Susan,
I've not followed your exchange with Nicole carefully enough to know
this particular context, but I do think that people are often bigoted
without being fully aware or intentionally so. We are drenched in
racist, sexist, heterosexist assumptions from birth, and I think it's
the unintentional bigotry that's most dangerous. Intended racism tends
to announce itself, but unintended can come from any quarter, from
ourselves, and despite the best intentions. That's why in my classrooms
(I'm a teacher), I try to create a spirit of willing risk and
forgiveness. Students will often blunder into an insulting idea even as
they are trying to unpack it and understand it, and other students just
have to gauge the offending student's sincerity and grant them what room
they will. I think it's harder to do that on a list like this b/c we
can't see each other's faces and hear our voices.
Sara in Houston
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From: Susan Hoyle [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, March 15, 1999 4:19 PM
To: STUDIES IN WOMEN AND ENVIRONMENT
Subject: sources of misunderstanding
I have been wondering why there seems to be a persistent
misunderstanding between Nicole and myself about certain issues. It
occurs to me that it may be, in part at least, because of a different
assumption about motivations. So I want to ask her: do you assume that
when a white person, at any period of history, in any circumstances,
does something to a black person which the black person finds
unacceptable, that that action is racist?
I do not make that assumption, any more than I do when a man
does something unacceptable to a woman. It may or may not be sexist.
In certain circumstances and at ceratin periods it is very likely to
be/have been sexist, but in itself the action is not proof of any
particular motivation----or so I assume.
Is this a helpful line of inquiry?
Susan
