In the three or four months before she died, my grandmother’s dog went blind and deaf and her limbs didn’t quite work anymore. When she needed to go outside or eat, she would wander in the general direction of her destination, bumping into things as she went. The thick, long fur of her Pomeranian heritage flounced back and forth as she did, folding forward with the impact, then back with the release. The dog’s name was Baby Girl. It had been a placeholder at first—something to call her until my grandmother figured out a more official title. After a while, though, she decided that Baby Girl was as good a name as any. There was no sense in forcing the poor, fluffy puppy to learn a whole new one. That little dog’s temporary descriptor became permanent—the full and official thing we said when we asked her if she wanted to go outside. “Come on, Baby Girl! Come on. Let’s go.” Whenever she got tired of running into things, she would plop down right where she was and huff. Resting her head on the beige carpet, her blue-clouded eyes pointed in no particular direction. Time for a nap. No one was getting anywhere fast. When she wanted dinner, though, she wanted it right then. She would bark and twist in circles at my grandmother’s feet. There was a hard and fast rule in the house that the dog didn’t get her dinner before five o’clock. My grandmother would leave her there, barking and twisting, until the hands on the clock above the china cabinet read the correct time. As Baby Girl’s furry limbs got older, her frantic dinner-circles became less circular—more oblong, triangular, and square. She kept twisting, though—falling in every direction as she did. I feel like her sometimes—that sweet, fluffy, yappy little dog. I think of her when I look back at myself a year ago and see someone so different from me today. I asked my father several weeks ago, as we ran down the bike path together, if this rate of change I’ve experienced is something that stays. “Do you always change this much? Every year? Or is it something restricted to youth?” “It’s something restricted to youth. You slow down.” “Good. I don’t think I could keep it up.” “But then you kind of miss it—changing and growing and learning so much.” It reminded me of a line my childhood pastor quoted once from a Christian book on marriage. “My wife has lived with at least five different men since we were wed—and each of the five has been me.” As I change, as I experience the pain and joy and endless confusion of growing up, as I run into things like Baby Girl did and have to course-correct, I am learning a lot. This year I graduated—without expecting to until March when some extra credits suddenly transferred in. My brother got married. He has a wife now. She’s lovely. I entered into my first romantic relationship with absolutely no idea what I was doing. I never dated in high school or college, and I had (have) a massive learning curve as a result. Six months later, I sat in a hot tub with friends—friends adult enough to be employed and in graduate school and the owners of a condo—and talked about it. “I learned a lot,” I said. I did. Round one of romance had been fast and intense, and ended painfully. Round two had developed very, very, very slowly and fizzled out in less than a fifth of the time it had taken to start. I learned that one was too fast and the other too slow. I learned that one was too much, the other too little. I learned how to kiss. I learned to let things be. I learned to break up, pick up, and move on. I told another boy I liked him. Friendships have changed this year. Some have gotten better and closer while others have faded or fallen away. There are a few new ones—casual work friends, a nice woman at church, and my priest, if he can be counted. I’ve read more articles than I thought possible on how to increase the odds of getting an interview for a job. I’ve applied to a lot. I’ve been accepted to one. I work at the front desk at a gym, earning the same pay grade that I had in high school. My grandfather has gotten sicker. He’s fading away. I get angry about it sometimes. Then I want to cry. I voted for Hillary. I studied hard for the GRE, took it, and did well. I applied to graduate school, got rejected, and wept. I took a deep breath and tried to let it go. Then I moped. Then I started looking for jobs again. I fumed at some of my relatives, but only on the inside. I packed up my room and went through my closet, taking a few things to Goodwill. The house—my parents’ house where I’ve been living—is going on the market this week. The realtor thinks it’s going to sell the first weekend. I always thought that I was supposed to leave the house, the house wasn’t supposed to leave me. I started a website. It’s starting to work. “How’s your life?” I asked my childhood friend on the phone, driving up I-5 late one night on my way back from visiting my friends with a condo and a hot tub. “Medium. Confusing. I’m graduating next year, which is far away, but isn’t far away at all, you know? And it’s hard to plan for the unknown.” Whenever Baby Girl tried to get outside, she would run into a lot of things on her way to the door. She would wander to the left, bump into the sofa, and reroute. Then she would hit the rocking chair, stand dazed for a moment, and wander off in another direction. Course correction occurred every few feet, her tiny body taking in stress and then striking off again, determined to reach the door. I’m running into a lot of things these days; figuring out where the furniture is and how much space I take up. Baby Girl always managed to get outside. I have to believe I will too.
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“I feel like post-college, pre-career is an underratedly sucky phase of life,” my cousin said to me this Thanksgiving. I sighed with relief. He'd taken pity, releasing me from my attempts to spin general hopelessness into some sort of ‘I’m moving forward’ narrative. “Yeah. It sucks a lot,” I said. I don’t know what I am doing. I’m underemployed. I’m clinically anxious and depressed (long-term struggles exacerbated by the aforementioned). I’m not sure about where to go next. Career-oriented jobs feel impossible to get -- they say they like me, but decide to go with someone with more experience. I’m applying to grad school with relatively little hope of getting in, and limited self-assurance that it is truly what I want to do the next four years of my life. I’m not alone in this situation. Post-college depression and anxiety are documented phenomena, marked by joblessness, addiction, confusion, loneliness, and fear. For the most educated generation (34% with a bachelor’s degree) entering entering the working world, this negative experience is not uncommon. Many young people don’t recognize that they are depressed, just that they are always frustrated or having trouble focusing, feel tired all the time even when they get enough sleep, or have lost interest in the things they used to love. Advice abounds around the internet -- suggestions for keeping your head up, embracing uncertainty, and just working a little harder you lazy, entitled millennial. Many of the articles discussing my generation -- a widely decried, and defended, group -- say this situation (often cited as a “phase,” like a health-kick or fleeting interest in a particular TV show) is a result of “idealistic hopes about life after the diploma. Expecting that they will get hired into a top position at their dream company while earning exorbitant amounts of money.” The phrasing of this particular quote is a bit polemic, telling the reader to dismiss