Healing Trauma: Perspectives And Attitudes, 51

I will begin with an email I sent my friends yesterday, following a visit together in a café on the university campus where they live: "... I don't feel that I did anything wrong, but this is one of those situations where nobody wins. I really hope that you don't feel at all tarred by the same brush that that young woman was trying to paint me with. I know how embarrassing that can be. Really, the way she went on, it was as though I was on my way to a cross burning! And really, I was simply calling out a tendency among Spaniards, in general, based on a lot of personal experience and observation, of discriminating against Latin Americans. But it's likely that that young woman doesn't know that there are differences between Latinos and Spaniards, and a lot of people don't know this. Besides which, she doesn't look at all Spanish, (she said in her note that people often mistake her for Spanish, which she is not) maybe she could pass for Mexican or Central American, but the Spanish are white Europeans, and she does not look like either. That said, just as we have free speech, we also all have the right to be offended and to voice our offence, so no problem with her handing me the note. It would have been nice had she stuck around to find out what we were really talking about but that might have been a little too brave for her. Besides, there's no telling what kind of stuff she might be dealing with right now. It is also possible that overhearing me might have triggered some trauma for her, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if she herself has been subjected to racist treatment. Still, I don't like giving offence, even if inadvertently, so I am taking this as a teaching moment about discretion. Really, university campuses have turned into hotbeds for intolerance and there is a huge culture of outrage now, so that anything that comes across as even remotely politically incorrect is going to make you a target for censure. And for that matter, why pour gas on this fire... On the other hand, it might also be wise to accept that there is no such thing as a safe place for conversation and dialogue and that it is always better, when in public, to err on the side of caution. There is no telling how others might react, and often they will. For me it is like this guy who left just before you arrived at the coffee shop. He would be about my age, talking with a friend in a very loud voice and often dropping the F bomb. Of course I found him offensive and really had to struggle to understand, from his conversation, that he was likely going through a lot of issues that I know nothing about, so of course I said nothing. I only wish that young woman had shown me the same consideration but I don't think that most people are about to do this for others. Everyone is too self-centred. Anyway, in the future I'm going to try to take care about what I say in public, which is going to be a bit of a nuisance, since no one likes walking on eggshells, but I also want to take care that I'm not hurting anyone with my words, no matter how inadvertently or how innocently. As for my attitude towards the Spanish, I am of course willing to be proven wrong. It seems that I've become so used to talking to Latinos about the Spanish, and they all universally dislike Spaniards and all I think for good reason, that I might have also allowed my discretion to slip..." Nobody wins. We're all on this sinking ship together. This young woman who passed me the note before she left looked Middle Eastern, perhaps. The way the note was written suggests that English is her second language. She had been sitting at the next table with her laptop. Quite honestly, these days with so many people plugged into their personal listening devices it is hard to imagine anyone having the ability or the attention span to eavesdrop on another conversation, but it still happens. And the assumptions also run high. If you are a white male, then that automatically makes you the Oppressor, and you only deserve to be punished. If you belong to a visible minority, or you are a woman, then more power to you, and if you are also LGBTQ, then so much the better. Nothing at all wrong with marginalized groups doing well and prospering, and an awful lot that is right with it. However, when people get stranded in this tiresome hectoring narrative about Privilege, then that colours everyone and everything with the same ugly shade of screaming acid yellow-green. This narrative needs to change, not to exclude the politics of power that occur with race, gender and sexual diversity, but to allow for another, newer and equally valid narrative: legislated poverty that is affecting everyone who is not in the One Percent, and whether some of you like it or not this is also going to include heterosexual, white cis males, the same ones who voted for Donald Trump in the US. I do not endorse their voting habits, nor their racism, homophobia and misogyny. But I am willing to allow that they also have legitimate anger for being disenfranchised and left behind, and that to call them out as whiners who have lost their privilege is simply to forget some of the basic empathy, compassion and human decency that so many of us have fought for ourselves and those we care about. We are all on this sinking ship together.