Race Relations

I spent something like 3.5 years in therapy.  I've also had college classes in psychology (Intro to Psychology; Social Psychology) and a class on Negotiation and Conflict Management.

Notice how it's conflict management, not conflict resolution. In most cases, conflicts don't end. You're best bet is to shoot for trying to make it not a big problem for any involved party.

I'm a social creature. People persons typically have a higher than average tolerance for interpersonal conflicts and friction.

That doesn't mean I'm okay with people being abusive to me. 

Differences aren't inherently bad. Differences can add interest to the conversation, be a growth experience, etc. and social creatures typically are less bothered by the fact that differences exist because they have social skills that help reduce the problems that typically causes and focus on the benefits it provides.

People often see me as a strong woman. White civilian American culture is extremely hateful to strong women and both tries to bleed them for what they need and break them of a trait it doesn't approve of. I've benefited from social relationships with people of other demographics who aren't as hostile to the concept of strong women.

I don't hang out with such people so I can stop being strong and turn into a needy basket case and let someone else be strong for once. Strong people are more likely to hit it off with me and stick around without us arguing about whose turn it is to "be strong."

I sometimes hear that shit from assholes acting like I refuse to LET other people be strong. That's absolutely not true but people with issues like to pretend me being competent somehow magically prevents them from rising to the occasion and we tend to part company when people act like I need to be less so they have the opportunity to shine for once.

You want to shine? Have at it. I don't need to do less so you can do something for a change. 

I hang out with people who are OK with the concept of a strong woman because I'm sick to death of hearing I'm too tall, too athletic, too butch, too opinionated, lack enough girly interests (sewing, cooking), etc. While at the same time being given shit for being too girly and feminine because I'm a doting mom, I like pretty clothes etc.

If you don't like me being me, walk the fuck away. I'm not trying to be either feminine or butch. 

I'm just being ME, whatever the heck that is, which gets me enough crap from people I was tight for a few months with a trans individual and continue to write about LGBTQ topics because: WHAT IS THIS SHIT???? Me having an opinion or not sewing doesn't somehow alter the bits between my legs.

 

I didn't really grow up with the idea that strong and feminine somehow conflict. My father was career military and a twice decorated veteran from two different wars. In my family, if you aren't Sarah Connor in combat gear trying to kill people, you're not too butch (though it wasn't perfect, no -- all my female relatives sewed, knit, crocheted, etc and I don't, so I'm a failure as a woman, I guess).

I did gymnastics and lifted weights to support that interest and no one gave me shit about that at home. I cut my long hair very short because I was tired of stepping on it and my mother marveled at my bravery and boldness and thought that was wonderful. 

So I've had close friends since elementary school who were Black or Native or part Native. According to oral family tradition, my father was part Cherokee and while growing up I had friends who were half or one quarter Cherokee and I seemed to be their only real friend. 

And I didn't really think too much about that until after my father died and I saw a picture of a full-blooded Native actor that looked uncannily like my father and thereafter took an interest in figuring out just how much my Native heritage influenced my life.

When I was eleven and in sixth grade, one of my best friends was a Black girl because, like me, she was one of the smartest kids in our class. That friendship probably ended mostly because middle school started and we went to different schools in seventh grade.

But not before I was invited to a party for all the smart kids only to learn at the last minute she wasn't because of her skin color. I was eleven years old and learned this when someone picked me up to drive me to the party.

If I had been notified earlier than that, I probably would have opted out. If I had been older, I also might have said "Oh, I didn't know. Count me out. If she's not going, I'm not going."

Instead, I went while wondering the entire time if I could have somehow opted out because this didn't feel right. I lacked sufficient lead time to figure out how to opt out politely or whatever and sufficient life experience to say "Oh, that's a NO from me." and just LET people be offended. 

I didn't really enjoy the party. It didn't somehow lead to closer friendships with any of the other kids who did attend. 

The reality is that I tend to not hit it off with civilian White Americans. I spent much of my life middle class and I'm definitely an American and White as far as skin color goes and was very pasty White with an Irish surname in my youth, but somehow I'm not culturally "White middle-class American" and I don't really fit in.

