Tragic Mulatto

karnythia:

lyraattack:

brandos:

lyraattack:

themindislimitless:

mangosupasonic:

vegtablez:

“You don’t come back in here until you’ve apologized to every person in this room, Because you just exercised a freedom that none of these people of color have. When these people of color get tired of racism, they can’t just walk out, because there’s no place in this country where they aren’t going to be exposed to racism. They can’t even stay in their own homes and not be exposed to racism if they turn on their television. But you, as a white female, when you get tired of being judged and treated unfairly on the basis of your eye color, you can walk out that door, and you know it won’t happen out there. You exercised a freedom they don’t have. If you’re going to be in here you’re going to apologize to every person of color in this room. And do it now.”

“I’m sorry there’s racism in this country—

“BULLSHIT! No, you’re not going to say ‘I’m sorry there’s racism.’ You’re going to apologize for what YOU just did.”

“I will not apologize because it’s not a matter of race always—”

“OUT.”

Jane Elliot is a champ.

This is quite painful for me to watch, because I can see that girl’s world or her beliefs get uprooted.

You can’t just say to a person you don’t see them as they are, you’re taking all the things they’ve gone through and saying, it doesn’t matter, I don’t care. I’m going to pretend you don’t go through these problems. It’s extremely rude. It’s extremely prejudiced. It’s white privilege.

No, I’m sorry, that is NOT white privilege. Well, what you wrote is. But not that girl’s behavior.

I have to agree with that girl. Persecution is not always about race, and judging from her reactions, she strikes me as the kind of girl who has experienced persecution herself, for other reasons. She’s plain, she’s eager to discuss, she leaves her hand up and she carefully considers her words. She’s a rock one moment and a wreck the next. She reminds me of myself. 

And for that reason, I have little doubt that this isn’t the first time she’s run from a classroom in tears. I have little doubt that she feels ashamed of her tears, I have little doubt that the reason she left was because she felt she was committing some grave offense by crying in front of others. I believe this, because I’ve been there. I’ve been driven there by classmates. If I’ve ever been driven to tears by a teacher in class, I can’t remember (though I won’t rule it out). 

But someone of her type? Of my type? For a teacher, to her a figure of trust and respect, to bring her to that vulnerable place, that place she hides so well — and you know she does. You saw how her face was steel one moment and so terrified the next — is the worst kind of betrayal. 

So when she came back in, she sat in the corner. She couldn’t rejoin the exercise. She had messed up. She had ruined it. She had failed. She was ashamed and hurt and scared to face her classmates now that they’d seen her ‘real’ face, how weak she was. So why was this trusted figure rubbing her shame in her face, she probably asked herself.

It wouldn’t have occurred to her to apologize to her classmates for removing her tears from the room. That would have seemed the only proper thing to do. When you can’t take it anymore, you take your tears to the bathroom so you don’t make anyone else uncomfortable with them. That’s what you do. That’s what she’s used to doing. She would have felt she owed Ms. Elliot an apology, but she would have felt that, at that moment, her feelings of hurt and betrayal would make such an apology fake, resentful, worse than nothing. 

So, faced with confirmation from all her classmates that she was a horrible person, seeing the blank, staring eyes of the classmates she had tried to defend with the best of intentions, the only thing she could do was get her jacket and leave. Obviously they didn’t want her there anymore, after she messed up. After all, no-one ever wants her. She knows that. 

That was not the face of white privilege. That was just a hurt young girl, a girl with a history of being bullied and belittled and disregarded, being pushed down once again. A person who is so aware of injustice that it aches, constantly, that the only way she can handle it is by pretending the hurt it causes doesn’t exist, by pretending that she’s strong. And also the face of white guilt, but that’s not the important part.

Let me say, here, that I absolutely agree with Ms. Elliot’s motives, with her lesson. The quote in the first post, above, is fantastic. And poignant. And true. But right now I can only find her despicable. Because she is crusading to stop one kind of persecution — the kind that affects whole communities, who can at least rely on one another for support — But she seems totally ignorant of another kind, the kind that targets individuals. That one child who stands out from their peers because they’re a bit smarter, or a bit quieter, or a bit worse at social situations, or a bit closer to the teacher than the other students. And I want you to look in the eye of someone who went through that kind of separation, the kind that left them without anyone their age to rely on and, in too many schools, no adults either, and tell them it doesn’t matter. 

Because whether they’ll ever admit it or not, I promise you the wounds inflicted by that situation never, ever heal.

