My father asked if I am gay
I asked, Does it matter?
He said, "No not really".
I said, "Yes".
He said: "Get out of my life".
I guess it mattered.
My friend asked why I talk about race so much?
I asked, Does it matter?
He said, "No, not really".
I told him, "Yes".
He said, "You need to get that chip off your shoulder".
I guess it mattered.
My neighbor asked why I put that ramp up to my front door.
I said, Does it matter?
He said, "No, not really".
I told him because it made my life easier.
He said, "Is there a way to make it less obvious"?
I guess it mattered
A member of my church asked why I like gospel music.
I asked, Does it matter?
She said, "No, not really".
I told her that it connects me to my southern, Christian childhood.
She said, "I think you're in denial about your oppression".
I guess it mattered.
My God asked me, Do you love yourself?
I said, Does it matter?
She said, "YES"!
I said, How can I love myself?
I am gay, Latino, disabled, and a Christian in a hostile climate.
She said: "That is the way I made you". Nothing will ever matter again!
Marginality and Mattering
Definitions: Marginality: Words and behaviors that shun one's culture, ideas, beliefs, values or project. To be pushed to the "margins" of the group or community by a significant person or group.
Mattering:The experience of one's culture, ideas, beliefs, values or project as being essential to the individual or group. To experience feelings and behaviors that affirms that one "matters."
A Narrative from Gary Howard
"I was born White and have been that way for more than 50 years. The first 18 of those years can best be described as a period of "cultural encapsulation" [meaning, not aware of other cultures or cultural experiences]. Since I had never met a person who wasn't White, I had never experienced the "other". Race for me was a non-relevant concept. In my youth, I had no conscious awareness of anything that might be called "racial identity". Like water to a fish, Whiteness to me was the centerpiece of a constant and undifferentiated milieu, unnoticed in its normalcy.
It wasn't until my senior year in high school that I discovered my Whiteness. A White male friend, who was going out with an African American student from another school, asked if I wanted to join them on a double date with one of her friends, also Black. This was the first time I had ever been invited to dip my toes in the river of racial consciousness. It was the first introduction to my white-washed world. I was afraid. I was confused. I was curious.
As for most of my fellow White Americans growing up in suburbia in the 1950s, people of color had existed only on the distant periphery of my social reality. "Amos and Andy", " Tonto" in "the Lone Ranger", and clips of civil rights activities on the evening news were my only tenuous connections with the {other} America. And even those limited images were, of course, coming through several layers of White media filtering, with all the inevitable prejudice and racism intact.
This simple invitation to meet a new person, to go on a date with an African American woman, shook loose one of the basic linchpins of my social isolation. It is interesting that my initial response was fear. Fear is the classic White American reaction to any intrusion to our cultural capsule. What will happen to me? Will I be safe? What will other White people think of me? What will "the other" think of me? How do I act? What do I say? Will I survive? I was overwhelmed by an emotional flood of narcissistic and xenophobic trivia.
Reflecting back on this experience, I realize that members of the dominant group in any society do not necessarily have to know anything about those people who are not like them. For our survival and the carrying on of the day-to-day activities of our lives, most White Americans do not have to engage in any meaningful personal connection with people who are different. This is not a luxury available to people who live outside of dominance and must, for their survival, understand the essential social nuances of those in power. "The luxury of ignorance reinforces and perpetuates White isolation." (citation: We Can't Teach What We Don't Know. 1999. p. 11-12).