depressed recent graduates’ issues as their own fault -- they’re just expecting the world handed to them on a silver platter. In more realistic language, however, this expectation of a college degree leading to steady and gainful employment is a part of the American Dream. Take, for example, my family. My immigrant grandmother didn’t finish high school, but supported her family driving school buses, and making wise financial choices along the way. My mother finished college, went on to get her master’s, and has supported my brother and I through her work as a teacher and now as an employee at a university. I have graduated college and… I’m working at a gym scanning membership cards. The idea that each generation builds on the last is a part of the American dream, but it’s not a reality for many young people today. Recently, a group of Ivy League researchers published an article showing that, “adjusting for inflation, slightly more than half (51%) of today’s 30-year-olds earn more than their parents did at the same age." While it sounds impressive at first, it's a small number when compared to the 92% of people born around 1940 earning more than their parents did at age 30. According to Pew Research Group, my generation is the first “in the modern era to have higher levels of student loan debt, poverty and unemployment, and lower levels of wealth and personal income than their two immediate predecessor generations (Gen Xers and Boomers) had at the same stage of their life cycles.” That is to say, as the graph moves right, toward today, “it points down like a ski slope.” I can’t speak for my entire generation, but amongst my friends the oft-cited millennial expectation of post-college greatness does not hold true. We’ve long been aware of the ski slope. We were shown it in the ‘tough love’ of our scary high school guidance counselors pushing us into too many extracurriculars for the sake of our resume. We saw it in the disapproving looks we received from older white men at our parents’ holiday work parties or church functions when they found out we were planning on studying anything besides engineering or nursing. We saw it too in the “You’ll find something!” from these older white men’s well-meaning wives. It's sometimes difficult to grin and bear it when the unemployment rate for college-educated millennials is 3.8 percent, more than double the 1.4% of the Silent generation before them, when all these disapproving older white men came of age. Despite our reputation, many of my peers don’t expect good things from the world. We know that messages to “follow your passion” aren’t realistic -- we can’t all be the Next Big Thing, especially when there are about 4.6 billion more people competing for the top spots than there were when our grandparents were our age. We read the news. We apply to ‘entry level’ positions requiring 3+ years of experience. We have massive amounts of student loan debt, quadrupled in the last decade, that we are trying to pay off with our hourly wage. We know that this debt has been accrued for a degree that carries the same weight a high school diploma did thirty years ago. We fight for unpaid internships that will give us that experience, while forcing us to accumulate even more debt. We struggle to find good jobs, and we struggle to defend ourselves in the struggle. Older adults have two easy, disparaging responses to struggling millennials -- to stereotype young people as entitled and useless, or to point at unfilled non-degree jobs. It’s a lot easier than talking about the economic complexities of globalization and automation that are changing the job market as we speak. Over the last few decades income has stagnated for just about everyone, not just a particular, lazy generation. Yes, some non-degree jobs are short of workers and, in the short term, it might benefit young people to enter into these professions. However, given the future of automation, they aren’t likely to last long. Take, for example, trucking. It doesn’t require a degree, and there are plenty of job openings in the sector. Lacking prestige, however, it wouldn’t win much approval from those who recommend it, and it is also a job likely to disappear within the next five years given the driverless future. Most non-degree jobs are the same. My generational peers who graduated during the Great Recession may never make up the difference in lost income and opportunity. My graduating class has had the advantage of receiving our degrees during a time of low unemployment and a generally healthy economy, and we still struggle to find gainful employment. While the current job market is, at large, doing well, it’s not so great for young people. Great Recession business decisions, to outsource low-level work and automate as much as possible, have eliminated a massive number of entry level jobs from the hiring system that is still in operation today. There’s no such a thing as “working your way up the ladder” when the bottom rungs have disappeared. A typical ‘entry level’ position requires two to five years of experience, and with a relentlessly crowded job market, young people are competing with more experienced workers for these low-level jobs. It appears that the ‘entry-level’ modifier in a job posting essentially translates to “we want young blood” -- a thinly veiled demonstration of the ageism that is also a growing problem in the U.S. job market. As of November of 2016, unemployment rates for workers 20 - 24 years old was at 8.1%, almost double that of the national unemployment rate. As recently as July of 2015, the 20 - 24 year old unemployment rate was 10.0 -- the same rate as national unemployment at the height of the Great Recession. For some people, college was something of a ‘golden era’ in which they were surrounded by close friends, had mountains of freedom, and little responsibility. Graduation can put a stop to that experience, resulting in “a vast expanse of free days with too much time to think about how overeducated and underexperienced you are.” Friends are spread out across the country, and financial and familial responsibilities begin to weigh heavy. For myself and others like me, college was not a particularly fun experience -- I had few friends, struggled with mental illness, and felt a crushing weight of responsibility on my shoulders most days. And still, even without the big drop off in daily life circumstances that many of my peers experience post-graduation, I feel as if I am in a “hopelessly long queue at a soup kitchen, where the meal they’re serving is [my] future… waking up each day with a giant question mark over [my] life and feeling this immense pressure to do something with all that [I] learned.” A major aspect of post-college depression, according to both research and my own experience, is a loss of independence. This is in part due to moving back in with parents, as many graduates of my generation do. The need to adhere to a different set of rules, tell someone when your schedule changes, ask to borrow the car, and put in requests ahead of time for shared groceries is quite an adjustment. Another contributing factor is a sudden deprivation of intellectual autonomy. One of the main objectives of many colleges and universities is to teach their students to “think independently and to be creative in their problem solving,” Many college students do this successfully, then graduate only to find themselves in the same pay-grade they were in high school, working jobs with little creativity, little input in processes, and an understandably resultant sense of personal constraint. My generation