Unlearning How White People Ask Personal Questions

http://www.samefacts.com/2014/05/culture-and-civil-society/unlearning-how-white-people-ask-personal-questions/

Holy shit. I have ALWAYS thought the people around me were being unconscionably intrusive and power-playing in their starter conversations and they told me I was antisocial and oblivious to culture norms. Turns out, maybe I’m just from a different culture.

****new link****

by Keith Humphreys - May 5, 2014           

When I met my fiance’s African-American stepfather, things did not start well. Stumbling for some way to start a conversation with a man whose life was unlike mine in almost every respect, I asked “So, what do you do for a living?”.

He looked down at his shoes and said quietly “Well, I’m unemployed”.

At the time I cringed inwardly and recognized that I had committed a terrible social gaffe which seemed to scream “Hey prospective in-law, since I am probably going to be a member of your family real soon, I thought I would let you know up front that I am a completely insensitive jackass”. But I felt even worse years later when I came to appreciate the racial dimension of how I had humiliated my stepfather-in-law to be.

For that painful but necessary bit of knowledge I owe a white friend who throughout her childhood attended Chicago schools in a majority Black district. She passed along a marvelous book that helped her make sense of her own inter-racial experiences. It was Kochman’s Black and White Styles in Conflict, and it had a lasting effect on me. One of the many things I learned from this anthropological treasure trove of a book is how race affects the personal questions we feel entitled to ask and the answers we receive in response.

My question to my stepfather was at the level of content a simple conversation starter (albeit a completely failed one). But at the level of process, it was an expression of power. Kochman’s book sensitized me to middle class whites’ tendency to ask personal questions without first considering whether they have a right to know the personal details of someone else’s life. When we ask someone what they do for a living for example, we are also asking for at least partial information on their income, their status in the class hierarchy and their perceived importance in the world. Unbidden, that question can be quite an invasion. The presumption that one is entitled to such information is rarely made explicit, but that doesn’t prevent it from forcing other people to make a painful choice: Disclose something they want to keep secret or flatly refuse to answer (which oddly enough usually makes them, rather than the questioner, look rude).

Kochman’s book taught me a new word, which describes an indirect conversational technique he studied in urban Black communities: “signifying”. He gives the example (as I recall it, 25 years on) of a marriage-minded black woman who is dating a man who pays for everything on their very nice dates. She wonders if he has a good job. But instead of grilling him with “So what do you do for a living?”, she signifies “Whatever oil well you own, I hope it keeps pumping!”.

Her signifying in this way is a sensitive, respectful method to raise the issue she wants to know about because unlike my entitled direct question it keeps the control under the person whose personal information is of interest. Her comment could be reasonably responded to by her date as a funny joke, a bit of flirtation, or a wish for good luck. But of course it also shows that if the man freely chooses to reveal something like “Things look good for me financially: I’m a certified public accountant at a big, stable firm”, he can do so and know she will be interested.

Since reading Kochman’s book, I have never again directly asked anyone what they do for a living. Instead my line is “So how do you spend your time?”. Some people (particularly middle class white people) choose to answer that question in the bog standard way by describing their job. But other people choose to tell me about the compelling novel they are reading, what they enjoy about being a parent, the medical treatment they are getting for their bad back, whatever. Any of those answers flow just as smoothly from the signification in a way they wouldn’t from a direct question about their vocation.

From the perspective of ameliorating all the racial pain in the world, this change in my behavior is a grain of sand in the Sahara. But I pass this experience along nonetheless, for two reasons. First, very generally, if any of us human beings can easily engage in small kindnesses, we should. Second, specific to race, if those of us who have more power can learn to refrain from using it to harm people in any way – major or minor — we should do that too.

This is really useful stuff – as someone who’s on disability and knows a ton of people in the same boat, “What do you do for a living?” can be such a loaded question. “How do you spend your time?” is a much more compassionate thing to ask, because you can just enthuse about what you’re writing or how great your cats are or whatever.

See this is the shit they should have been teaching me in therapist school.

See this is the shit

they should have been teaching me

in therapist school.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

Reminder from someone with actual literal brain damage from a brain injury to stop fucking using "brain damage" and "brain injuries" as a means of describing someone whose opinions you don't like or deem as stupid.

It's ableist and offensive as fuck, and for some reason a lot of leftist people think it's okay to use. I've seen posts replying to right wing racists calling them "brain damaged if you believe this" and "do you have a brain injury? do you not understand X?". Just now I saw a beautiful post about fat people throughout history that was absolutely ruined by opening with "How do we break it to boomers with actual brain damage and nostalgic brainrot, and the 'tradwife' thirsting Andrew Tate fans..." before continuing to say that fat people existed throughout history.

