Hey White Girl.
I know. It's not fair. You tried really hard and you worked your ass off! You got rejected seven billion times and even then you kept going! And when you finally sold that damn piece that had eaten up your life thanklessly for years, and you hit paydirt, it was like finally, finally, God or the Universe or fate or whatever you want to call it was vindicating you and all your effort.
And then it happened.
Some person of color came along and made you feel like shit. Maybe they said that your research was lacking. Maybe they said that you were actually causing harm with the depictions of people like them in your work. They didn't even care that your friends who are PoC said that you did great. Worst of all, maybe they just plain didn't like you. It was personal. You spent all day crying, and telling people you were crying, and some PoC told you that you didn't deserve that kind of grief, but the person who started it all--even though they didn't even know you, or where you're coming from, or what you meant--refused to admit that they overreacted and let you live.
I get it. I, too, have been The Girl Who Cried.
When I was in college the first go-round, which was far from the last go-round, I was 18 and working at the Galleria in a little boutique that sold designer t-shirts and beachwear. I was the only white girl who worked there; all the other employees were black or Latinx, and I got along with all of them fine, or so I assumed. Assumed, that is, because I assumed as long as they didn't say there was a problem, there wasn't one, and I liked all of them fine. Then one day I got called into our boss' office, and lo and behold, there was one of my co-workers sitting there. He was a tall black guy who didn't talk much, but I'd always assumed his taciturnity was part of his personality.
Turned out, it was part of him not liking me. Me! I was so nice to him! I was nice to everyone! But my boss had called me in there because my co-worker had come to him to quit his job, because he disliked me so much that he couldn't stand working there anymore. He literally was leaving his employment because of me.
I stared. I repeated what my boss said in an incredulous voice. And then I burst into tears.
Now, with the perspective that twenty years down the road brings, I can say with almost 100% certainty that I must have done something awful/racist and not even realized it. I was a clueless white girl in the mid-nineties in Texas. I did something offensive. I still, despite having gone through memory after memory, can't figure out what it was, but that just goes to show you how little it must have registered. My co-worker, being an intelligent man, wasn't about to get specific when our boss questioned him as to what the cause of the beef he had with me was. He just repeated, "I don't like her," over and over again while I sobbed in my seat. I cried because I'd been taught that Being Nice was the height of what was required of a woman and that if someone disliked me, it was because they'd realized that all my Niceness was just there to cover up the fact that I was an inferior specimen of humanity (I'd been convinced of my inherent annoyingness and inferiority for basically my entire life). If he disliked me, it was because he'd somehow sensed I deserved it. It certainly couldn't be because I'd done anything wrong. I hadn't done anything mean to him (or so I believed).
With that same twenty-years-down-the-road perspective, I'm very glad that our boss, a Vietnamese man who'd only immigrated 15 years before, was inured to White Girl Tears and therefore didn't react with that almost instinctive jump to protect me. Instead, he told my co-worker he wasn't going to accept his resignation, told me that I needed to do better about getting along with my co-worker, and sent us both down five levels back to the sales floor. I sobbed all the way down, I sobbed when I got to the store, and then I had to hide in the back room until finally our boss' brother came in and said, not without sympathy, "You need to go home, girl?" I grabbed my keys and ran for it.
When I called my dad and told him what had happened, he was furious and wanted to know why I hadn't quit on the spot. The truth was, I needed the money so badly that I never even thought about quitting. Nobody was paying my way except my National Merit scholarship. I needed funds for gas, and insurance, and clothes. But I just told my dad I didn't know why I hadn't. And then the next day I was on the schedule rolled around. I went back to work.
So I get it. Sometimes you can do everything right, and someone is still going to dislike you for no apparent reason, even though you did everything you knew to do.
The thing is, I keep thinking about what it must be like, to be a woman, and to know that my being Nice wasn't just the thing that helped me make my way through the world accepted, but the thing that would keep me employed, because I was a woman of color. The thing that would maybe keep me alive, when someone saw the shade of my skin on their porch late at night. The thing that would maybe help someone hear me, when I told them they'd hurt me, instead of them bursting into tears and those around them leaping to their defense, when I was the one who'd been hurt first.
I wouldn't want to be nice nearly as often, that's for sure. When you're hurt, you deserve to be heard. You don't deserve to have someone tell you that your hurt has hurt them. That somehow, no matter how damaging their behavior is to you, it's still all about them.
So, my fellow White Girl, I have a suggestion. How about we, as a general rule, decide that if someone tells us we've hurt them, through ignorance or negligence or, hell, straight-up intent, we will not cry. How about we hear the pain we have caused, and say we're sorry, and try to do better. Even if all the other person says is, "I just don't like you."
But most of all, how about we stop making the fact that we inflicted hurt on someone else all about us. It's not Nice.