has also been taught that every decision is critical to our future success, with little room for error. We had to go to the right college, be involved with multiple clubs, get good grades, land an internship with a major company, and make deep and important connections with everyone who mattered -- professors, advisers, career counselors, etc. If we wanted to get into the right college, we had to excel in the right high school extracurriculars, take as many AP classes as we could, work a part-time job, volunteer consistently, and get at least a 4.2 GPA. We also had to make sure we had a significant other, went to all the dances and football games, and formed great relationships with friends because, after all, this was the time of our lives. We had it so easy. In order to manage all of this in high school, we had to get started by 4th or 5th grade at the latest -- sports, choir, band, and math club, good grades, Honors English, goal setting, and a life plan. This was the way to success. To do otherwise would surely end in disaster: no job after graduation, destined for a life of misery and low income, for which our future children would suffer. According to the narrative we’ve been taught, our presence in the category of jobless graduate means that we did something wrong. We messed up the life plan, and the future isn’t looking very bright. For a lot of us, misery was expected to come with the territory of post-college joblessness -- a territory we tried really, really hard to avoid. I think this lifelong emphasis on the gravity of each action has led many of my peers to believe that the end is nigh if we take a step in the ‘wrong’ direction -- take a job in marketing only to find out we hate it, go to graduate school for a subject that turns out not to be our passion after all. Feeling like we messed up the plan already, seeing as we are in this jobless/underemployed state, we’re scared to try anything else. What if it puts us somewhere even worse? Even more miserable? The endless advice from all sides isn’t much help. Mostly it’s paralyzing, sending the thought spiral into “Maybe I am rushing the career thing too fast. Maybe I should be exploring more or traveling? Go to grad school? I have no idea! Afraid to make any choice right now!” It’s a high stakes world that has been shown to us -- it doesn't surprise me that some of my generation (the decried “lazy and entitled” millennials) have simply stepped out of the ring and taken a lower-key option. The road ahead of my generation is incredibly high stress and, so far as we can generally see, has a pretty high chance of leading to narrative failure. As members of a decried generation, we millennials often feel blamed for our situation, and regardless of whether or not we are truly culpable, guilt and shame are difficult burdens to bear. Many requests are made of young people. As a one woman put it to the New York Times, “It’s somewhat terrifying to think about all the things I’m supposed to be doing in order to ‘get somewhere’ successful: ‘Follow your passions, live your dreams, take risks, network with the right people, find mentors, be financially responsible, volunteer, work, think about or go to grad school, fall in love and maintain personal well-being, mental health and nutrition.’ When is there time to just be and enjoy?” I’m not saying we don’t have leisure time, and neither, I think, is this young woman. We have the time to watch a show on Netflix, but we don’t feel like we have the time to enjoy where we are at in life. It’s a never ending quest to do more, to win approval, to win the game of success -- and maybe it’s success by someone else’s definition. While the economic factors promoting this difficult stage of life are not exclusive to any particular demographic, I think the overall identity crisis may, in part, be tied to privilege. These complaints that I have voiced, while heartfelt and real, are also the complaints of those with considerable advantage. To have attended and completed college, to be allowed to have an identity crisis, to waffle between careers -- all of this is evidence that I do not have to take the first job that comes along. I have the ability to use my support networks of well-off parents and connected family to find a path that works for me. According to Jennifer Lynn Tanner at Rutgers University, “If you spend this time exploring and you get yourself on a pathway that really fits you, then there’s going to be this snowball effect of finding the right fit, the right partner, the right job, the right place to live. The less you have at first, the less you’re going to get this positive effect compounded over time. You’re not going to have the same acceleration.” To have the time and money to find the right fit is an advantage that many people do not have. On the flip side, however, the pressure to succeed, succeed, succeed with an ivy league degree is often felt most acutely in areas of privilege, marked by wealth and whiteness. While pressure comes to all people in all demographics, it is no secret that those with particular advantage have a particular brand of unhappiness, evidenced by “disturbingly high rates of substance use, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, cheating, and stealing.” So what do we do now? I’m no expert at moving forward, but here are some things that have been helping me: 1. Normalize it You’re not alone. You’re normal. Your feelings are valid. I hope the information above has helped cement that. It’s hard for almost everyone. It sucks, and that’s normal and sucky. Graduation is a major life transition, and a “job search, change in relationships, [and] change in residence” are all things that cause everyone, regardless of age or circumstance, some anxiety. 2. Realize that having a plan or a job, moving, etc, may not fix it Depression and anxiety are real things, and while some people experience a lifting of symptoms with a change in circumstance, that’s not always the case. Hard things don’t always disappear. It’s important to recognize that and to focus on the feelings more than the circumstances. Often this focus will help provide a sense of control, as you tend to have a better grasp on your own inner workings than the inner workings of the HR firm at the company you applied to. 3. Get help If counseling is something financially/logistically possible for you, I recommend looking into it. It has helped me and a lot of other people. If you can get in to see a doctor, I recommend this also. They have a lot of resources you can’t find on the internet. If professional help is out of the question, talk to a friend or family member. It’s often really hard to do, especially the first time, but it’s important. 4. Take care of yourself Shower, eat, sleep, exercise, socialize. These things matter more than you know. If you’re capable of doing them, do them. I spent multiple days in a row this last summer in the same pair of pajamas, staring at my computer screen, job searching in desperation. It was awful. Don’t be me. 5. Do Something You Love Maybe you hate your job. Maybe you have no job. Maybe it's just meh. Regardless, you’re not spending your days doing something you love. Try to make time for things you do love -- hobbies and projects that bring you joy and fulfillment. If you like drawing or writing or running or building things in the garage, do those things. It helps to disassociate the core of your identity from your occupation and future prospects. Try to “create your own escapes from the mundane.” 6. Try Not to Play the Comparison Game You and your friend/classmate/cousin/etc. are different people. You aren’t living their life and they’re not living yours. That’s a good thing. If you must play the comparison game, I suggest looking up what some of today’s highly successful people were doing in their 20s. Tina Fey was working at a YMCA. Oprah was fired. Lin-Manuel Miranda was working the register at McDonald’s. #First7Jobs is an encouraging hashtag. Thanks to zhaolifang for the art! I am a white woman, but I don’t always look it. My hair is dark brown, very curly, and very big. My eyes are dark brown too. Find me in summer in my California hometown and my olive complexion, caramelized by the scorching heat of the Sacramento Valley, presents itself as a deep shade of golden-tan.