And then tell me that this session doesn’t almost seem designed to take advantage of that person. That person who has been ostracized, been belittled, gotten used to beating back problems with their brain and their stoicism. Because that’s always the person who raises their hand. That’s always the person who tries to speak intelligently. That’s always the person who defends the others even when they know, intellectually, they’d be safer keeping quiet. And that’s always the person who is driven to tears when they realize they can’t help.

I’m sorry

Ican’t-

Because it’s NOT about race always. If you know nothing else, you KNOW that humans always find some way to make some people worth less. And if you beat back one kind of discrimination while inadvertently furthering another— 

She just.

I did not see an educator and crusader for racial equality. I saw a bully. Because that girl was not the one who needed the lesson on race. That girl was the one who fights for others and for herself without a second thought, because she honestly feels that she is worth less than the people around her, even though she knows, intellectually, that she’s a good person. And I saw her get crushed down under an educator’s heel for the sake of making a point about something SHE HAS EXPERIENCED, when what she really needs is a good therapist. 

And I cannot forgive that. 

And if I’m wrong about her entirely, and she does indulge in all sorts of white privilege and no-one has given her an unkind word in her life and she’s the most popular girl in her class?

It doesn’t matter. Because the fragile girl I described above is me. And if I were in that classroom, I would be the one trying to speak up, the one trying to stand up for herself and her classmates and her validity. I would be the one who would have to run from the room to avoid showing others my tears, who would be too ashamed myself, upon returning, to bring myself to apologize. 

And if just watching this video is enough to  - to trigger horrible memories and feelings in someone who has suffered exclusion and discrimination, if it’s enough to trigger tears and shakes and page long soul-baring — I am crying while I type, right now — then you are DOING something WRONG. 

I believe that race is the most important type of persecution — that it’s the most widespread, the most harmful, the one that should most urgently be stopped. 

BUT IT IS NOT THE ONLY KIND OF PERSECUTION. 

And SHE needs to GODDAMN REALIZE THAT before she HURTS MORE YOUNG GIRLS.

dkla

okay.

that’s all I got

I hate this video

You know absolutely nothing about that girl.

And I don’t think you even get it.

I did not feel sorry for her. I will not feel sorry for her. Because the entire point of her being singled out, she chose to keep arguing with Jane and that was pretty brave of her but at the same time she refused to listen.

Am I supposed to really sit and feel sorry for a girl that couldn’t handle an exercise? Someone that had the opportunity to walk out and get her cry out and compose herself.

SHE MADE THE CHOICE AND DECISION to speak up for herself. She had a point to prove, she refused to listen and that woman belittled her because she was asking for it and you tell me that this woman is being a bully.

There are some people a LOT of people in this world that get picked on like that because they are brown or gay or handicapped and they don’t WANT to be bothered and you’re sitting here crying with her and I’m supposed to feel SORRY?

I don’t think so.

You need to watch the video again because you COMPLETELY missed the point.

I don’t WANT you to feel sorry for her. You missed the point of my post. I was not crying for her.  I posted because this video made me feel so sucky about myself that I could hardly take it, and writing out my reasons was the only way I could deal with what I WAS FEELING. I was crying because her treatment in this exercise triggered my own memories and feelings of being a lonely thirteen-year-old just trying to get a good grade in the science lab and brought to tears by my lab partners because they thought I was being a snooty bitch when I asked to actually be a part of the group I was assigned to instead of sitting in the corner and failing the lab. 

I was crying because — No. I’m not finishing this. Because just from reading your post I’m already trembling like a goddamn leaf with tears and snot rolling down my face. How dare you. How dare you. Because I’m sitting here, trying to explain how just watching the video I felt like I WAS that girl and I felt attacked and helpless and voiceless, and I didn’t need that to understand that racism exists and is pervasive, because I had already had those feelings of helplessness and voicelessness before anyone in my life started teaching me about racism, so when someone did teach about it, I GOT IT immediately. Because I’d seen and felt something as close to racism as could possibly be addressed to a middle class white girl. And I realized even then, at like, five, or seven, that I COULDN’T get it completely. Because I haven’t experienced racism. I’m white in a primarily white community. But goddamit I HAVE been made to feel like I’m less than the people around me. So as much as anyone can understand, I understand that it is to experience discrimination. And I understand and acknowledge that I can’t understand completely, because I can walk out of the room, and I respect that. 

