Over-sensitive & In-sensitive about Race

I wanted to continue a thread of discussion begun in my March 12 (Wed) post "When a cigar is just a cigar." The comments that followed my post raised some excellent points about reading into race--why we do it, what the consequences are, the intentions behind mis-hearing and mis-interpreting actions, our subconscious biases and unintentional actions that become interpreted and racially inflected depending on the actors involved, and larger issues of the difficulty of trying to name all of this accurately and respectfully--to insist that we have a right to talk about race and racism without charges that we are being "oversensitive" about race or that others are "insensitive" to racial issues.

Let me flesh out the restaurant example I used in my March 12 post even fuller for you. It was 12:15pm when I was seated, and I seemed to be the only person eating alone (there were about 30 customers and a dozen staff, all white), and this restaurant had a bar/pub area and then a table area where a majority of the patrons were seated. I elected to sit in the less crowded area--in fact, I was the first person to sit in the bar section (there are about half a dozen elevated tables/chairs and then your usual barstools around the bar). Two white men next followed, and their order was taken before mine (at this point I had been waiting about 8-10 minutes). There was another white couple seated behind me, and the hostess noticed me looking around. I then saw her say something to two of the wait staff--a male waiter who had taken the table's order ahead of mine (and who took the order of the couple who just entered) and a female waiter. It was the female waiter who came and took my order--and, really, she was busy covering the tables at the non-bar end of the restaurant. She was very pleasant--apologized immediately--and I had very good service from her. The male waiter was also fine--he didn't "vibe" me for lack of a better word. Perhaps he thought I was waiting for someone to come, although that shouldn't have excused him not coming to my table and asking if I needed anything or was waiting for someone.

It is impossible to know why he didn't "see" me--why I was overlooked. And let me also underscore something important: THIS IS MINOR. I am not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, not when there are real racist incidents, like the example of the reporter being attacked (see March 13 post)--but I am trying to make a larger point about the ways I, and others, try to figure out our racial difference from others--and to figure out whether our discomfort is racially inflected or coming from a different source (like the minor irritation of waiting an extra 5 minutes for someone to take your order, which, again, in the bigger picture of important things to worry about, is very low on that list--and yet, putting this incident into the context of others is important in trying to figure out how to read circumstances, racially, not just for yourself but for others. And if this restaurant HAD been discriminating people on the basis of race, well, that's something important to figure out because from a social-justice point-of-view you would want them to be held accountable for this behavior, which I think almost all of us would agree is discriminatory, wrong, and actually criminal).

Again, I'll let the comments from the previous post (which you should read--they are very thoughtful) stand for any of my own analysis of this incident. The fact is, I want to be able to talk about this. Not to cry out "RACISM! RACISM!" or to shrug this off as me being "oversensitive" or "over-determining" issues of race. But to say that while I shouldn't rush to judgment about the motives behind the male waiter (for example, I could speculate that he hates Asian women--that his former girlfriend was Japanese American and he now harbors animosity towards Asian American women), the fact that it enters my head that this *might* be racially inflected is in part my own current way of "seeing" and interpreting the world, and because "it" HAS happened to me in the past--I have received poor service and was made to feel uncomfortable at a restaurant because I (and my dining mate) were the only people of color in an all white eatery.

[Aside: Of course, any idiot could tell you that showing up on a Sunday afternoon at a small diner in Columbia, South Carolina where most of the white patrons look like they came straight from church--and to enter with your Asian American male friend and sit down in the back of the diner--when both of you are dressed in shorts and tee-shirts--is to almost invite the steely stares of white octogenarians--seriously, there were two in particular who COULD NOT STOP LOOKING AT US. Most people tried to be discreet about it--glancing at us sideways or looking and then looking down. But these two just kept staring straight at us, like paramecium under a microscope. Not a comfortable feeling]