I’ve been asked my entire life what I am, racially/ethnically speaking. I’ve had many a hair stylist pose the “What’s your heritage?” question as they piece apart the mass of spirals atop my head. In the tenth grade a black classmate said to me, sitting across the table in Spanish class, “What are you? Cause you gotta be something with hair like that.” My freshman year of college I made a comment about my race to my Asian roommates and our friend, a white guy, looked over at me in shock. “Wait,” he said. “You’re white?” When I studied abroad my junior year, one of my new roommates asked, as I stood in front of the mirror putting on makeup, “What are you?” Used to the question by this point, I filled in the blank. What are you racially, because you don’t fit my paradigms. First off, it is pretty much always best to let a person of color volunteer information about their ethnicity, as asking the question is, in most contexts, othering -- making them feel as though they inherently do not belong. Beyond this, however, it is interesting to note how often people, and in my experience, particularly white people, ask this question, seemingly uncomfortable with a person until they can fit them into one of their racial boxes. The assumption of a white norm, that is, treating white skin and white culture as though it is the default or inherently non-racial/non-ethnic, allows white power and its wielders (i.e. white people with white privilege) to cast people of color as The Other and has, historically, allowed them to create what we today call race. With parameters of race (a socially constructed concept) currently centered around certain genetic presentations (i.e. skin color, hair texture, nose shape, eye shape, etc.), a diverse society is more difficult to categorize. Many people, regardless of biological background, don’t fit into neat racial boxes based solely on physical appearance -- myself included. This defiance of categorization makes most people who have internalized the troublingly categorical rhetoric of race uncomfortable. White people, who have historically held the power to determine socially operational racial categories (i.e. what we call people who look/act/live a certain way, and what that means about how they are thought about and treated) and place people into them, seem to struggle more than others with this defiance of categorization. Now, I want to be clear that I have experienced what I consider the full swath of white privilege (save, perhaps, the microaggression of being asked about my race). I have never, to my knowledge, been discriminated against because of my perceived race. I have generations of white wealth behind me. I attended good schools and lived in well-off white suburbs. I am not followed in stores. I do not worry about my race keeping me from any opportunity. I operate with native comfort in white spaces and do not feel pushed out of or unwelcome in any organizations or institutions because of my race, ethnicity, or culture. I am privileged, and incredibly so. It is interesting to think about what role my sometimes-ambiguous racial appearance plays in my daily life. This last October I was taking a flight out of Oakland airport, headed to Minneapolis to visit friends. That morning it seemed like everyone I interacted with was on my team. The young woman at the parking lot kiosk went out of her way to help me sort out my ticket. The shuttle driver waited for me to grab a cup of coffee even though all of the other passengers were already on board (and fairly impatient). The TSA agent chatted with me about my morning and directed me to an empty line that I had not realized was open. The on-break airport janitor smiled and sat down next to me in the waiting area, pulling out her breakfast sandwich and digging in, comfortable in my presence. A few hours later, thinking about my experience while squished between two strangers in economy class seating, I realized that all of the people I had interacted with that morning had been people of color. In our interactions, our gestures, our smiles, there had been a comfort of relationship. They had shown me kindness that went above and beyond normal levels. There was something between us that felt like a rhythm of recognition. I have heard friends and media personalities, authors and journalists, talk about the “black nod,” an acknowledgement between two black people in a predominantly white space that both of them are there, that they see each other. It is a recognition of visibility, an acknowledgement of identity in a climate in which black people, or at least their blackness, is ignored for the comfort and power of a white majority. I suspect that the exceptional kindness I regularly receive from people of color is an iteration of this public acknowledgement. I have exchanged nods and smiles with people of color that I do not know in many public spaces. If I am in a predominantly white group and a person of color needs to address us, I am usually the person that they come to. I am safe, I think, because of my coloring. The person approaching likely assumes that a darker individual will be apt to understand different cultural rhythms of communication, because cultural identity is something that darker people have had to think about. People who look like each other, who are identified as members of the same group, even if that group be as wide as the generic and often statistically inaccurate “minority”, regularly have shared experiences. The experience of being a person in the United States, and the world at large, is not uniform. Unlike people of color, I do not have the experience of being teased for a particular aspect-of-self associated with my race or culture -- an accent or dialect, a facial feature, a food. I do not have the experience of being called a “credit to my race” or a touted as a member of a “model minority” when I experience success. I have not experienced negative stereotyping about my academic abilities or thought of as an “at risk” student (in fact, I have been challenged and placed in higher level courses). I have not been unjustly stopped by the police, pulled over for “appearing suspicious”, or pulled over at all, despite my mediocre-at-best driving. I do, though, again, unlike people of color, have the experience of seeing actors, actresses, newscasters, and comedians of my self-perceived/biologically inherited race every time I turn on a television. I also have the privilege to enter into every situation where I am meeting new white people without fear that my race will cause me to be seen unfavorably. Discrimination based on my perceived race is, for me, rare enough to be surprising, and is always easily mitigated by some sort of clarification, such as a picture of my white parents or an emphasis on aspects of white culture I hold native familiarity with. I am glad that I seem to appear as a safe