Brain damage does not make you racist. A brain injury doesn't make you stupid, or fatphobic, or unaware of history and politics. Stop fucking using my disability as a catch all to describe people you think are shitty. Y'all use it like it's a replacement for how people used to use the R-slur, which shows you learned absolutely nothing about why the R-slur was wrong to use and decided to throw in other disabilities instead. Fuck off and stop doing it.

(And don't do it with other disabilities either, because I know y'all do.)

I know a lot of people with brain injuries. They're smart, and funny, and compassionate. They learn about the world and care about social issues and wish they could go to protests if their disability won't allow them to. Are there right wing people with brain injuries? Sure, absolutely. But they are not right wing because they have a brain injury, and using any disability as an insult is still fucking ableist.

Tldr - stop using brain damage and brain injury as an insult. It's ableist and incredibly offensive.

Love, your local brain injured/brain damaged pal

Why is it that ace representation never involves an ace that enthusiastically writes, reads and watches erotica, porn and kink, gets palpitations over hot people doing sexy things, but runs the fuck away at the mere suggestion of sex that requires themselves to actually participate in any context or capacity?

There's so many variants of asexuality but all I ever see are aces that are simply flatly disinterested in sex of any kind and aromantic to boot, so they never have to undergo the most common ace struggle of wanting a relationship desperately but almost giving up on one because everyone seems to want sex. No shade to aro aces but I think aromantics also deserve more than being eternally associated with asexuality.

hi, as the stereotypical sex repulsed aro ace here I just gotta say that I agree with this sentiment 100%

Thank you! I get what you mean, but I personally shy away from thinking of real people as stereotypes. Those are just one-dimensional fictional characters usually created by incurious and lazy creators, not real three-dimensional people who happen to represent some of those characteristics.

"Sex repulsed" can also mean different things. I also identify as sex-repulsed (see that first paragraph). Otoh, I know that others mean they don't want to see any sex or kink at all. And both those definitions set us apart from aces who don't mind having sex, can be in sexual relationships and even like getting off on top of a body although they don't feel any real attraction to it. There's many ace sex workers with varying levels of involvement in sex and even ones in sexual relationships for whom it's just like, whatever.

Any attempt to represent this wide spectrum of asexuality gets shut down with accusations of "endangering aces by making allos think they can convince us to have sex" as though people's inability to respect a boundary or negotiate consent is somehow down to problematic queer representation. Apparently the only way to keep away predators is to purge all idea of aces as remotely sexual beings with sexual agency and variation (feeding instead the aphobic idea that asexuality is a lack of sexuality rather than another form of sexuality). This is also what they do to minors by drumming up hysteria about pedophiles and blaming it on any depiction of children having crushes or adolescents exploring sex on their own terms. The infantilization of aces, disabled people and minors is a perfect circle on a venn diagram.

It's all just queerphobia, gatekeeping and reinforcing rape culture. We deserve better than to have this puritanical and harmful sex negativity projected onto us.

"Why doesn't social justice include jews?" the fuck are you talking about--we're literally in those movements. how does that mean "not included" to you? "oh but sometimes people are antisemitic and" okay?????????????????????????? are you aware social justice movements are often homophobic and racist ??????? what is with this "why I left the left" nonsense for only antisemitism lol???

i think when people use the word "include" they are speaking misleadingly. they don't mean, why aren't jews able to be activists in social justice movements. because as you point out, we are! the question that's being asked is "why are jews not treated as a marginalized group in social justice spaces' analysis?"

I want to address this more specifically than my original post intended.

I understand what people mean by this--though there's also an element of condemning Jews being pushed out (literally marginalized from) social justice communities. I really, strongly disagree with the premise that antisemitism is uniquely erased in communities which seek some kind of social justice. I want to explain a bit more where I am coming from with this post, because I think it is important for our community to understand. Let me first say that I personally experience a pretty intense, and a bit abnormally high?, amount of antisemitism in the social justice communities I am engaged in.

Some of that is from an actual Holocaust denier who is a prominent leader in disability communities. Any time I bring up antisemitism, I am dismissed.

Antisemitism is not uniquely reproduced by spaces which seek to advocate for some kind of social justice.

