As we try to navigate this otherwise toxic terrain that is the United States of America’s politics, sometimes we can do all we wish with the best intentions and aware of ongoing issues and still stumble.
Hello, that was me a weekend ago. Before I go further, I will give a content warning of how I had taken for granted the delicacy of conversations around Hispanic, Latine-descended, and Spanish-descended identities. Though I understood this in theory, I had not awareness to the breadth ideal.
When a Hispanic woman brought up a racist interaction, in my attempt to affirm her experience I said, ‘That is tone-deaf of them to do that in front of two Latinas.’ This caused pause, and in hindsight, I understand why. We switched topics temporarily and then I noticed something in the air still so I brought up to the woman despite intentions, I wanted to ask her if I could make things right and apologized for how I made her feel. I recognized knowing what I did then, I did not know her and in retrospect, I could have just said ‘I am offended on your behalf’ and got the same point across.
She told me my conversation I had with multiple folks in our troupe about getting passports updated made her uncomfortable. I told her if she referenced the conversation I thought she did, I acknowledged it compounded with our conversation moments prior and apologized for how it made her feel. My instructor, present and a Chicana, said she thought all of us had been affected negatively by the political climate. The woman accepted my apology and I said I will try to be more careful and try to mind how much politics came up.
Said woman also said ‘I am not Mexican, I am Hispanic.’
Though I did not think to single her out as one group or another in the umbrella, I recognized it a legitimate issue in the broader climate and intend to do better with what guidance I had in the interaction. In addition to this start, I had reminded myself the identity of Chicanas, Hispanics, Latines, and Spanish-descended people remained a very difficult conversation. Just like many Asian-Americans, they all get conflated or singled out as the ethnicity most reported on the news. For them, most ignorant (if not racist) white Americans single them out as Mexicans in a way many Southeast and East Asians are accused of being Chinese. A part of me kicked myself because with my background as a mixed race White-Asian, I thought I might have known what I said might have been interpreted as such. After saying such, my mentor told me to remember the woman in the interaction accepted the apology, and I offered to make further amends.
Despite telling this to myself mentally, I felt pang of guilt and mulled over how I could have done better. All the same, there exists a few take away lessons here: first, when discussing current events and helping active-ate your circles, know your audience still. Sometimes, people just want to have an hour of their class time to escape. They may sometimes just not want to think about chaotic, trauma-inflicting, and quality of life-affecting actions done by the current regime in the United States (I refuse to call it an administration). My diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder and fixation on trying to help make the world a better place caused more issue than intended, and my low-key neurodivergence likely also did not help. Though many activists keep telling people to keep their wits sharp and keep fighting, people sometimes need to take a breath or touch grass when overwhelmed.
Second, if people do not know you, some conversations may be taken differently not because of words alone, but context and experiences. Even with my own background, I still stumbled when interacting with someone who, even if they had drastically different experiences from myself, had at least something in common across communities. That is, our communities are often mistaken as belonging to other communities. When it comes to interacting with others through time, those of us in marginalized spaces develop our own pattern-recognition. Sometimes, this pattern-recognition may not predict accurate outcomes, but they not only follow logic for any listening to us, but they can be harmful when we find ourselves correct. James Mendez Hodes has a very great article on this called Raindrops on a Pool. I recommend to anyone who needs explanation of why some topics, or any topic, can prove a sensitive spot for marginalized peoples.
Third, no one is entitled to a response from someone hurt from an interaction, even with unintentional hurt. People do not expect someone they accidentally cut off on the road to offer forgiveness, so no one should expect someone hurt from a boundary violation — intentional or otherwise — to deliver any response. All we are entitled to is being treated with dignity, grace to learn, and basic human rights. Thus, I try to show kindness and cordiality with the woman I had hurt, put effort into showing I want to do better, but it is not up to me how her process for healing from what this world has done to us all looks. Just like no one can tell me how healing from chronic bullying in a small town school ‘should’ look for me.
I could go on and on about this, but for now, I am going to end the blog post here. I originally wanted a post about reasons for all of us to live through this political turmoil, of which I touched just briefly here. Unfortunately, I think I will have to continue that with the next post, which will also address a job interview of which I am a finalist. Please be kind to others but importantly: be kind to yourselves.
—Arya