person, a known member, to many people of color. There are not enough safe spaces and safe people in this world for people of color. Appearing as “something brown,” I am assumed to have a shared knowledge and therefore a shared ability to engender solidarity. This basis of trust allows me to be an advocate, to help people, to operate as a go-between for people of color and white people when need be. Looking brown makes me more approachable and accessible and allows me to connect with strangers in public places, and I am grateful. I am concerned, however, that this basis of relationship is undeserved. The last thing that I want to do is “play” at being a person of color -- I have not experienced the hardships of living in the United States as a non-white individual. This concern that my experience of being perceived as a person of color is undeserved highlights something in our society -- that people of color and white people do in fact experience the world differently. People of color share a common experience that white people do not, and that experience causes them to operate together in a particular manner -- a manner in which I am often included. I have not, however, paid the common cost of being a person of color that confers this familiarity. I have all of this privilege; a privilege that can more accurately be named as the white oppression from which it comes. If I gain the few things that are of specific benefit to people of color in our world – namely camaraderie and acknowledgement – it does not make the scale of privilege slightly less unbalanced, as it does for people of color, but tips a scale already strongly in my favor even steeper my direction. My ambiguous appearance allows me to regularly receive positive treatment from almost everyone -- the people who identify me as white treat me with the privileges of my dominant race, and the people of color who identify me as another person of color treat me with particular kindness and grace, looking out for me. In a messed-up sense, I get the best of both worlds, and that’s even more unfair than the already extremely unfair racial system in the United States. Some of the subtext of the “black nod” and its other iterations is a recognition of shared history, an “I know what you’re going through right now.” I exchange these nods with people of color, and I try always to be aware of my privileges and biases when interacting with people of color, but I do not have this shared history. Do I lie, then, in acknowledging it by the implicit context of these interactions? Or is what I acknowledge an understanding of history and culture, race and identity, on a larger scale? Because that, at least, is something that I have studied in classrooms and sought to understand in conversations. What I can truthfully be, and what I hope and want to be, is what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls “The White Friend Who Gets It.” The person “who you don’t need to explain shit to… [who] can say stuff that you can’t.” What I am currently seeking to understand is how my appearance and the regular misconception of my race plays into this. I will continue to accept my undeserved social position as “sometimes perceived as a person of color” because if I reject this role, ignore the nods, and refuse to accept incredible kindness, the net result is snubbing people of color because they are people of color, and that’s a horrific thing which I am not ever going to do. Beyond this, it also results in denying a fellow human a point of connection in this world, and that’s wrong even if we did live in a magical world where racism did not exist. If I can create a sense of recognition and safety for another human being, a human being who is regularly looked down on and discriminated against, then it is my duty and my joy to provide that; to create that space in a silent and momentary relationship between us. That is my blessing, to give and to receive. That is my nod. ************ To my fellow white people, then, let me speak about your nod. People of color need more safe spaces in this world (if you don’t believe me, you’ve got some reading to do -- see links at the bottom of this post) and you can help create and foster them. Here are some practical steps to get you started: Be Aware You don’t know what it is like to be a person of color, but you can read books and articles that show you more of what it is like to be a person of color (again, see links at the bottom of this post). Do that.Then, take the knowledge you gain forward into your everyday interactions. Try to pay attention to your own implicit biases, anticipate them, and move to correct them. Don’t try to be color blind, because it actually perpetuates racism. Instead, be aware of your own race and culture, your racial assumptions, and those assumptions that may belong to the person with whom you are speaking. Act accordingly, and act in grace and love. Be Kind Due to implicit bias, people of color aren’t treated nearly as well as white people. They struggle to get a table at a restaurant, they can’t catch a cab, and generally receive poor customer service. So, go out of your way to be nice to people of color. If your actions toward people of color are above and beyond typical, they’re likely to be nearing the treatment white people generally receive. Recognize also that people of color are not accustomed to receiving positive treatment from white people. They may be defensive, and rightfully so. Go out of your way to reassure them: smile a lot, be gracious, make dumb puns -- whatever is well intentioned and effective for putting people at ease. Help diminish the imbalance. Call Out Racism and Xenophobia As a white person, people will listen to you. Use your platform, call people out, use your power and privilege to stand up to people who are acting unjustly towards people of color. Say something. Don’t be a passive bystander who goes home later and posts on Facebook about being appalled. That’s not helpful. Be the White Friend Who Gets It. Talk To Your Fellow White People You can say things to fellow white people that people of color can’t easily bring up due to -- you guessed it -- racism. Use your voice and cultural understanding of whiteness to bring about change. Challenge your friends when they make racial comments, talk to your family about why that thing they said isn’t okay. Speak up. Bottom Line: be aware, be kind, be active. Take an active role in your education. Do your own research, starting here: NPR’s Code Switch, a podcast and accompanying articles on race and identity. The Berkeley Student Cooperative rundown on safe spaces and how to create them. This OSU center, if you’re looking for more scholarly resources. