Inherent Bias

I want to talk about implicit and systemic bias. My own.

I'm a small brown woman, a feminist, and a liberal.  I've appreciated the things I've read about Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.  I've loved reading her speeches and writing.

Yet, when I saw this video.....

When I actually *listened* to her speaking, I thought "She sounds so young, like a little girl"

The very pitch of her voice seemed to reduce her gravitas.
How she sounded distracted me from what she was actually saying.

If this is how *I* respond to someone I already appreciate, someone who I agree with on many points, can you imagine how an old white man would respond?

That is implicit, inherit, bias.  That's one thing that can lead to systemic bias.  If the very sound or sight of a person triggers you, how can you be thinking clearly about what they're actually saying or doing?

This is a reason that so many black and brown men are shot by police.  Why the justice system has a higher percentage of  black and brown bodies than their percentage in the general population.  If just seeing someone makes you feel afraid, aggressive, threatened, of course you're going to be more defensive around them.

It's not that most police are intentionally racist.  It's not that they want to treat people unequally. 
It's that they can't help their own reactions, anymore than I can help my reaction to AOC's voice.

We may never be able to not have these reactions.  It could be it's part of being human.

But here's something we can do.

We can notice it.  Notice how you react to people, especially when they're different from you and what you're used to.  Notice when they're in positions that seem unusual to you, a confident woman in power, a quiet man caring for a child, a black man in a white space.  We can be aware of this inherit bias. 

We can choose to openly acknowledge it.

We can choose not to act on it.

We can choose, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., to judge not based on color of skin (or pitch of voice), but on character.

Not ... Enough

Have you ever noticed that if you don't do something the "right" way, the socially accepted way, that then it's all your fault?

Yesterday I discovered Black Girl Dangerous, a fantastic blog that describes itself as " a literary and activist forum that amplifies the voices of queer and trans* people of color."  Yes, it's angry, it can be extreme, especially the current post, but, it also makes some excellent points, and can be beautiful to the point of bringing me to tears.  I got carried away and linked a lot (3?) of the posts on my facebook page. 

I was saddened to see the comments that a couple of friends made on my links to her posts.  Mostly along the lines of "I can't read her" -  she's too angry, full of loathing, negative, not productive....
It could be summed up in this remark: " Really, it doesn't take any more effort to look around and see the positive. But then one can't continue to call oneself a victim."

It's being a victim to express your feelings?  To name the injustice you've seen and experienced?  When you've been abused and mistreated, when you've seen others in the same situation, you shouldn't be angry and speak out, you should just "look around and see the positive"?

I felt personally invalidated by their opinion on BGD posts.  It's taken me a while to understand why I was so hurt by this, why I was well and truly triggered.  Here it is- what I heard these people say was "She's not doing it right."  I heard them say that there is a proper way to be a marginalized minority, there is a proper way to express the feelings you have about how you have been treated, and this isn't it.

It's something I've heard and experienced again and again in my life.

When I spoke out as a young adult about being molested and abused as a child I was invalidated - told it didn't happen, told it wasn't so bad, told I was rude to talk about it, besides "You lived, right?".  Because surviving was evidence enough that it couldn't be that bad?

Now as an adult I'm not recovering from cancer treatment right either, I'm constantly asked "How are you?  When are you coming back to ...?"  No one wants to hear anything but "Fine." and "Soon."  No one (including me!) wants to hear the litany of ailments cancer treatment has left me with, or that my life will not be returning to what it was any time soon, maybe not anytime at all.  I just need to "look around and see the positive."  To do otherwise indicates that I'm ungrateful for my life and all my blessings.  I lived, right?  Shouldn't I just shut up and be grateful to be alive?

I was taught to be a good little girl.  Keep quiet.  Keep the family secrets.  Be polite.  Suck it up.  Put on a good face.  Time and again, when I have bucked those lessons, I've been reprimanded and shamed, and that's what I heard in the facebook responses to my links to BGD's posts.  You are not ____ enough.  Not polite enough, not good enough, not white enough, not brown enough,not sick enough, not healthy enough, not grateful enough... 
You Are Not Enough.

I don't think they meant it that way.  They certainly didn't mean it towards me.  Knowing these people IRL, I suspect that it really is just that they have enough on their plate without having the pain of another thrown in their face.  I know it's hard to face the harsh reality that so many other people have to live with, especially when our own feels like more than we can take.  I can only take so much too. I turn off NPR and turn on my MP3 player to avoid having to listen to one more report of another bombing, another war, another rape victim.

Just because I can't take it, it doesn't go away.  It's my right to not listen when I can't take anymore.  But even more so, it's the victims right to speak their truth, in any way they need to.

Yes, it's good to survive.  Some times it makes us stronger, but the unfortunate fact is to be a survivor, first we had to be a victim.  It's not a crime to be a victim, it's not a crime to wish it never happened and to rail against the powers that be that allowed it to happen.  It's right and just that we speak out when we can, however we can.  The world needs our truth. 

The world needs everyone's truth - even if the truth is ugly.

How else can we know we need to work to make things better?