Am I oversensitive about issues of race? Perhaps--although the way I'd phrase it is that I have an interest in issues of race/racism so my radar is tuned to a high frequency where these issues are concerned. I'm much less righteous about it than in my younger, wilder days. But I am aware of the biases that we carry around--and the privileges too. And it's the privileges that makes us forget what its like for others who don't share the same benefits--that those of us who either look like the majority of the people around us, whose class background or educational background makes us comfortable walking into any store in a large mall or dining in any restaurant, and, in my own quasi-examined hetero-privilege (I don't presume to say that I always scrutinize my straight privilege--I try to--but I know I slip up and, most importantly, I don't know what it's like to be queer because I'm not queer identified and have not had the same experiences as my queer friends--so while I can be friendly to those issues, it seems arrogant and inaccurate for me to say that I know what it's like, because I don't), where I don't have to think twice about holding hands with my partner in public or kissing him.

Let me turn the question on its head: Can we be oversensitive to issues of race? What does that, exactly, mean? That people are tired of being reminded that racism exists? That they don't want to hear about my musings about whether my treatment in a restaurant was racially inflected? That I worry too much about race, and rather than do this kind of worrying I should just go about and live my life? And what are the consequences for not being sensitive to issues of race?

It's a false binary, but I'd rather be over-sensitive rather than in-sensitive about race. It hasn't stopped me from living my life or moving about in all-white spaces or talking about race when I want to or not talking about race (because I also don't want to be overdetermined, by others, to always talk about race--sometimes I just want to talk about a great song I heard or being moved to tears by a passage in a novel). But I think the point I'm driving at is that we should try to be more comfortable muddling through with this issue and shouldn't shut down dialogue on topics of race--getting out of one's comfort zone isn't a good feeling, but it is where change can occur.

I feel privileged

There are moments when I am amazed, really absolutely amazed, at my life. I was at a meeting recently where we had to go around the room and talk about our "professional autobiographies"--how did we get to be where we're at, academically speaking. And like many people, I never thought I'd be a university professor. My parents, themselves, never went to college. The stakes of getting into a PhD program, finishing, and landing a tenure track job are just SO HIGH that I really am in awe of how I ended up at Southern U. And the fact that I feel passionate about what I do--about the novels I teach and research and the topic of race in America, just adds a cherry to the top of my sundae.

So all in all, I feel privileged.

I was reminded of this feeling last night when sitting around a dinner table with some pretty high caliber folk. Because I want to remain pseudonymous and because such things are confidential, I will only say that at one point, as we're having this lively dinner conversation about how to make the Humanities matter and how to make what we do in the ivory tower more accessible to spheres outside--and the question of knowledge production versus dissemination (are they the same? what counts as good knowledge?) I really just felt privileged, both in the sense of being honored to be part of this conversation but also privileged in having access to being invited to such a dinner, to having my voice heard and my opinions considered.

And it's really about access. And about who feels like they get to take part in the conversation. And language. Who has the language to be part of this conversation. We were, for the most part, a bunch of liberal academics with strong social justice agendas, either in our personal politics or professional lives (or both). I actually disclosed that I "blogged" and that I'm doing this, in part, to try to have conversations with people about race whom I wouldn't normally have conversations--both because I can't possibly be flying to Canada and Oregon and California and all the other places where people who comment live. But also because, in my day to day life, my friends and my co-workers are mostly like me--PhD holders, liberal-progressive, and immersed in life in a university.

So this blog was partly a way for me to practice what I preach--to try to really talk to people about race where it's not just preaching to the choir. And to really have conversations with people about race where we can agree to disagree and try out ideas and be uncomfortable but also to be respectful and to create knowledge, together.

I've often wondered who is reading this blog--especially since I added the nifty map of the world which shows you where readers are coming from (although I know very well that google searches probably account for 80% or more of the traffic, which means it's people accidently clicking on). So if you've never left a comment, here's your chance, just to say why you are reading this blog or even if you just came across it by happenstance. But really, what I want to acknowledge is the kind of privilege I have--to be able to think about race in America, to research mixed-race issues, and to have the time to blog about such things. Because I've had some great conversations with people and have really appreciated all the comments I've gotten, I think especially when they've pricked me, because as a wise person once said, getting people angry and upset doesn't mean there isn't knowledge going on, it means that you've pushed someone's buttons to the point where you are making them think.