I know. It's not fair. You tried really hard and you worked your ass off! You got rejected seven billion times and even then you kept going! And when you finally sold that damn piece that had eaten up your life thanklessly for years, and you hit paydirt, it was like finally, finally, God or the Universe or fate or whatever you want to call it was vindicating you and all your effort.
And then it happened.
Some person of color came along and made you feel like shit. Maybe they said that your research was lacking. Maybe they said that you were actually causing harm with the depictions of people like them in your work. They didn't even care that your friends who are PoC said that you did great. Worst of all, maybe they just plain didn't like you. It was personal. You spent all day crying, and telling people you were crying, and some PoC told you that you didn't deserve that kind of grief, but the person who started it all--even though they didn't even know you, or where you're coming from, or what you meant--refused to admit that they overreacted and let you live.
I get it. I, too, have been The Girl Who Cried.
When I was in college the first go-round, which was far from the last go-round, I was 18 and working at the Galleria in a little boutique that sold designer t-shirts and beachwear. I was the only white girl who worked there; all the other employees were black or Latinx, and I got along with all of them fine, or so I assumed. Assumed, that is, because I assumed as long as they didn't say there was a problem, there wasn't one, and I liked all of them fine. Then one day I got called into our boss' office, and lo and behold, there was one of my co-workers sitting there. He was a tall black guy who didn't talk much, but I'd always assumed his taciturnity was part of his personality.
Turned out, it was part of him not liking me. Me! I was so nice to him! I was nice to everyone! But my boss had called me in there because my co-worker had come to him to quit his job, because he disliked me so much that he couldn't stand working there anymore. He literally was leaving his employment because of me.
I stared. I repeated what my boss said in an incredulous voice. And then I burst into tears.
Now, with the perspective that twenty years down the road brings, I can say with almost 100% certainty that I must have done something awful/racist and not even realized it. I was a clueless white girl in the mid-nineties in Texas. I did something offensive. I still, despite having gone through memory after memory, can't figure out what it was, but that just goes to show you how little it must have registered. My co-worker, being an intelligent man, wasn't about to get specific when our boss questioned him as to what the cause of the beef he had with me was. He just repeated, "I don't like her," over and over again while I sobbed in my seat. I cried because I'd been taught that Being Nice was the height of what was required of a woman and that if someone disliked me, it was because they'd realized that all my Niceness was just there to cover up the fact that I was an inferior specimen of humanity (I'd been convinced of my inherent annoyingness and inferiority for basically my entire life). If he disliked me, it was because he'd somehow sensed I deserved it. It certainly couldn't be because I'd done anything wrong. I hadn't done anything mean to him (or so I believed).
With that same twenty-years-down-the-road perspective, I'm very glad that our boss, a Vietnamese man who'd only immigrated 15 years before, was inured to White Girl Tears and therefore didn't react with that almost instinctive jump to protect me. Instead, he told my co-worker he wasn't going to accept his resignation, told me that I needed to do better about getting along with my co-worker, and sent us both down five levels back to the sales floor. I sobbed all the way down, I sobbed when I got to the store, and then I had to hide in the back room until finally our boss' brother came in and said, not without sympathy, "You need to go home, girl?" I grabbed my keys and ran for it.
When I called my dad and told him what had happened, he was furious and wanted to know why I hadn't quit on the spot. The truth was, I needed the money so badly that I never even thought about quitting. Nobody was paying my way except my National Merit scholarship. I needed funds for gas, and insurance, and clothes. But I just told my dad I didn't know why I hadn't. And then the next day I was on the schedule rolled around. I went back to work.
So I get it. Sometimes you can do everything right, and someone is still going to dislike you for no apparent reason, even though you did everything you knew to do.
The thing is, I keep thinking about what it must be like, to be a woman, and to know that my being Nice wasn't just the thing that helped me make my way through the world accepted, but the thing that would keep me employed, because I was a woman of color. The thing that would maybe keep me alive, when someone saw the shade of my skin on their porch late at night. The thing that would maybe help someone hear me, when I told them they'd hurt me, instead of them bursting into tears and those around them leaping to their defense, when I was the one who'd been hurt first.
I wouldn't want to be nice nearly as often, that's for sure. When you're hurt, you deserve to be heard. You don't deserve to have someone tell you that your hurt has hurt them. That somehow, no matter how damaging their behavior is to you, it's still all about them.
So, my fellow White Girl, I have a suggestion. How about we, as a general rule, decide that if someone tells us we've hurt them, through ignorance or negligence or, hell, straight-up intent, we will not cry. How about we hear the pain we have caused, and say we're sorry, and try to do better. Even if all the other person says is, "I just don't like you."
But most of all, how about we stop making the fact that we inflicted hurt on someone else all about us. It's not Nice.
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