Racism is Exhausting

“I don’t have a job, I don’t have a woman, I’m about to be evicted, but at least I got this white privilege. No one can take that away from me,” he joked.

I sighed. I was at a writing group for standup comedians and it was my turn to provide critique. I was sitting on a plastic patio chair that was somehow deemed suitable as permanent inside furniture. Milk crates were propped up as a table and beer posters were tapped to the wall haphazardly in his small apartment. The whirl of sirens from outside and the shouts of a fighting couple next door could be heard through the thin walls, making it hard to concentrate.

In the wake of my silence, he tried to explain what he meant — always a bad sign for a joke.

“Do you get it? I was providing commentary on how my life is, like, worth more than yours,” he stammered. “I mean… I mean society and the media thinks I am worth more.”

I was distracted because I was concerned about the safety of my new car. I wasn’t sure what part of town I was in, but based on the seven liquor stores and three army recruitment billboards I’d passed as I neared his apartment, I knew it was the hood. The closest parking I could find was next to an overflowing dumpster.

“Well, first, I guess I didn’t realize that you were white.”

His name was Marcus Rodriguez and he looked pretty Hispanic to me. He had the Mexican flag crookedly duct taped to his wall.

“Oh, I’m two-thirds Hispanic, one-third white.”

“Well, now that’s kinda funny. I’ve never heard someone describe themselves as one-third anything.”

He stared blankly at me.

“Forget it. It’s just, like, a math thing, ’cause we have, like, two parents so, like, the denominator has to be divided b…”

I let my voice trail.

I scanned the room briefly before saying, “Also, maybe there are levels to white privilege.”

Later, he told me he was disappointed that I didn’t have more to say about the joke. When I recounted this experience to some of my friends, they got heated: “I would have told that dude off” or “You should have told him that wasn’t funny.”

Even better: “You should have taught him about what white privilege really means.”

My usual reply is: “Why is it my responsibility to be the race police every damn day?”

I can’t feel and express outrage literally every day and this time I wasn’t even personally offended (perhaps I might have been if he had more going for him).

Our current 24/7 news cycle has made it harder to have constructive conversations about race, instead what is reported is designed to activate fear and scarcity. You’ve heard the adage: “If it bleeds, it leads.”

If it’s about hate, it’s good click bait. It’s mentally exhausting to overlook racist comments, process whether or not the subject is actually racist or simply talking about race, educate people about racism, and leave behind conversations that can’t get past hateful finger-pointing. It’s even exhausting to listen to seeming well-intentioned stories about diversity because there often are no actionable steps, no case studies of companies successfully increasing their diversity numbers and the resulting benefits.

Instead, it’s a deluge of reports about the lack of Blacks in Tech, or Hispanics in media, or Women in Hollywood, just another reminder of the struggle.

It also takes work when you have a view that deviates from your peers who expect solidarity in scandal and the comfort of a united minority front. Sometimes I read diversity articles and think “does this even matter?” and “still?”

I like to think about media the same way I think about the food I intake. I try to only feed myself food that is nourishing and delicious, although sometimes, I have been known to eat everything in sight. I approach my social accounts the same way. I skim the headlines to be aware of them, but rarely am I going to take in the whole story. But even a quick scan can be taxing and just because I am only reading the headlines does not mean that I am not consuming the story. I mean, one can only be told that they are an underdog for so long and in so many different ways before it starts to take a toll.

Here is a quick scan of my social feeds (and this is excluding all of the fun posts about life as a woman: including the trending hashtag #makerapelegal):

• A black man has been shot by the cops. The video auto plays. The man’s body crumbles and we watch as he shakes and takes his last breath. I can’t today. Also, I thought I had turned autoplay off.
• People in Flint can’t even take a bath or drink water. Is it or is it not environmental racism? Will read this later.
• Only 2% of the employees at Twitter are black. Because I am better at quitting jobs than keeping them. I have 27 stories in my feed about Diversity in Tech, Diversity in Business School, Diversity in Comedy, Diversity in Publishing. Same story, different industry. Disregard.
• A cop admits that he targeted 36 Black women to rape because they were easy targets. The headline just makes me want to scream, will skip over. Also, he looks “touched.”
• Apparently, Hollywood is not diverse. Duh. Next.
• Canada’s Native Americans treated worse than the Blacks, almost. When did we become the global benchmark for oppression?
• Teen Girls in Arizona wear homemade T-shirts with racial slurs to school. Don’t they know that the first rule of being racist is to do it anonymously? The shirts were nicely made, though.
• Meanwhile, The Birth of the Nation, a movie about a slave rebellion, gets the largest distribution deal ever at Sundance. Do all critically-acclaimed black movies deal with civil rights and slavery?
• A video goes viral. It’s titled “What happens when you give white kids a black doll.” Plot point: white kids cried, apparently bias is taught early. What dumb parent would film this and put it on YouTube?
• McDonald’s is posting about famous black inventors from way back in the day. Must be Black History Month.
• Stacey Dash/Don Lemon/Raven Symone saying anything. No comment.
• A #gamergate friend is being trolled and she is re-posting pictures of her face photoshopped onto hanging bodies swinging from a tree. Not sure what to say, so I dm her “So sorry this is happening to you.”
• A white guy is playing Michael Jackson

Our coverage of racism is basic. It’s predictable, uniform, and shallow. You can forecast the story based on the time of year. Is it Black History Month? Like clockwork, Fox News will talk about whether or not we need Black History Month. Is it Halloween? Another white fraternity is in the spotlight for its members who put on blackface as part of their costume. If it’s a slow cycle, TMZ will surface surprisingly shocking footage of someone saying something racist from nine years ago.

I met a woman once who told me she couldn’t watch TV, go to the mall, or visit a bookstore because images of models on magazines triggered her anorexia and put her at risk to cut herself again. For the last 20 years, she has worked (successfully) to get grocery stores to bag women’s magazines in opaque plastic so the cover images are concealed to protect the self-esteem and body image of young girls. What happens to the self-esteem of children (and adults) who see images of the bleeding and dying bodies of people who look like them right next to a game invite for Pocket Gems. It’s amazing that as a group we aren’t having mental breakdowns all the time or developing PTSD from just existing.

I’m not delusional about my role in society or what’s going on around me. I just sometimes choose to avoid the comment section and the story. I am careful of the type of mental calories I take in, and I choose those that make me more productive, inspired, and joyful, instead of depressed, angry, or feeling helpless. I think me being the best me — the happiest me possible — is my activism. My happy existence is the rebellion. So, instead of watching Macklemore’s eight-minute music video for “White Privilege 2,” I am happy to look at 73 photos of your baby burping, or to look at animal pics, like this white giraffe pic. Three sentences into the article, I read this:

“Omo appears to get along with the other giraffes, she has always been seen with a large group of normally coloured giraffe — they don’t seem to mind her different colouring . . . ”

Kimberly Dillon is a comic and storyteller who lives in Los Angeles.