A Primer on Getting Your "Respectful Questions" Answered

[TygrBright]

Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I was for a short time the only white student on a dorm floor otherwise occupied by black students. (Being it was 'back then' we were also all female. And there were curfews and rules and shit today's students would think totally archaic... but I digress.) I had never had much contact with black people, but I tried to be both respectful and friendly, which basically involved smiling a lot, saying 'hello' in the dorm halls and when I met a dorm mate elsewhere on campus, etc. I never made any close friends but most of my dorm mates reciprocated the respectful friendliness.

Until one day when I was startled by the appearance of a dorm mate with an AMAZING hairdo. Up until then she'd had a shaped and trimmed "natural" and occasionally slicked it or did short braids in tiers for special occasions. But that day she showed up in the common room with a swear-to-god foot-high cone of amazingly-twisted braids atop her head, with sparkly ornaments inserted and it just looked incredibly COOL and before I could stop myself I said "Melly, how did you DO that?"

And then blushed bright red.

And, as was a perfectly natural response, she gave me the side eye. I waited for a slapdown, but she decided to be nice, instead, and smiled, and told me about 'extensions' and how long it took to work up an elaborate 'do like that, and the night out she and her friends had planned at a very elegant place.

And that was my first experience with getting a "respectful" (well, amazed and impulsive) question answered.

Later, I tried again with someone at a place where I worked, who gave me much of the following wisdom:

1. You may think it's "respectful" because a) you really want to know, and b) you don't think you have any bias/bigotry against the 'different' person. That doesn't make it respectful, though. Unless you have an immediate, practical reason to know about something (like, you're in charge of arranging refreshments and do they need a dietary accommodation, or you're setting up seating for a presentation, and do they need an accessibility option, etc.) it's just your curiosity and your assumption that they should be able and willing to satisfy it is pretty disrespectful, actually.

2. You might have very good intentions about wanting your curiosity satisfied, like your workplace is becoming more diverse and you want to know how to be respectful, etc. That still doesn't make it your (black/trans/Jewish/blind/etc) co-worker's responsibility to enlighten you.

So how DO you get your "Respecftul Question" answered?

Fortunately, there are members of just about any different-from-you group you can imagine who have shared their experience of living in a world where they are considered different. They have shared that experience in writing (books, articles, blogs). They have shared it on video or film. And there are lots of them.

So do your own damn' homework. Start reading, watching, educating yourself. Be prepared to find out that (holy moly!) not all people who are different-from-you in a particular way have the same experiences or the same opinions about it. There's no one answer to some questions, especially the tricky, complicated ones.

And for the most practical stuff - like that 'how do I respect work colleagues different-from-me' thing, there are likely (there SHOULD be, anyway) a set of resources your Human Resources colleague(s) can point you to, to address issues like why vacations schedules might differ, why a 'no head covering indoors' rule has been changed, etc., and how you can/should accommodate that in the workplace setting.

You might find, if you take your "respectful curiosity" seriously and start actually seeking out those different-from-you voices in print, on video, etc., and reading them and thinking about them, that not only are all members of a different-from-you group not going to have the same experiences and opinions, they may have a very wide array. In some cases, their experience/opinion might superficially resemble your own, especially if you are yourself 'different' from the predominant culture. That doesn't make y'all besties or friends or necessarily fellow-travelers, but it might help you understand in a more personal way.

And hopefully, you'll stop seeing each member of that particular different-from-you group as a generic representative of the group, and see them instead as a person with a unique history, set of experiences, cultural background, etc., that may be shaped by being of that group, but is transcended by their essential humanity, which is the same as your humanity.

At that point, it may no longer be necessary for you to have your "respectful curiosity" gratified, because there are many more important things about interacting as a human being with other human beings who have an experience of discrimination, oppression, and bigotry to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

Who knows, you might even be moved to start thinking about the unconscious biases you have absorbed and whether they're part of your operational 'normal', and how you can be aware of them, and work against them to be less biased.

We can all hope, right?

helpfully,
Bright