Ulimozinefaktree | Someplace between the between that is between here and there.
Answering A Question
Rumnination relative to all the -isms that afflict us and that get woven deep into psychic make-up
This personal narrative was written in response to the outcome of comedian Andre Rick's routine as delivered at Sancho's back in 2018 and how I feel like I failed when I answered a question that should have been answered better.
Putting this up front and making it clear: This isn’t an excuse, and I’m not looking for any absolution or anything else. It is something I’m working through, and I’m sharing it in the event that it sparks some beneficial conversation.
Among other things, I’m prone to ruminating when something gets under my skin (pun intended, but we’ll get to that) or when it drills (or knocks) its way through my sometimes thick and stubborn skull. I’ll probably be ruminating on this one for a while.
Earlier this week the very good Andre Ricks took his turn to do some comedy at the Tuesday night open mic I regularly attend (something a little like church for me). Ricks’ set included his extrapolation of the absurdity and abhorrence of a restaurant called Yellow Fever. To say it in an unfunny way, it’s a cutting and funny routine that points to the problematic ways we deal with (or don’t deal with) and admit to (or don’t admit to) our culpability in the disenfranchisement, dehumanization, and demarcations we create when we inadequately attend to race and the part it plays in the society we continue to try to construct.
You’ll have to hear Ricks’ routine to get the full effect, but the punch line is a question. The thing that continues to eat at me is that I feel like I stepped over a line and said something I should not have said. I answered a question, and at one level it was the right answer, but at another level that answer was inherently wrong. And that gets me to questioning myself, where I’m at relative to all the -isms that afflict us and that get woven deep into psychic make-up. I don’t have any excuses.
Addressing standpoints, it’s true: I’m about the whitest white guy a white guy could be. My predominate ancestry involves the blood of German-, Norwegian-, and Great Britain-ish peoples, and I grew up 50 minutes southeast of the center of the continental United States – the literal middle of America. Somewhere in family lore there’s some claim that someone married a Cherokee (maybe on the Seizmore side but probably the Hiebert side), but that only serves to make it more thoroughly clear: If there’s a privilege card, then I was born with the platinum-diamond-can’t-touch-this edition with unlimited credit and terms so easy my ancestors’ ancestors wouldn’t have to pay it off, either.
Balancing that, however, I also want to think I’ve worked to keep my privilege in check. I want to believe that in the various stations of my life I’ve actively participated in the work of deconstructing the cultural norms and systems that support the gamut of disempowering expectations, lines, barriers, walls, ceilings, and all the rest. These are the things that get tied up with how we address class, disability, gender, race, sex, and whatsoever else we use to get up and over others or make ourselves comfortable with being comfortable when others are caged or walled away from the full potential of their lives.
Ricks’ routine asked us to question ourselves. He did it in a way that makes me thoroughly consider how, exactly, am I continuing to perpetuate ideas and actions that I believe to be reprehensible, particularly if that “how” is a matter of inattention or blindness. It also goes to the matter of language, who has standing to deploy words and who turns words into weapons when they are deployed.
The heart of my rumination lives in this: How are my actions and words still racist (or any other -ist) and how can I better excise that from my being? How am I failing to see what harm others might feel for the fact of my words, actions, and presence, and how do I change myself so as to remove the potential of any harm that might be perceived?
And if you happen to be like me (which is to say among the ranks of the privileged) and think -- even fleetingly -- “I'm not _____,” “That’s not what I meant,” “It was just a joke,” or the host of other attempts at excuses for when a line gets crossed, then there’s probably something in there that requires you to work on yourself.
Looking back on that moment in a bar at the tail end of an open mic night, my answer to the question should have been something different. I should have answered, but I should have made a better answer.