research, and not his, that addresses this distinction. This totally blew my mind. My ideas and contributions have been misattributed to others (always men, usually older men with more power) countless times. It happens all the time, but nobody has ever noticed these things before. Which makes sense, because when you are the person who is being treated appropriately, it is difficult to even see those subtle, constant instances in which others around you are being ever so slightly denigrated. It's just not on your radar, because it's not something you personally are experiencing. So when others complain about things like racist or sexist behavior the tendency is to poo-poo it, complaining that others are overly sensitive, can't take a joke, or are imagining things.

I don't know what it is that has made my mentor capable of attending to stuff like that. I don't know if it's a personality trait or a result of a set of experiences or what. I'd like to understand it better so that I can understand how to foster this in other people. In Nora and Milo, certainly -- I want them to be aware of their privileged status -- but also in my student teachers. Who are all White, but who are teaching many students of color. They are teaching kids who are unlike them in other ways, too, in terms of their primary language, their country of origin, their religion, etc. If you can't even notice your own privilege and how that makes your experiences different (easier) than others', then you're going to have a much harder time supporting your students and treating them appropriately.

This is a place to start, but it's just a start.