Stories (POSTS PAGE EX)

I’m Latina, from Caribbean descent. So that means people see me as a sex object. The hot Latin woman, the Sofia Vergara caricature. Sometimes, I’ll move my body in a way that is perfectly natural for anyone, but people will imitate me as this hyper-sexualized thing, and it’s supposed to be funny. They don’t realize it’s because they are buying into the racism. I get it from people across the spectrum — white people and people of color. But never from other Caribbean people. We just all shake our heads. 

Sometimes I have trouble telling white people apart. And they all have the same names. It’s really hard for me. I’m not sure they notice, though, and if they do I don’t think they know it’s a racial thing. It is. 

People interrupt me all the time. And when I assert myself, they smile and nod and talk about how I’m a squeaky wheel. When white guys say the same thing, everyone nods and makes a note of the point. It’s annoying on a day to day basis. But it also makes me feel stupid and small. 

When my students turn in their first papers, about a third will use the wrong first name for me. They will use the Spanish version of my English-language first name. They just think that’s my name. Because it just seems righter to them. They don’t know why. 

I was out to eat dinner on Main St. and when my food came, it was taken to another table. Sure, mistakes happen. But the embarrassing microaggression occurred because my food was taken to the table of the only other person of color from my same racialized group in the small restaurant at the time. We were not together. We don’t know each other. The assumption was a clear lumping together of brown people as probably together because that’s how few brown people there are here. So, we must be together and they need not be burdened with distinguishing between two separate individuals who appear to be of the same racialized ethnic group. This incident is akin to the old racist attitude that goes something like this: all people from X group look/are the same. 

If one more person talks about how “beautiful” and “great” the Town of Davidson is, I’m going to come unglued. It’s a white flight suburb that actively excludes and marginalizes people of color. We get pulled over, our children are excluded in the schools, and the only poc left are actually living in a toxic waste dump. Stop saying how much you enjoy living here. It’s super racist. 

If I raise my voice or speak passionately about an issue, I am framed as angry, uncivil, unreasonable, as someone who “clearly has some problem(s),” and who is not interested in getting along with or seeing the perspectives of others. These “others” are typically white, able-bodied, cis-hetero or otherwise privileged. I am angry. Because this treatment would not happen if I were a white man. I see that it does not happen to white men because the framing for the exact same interaction is completely different. 

I’m a white first generation student from a working class family. I am often frustrated with the assumption that whiteness equals socioeconomic privilege (which sometimes simply means middle class stability, certainly a privilege). I am included among other white people as socioeconomically privileged in the way people talk about SES class-based things but I am always shocked to realize my whiteness provides me the automatic assumption of not having money problems. I don’t identify with many fellow white students because of my lower income upbringing and current realities. But I experience white privilege and it is uncomfortable. 

I once overheard a conversation in which a white man wondered aloud about the role and place of white men in academia as the future unfolds. I thought to myself, Seriously? You are not a minority or an endangered species. You are not outnumbered or even close to being outnumbered. You still make up upwards of 70% of the professoriate. Not only that but whiteness is embedded in our systems and institutions. It’s so “normal” that you don’t even see it. 

A colleague once mocked #BlackLivesMatter by jokingly referring to #BlueLivesMatter (referring to police) and #RedLivesMatter (referring to firefighters) because #AllLivesMatter. This took place in the tone of *nudge, nudge, chuckle chuckle* ‘what’s all this diversity and social justice stuff about anyway?’ Clearly this person doesn’t understand that occupations are not the same as people’s lives and that there is a systemic pattern of police brutality against black people -whether they are actually committing a crime or not- in this country that is undeniable in recent years’ public memory. I was stunned by this level of ignorance and lack of empathy but mumbled through points about why and how his comment was grossly shortsighted and a perversion of #BlackLivesMatter. I am not confident he really understood what I said to him.