But, any time I bring up racism, as a white person, I get chewed out for it. When I bring up transphobia (I am a trans woman), even my allies tell me "some people are uncomfortable with that." Women's rights are also a "difference of opinion." I almost always run into situations where even acknowledging the basic humanity of Palestinians--much less being actually supportive of Palestinian liberation!--leads to conflict with PEPs* and their supporters.

(*Progressive Except Palestine. On that note, it does not escape my mind how folks who complain about antisemitism in the way you describe are all too comfortable with marginalizing Palestinians and Palestinian death. Are we not also responsible for our communities? I know for a fact that you, the person who I am responding to, will make community with Zionists, while also seeing what Zionism is doing in Palestine. Are we not also complicit? Is antisemitism in social justice communities really more unique or harmful than anti-Palestinian racism in social justice communities? How do we lecture when we do not do the work? I think that's a real question that deserves a real answer.)

Now, there's open questions for me as to how/if to engage with these groups, coalitions, and communities, etc. when they are openly antisemitic to me and few people will even listen to me about why that's a problem. Sometimes it is important to engage and sometimes it is important to build around. Whatever I do, I make sure to act in solidarity with the numerous people of color and trans people in those spaces and pushed out of those spaces. As in, literally, I work with them. That is the only way to get through this and this is something that other marginalized communities have already discussed. In the notes of this post, people of color are discussing this, for example.

Again, I, sadly, understand feeling angry at the ways communities will reproduce antisemitism while not acknowledging that they do it. I am currently literally wracking my brain over how literal actual "six million Jews did not die in the Holocaust" tweets aren't career ending in the disability rights movement. I feel very fucking irate about this! I fully understand the mental anguish associated with people just failing to give a shit about Jews.

At the same time, I must acknowledge that this is not a unique feeling and there is safety in solidarity with my friends who are similarly marginalized by these racist, misogynist, anti-LGBTQ, Islamophobic, and xenophobic movements. It is also important to distinguish between fueling antisemitism and using antisemitism, which the progressive Jewish group Bend The Arc describes: https://www.bendthearc.us/understanding_antisemitism_fueling_vs_using

On confronting antisemitism: We all have a lot of work to do to challenge antisemitism and it's going to be increasingly frustrating work as antisemitism becomes more and more normalized. Both covert antisemitism (Soros conspiracy theories) and overt antisemitism ("Christ is king, synagogue of Satan") are becoming more acceptable in mainstream politics. It certainly doesn't help that Zionist politicians in both the U.S. and the State of Israel will promote the covert antisemitism and, occasionally, overt antisemitism but specifically about anti-Zionist or left-wing or diaspora Jews! We need to get serious about this. Part of getting serious about it is acknowledging antisemitism is not aberrant and expecting it. We need to expect conflict. You need to be brave about confronting it through the very annoying process of coalition organizing and solidarity work. Retreating from it--and, especially, retreating into racism--will not work. Luckily, maybe, we are not actually alone in this dynamic.

As Jews, understanding that our struggles aren't completely unique can help us recognize opportunities for solidarity against a white supremacist system which produces antisemitic violence and antisemitic ideology alongside structural racism and racial terrorism. Our struggles are clearly intertwined--the same ideology which murdered dozens of Muslims attending their Mosques in Christchurch and Black shoppers in Buffalo and Latin American shoppers in El Paso also murdered a dozen Jews at the Tree of Life Synagogue. We need to act like it. We need to do the work, just like, horrifically, other marginalized communities are forced to do.

some tags on this that are worth reading:

I am not broken. I have been wounded.

I am not damaged. I have been hurt.

I am not useless. I am making the best of my limited capacity.

I am not lazy. I need rest to heal.

I am not unreliable. I live an unpredictable life.

I am not irresponsible. I have limitations.

I am not incompetent. I am learning at my own pace.

Having a crush does not make you delusional. That's a normal human experience. Thinking you're hot and thinking positively and believing in yourself are all regular subjective opinions, not delusions. And having an obsessive interest isn't delusional behavior either. So please stop it with "hihi I'm so delusional #delulu" bullshit. You are turning an important medical term into a joke and it's not funny

Yeah don’t refer to these things as delusions.

But uh. ‘Delusional’ is not an important medical term.

It’s hotly contentious within medical and mental health literature because it does not actually refer to anything concrete. Uncommon beliefs not supported by fact that are culturally not shared by peers? Good luck considering that a concrete symptom that’s in any way helpful for diagnostic or treatment purposes.