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk. Carol Anderson’s White Rage. This post full of links to articles you should read. This list of reading recommendations for better understanding the Native American experience. This list of reading recommendations for better understanding race and racial experience. This list of things that white allies should read. It is November on the Gregorian calendar, the apple orchard season winding down, the turkey carcasses piling up in the aftermath of the third Thursday of the month. It’s still sunny in California, most days passing by without so much as a proper chill, golden rays shooting down to shine through golden leaves just now starting to turn yellow. I try to spend as much time out of doors as I can. On many of these beautiful autumn days, I go for long runs, sweating in the sunshine. I read a book in the park down the street when I can. On Sundays I walk to church, swinging my coat and picking up my feet to crunch along through dropped acorns and drying twigs. It is November in California, and November is bright and beautiful. My soul has a November too, but my soul’s November does not match the weather. It’s more along the lines of the soul-state described in Moby Dick; dark and drizzly, making me want to step out and start knocking people’s hats off. In this season of gratitude, having just celebrated Thanksgiving, I am struggling; struggling to be thankful when I’m actually feeling rather ungrateful. I’ve begun to complain a lot more in the last few weeks. I’ve started harping off about my distaste for my job, gotten on my self-righteous high horse regarding a myriad of social issues, and walked around feeling as if I am simultaneously way too good for everything and also, as I receive rejection letter after rejection letter from positions I apply to, not good enough for anything. I am both self-loathing and entitled, and it’s a strange combination to be. There have been many days this November when I felt so blue that I couldn’t properly function. It felt like sickness, like exhaustion, like hunger and thirst and anger and tears all rolled up into one. I was bored all the time. I was lonely a lot. I was prideful most days, thinking about how I was too good for my job or my town or whatever I fixated on that day. I was sad a lot, feeling like I had tried hard, and for a long time. As I failed again and again, I grew hard, grew angry, grew self-righteous as a way to keep myself from being crushed beneath the weight of hopes deferred and dreams lost, plans not fulfilled and relationships missed. I grew guilty on occasion, when I let my emotions be loud enough to feel what my soul knew to be true – that I was in the wrong on a lot of fronts, and I was not being nearly so kind as I should. I’ve been ungrateful this month. Ungrateful in the way that I imagine the rotten, spoiled child of storybooks and made-for-TV movies to be. I have been given so much in this life. I have, honestly, been given everything. And still my greed, my desire for more, my search for some ultimate meaning (that I want to come with a decent salary), is getting the best of me. I realized this ingratitude in particular depth on Thanksgiving. Gathering with family in the Bay Area, I walked in feeling I was different than them. In part this is because I am, as we are all different from each other, and in part because I want to feel special in order to not feel so scared, and so set myself apart in my mind. As we milled around, eating and eating and eating some more, I had good conversations with cousins, aunts, and uncles. They sought to see and understand me and it was, honestly, overwhelming. I didn’t know how to present myself, as my own self-concept is exceedingly muddy. On top of this, the recognition of their care and love for me, which I have long struggled to feel and accept, made me feel unbalanced, as though our relationships were now even more lopsided than they are circumstantially, my being seven years younger than my next closest cousin. I felt unsure of myself, unsure of most things, and very sure that I was wrongfully ungrateful. My experience this Thanksgiving scared me and made me humble. It made me sorry for a dark, unnamable cloud sitting in my chest and behind my eyes. A cloud of pride and shame, of falsehoods, of goals that I have failed to meet. Coming out of the holiday, I have kept checking in on my emotions, expecting to feel some immense gratitude well up, but it hasn't come. I’ve tried to force it, but that hasn’t worked either. My now-more-latent ungratefulness feels wrong. November and December are not the time for bitterness and greed. Thanksgiving didn’t cure me, like some part of me expected it to. My life isn’t a Hallmark movie; I don’t even get a script. Thanksgiving didn’t make me grateful, but it did help me take a step in the right direction. Thanksgiving made me sorry, forced me to acknowledge my wrongs, to recognize and confront my self-obsession and desire. It forced me to look at myself and how I present to others. Thanksgiving made me feel bad for not being grateful, and that’s a good thing. I am sorry now. After sorrow comes apology, and after apology comes forgiveness. Forgiveness incurs gratefulness, so many a tale has shown. I have found a way to sorrow, and through it I think I will find a way to gratitude. For this strange journey, I have decided that I am thankful. Happy Thanksgiving, a few days late. My grandma told me a story recently in which she referred to a Native American man as an Indian.* I corrected her, interjecting “Native American,” the next time that she said it. She smiled at me and shook her head.
“No,” she said. “They’re Indians. They’ve been Indians my whole life. You can’t change it on me now.” We bantered for a moment, then the conversation continued onto another topic. While our exchange felt worthwhile, I sincerely doubt that she has since changed her terminology in retelling this story. This is a familiar narrative in families and communities all across the United States, and particularly, I imagine, in white circles. I could ask just about any one of my white age-peers if their grandparents are a little bit racist, and they’d likely have a hard time denying that they sometimes say things that make it seem that way. “The personality,” as journalist Howard Witt put it in his article in the Chicago Tribune, “is familiar to us all: the sweet old aunt, the loving grandfather or the generous widow down the street, each of them unfailingly kind towards friends and family but given to flights of shocking prejudice when the conversation turns toward ethnic groups to which they don’t belong.” One of the difficult things about this is that these people, saying inappropriate things, are very often people that we love. President Obama has faced this conundrum, which he shared in a 2008 speech on race. He said that his grandmother was “a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.” These are not easy issues to address, and it seems that the problematic statements and tendencies of elderly people are regularly and comfortingly downplayed by the conclusion that they “mean no harm” by their words. They were simply raised in another era, a “less enlightened” time in which it was perfectly fine, perfectly normal, to make such stereotypic remarks. The author and historian Timothy Tyson, in his book Blood Done Sign My Name, about the turmoil of a small North Carolina town in the 1970s, described his grandmother as “a woman of her time and place,” trying to explain her segregationist ways. Of her time and place, at least partially excused, on account of her age. Many older people use this generational difference as an explanation for their own behavior. A mild example is my grandmother, saying that Native Americans had been “Indians [her] whole life.” A less mild, more public example is the famous French parfumier Jean Paul Guerlain who, in 2010, spoke about creating a perfume: “... for once I started working like a n****r. I don’t know if n****rs ever worked that hard.” In 2012, facing fines for his comments, Guerlain made the excuse, “I am from another generation,” citing that his utterance was “a common expression at the time.” Guerlain also apologized for his words, calling the remark “imbecilic,” but his generational defense stands out as emblematic of a larger trend The idea that older people tend to be more prejudiced, while an idea that itself acts as a stereotype, actually