American military culture is more diverse than American culture generally. I grew up near a big military base and my mother was a German immigrant married to an American soldier and many of my friends had a German mother and retired military father exactly like I had.

You also see a fair number of Korean wives of American soldiers and this fostered a Korean-American enclave where I grew up, which is one reason one of my best friends in high school was Korean and one of my brother's best friends was Korean and frequently went with my brother to Bruce Lee films and practiced martial arts with my brother. 

I had a diverse social circle growing up and it wasn't an issue when I was a child that so many of my closest friends were anything but strictly White American and I was shocked when I left home at how poorly I fit in with most White Americans. 

On Metafilter, I learned the phrases Ask Culture and Guess culture. Most White Americans are probably thin-skinned Guess culture where you never ask a question without first knowing the answer so as to not offend anyone. 

Military culture is mostly Ask culture in part because diverse cultures trend that way and in part because lives are on the line. You NEED to communicate clearly so you don't get people killed.

The delicate parts of military culture aren't Guess culture. They are STFU, loose lips sink ships culture.

Military culture has jokes like "If I tell you, I have to kill you." You can ask, but you better be prepared to take No, I can't tell you for an answer and DROP it if they don't want to discuss it. 

And ideally just don't ask certain things, stupid. At all. Not even delicately.

This was touched on once on the sitcom Major Dad where his new wife thought he was being an asshole. He couldn't tell her he was on alert. The new neighbor kid or something explained it to her: He can't leave the house because he's waiting for a phone call and can't tell you that because national security. 

So me and fussy upper class White Americans tend to mix like oil and water and I had no idea growing up that this would be an issue. And somewhere along the way I stopped having friends entirely in part because I would talk to non Whites online and get open hostility that I absolutely didn't expect. 

I've had lots of friends over the years who weren't White or weren't American and let me state this bluntly: There's no reverse racism. If you want to be openly hostile to me because I'm White, sorry you have baggage but that's racism. 

And if you are a minority in this shitty racist world, you are doing yourself no favors to be openly racist to White people and hateful to someone like me who is White but isn't a White Supremacist, no.

I've largely STOPPED trying to participate in online conversations in Native spaces or whatever. I'm not a Pretendian. I'm not trying to hurt you or disrespect you and I also have zero interest in being your bitch.

If you think me expecting YOU to be polite and respectful to me is me expecting you to kowtow, sorry you got baggage.  That's not what I'm doing.

I have zero problem with proving myself or whatever because trust is earned, but if the starting point is "You're White, so we're going to piss all over you until you prove yourself." Sorry you got baggage, but that's a NO from me.

I will do all in my power to be polite and respectful to YOU and I expect the same in return.

So I am increasingly isolated in part because I am not interested in compromising my personal values and 99 percent of this shit world has expectations like "You will politely go along with our racist, classist, misogynistic shit if you want to hang here." So I'm generally not welcome anywhere.

That was a factor in me being unjustly banned from Metafilter. It's a largely upperclass White coded culture with people slapping each other on the back for how wonderful and idealistic they are and making the world a better place while being openly classist, intentionally mistreating specific people at the behest of the moderators and openly saying stuff about needing to not offend the upper crust if you want to participate in society at all.

I was mistreated and refused to go along with their bullshit and was banned after I decided to stop trying to figure out "what I'm doing wrong" because I had made sincere efforts to figure out what I was doing wrong and update my behavior and had reached a point of realizing they are hypocritical abusive assholes and if you assholes WANT to brag online about how WONDERFUL and ethical and high minded you are, you can either walk the talk and learn to respect the well-educated homeless White woman in your midst or show your true colors as the deeply fucked up jackasses you really are, pick one.

And they went with "We shall prove what assholes we are because respecting poor people is not part of the culture here and will NEVER become part of it, no."

Looking too hard to remove all social friction tends to mean kowtowing to the personal comfort of the inner clique at high cost to everyone else. It leads to draconian authoritarian policies, often called "Nazi" these days. I'm not interested in doing that.

I'm also not interested in the slightest in letting anyone be abusive to me for any reason, not even in the name of trying to somehow make up for systemic racism. I think I can try to be part of the solution, not part of the problem, without saying "It's okay for people of color to intentionally piss all over me!"

