black and blue

I used to paint the world in black and white
  the whites clean, pure, sometimes a little stale
  the blacks deep, rich, and often very meaningful

one day I woke up
  physically
  metaphorically
  maybe a bit of both
and realized I wanted a life more rich in color

so I poured a measure of blue ink into my bottle of white
  gradually
  carefully
  then all at once, with reckless abandon

the world was more beautiful, colorful, alive
  I could see things I'd never before seen
  imagined vistas I could never before consider
  and was less concerned that my black was a bleeding,
        permanent stain on my white-white palate

until today, when I woke up
  physically
  metaphorically
  maybe a bit of both
and looked at my blue ink
so deftly poured from the well
and wondered how I hadn't realized before:

blue is just another shade of white

Bad Feminism

I am a bad feminist.

The other day, a friend asked me if I was a feminist and I hemmed and hawed and qualified and... I finally had to admit that, even if I had some pro-female qualities, I really couldn't label myself as a feminist.

And then within only a few short days, I was called out on several occasions for saying or thinking things that really were counter to the feminist movement. I like to think of myself as more of an egalitarian, somewhat progressive and forward-thinking, typically politically correct, culturally aware, etc, etc, etc. I also am fairly aware that I have a ton of middle-class-white-educated-male-I'msurethere'salotmore privilege, and I do a fairly decent job of recognizing when someone says something fundamentally ignorant or racist. But twice? In two days? Being corrected for very male-centered thinking?

This morning while I was playing basketball, I found myself wondering how certain darker-skinned guys (how do I say this without being racist?) had a very similar cadence/accent to their speech. Is it just because they were raised that way? Because they've been around it from a young age? Is it a conscious choice or something that just happens? And then on the way home, the Ted Radio Hour addressed just this issue. An African woman talked about how she had control of three "languages": her native African dialect, the African-American dialect she was raised on, and her "articulate" American dialect she's developed so people think she's "qualified." The program further went on to describe how even Prime Minister Tony Blair (definitely not American) was considered "more American" than Barak Obama.

And then Paul Bloom went on to say something that really stuck with me:

You can't change implicit biases by just sitting in your room and concentrating, saying, "I'm not going to be racist, I'm not going to be racist." But what you can do is, you can actively expose yourself to real-world instances which give you maybe a more accurate and more fair representation of these groups.

Maybe I am a bad feminist. And I probably have a lot of hidden biases that will come up with terrible timing. And I certainly hope I'll be corrected in the future for my self-centered thinking. But instead of being sorry for this reproof, I should welcome it as real-world instances that give me a glimpse into another group.


So I'm going to stick with Roxanne Gay on this one, and proudly proclaim that I, too, am a bad feminist—and that's not a bad thing.