Where Gillian tries not to feel small
Today I was on the verge of writing an angry diatribe about how people keep telling me what I am ("You are white and university-educated and have advantages - stop and think about how awful my life is compared to yours" is the most common message, with "You are Jewish and awful, and totally responsible for everything bad every single person has done since the dawn of time" next in line).
I live in borderland and receive both prejudice and privilege: I am white and not-white. And right now, I'm heartily sick of people not seeing me because they're too busy shouting their rhetoric at me. This is why I'm not going to write a passionate diatribe. Although if anyone tries to explain the awfulness of Jews to me this Continuum, I will try to be angry rather than triggered. I am well-aware of my advantages and my disadvantages, and I'm very tired of being condescended to. Everyone means well. Good intentions are not always enough.
There is a tone on the interwebs right now that's in-one's-face. We get told things. A transcript of a speech told me that I hadn't spotted that the speaker was lying when she said "Hi" in her native language. I just thought that Spanish was her native language, but it turns out that I was supposed to not recognise Spanish and assume it was an Indigenous Australian language. The joke kinda works, but the accusatory tone it was couched in hurt. It makes us all feel small. So now, I feel small. And yet... the fine print in the speech shows that the speaker was aware of the problems that Jews face culturally in Australia. The accusation wasn't directed at me. Fine print doesn't soften an up-front accusation. Saying "I'm not angry at you" five minutes in is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
The teacher who gets in front of a class and says "Well, you're all stupid and I'll be surprised if anyone passes" or who flicks the cane they're carrying, so that everyone knows there will be punishment and says "You will learn, for I will make you" isn't actually a good teacher, because for every student who is challenged to do better by this behaviour in a class of 35 there are 34 who will accept the opinion as targeted at them and will behave according. Doors will shut for them.
No matter how good a piece of rhetoric sounds in the current tweets I'm getting and on Facebook and in newspaper articles, it takes the role of the cane-whipping angry teacher. One occasional person may be inspired to address their privilege from the tone, but the rest of us will feel small. We will huddle in corners, or we will put barricades around our lives so that no-one will ever see just how awful we are. We won't venture out and learn what we need to learn.
We need to be lowering barricades in the current impossible environment, not raising them. I suspect that means putting justified anger aside and trying not to say "You fools, do you KNOW how much suffering there is?" We need a path out of the mess that is Australia right now, not an increase in scared Australia and in fortress Australia. Just because Tony Abbott likes accusing people (I know this, for I saw Question Time yesterday, when I was at the hospital) doesn't mean we ever should. In fact, Abbott taking that tone is a clear indication that we really should find other ways of telling people what needs fixing in this very broken nation.
And I guess I turned polemical after all.
I live in borderland and receive both prejudice and privilege: I am white and not-white. And right now, I'm heartily sick of people not seeing me because they're too busy shouting their rhetoric at me. This is why I'm not going to write a passionate diatribe. Although if anyone tries to explain the awfulness of Jews to me this Continuum, I will try to be angry rather than triggered. I am well-aware of my advantages and my disadvantages, and I'm very tired of being condescended to. Everyone means well. Good intentions are not always enough.
There is a tone on the interwebs right now that's in-one's-face. We get told things. A transcript of a speech told me that I hadn't spotted that the speaker was lying when she said "Hi" in her native language. I just thought that Spanish was her native language, but it turns out that I was supposed to not recognise Spanish and assume it was an Indigenous Australian language. The joke kinda works, but the accusatory tone it was couched in hurt. It makes us all feel small. So now, I feel small. And yet... the fine print in the speech shows that the speaker was aware of the problems that Jews face culturally in Australia. The accusation wasn't directed at me. Fine print doesn't soften an up-front accusation. Saying "I'm not angry at you" five minutes in is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
The teacher who gets in front of a class and says "Well, you're all stupid and I'll be surprised if anyone passes" or who flicks the cane they're carrying, so that everyone knows there will be punishment and says "You will learn, for I will make you" isn't actually a good teacher, because for every student who is challenged to do better by this behaviour in a class of 35 there are 34 who will accept the opinion as targeted at them and will behave according. Doors will shut for them.
No matter how good a piece of rhetoric sounds in the current tweets I'm getting and on Facebook and in newspaper articles, it takes the role of the cane-whipping angry teacher. One occasional person may be inspired to address their privilege from the tone, but the rest of us will feel small. We will huddle in corners, or we will put barricades around our lives so that no-one will ever see just how awful we are. We won't venture out and learn what we need to learn.
We need to be lowering barricades in the current impossible environment, not raising them. I suspect that means putting justified anger aside and trying not to say "You fools, do you KNOW how much suffering there is?" We need a path out of the mess that is Australia right now, not an increase in scared Australia and in fortress Australia. Just because Tony Abbott likes accusing people (I know this, for I saw Question Time yesterday, when I was at the hospital) doesn't mean we ever should. In fact, Abbott taking that tone is a clear indication that we really should find other ways of telling people what needs fixing in this very broken nation.
And I guess I turned polemical after all.
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