Friday, April 6, 2018

White Complaisance

Years ago a man asked – if reincarnation were possible – would I rather return as a man or a woman.

My immediate answer: as a man!

He feigned surprise, claimed no other woman had answered that way.

I was young then, still stung by the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment and fresh from multiple experiences of feeling (and being) unsafe when alone.

I attempted to explain. He pretended to understand, though he seemed offended that I saw male privilege in ways he had never considered.

I’m much older now. My answer today: as a woman! Specifically and emphatically as a woman of color – Black, Latina, Asian.

Why? What changed? The Equal Rights Amendment is still dead. The element of danger for a lone woman hasn’t changed. Much progress has been made but now the backlash of White (male) Supremacy is taking away gains – one at time – reverting back to a time before I first answered that question: Roe v Wade threatened, Title IX not fully implemented, women just beginning to rise against abusive men - #MeToo.

So why would I want to be a woman again? And why a woman of color?

I admire women like Dolores Huerta, Shirley Chisholm, Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama and many others. Yet I am not them. And I’ve come to understand that my whiteness gives me huge privilege: I’ve not experienced discrimination for how I look.

It wouldn’t be necessary to be a famous woman or lead a movement. Still, I ache to join their sisterhood, to understand their experience from within.

And if there is no reincarnation? I’ve got to get busy here and now, join the fight for equality, participate in calls for justice, get out of my comfortable white complaisance.