‘Delusional’ symptoms are encouraged to be treated neutrally in practice. It’s the distress around a ‘delusion’ and the interference with social functioning that gets treated - not a delusion.

A term can be controversial and hotly debated without that meaning it isn't important. I am schizophrenic. You don't get to tell me that having medical terminology for psychotic experiences isn't important

PSA: Please for the love of God stop using the word "cretin". It's a slur for people born with congenital hypothyroidism (CHT, that used to be called cretinism) that causes physical and intellectual disability.

I think it's unrealistic to expect a blanket moratorium on insults about intelligence, but words like "mong/mongoloid" (anti-Asian slur later applied to people with Down Syndrome), "spaz", "downie", "midget" and "cretin" refer to people born with specific developmental disorders. If you care enough not to use the "r–word", please steer clear of these as well.

never in my life or all of media have i heard it used this way, but maybe that's just where i live? i had to google cretinism to even know what you mean, but that being said, yeah, there are a ton of words like this that are used daily. "idiot" "moron" and "lunatic" being among them. likewise "queer" and "weird" have changed meanings over time too.

i rarely ever have a use for the word cretin, i don't mind giving it up, but yeah where is the line drawn? i remember when the r-word was a slur, but is cretin currently used as a slur somewhere?

The r-word is still a slur, and the fact that you don't know what cretinism means doesn't mean nobody else does. It was used in my school textbooks in South Asia, which are still influenced hugely by British colonialism. A lot of people didn't know "midget" was a slur either, to the point that John Mulaney used it repeatedly in his godawful stand up just because his producer told him not to use it. There's lots of slurs nobody had any idea were slurs, to the point that Beyonce apologizing for using the word "spaz" got immense pushback. Meanwhile, the first time I tweeted this, a mother of a girl with CHT thanked me because her daughter was triggered every time someone used it.

As for "where the line is" I pointed out clearly that slurs for specific conditions, historical or otherwise, should be off the table, rather than general ones that's lost their relevance like "idiot" and "moron". Even so, "imbecile" still toes the line because it was in wide use as the bottom-most rung of the intellectual disability hierarchy pronounced in 1927 by Henry Goddard. It was the last word to fall out of use with the introduction of "mental retardation" in the DSM-IV in 1994. Definitely not equivalent with the word "queer" which was actively reclaimed by the community during the AIDS crisis.

I'll admit that I don't have much to add, but I did want to point something else out, too. It's extremely hurtful to compare the struggles of any one marginalized group to another. Being queer isn't in any way comparable to being disabled, especially when you're both of those things. It's extremely harmful and alienating to do this to all disabled people, but especially queer disabled people who are so used to our voices being ignored by people we should have a community with.

I'm begging abled people to please stop comparing your struggles to those of the disabled. Just in general you should know that you shouldn't be comparing anyone's struggles against each other's. Please just let disabled people talk without having to weaponize someone else's against us.

it's so annoying when i criticize a structure or system as being, quite factually, inherently abusive and severely harming the people forced to be in it, and someone comes in with "but people NEED that system? isn't it ableist to say we should get rid of a thing people NEED?"

like i don't know how many more ways i can say "the fact that people literally need this system and rely on it to live means the system doesn't have room to be even mildly flawed, much less actively fucking abusive."

the only available system for legal guardianship being abusive means people die. the only available system for receiving psych medication being abusive means people die. the only available system for income & housing for people too disabled to work being inherently abusive means people die. the people who aren't outright killed by these abusive systems live in abject poverty and under constant surveillance, endure constant trauma, have no legal recourse to escape abuse. the people who are subject to these systems are surviving them, not being helped by them, and that is completely unacceptable. How Much More Clear Can I Get.

recovery horror: where the process of healing from something reveals previously unknown levels of damage

seeing a smudge on the wall and realizing it’s mildew. examining the mildew and realizing it’s black mold. peeling back the wallpaper and seeing it’s eaten the entire house. going into the basement for a flashlight and realizing it’s flooded. spending every last bit of money at your disposal on fixing all of these things, only to move the box covering the trap door that leads to the seven hundred mile obsidian tunnel that leads directly to the gates of hell.

where exactly every individual’s collapsing point is located. where they stop in that process of uncovering and why.

the conflicts that arise from knowing FULL WELL about the tunnel to the gates of hell, but you’re stuck with somebody who has only just found out about the mildew.

pretending to care about the mildew. speaking with them calmly and compassionately about how mildew is definitely a real problem that people ought to take seriously, and waiting for them to take a good hard look at what’s really crawling up the walls.