Ink and Vein

In November 2016, many people watched in disbelief as a qualified and competent candidate lost the presidential election to a reality TV star with multiple bankruptcies under his belt, who somehow still had the reputation of being a good businessman.

I suppose I wasn’t surprised, but I was heartbroken.

The morning after the election, one of my students (the daughter of immigrants) at the high school where I taught concurrent enrollment courses asked to stay in the classroom during my office hours because she was scared to be with her classmates. Already that morning, she had been told by multiple peers to start packing her bags because all the immigrants would be sent back where they came from. I sat near her and listened to her, held her hand and hugged her while she cried.

I cried, too.

Despite what many people seemed to think, my tears weren’t about my candidate losing, or my party losing. I’ve long been disenchanted with both political parties, though the one that at least wants to provide social services for its citizens and let people keep their bodily autonomy seems better to me than one that continually tries to hoard wealth for the wealthiest and punish the suffering, while eroding our rights under the guise of “protecting our way of life.”

My tears were stimulated by the sheer cruelty, bigotry, and bullying that appealed to so many people. And my frustration and sadness continued through the months that followed, as liberals looked for scapegoats, as leftists were scolded for being too radical, for losing the election, for causing the divisiveness that lead to red-state voters feeling disenfranchised and voting for the bigot. We were supposed to focus our energies on reaching across the aisle, on moving more towards the center so that our politics would be more palatable and we could win back the white, middle-and-working-class male voter, since these voters, apparently, felt ignored and uncared for because the focus on marginalized people made them feel unimportant.¹

Something I noticed then, that I notice again in our current political situation (and in many situations that people might think have nothing to do with politics at all), was a general inability to sit with discomfort, and to sit with the possibility of being wrong, of having harmful beliefs, of sharing the accountability for the world we live in. I’ve experienced, so many times, in my professional and personal life, people being angry and unable to hear me – no matter how much reason and evidence I have to support me – because I’m making them feel like a bad person.

In order to get them to listen, I’m supposed to go out of my way to assure them that no, they are not a bad person. No, they can’t possibly carry any blame for the current situation because they didn’t start it. No, of course they aren’t racist, or misogynistic, or homophobic. Of course they are free and clear of all these problems. And then, maybe, when I’ve exhausted myself assuring them that they are completely blameless and a good person, perhaps then we can have a conversation about privilege, about societal oppression, about the ways we benefit from a system that was built on inequality. Perhaps then, after a really long and exhausting period, we can have a conversation about their own harmful thoughts and behavior.

But at each step, I have to make sure I don’t make the other person uncomfortable. I have to make sure I don’t imply any wrongdoing on their part, or they’ll shut down and be driven to, apparently, vote for a predatory bigot, all because I asked them to understand the long-standing history of white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity in our country.

Clearly, the intolerant left is the problem. If we just wouldn’t talk about these things, if we just ignored racism and misogyny and transphobia even as people of color are disproportionately murdered and incarcerated by law enforcement, even as women are losing their bodily autonomy, even as trans people are villainized and brutalized… clearly, talking about oppression is the problem.

I am so damn tired.

I am so weary.

I am so angry.

I am so sad.

I do understand that good communication and careful framing of the issues at hand is helpful, and needed. I do my best to present the information I have at my disposal, and to share my experiences with care, precision, and compassion.

At the heart of so much of this, though, is an inability to sit with discomfort, an inability to confront out own complicity in our cultural situation, and an inability to decenter ourselves and think about others. It doesn’t matter how good I am at communication if the person I’m communicating with can’t handle feeling discomfort, and feels personally attacked by a discussion of homophobia or white or male privilege. If the person I am talking to is focused only on how the discussion makes them feel, we can’t get very far.

I see people more concerned with being perceived as bad, than with pausing to see what harm they might be causing, or pausing to see what other people might be suffering.

We are so concerned with optics, and with appearing and feeling blameless, that we don’t pause to think about how our hurt feelings and our discomfort are not as important as the actual oppression and violence experienced by marginalized people.

We are unable to understand the difference between being uncomfortable, and being oppressed.

I’m not sure what to do with this post, where to end it, what else to say. I’ve written and rewritten this post for weeks, and cut back quite a bit… I used to try to engage and dialogue with people, I used to be much more outspoken and much more patient.

But I’m just so damn tired.

I don’t feel safe.

I don’t have it in me.

I’m so very sad.

1. For research and savvy political commentary about this, read Ijeoma Oluo’s Mediocre. Be prepared for discomfort, especially if you are a white man in America. I promise, though, that you’ll learn something and have a greater understanding of what white supremacy is and how it functions in our culture. ↩︎