White Noise

Yesterday, on Facebook, the source of much of the world's troubles, a popular black blogger posted this query:

Okay black people...

ask white people one

question you always

wanted to know 🤣

The resulting thread was fascinating. Responses were funny, touching, wise, and real. I learned a LOT. Some themes just kept recurring. For example, white people, if you, like me, were under the impression that mac and cheese can be a main dish, we have all apparently made a grave error. Discussions ranged from the absurd--"What is a Hooting Nanny?? Did I spell that right?"--to the sublime--"You do know Jesus wasn't white, right?" 

Soon, though, another theme began to make itself apparent. Not all white people recognized themselves in all the questions. And when that happened, white people who don't let their dogs lick their mouths, or who don't put raisins in their potato salad (WHO DOES THIS, I MEAN IT), or who always use a washcloth when they shower, began responding with a similar comment--"I guess I must not be white!"  White person after white person responded to questions by saying, "I sure don't say, 'I'm just going to sneak by you', and I don't know anyone who does--I guess I must be black!"

At some point, one of the commenters called this out. "What a white person response," she said.  I was relieved, honestly, that someone else brought it up, because I was feeling uneasy. Which is what I said in my own comment of agreement. Maybe, instead, we could say, "This one doesn't apply to me," or "I don't do any of these things," I suggested. But it seemed to me like maybe it's a bit disingenuous to answer by distancing ourselves from our white experience, when the whole point of the post is to elicit honest discussion about it. After all, even if we can't relate to the specific question, we are white. We're not black. So maybe, although it is important to acknowledge what we have in common, it's not respectful to act like we're the same.

You might be able to guess what happened next.

Replies started rolling in to my comment. I was being too serious, they informed me.  People were just joking. Couldn't I keep things light, funny? Why did I have to ruin everything? It's all in good fun, there is no harm done. Why did I, one person asked me, have to make everything about skin color, when we are all just humans? 

Now, I think it's pretty obvious that the entire point of the original post was to spark discussion between people of different skin colors, so this was hardly a difference being raised by me. Also, on this post, questions have been asked such as, "If you're not a racist, why don't you speak up when you see racism?" So I also don't believe I was personally bringing down all 800K+ commenters with my seriousness. However, if you guessed that all the people who immediately chimed in to tell me that it is fine for white people to make this joke, and I am wrong for suggesting that it might not be OK, are, in fact, white people, you would be correct.

I will be the first to admit that I know nothing about this, and I might be wrong and all those other white people might be right. However, here's what I do know. I'm a single mom. I haven't always been one, just for the last six years. Just while my kids went through adolescence, so no big deal. 🙄  Sometimes, I will hear a married mom, when her husband is out of town on a trip, or is working long hours, or is temporarily physically separated from her for some reason, jokingly talk about how she is a "single mom for the weekend", or some other similar phrase. And I know this. You can't be a single mom for the weekend. Not for the day, not for a month, not for a while. If you have a partner in life, in responsibility, in investment in your children, with an equal share of hope and dread and fear and joy in everything that you carry together, you are not a single mom. 

Before anyone gets all upset (as if that didn't already happen back there when I started talking about white people), I'm not trying to say that every mom's job isn't a hard one. We are all just slugging it out the best we can. But the experience of a single parent is a different kind of hard. And it's a kind that is difficult to understand unless that experience has been yours. It's OK. There's no blame and there's no shame. But it's not all right for you to invoke it so casually. It's an unintended, well-meaning blow to those of us who are just white-knuckling it through the real thing. 

I'm not the first to point this out. There are hundreds of articles, blog posts, and online discussions about it--Google it and you'll see. And it's not the only thing of its kind. Many of you may have just recently seen all the social media posts around April Fool's Day, asking people to realize that it's not a funny joke to read your fake pregnancy announcement for someone who has just experienced their third miscarriage. Another example is the conversation I had with my teenage son about why some girl was "overreacting" to a joke someone (thankfully not him) made, that she called sexual harassment. To you, I told him, it was just a dick joke, because to you, it can be. It can be that way to everyone who never had to hear an unwanted dick joke when they were just being a professional, respectfully doing their job. Those of us who are parenting together can be unaware of the challenges of parenting alone, and those of us who haven't battled infertility can be cavalier about surprise pregnancies, and those who don't feel sexually endangered (largely men) are often unconscious of the constant vigilance that is routinely experienced by women.

We all have some area in which we have been untouched by pain or struggle, and this can make us not only insensitive, but unseeing, to the difference between our experience and that of others. For those of us who are white, our race has often been an invisible experience, seen only by those who don't share it with us. Our whiteness is so taken for granted that it is simply part of the backdrop of our lives, real white noise--constant yet unheard, blocking out all other sound. It seems harmless to us to set it aside, to say, lightheartedly, "Well I guess I'm really a black person!" But when I listen to my non-white friends, race is not something they can jokingly set aside. They cannot un-see their own skin color, cannot, as one of my scolding commenters on the Facebook thread told me, feel free to "identify" with whatever race they choose, black or white. In many ways, blackness defines their experience of the world, and it is a vastly different experience than anything myself and my white friends can identify with just because we might think we share an equal knowledge of how to correctly season chicken or discipline our children.

The bottom line is that jokes are made by people who can afford them--the people who have power, or safety, or resources. But if you feel unsafe, the constant recipient of unwanted attention that invades your space and violates your bodily autonomy; if you are in pain and grieving the loss of something deeply wanted and longed for; if you are struggling just to make it through the day, deeply convinced that you are never doing enough, can never be enough; if you continuously experience a deck stacked against you and the constant invalidation of your dignity, your personhood--it's hard for the joke to sit lightly. As a result, when we are in the power position, the position to joke, we can instead unknowingly hurt, and I think that means we have a responsibility to be more careful. All I'm saying is maybe we should consider it. I'd like to try.