So something happened to me the other night, and it’s really stuck with me, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. I hope you don’t mind me putting the story here.
So the other night I was walking past Spadina Station, Toronto, wearing my McGill Anthropology sweater. Earbuds in, mind you.
And this lady (white, with grey hair…I’d guess maybe late 50s?) says hi to me and asks if I studied Anthropology.
Now, I like to be the kind of person who random strangers accost, so I take out my earbuds and tell her yes, I did. She asks me some sort of vauge question about what I think of the state of the world, from an anthropological perspective, and, taken aback and not really sure what she wants me to say, I rattle off some stuff about global warming and technology and diversity and the increasing hegemony of the global economic system.
At this point it becomes apparent that she just wanted someone to rant to about her own personal little axe to grind, which is how what’s ~really~ the problem is all these people all wired into their devices all the time not being *present*.
Okay, fine, now at least I know what you want to talk about. I said “Yeah, I mean–I spend a lot of time on the internet, and it’s very easy for me as a white guy to say that I could take it or leave it…but if you’re a gay black girl growing up in a small town in Kansas, there’s a very real possibility that the internet is the only place where you can find loving relationships and really connect to people”
She then comes back with how all of these labels are holding us back, and that it doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, purple, or green (at this point, I think I pulled a face and indicated I wanted to put my earbuds back in), what you need to do is connect with the people around you.
I said to her that that sort of “it doesn’t matter what colour you are” statement was a pretty racist thing to say, and that if you talk to people who aren’t white it’s pretty clear pretty quick that it matters.
See, I’ve never called someone racist to their face before (I have an anxiety disorder okay; confrontation is hard for me), and although I hear all the time about the “BUT I AM NOT A RACIST WHY ARE YOU SAYING I SAID A RACIST” thing it was…kinda shocking to see it in person. She completely stopped talking about what she had been talking about and the entire conversation became about convincing me that she wasn’t a racist. I made a face and excused myself.
idk, I have a feeling that that situation could have been handled better…but I pretty much always have that feeling, and, to be fair, she did accost me on the street.
TL;DR: a random lady accosted me on the street and said some technophobic shit. I said “but teh internet can be cool if u r marginalized!”. Then she said some racist shit. Then I called out her racist shit. Then she became very pearl-clutchy and weird.
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