has some evidence to back it up. In a 2012 paper British Political Scientist Rob Ford found a “substantial difference in attitudes towards immigration across generations.” While younger generations, having grown up in more diverse communities, were more favorable towards immigration and less concerned about the origin of migrants, their parents and grandparents were remarkably less favorable toward immigration and more concerned with the origin of migrants. In 2012 the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 35% of Americans age 60 and above believe that white people and black people should not be romantically involved. This 35% is more than halved with the next generation, with only 16% of baby boomers in agreement. For Americans younger than 30, this number dropped to just 6%. Harvard University’s Project Implicit, a lab that measures participants’ “implicit associations about race, gender, sexual orientation, and other topics,” has also found an uptick in implicit bias for the elderly, with whites age 60 and older showing 5%-10% more bias than their younger counterparts. Psychologist William von Hippel’s research suggests a similar conclusion, stating that “older adults have a tendency to be more prejudiced than their younger counterparts,” but von Hippel’s work paints the older generation in a more favorable, less culpable light. According to his research, this prejudicial tendency is due in large part to a deteriorating frontal lobe. “Atrophy of the frontal lobes,” he says, “does not diminish intelligence, but it degrades brain areas responsible for inhibiting irrelevant or inappropriate thoughts. Research suggests that this is why older adults have greater difficulty finding the word they're looking for - and why there is a greater likelihood of them voicing ideas they would have previously suppressed.” According to Von Hippel’s research, it is only older adults who show signs of poor frontal lobe functioning that are more likely to rely on stereotypes and be generally socially insensitive, not all older adults at large. It seems, according to this research, that some older people begin to show prejudice even if they never did before, as they find it much more difficult than they did when they were young to halt the vocalization of their implicit biases. The result is that “older adults are more likely to think and express prejudicial thoughts, even when they want to be non-prejudiced and are reminded to ignore stereotypes.” While there is little discussion of this phenomena in broader culture, what conversation does take place, outside of “racist grandpa” tropes, seems to agree that as the younger generation takes the main stage, eventually becoming the older generation, this prejudice will no longer present a significant issue. Oprah exemplified this opinion in a 2013 address promoting The Butler. She said “there are still generations of people, older people, who were born and bred and marinated in it – that prejudice and racism – and they just have to die.” The likely-not-far-off deaths of older adults seems to be used as a tacit excuse for letting their prejudice slide by without comment. The idea that ‘they’ll be dead soon enough’ and the generational shift will solve many of these issues is a morbid, easy solution, a smooth path to take out of that conversation with a racist grandparent. Popular opinion holds that the next generation will have grown up in a “time and place” that held fewer stereotypes – a less racist, less prejudiced era. While this idea has certainly been called into question this election season, the outrage of millennials at large over the win of Republican President-elect Donald Trump, whose campaign has been largely fueled by racism and prejudice, seems to lend some credence to this theory. It is important to remember, however, that these are people whose frontal lobes are still fully functioning, and also that they are by no means a wholly unprejudiced group. The relegation of prejudice to the domain of older people makes it easy to ignore the prejudice of younger people, as well as the everyday acts of bias that make up many of the obstacle on the path to greater equality and justice. We all hold implicit biases, learned at a young age when we cannot realize that they are incorrect and harmful. As we grow older, these biases are psychobiologically likely to become more apparent. As the younger generation physically ages, they may take on these characteristics which they currently denounce in their parents and grandparents. In discussing the racism of older adults, it is important also to keep in mind another –ism: ageism. Some qualitative studies have found a “much greater openness and diversity of opinion than is suggested by elderly stereotypes and quantitative analyses of people's’ attitudes.” The statement that old people are more prejudiced does have some scientific backing, but it is by no means applicable as a blanket statement, and is also an oversimplification of the issue at hand. Many older people lack demographic exposure to people of other races, and many are aware that they are “unqualified to comment as a result.” It is also important to remember that many people in the current elderly population are the children of the 50s and 60s, having grown up with the Civil Rights movement, the rise of youth culture, and women’s liberation. They are not as ignorant of racial justice as younger generations might think. It is a disservice to old people, and to the cause of advancing justice and combating prejudice, to paint all old people with the same ‘racist’ brush. This is not to say that older generations do not demonstrate greater rates of prejudicial action, as has been discussed above, but that this tendency does not grant permission to assume that older people are inherently prejudiced. To do so promotes the prejudice of ageism. So, what then is there to do? When our loving grandmother stereotypes the Japanese woman in line at the grocery store, our grandad blames President Obama’s flaws on his blackness, and our aunt says that the owners of the taqueria around the corner “have gotta be illegal,” how do we react? Likely it is true that these people, people that we love, do not mean any harm. Just because they do not mean harm, however, does not mean that they do not cause harm. Our response to these sorts of comments are often “a nervous laugh, a wan smile or a hasty effort to change the subject.” In this, I believe we are doing our world and the old people in our lives a disservice. We often stereotype old people for being racist, making them culpable for their comments through attempts at humor, talking about their comments when they are out of the room, and, occasionally, correcting them. I think that we need to rethink the distribution of culpability in these situations. I think that all of us are culpable. Members of younger generations, we are certainly culpable for speaking to those in our circle of influence – to grandparents and parents, aunts and uncles and neighbors. If there are people who speak and act out of prejudice, it is our job to speak with them and address their behavior. If these people will listen to us and take us seriously, and we do not speak up on behalf of the marginalized, we are then culpable for their misguided behavior and we should be held accountable for that. The people speaking words of prejudice are culpable too, regardless of their age. Old age does not give anyone a free pass to say whatever comes to mind. Those who speak and act out of prejudice need to be confronted with and about their prejudice, but