It happened on our weekly grocery run — which was odd given our local supermarket is almost cliche for it’s commitment to earth friendly goods, organic produce and all things lefty. My husband and I were in the spice aisle looking for dried peppermint. That’s when a middle aged man came up to me and politely asked: ‘I’m so sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you could tell me which spices I should get to make Aloo Mater?’
My breath caught and I glared at him. He continued ‘we’re having a bunch of friends over — and none of them will know what it’s meant to taste like but I’d really love to get it as authentic as possible.’ He kept smiling at me — clearly proud of himself for being so culturally sensitive, for trying to ‘respect’ authenticity.
Why was I mad? I’m not from India and even if I was — the assumption that just because I was from a country and a woman meant that I could cook a particular dish (or really cook at all) was astonishing. The worst part? the man felt entitled to my help but also expected me to be delighted to help him answer a question that with minimal effort he could answer himself. In other words— he thought he deserved a gold star for asking me to do that basic menial labor for him. I didn’t say anything and walked away.
Why didn’t I say something like: “I’m not Indian and not sure why you’re assuming I know how to cook. There are great resources online about Indian cooking which would answer your question if you googled it on smartphone.” or “please don’t make assumptions about where I’m from because I’m brown?”
Despite his bad behavior, I knew he didn’t mean harm and I was worried about hurting his feelings by pointing out his casual racism and sexism. That’s when I realized that my standards for white people engaging with race are so incredibly low. Just the pretense of trying, without doing even baseline work is enough to stop me from calling someone out because I know how ‘fragile’ they are. The thing is I knew that even if I had pointed out what he was doing gently he would have likely still pushed back with ‘but I didn’t mean it’, ‘it was an honest mistake’ or ‘you’re so sensitive.’
Now before you say — ‘how do you know he would have reacted badly?” let me share another story that happened a few weeks before the supermarket incident. I was going about my day when an acquaintance stopped me to say hello and then thanked me for a contribution at an event I wasn’t at. I smiled and said “That’s awesome — but the kudos belongs to ‘insert name of other brown woman who we both know.’”
It wasn’t a big deal — he could have just apologized and moved along with his day at that point. Instead of apologizing or even laughing it off — he decided to tell me I was mistaken, and check the ID badge I was wearing. Clearly — he had a better grasp of my name, identity and where I was then I did myself. After confirming that yes, I knew who I was, he didn’t say sorry. He said ‘oh okay then’ and walked off peeved because I had done the monstrous thing of pointing out a moment of privilege to him in the gentlest way possible.
I’m sharing these stories so that others who don’t go through this understand what casual racism feels like. I also want to say these are two stories among thousands.
The other lesson for me in these interactions has been that there is no ‘gentle/polite/correct tone’ for addressing privilege. Pointing out that someone is accidentally behaving in a way that discriminates against others is about power. It’s uncomfortable, it makes people vulnerable and it challenges the root of people’s self perception. The only nice way to do it is to not do it at all — and that would help further boost the norms that help make the discrimination okay in the first place.
How do we change these situations? I’ll be posting part two of this in a few days with my thoughts — but in the mean time would love to hear your thoughts about the best ways to help counter casual racism.