But don’t call it just an exercise. Don’t dismiss it like that. If this was in a history class and was about civil rights or WW2, and the students that had been the target of the exercise were all black, or all asian, or all jewish — think about that. They wouldn’t have been any stronger. They wouldn’t have been any slower to fight back. That’s the point. We’re all the same, and we’re all equally helpless in the face of that kind of determined mistreatment. That is what Jane was trying to teach the class. That no-one can handle that, and no-one should have to.

I mean, yes, it IS an exercise. But it’s a harsh lesson, taught the hard way. And it’s needful. Oh god, of course it is. 

But making the example for the lesson that one person in the room who is quickest to fight back against your (intentionally and for the sake of the exercise, I understand) prejudiced behavior is a perfect recipe for disaster, because the person who responds like that, who tries to keep calm, to hold a straight face, who tries to keep fighting to be treated with basic human respect even though they know perfectly well all it will get them is pain? That’s a recipe for disaster. Because five times out of ten, the person speaking out is the person who, among the participants, is most familiar with being treated wrongly. And because that person will cry, and they will never be able to look their classmates in the eye again, and they will receive lasting trauma. Not because they can’t handle being treated unfairly, but because THE TEACHER is supposed to be THE ONE PERSON THEY CAN TRUST to treat them FAIRLY. Because NO-ONE ELSE DOES. But then there’s also the part of them that’s not really surprised that they’ve been betrayed because they really do believe that they’re not worth basic human respect because no-one in their peer group has ever treated them with it.

The exercise is horrible because it intentionally makes one person in the room a victim of behavior specifically tailored to be like intense racial discrimination, and then, when they react exactly how they’re supposed to, are called the oppressor, the bad guy. Made into the bad guy when that first kid to actually try to engage intelligently with the teacher is the one white participant who is almost guaranteed to have already experienced being made a victim, often since they were very young.

Read your post again. “There are some people a LOT of people in this world that get picked on like that because they are brown or gay or handicapped and they don’t WANT to be bothered and you’re sitting here crying with her and I’m supposed to feel SORRY?”

What are you saying? Are you saying she’s the one who picks on the people who belong to some other minority? Because nothing in that video says she is, except the line ‘it’s not about race always’. And that line is true, because you said yourself it can also be about ability or sexuality. And it can also be about being just a little bit different, because you’re not good at talking to people or you actually like raising your hand in class. 

So don’t you DARE tell me off for crying with her. Because I’ve only ever had one or two black classmates at a time, and if they faced things in the world at large that I could never understand or handle, they were at least liked by our peers instead of outcast and ridiculed for something they couldn’t control.

And you’re treating me exactly the way she was treated. But you’re not doing it because you’re running an important educational workshop. You’re doing it because I DARED to admit that watching a girl I identified with reduced to tears by someone who should be a figure of trust and respect triggered something very vulnerable in me. I’ve been through things. And this video triggered them. That is ALL. 

“You can’t just say to a person you don’t see them as they are, you’re taking all the things they’ve gone through and saying, it doesn’t matter, I don’t care. I’m going to pretend you don’t go through these problems. It’s extremely rude. It’s extremely prejudiced.”

So screw hats off to you. You can make a clinically depressed teenage girl cry.

And to my followers: I don’t usually post things like this. I know it’s petty and stupid and if I don’t have anything to say that anyone will actually listen to, I should just write it out and then delete it. I know that. But these last two posts are so personal to me. I made myself so vulnerable just writing them I thought it would be cowardly not to post them, when I’m so sincere about what I’ve written. So please don’t think I’m being immature or petty or just plain horrible right now. Because I couldn’t take it if any of you thought I was a bad person for posting this. 

Because I already feel so goddamn worthless right now.

So, this right here is a prime example of using tears & emotional manipulation to derail a conversation about race & racism & how it impacts POC. And I know some one is going to call me mean or harsh, but I want to point out that at no point did this person consider the feelings of the people she’s talking to, or pick up on the point that for POC teachers, policemen, and authority figures in general treating us this way is normal. We don’t get the option of sympathy from outside viewers either, instead the asssumption is that we deserve to be talked to this way, that we need to learn our lesson, or (and I love this one) that our pain isn’t real and is something to be ignored. You want sympathy for your emotions? Great. Try remembering that we have them at all, and that your tantrums about being shown the reality of our experiences is hurtful as fuck. I’m not going to dry your eyes, or hold your hand, or any of that shit. Mammy doesn’t live here and the quicker y’all learn that shit, the quicker we can move past this delusion that your pain is paramount in discussions of my life.

Posted 4 months ago — 7,048 notes