I’d like you to examine your typical reaction to being told you have salad in your teeth. We’re lucky enough to interact with enough people on a daily basis that the chances of being saved are high. Someone will gently point it out to you to spare you future personal and professional embarrassment, that “oh god, how long has it been there” moment in front of the mirror however many hours after you’ve actually finished your sad desk salad.
My reaction tends to be a combination of fleeting embarrassment, misplaced apology, and eventual gratitude to the salad whistleblower. Light relief follows me for the rest of the day, as I briefly entertain how mortifying every subsequent interaction would be, had I not been made aware of said salad in my teeth.
Has my response ever been “I didn’t MEAN to have salad in my teeth” or “No I don’t”? OF COURSE NOT. I have never in my life seen someone argue about whether or not they have salad in their teeth, but if someone has done it, it was probably a man.
This is of course a metaphor for the fragility I’ve encountered in people who are asked to examine the impact of their microaggressions. I’m very tired and I’m sorry for not finding a way to reveal this more elegantly.
I and many of the people I know are regularly demeaned in small ways: The passing comments, the stereotypes, the generalizations sandwiched between lunch recommendations and shop talk. For example, any statement you’ve heard someone make that begins with “This is probably going to sound racist, but…” (It’s racist.) Or the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments of ignorance, like an assumption that the two black people in the office definitely know each other, or that the cleaning crew is Hispanic (I have seen both of these things happen in various locales).
Or the multiple, MULTIPLE times that someone touches Ari’s hair out of nowhere, or that college friend who kept telling me I was pretty *for an Asian girl*. It’s a death by a thousand cuts: Daily, small things that reduce the humanity and individuality of minorities that I, honestly, usually would rather let go than start an argument over.
Because! I am all too familiar with the pearl-clutching when someone calls them out. “That’s not what I meant.” “But I just said I’m not racist.” Some of my other favorites are “I was joking,” or “You’re being a little too sensitive,” which begs the question, to quote Hannah Gadsby: Why is insensitivity something to strive for?
If someone told you there was salad in your teeth, you wouldn’t question their intentions or assume they were attacking you. In fact, you’d probably know that their only goal was to help you live your best life for the rest of that day and save future you from humiliation. Never have I ever enjoyed telling someone they had salad in their teeth, or made it up.
You know what else people don’t make up? Feeling hurt or offended by something problematic you said. The same way you’re not the one who gets to decide whether you hurt someone’s feelings, the same way you don’t go “mmmm, is there though?” in response to “there’s something in your teeth,” you are not the one who gets to decide whether something you said was offensive or not.
It’s okay to feel embarrassed if someone tells you that that joke you made was kind of racist or offensive. It’s okay to feel really, really bad about it. But please remember that it’s highly unlikely that whoever called you out is calling you racist, or trying to attack you. They’re not even saying that it’s your fault that you said something offensive. Stereotypes and generalizations and discrimination are built into our language and our thinking and our society because those things were built by and to accommodate those — and only those — who have historically been in power (you know who I mean). We are trying to dismantle it. We are asking for your help. All you have to do is realize that and be open to getting the salad out of your teeth, instead of getting defensive. And maybe check the the mirror once in a while.
Here are some things you should read about white fragility and how to respond when someone points it out.
— Natalie, who also sometimes has salad in her teeth
How White People Handle Diversity Training in the Workplace
BY ROBIN DIANGELO
“In the post–civil rights era, we have been taught that racists are mean people who intentionally dislike others because of their race; a racist is consciously prejudiced and intends to be hurtful. Because this definition requires conscious intent, it exempts virtually all white people and functions beautifully to obscure and protect racism as a system in which we are all implicated. This definition also ensures that any suggestion of racially problematic behavior will trigger moral outrage and defense.”
Welcome to the Anti-Racism Movement — Here’s What You’ve Missed
BY IJEOMA OLUO
“It is okay to feel guilty about things that you are guilty of. It will not kill you, but hiding from that guilt and responsibility can kill others. So feel the guilt, realize you are still alive and intact, figure out how to do better, try to make amends if possible, and move forward. You are not alone. We are all fucking this up in various ways, every single one of us. Right now, there are whole big problematic chapters in our movement. We are all trying to do the work and wrestle with the ways in which we are causing more harm than good. But we have no choice but to keep working, even when it sucks.”
White People Are Noticing Something New: Their Own Whiteness
BY EMILY BAZELON
“The growing self-recognition among white people, prodded into being by demographic change and broader conversations about how racial identity works, could certainly lead toward self-acceptance and harmony, sure. The Parkland student activists, for example, have seemed almost intuitively savvy about such things, finding ways to interweave their goals and share their stage with kids of color who had, as one put it, “always stared down the barrel of a gun.” But we’re also staring at copious evidence of this self-recognition swinging in the other direction. When white Americans burrow into their group identity, the switch that Painter described often flips, from nothingness to awfulness. Some of us fixate on maintaining racial dominance, conjuring ethnonationalist states or a magical immigration formula that somehow imports half of Scandinavia. A majority of white Americans currently believe that their own race is discriminated against. News accounts fill with white resentment and torch-lit white-power marches. White Americans, who “seem lost,” are searching for something important: how to see ourselves without turning awful in the process.”