that confrontation also needs to come with the grace of understanding that there are psychobiological factors at work and, to some extent, they may not be able to fully help all the things that slip past their filters. One amazing example of this grace-filled confrontation is the crowdsourced letter that young Asian Americans wrote to their families about the Black Lives Matter movement. The letter, written in English and then translated into many other languages, explained why these young Asian Americans felt that they and their families should be involved in activism against police violence towards black Americans. It brought up the uncomfortable subject of “anti-blackness in Asian-American and immigrant communities,” which many of these young people felt uncomfortable bringing up with their parents and grandparents. The letter started a lot of important conversations, and led to a lot of healthy confrontation and growth in many people’s lives and relationships. This is the action that I think we should take: conversation, entered into with a willingness to be uncomfortable. We need to talk to our grandparents about race, to our neighbors about prejudice. We need to try to understand where they come from, and try to explain where we come from. We need to speak up on behalf of the marginalized. We need to try to look at the world together, try to say what needs to be said in a way in which it can be heard. We need to talk to each other and create a new time and place of mutual understanding from which we can come into relationship and go out into the world – filled with grace and not letting any statement or action rooted in prejudice slide by. *I am aware that many Native Americans prefer the name American Indian, reclaiming a once forced identity. I fully respect and encourage this action. As a white person, however, I feel that it is not my place to refer to these people groups by this name. Coming from me, it may still ring with imperialism. I therefore choose to use the name Native American. Thanks to nightwolfdezines for the art! The changing of the seasons may well be the most hackneyed metaphor in the English language, and likely also in other languages that I do not know. Cliches, though, are cliches for a reason, and it was the changing of the seasons that I thought about when I woke up one morning a few weeks ago to the sound of rain. It was a rhythm so familiar for so long; a regular alarm clock during all the autumns and winters and springs that I lived in Seattle. It was also a rhythm so long missing from my days and my dreams. I moved back to California in July, and had not seen rain until that morning in the middle of October, save for one day visiting friends in the Midwest. I missed the wet, missed the sound of fat droplets hitting the window and splashing puddles on the muddy, blackened road. I missed the gray and the way that the water made everything around me smell like earth and iron. I missed the way that the birds sang right as the water dried up. I missed the rain, and there it was, greeting me, saying “Good morning, we missed you too.” I got out of bed and put on a sweatshirt, scurrying to the door of my parents house in which I now lived, stepping out onto the porch. I sat down under the little awning, watching the water fall from the clouds. I read a poem about rain on my cracked phone screen. Within a few minutes I had stepped out onto the sidewalk, and then out into the street. Pitch black puddles reverberated with the joyful displacement of my feet. A woman walked by and smiled at me. “This rain is great!” she said. “It’s awesome!” After fifteen minutes or so I walked back in the door. My father was on his way out, headed to jump start my grandparents’ car. I went with him, barefoot again -- a decision for which I was good-naturedly chided by my grandmother. When we returned to our own house, I sat down at the dining room table and looked out the window smiling, then sobering. As the water hit the glass I became fully, deeply aware of where I was; in California, in the fall. I had not been in California in the fall for years now. I had grown used to life elsewhere, in other places and spaces, with other people and other customs. It was strange. Perhaps stranger was the fact that it was October and I was not in school. I had not ever spent a single October that I could remember outside of the classroom. As I watched the water hit the glass that morning, I let it sink in -- I was here, in my parents house, in a California suburb, in the fall. I had been waiting all summer to leave this suburb, to move, to get a “real adult” job or a viable life plan. I had spent at least part of every summer living with my parents, but the last three years I had left come September. The last three years, I had not spent a fall in the same house as them. That rainy morning, though, I was there. I was not in school. I was working an hourly job scanning people’s membership cards at a gym and writing blog posts and social media content for a non-profit as a part of an unpaid internship. I was studying for the GRE, but didn’t know very specifically what it was that I wanted to do with my scores once I got them. It was a new season and I was in new territory -- trying to be an adult while living with my parents, trying to sort out how I wanted to spend my future, trying to fit a changed and changing me into the patterns and strictures of my old ways, old town, old roles as a daughter, granddaughter, and suburbian. The rain, the fall, the changing of the seasons all told me that I was here for the time being. Really here. It was no longer summer; that season filled with an air of transience, impermanence. Summer is temporary, a season of quickly-passing romantic flings and short-term jobs -- a vacation. But fall is not. Fall leads into winter, which leads into spring. It is connected -- here and real and unavoidable. In that moment, sitting there at the dining room table, I felt myself settle. Not quite settle in -- it was not a perfect fit. It was something like the way that a boulder might settle after being dropped into a narrow chasm. Having bounced and scraped, rolled and chipped its edges off on its way down, it comes to a stop at an odd angle when it reaches a portion so narrow that it cannot continue to plummet. I had been plummeting that summer, running every direction with my thoughts and my feelings, my relationships and my plans for the future. I had been falling, and now I had been caught. There in the rain that October day, I stopped plummeting. I reconciled myself, at least in large part, to my place in the world at that point -- in suburbia with my parents and an unknown future. My heart settled -- settled sideways. Very often, when I think of rain, I think of a washing away, a cleansing of sorts -- and it is. Rain does wash away stains and pains. In this place in my life, though, I am not seeking cleansing. I do not want to wash myself or make myself new. I want to take myself, as I exist, all of me, my past and my present, and be at peace with it. I want to feel secure in my sideways-settled self. And rain, I think, is good for this too. Rain might wash things away, but it also makes them grow and put down roots. Rain connects -- the ocean to the clouds, and the clouds to the stars, and to the trees, the grass, and the pavement. And all of this to me. And so I am connected. And so I am here. And so it is fall. And so I am myself. |
Rebecca Rose“There is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.” Archives
March 2017
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