white people are basically overgrown children
Reblogged from bad-dominicana
pursuant to this post but posted separately because the answer to “what could possibly be better than a white person chipping in their fascinating insights into whiteness in the middle of a conversation among POC” is “everything. literally everything is better than that.”
something i’ve learned about kids after working with them for a couple of years in a number of different locales and settings is: kids are rude, whiny, entitled, mean, intrusive, etc. etc. (ALSO THEY HAVE MANY LOVELY QUALITIES, FREQUENTLY AT THE SAME TIME, but let’s not lose focus). this is because they are children. sometimes it’s partly because they don’t know any better. they’ll point at a stranger and say something completely inappropriate about their appearance because facts! i am observing things about the world around me and sharing them with everyone because i am a five-year-old! or they’ll ask or do intrusive things partly because they don’t know these things will bother people. i have fielded a kind of unexpected number of requests to touch my hair, especially when it is puffy, i don’t really know why — i was going to say “mostly from kids whose hair is in some way very different from mine” but eh i don’t know i’ve met that many kids with hair like mine so who knows. and i don’t mind because they’re children, it’s like, “a thing! about which i am curious! because i am curious about everything! i will investigate, because the world is my playground to explore, also i am seven!”
and it is part ignorance but also part the fact that they are beginning or in the middle of the long process of developing empathy and learning that other people are humans with feelings (babies are born and spend the first few years of their lives literally unable to cognitively process this!) and then moving from that to caring about that fact (which is a complicated and jumbled process full of steps in all directions — i mean i always feel sort of sorry and simultaneously not that sorry for kid who are incredibly sensitive and also really obnoxious to other children — but anyway I AM REALLY SIMPLIFYING HERE).
so. white people… are rude, whiny, entitled, mean, intrusive, etc. etc. lol. but also! here’s the thing. most people i think eventually outgrow this world-revolves-around-me tendency to some degree. but white people a) outgrow it less and b) especially outgrow it less in relation to POC. and like with kids it’s partly an ignorance thing (not an excuse! especially when you PRIDE YOURSELF ON KNOWING SHIT), but then it’s also an empathy thing. i am not the first person to observe this, and at this point it has been scientifically observed, but: white people go a lot farther in the process of developing empathy and the awareness that these other people in the world are like human beings with children in regards to other white people than they do in regards to, um, anyone else.
and here is one way in which they are mostly different, and one thing i like about kids that i wish we did better about preserving into adulthood: kids are set up with the expectation that they are in the process of learning. they understand and accept that they don’t know all there is to know about the world. so mostly — not always, but mostly — when i’ve sat down with a kid and said “k so maybe you didn’t know this, but it’s rude to touch people without asking because it makes them uncomfortable” (or say something about other people’s bodies because it could hurt their feelings, etc etc), mostly they’re like, “k.” which i mean, doesn’t always alter the behavior immediately, ha (we have a weird epidemic of butt-touching in our class right now? it’s distressing?), because they are building the empathy thing, also they lack impulse control. but at least then for future conversations you have a shared baseline awareness/acceptance you can start with. i mean: a thing i totally stole from social justice internet is “even if you don’t mean to hurt someone, you did, and now they’re hurt, so the right thing to do is say sorry so they will feel better” and let me tell you guys, kids swallow that so much faster than grown-ups! especially white grown-ups! although some of them will then start pulling the thing of “yes i admit that i said this thing i know was wrong but then i said sorry so it’s over right?” which again, you know, they’re 6, and another thing i stole (thanks internet!!!!) is “being sorry doesn’t mean you didn’t do the thing you did and if it’s big enough there are going to be other consequences” (which we try to make relevant and… don’t always oops). but if you’re white, pulling that shit on POC, then… probably no! there are not! you will still have your book deal and your career! etc. etc.
an illustrative anecdote: last summer on the train ride back from a field trip with the summer program i was working for, we happened to run into a woman i used to work with who was chinese-american. one of my favorite kids i have ever met (also the one who threw a box of markers at my head, the difficult ones are also always the best!!!) goes up to her and asks if she speaks chinese, and when she says she does he asks what ching-chong means. she said “it means nothing at all” and while i was freezing up out of mortification (this woman maybe intimidated the hell out of me) a coworker started tearing into the kid about how do you think you’re being funny etc. etc. which, no, he didn’t, and this kid really hated being accused of things he didn’t do (…also of being caught at things he clearly did, right in front of my eyes but anyway) so he stormed off in a pretty intense rage. and the thing is, i could tell by the way he had asked that he really hadn’t meant anything by it. so when i caught up with him i started with that and let him vent a bit and then i explained, very calmly, that a) people don’t like it when you ask them questions about their language or religion or where they’re from based on how they look, because it’s considered rude, and b) “ching-chong” was a phrase made up by people who speak english to make fun of people who speak chinese. and he accepted that right away. which, let me tell y’all, after a number of years reading the social justice internet? was so refreshing, someone just being like, “i did not know this thing was rude, now i am sad because i didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or make fun of anyone” instead of WHY ARE THEY SO OFFENDED? IT’S NOT A BIG DEAL IT’S NOT LIKE THEY’RE OPPRESSED ANYMORE and other bullshit that actually means “i refuse to admit i am a human being capable of making a mistake, because i believe that i am at a stage of life where i no longer need to expect to regularly take in knowledge that expands or contradicts what i once believed was true.”
obviously i am WAY THE FUCK SIMPLIFYING and generalizing a lot about a lot of different groups here (for example the kid in my class who called another kid a “chinese mailman?” was trying to make fun of that kid, duh). but tl;dr people are born not knowing anything and lacking empathy, and in some super key respects along the lines of “how to be a decent human being” white people by the time they reach adulthood learn less and develop less empathy than other people, is a thing i believe i have observed.
