The Crimes in the Next Room
I haven’t had much spare time lately, but in my rare unoccupied moment, I’ve been thinking about privilege more.
Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to not care.
When my life gets busy like it has been, it’s too easy to not care about the oppressions that other people face. I have my own life, the reasoning goes, and I need to deal with mine first.
It is a privilege just for me to be able to think that. My daily life isn’t hedged by racism, or a severe lack of money, or a need for physical accommodations that often are just not there. I can climb stairs without assistance and not worry about how strangers will react to my skin color. And some of my busy-ness comes from going out with friends and attending a workshop – neither of which I could have done if I didn’t have just enough extra cash and free time to afford them.
Yet I can’t stop thinking about what an unearned privilege it is for me to have so little to worry about.
I read Womanist Musings almost every day, when I’m too exhausted to do anything but hunch in front of my computer but too bored to veg in front of the television. And because of Renee, I am reminded every day of the issues that I don’t have to pay attention to because of the facets of my self-identification.
But, you may ask, what do you mean by self-identification? How can a white woman identify as anything other than a white woman?
And I would respond, why do I identify myself as a white woman? Are there not other markers that significantly separate me from others?
And are these divisions really so significant after all? Why am I not of “woman of color”, when we are all a color of some kind? Does my pale skin not have a color? Am I not of a specific ethnicity, just as a woman of color is of a specific ethnicity? Why do I get to identify myself as a “woman” while Renee must identify herself as a “woman of color“?
By saying this, I am not trying to claim the oppressions of women of color. I am not trying to squeeze myself into that already-crowded-by-stigma category. I’m not interested in appropriating it but I am beginning to see instead how false the distinction is.
It is a spurious category, a way of breaking up the world which allows me to look the other way while other women – other people – get hurt. All categories are flimsy constructions, formed by the grasping of our lonely brains, and yet few are given such weight and imperviousness as the hierarchical boxes that we use to divide ourselves from our fellow human beings. They allow me to tell myself that it isn’t my concern because it doesn’t effect me, to claim that the boundaries between these identities are like thick insulation, that I am exempt from the crimes going on in the next room.
