Outside of a school, Yvonne Arongundu, an immigrant woman tried to express her fury to a fellow parent. Her little boy had been cornered by three bigger boys who had rubbed his hair repeatedly.
“He feels violated!” She was saying, trying to choke back her helpless. She knew she would have a long night of questions.
“What if they were trying to be friendly?” The second mother asked.
Yvonne saw her little boy being cornered while strangers pushed his head down. It didn’t seem friendly.
“If it was your daughter,” she asked, “would you think it was friendly?”
“Well boys do pull girls hair when they feel attracted to them.” The mother said “Really, your anger won’t help your son make friends.”
Yvonne felt horrible. Shame made her turn away and she felt herself wanting to slink out of the playground. Worse still, she would have an upset child she didn’t know how to help. In this instance mommy couldn’t make it better. It wasn’t only her son who had been silenced. She had been too.
It wasn’t playful banter, Yvonne knew that. She didn’t have the words to express it but she knew deep in her soul that it was racism, a little boy targeted because his hair was different, surrounded by bigger boys he couldn’t say “No!” to. It was a micro aggression. Nothing dangerous, but her little boy felt powerless, as, she believed, girls felt helpless when having their hair pulled, no matter how flattering it was meant to be. But then she had a moment of doubt. Should she tell her son it was harmless, that he should shrug and smile, that it would all be okay? Wouldn’t it be nicer for him to believe racism just didn’t exist?
This is how systemic injustices work. A woman complained because her son was bullied, pushed into a corner so people could touch his hair. He was targeted because of difference, and yet she was told not to be angry. Her feelings of helplessness at her son’s frustration were dismissed. It was harmless. It was all a game. She was over reacting. She should calm down. She was making it inconvenient for other mothers. Her experience was dismissed simply because another mother couldn’t see it through her eyes.
This is one of the more painful aspects of social injustice. The way your experience can be invalidated or dismissed, and you can be the one cast into doubt. Your feelings of powerlessness and pain became your fault, based on a personality flaw, an inability to take life as it comes and calmly accept the pain it brings. If this isn’t gaslighting, I don’t know what is!
So how do we create change? We acknowledge how others feel even if we haven’t experienced it ourselves. We empathise with people who have insights into marginalisation rather than dismiss them. Even if we can’t imagine how it might feel, we take time to see it through someone else’s eyes. That’s all. We acknowledge, without judgement, how another person feels.
If you can understand, speak up. Do it even if others silence you. I know students who have been silenced for understanding marginalisation. Don’t let it happen.. it means the world to the person who is being ignored or invalidated. It won’t fix the injustices but it will help lift the weight of social injustices from individual shoulders. #blacklivesmatter #speakup #injustice #donttouchmyhair #racism
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