Over the years, I've repeatedly tried to express various ideas I'm trying to cover in this piece. I also used to redact a lot of my writing while trying to figure out how to write well.

One point I've tried to make (and redacted at least once) is that racism and other social problems are kept alive by the tendency of most people to bet the odds. This is why the White male on site gets assumed to be the boss much to the frustration of every woman or person of color who actually is the boss and constantly has new people treat them like the janitor or secretary while talking at some new White male hire younger than them like they must be in charge.

At the same time, people of color complain endlessly about things like having to "educate" White people and how exhausting that is.

I get it, it's extremely exhausting to try to actually get to know new people and assume good faith when you've been burned. I know because I make a sincere effort to actually do that and it gets me a lot of abuse from bad actors who seem to think I'm naive for refusing to assume the worst about every single person I meet.

It's reasonable to be slow to warm up to White people and slow to trust White people given how many are racist shitbags.

But you are actively making me want to have nothing to do with people of color in spite of being someone who thinks we should repurpose an old ugly joke about lawyers and apply it to White supremacists. 

I don't currently have a Black friend. I don't currently have a Native friend. I sure as hell don't currently have any White friends and have probably had fewer White friends than other colors. And I've definitely had fewer White American friends than other demographics. 

I don't currently have ANY friends. That's apparently what you get for growing up and having enough experience to say "That's a NO from me." unlike when I was eleven, even if you don't have adequate lead time to try to be diplomatic about it to racist, classist, misogynistic, homophobic etc. ASSHOLES who sure as hell aren't being respectful to anyone themselves. 

And no matter what ***I*** do, no, I'm not going to make friends by agreeing to be your bitch and put up with abusive bullshit. If you accept that from abusive people and keep coming back anyway, you can bet money it steadily escalates rather than ramps down.

So if you're Native or Black or whatever, sorry you got baggage. I'm not the Great White Hope. I'm a dirt poor blogger and we are not friends and you hating on me for being White and expecting me to understand because I'm nice: That doesn't work.

As best I can tell, I'm on track to die of poverty. That's apparently punishment for having ethics at all.

And you are on track to continue to revel in your abandon and wear your victim status on your sleeve rather than try to figure out which White people deserve your hatred and which don't. 

Footnote 

This a short list of related posts, with some excerpts. It may grow yet more. I still haven't found all the posts I intended to include. 

I'm not perfect. I don't claim to be perfect. I'm an imperfect person with an imperfect life doing the best I can and that includes not doubling down and justifying racist crap to save face or whatever. 

I've written about some of my blind spots and personal growth. 

It took me a long time to come to another conclusion and to feel poisoned by systemic racism for not seeing it sooner.

With seeing his best friend get out of the car I had two shocking revelations:

First, that I had made this assumption that the guy must be White since nothing had been said and second that this assumption was a racist thing and it was the kind of thing that kept racism alive.

I felt kicked in the gut because I didn't think of myself as racist. 

I think I got to grow up in a house in the 'burbs not simply because my father had been career Army but also because he downplayed his Native heritage. So I can't really imagine how hard it is to be a person of color in the U.S. The best I can do is feel like "There but for the grace of God go I."

So if you WANT to hate on me for being White, well I guess you can come up with justifications. If so, please leave me alone. I do my best not to bother other people while writing about social issues that happen to interest me.

A Hypothesis is about how one might try to politely further a goal of overturning the criminalization of homosexuality. 

So a primary goal here should be changing people's minds about that. You change minds by proving that assumption wrong.

You aren't obligated to try to change minds, no. But you're currently outnumbered and outgunned and playing the victim card. 

Pro tip: Whining and crying about being a victim has extremely poor odds of getting your abusers to be kinder and more respectful. 

I'm part Cherokee and part Irish. These are apparently both very talkative cultures and my mother was one of twelve kids and she was a big talker. I've written about that and here is an excerpt:

I am not trying to insist that they must take the one-down position. Me refusing to treat someone as one-up is not me trying to say "I'm the person entitled to do the shitting and you are the toilet." No, it is me saying "Treating someone like a toilet is NOT NICE behavior. I won't take your shit, thanks."

Gatekeeping Poor People Out is about my negative experiences on Metafilter, touched on above.