I haven't said a lot since we got onto this because... it's tiring. It's exhausting, having essentially the same conversation repeatedly, and I don't have a lot of energy to spare to begin with. This is one of the reasons that people link things rather than write another post: we have already had this conversation, you just weren't there at the time. We've had it a hundred times, with a thousand other people coming from your basic point of view.
Some of the identities I have/am read to have are privileged. Others are marginalized. This is probably true of most of us, though the balance is obviously going to vary. So I want to make clear that when I talk about things members of privileged classes are prone to, this means me too -- I've been made aware of them, and I work at changing or avoiding them, but being marginalized in other ways hasn't magically made me immune where I'm not. It may make it easier to see once it's pointed out, I don't know.
Anyway. People in a privileged position tend to enter these conversations with the mindset that the marginalized people should convince us. They should lay out their case calmly and rationally to be judged by our objective, unbiased view. They WANT something, therefore they should meet our demands if they hope to get it. Do we think it in those terms? No, probably almost never. But that's what our society has always taught us, and what our actions and arguments often betray, nonetheless.
When we focus on tone in one of these discussions, that's what we're doing: we're putting the marginalized people in the position of children (don't take that tone with me, young lady!) or other subordinates who owe us respect and 'civil' address if they hope to convince us -- and surely they should want to; our opinion on their lives and experiences should be valued! People in privileged groups are generally, whether they realize it or not, used to having their opinion be the one that matters most. We're used to seeing ourselves as objective, free from bias, logical, rational. But we're not. Humans just aren't. We try! Many of us do our damnedest. But we don't and can't fully succeed. The difference is that when we're coming from the privileged position, society tells us our view is clear and correct. And we tend to believe it.
When we ask to have things explained to us, of course we usually mean well. We want to understand; we don't want bad things to happen to other people; we want to fix things. We've just come into this conversation, and often we feel attacked or rejected when marginalized people don't engage with us the way we want, expect, and on some level, feel that we deserve.
The thing is, the people in the other half of the conversation haven't just entered it. They live it, and if they're talking about it, they've probably already explained it 5, 10, 20, 100 times. Like I said, people get tired. People have other things they need to do with their lives and time rather than spend an hour writing -- again -- a personalized (and polite! Never forget polite, carefully worded, and appreciative that this privileged person is willing to listen!) answer to the same question. So often a link is given to somewhere it's already been answered, or the person professing a desire to be an ally is told to research it. And this is often taken as a dismissal or rejection, because we tend to believe that we deserve that answer, we deserve their time and attention, or at least we certainly do if they want us to care about their problem(s).
We don't deserve it, not really. And we should care regardless. Even when we feel to our toes that the treatment we're getting isn't FAIR. Once in a while we're even right. But I have never seen it be less fair than the issue that's actually being discussed. It's not easy trying to learn how to listen to and engage with these discussions without derailing, or how to let go of the reflex to focus on how the discussion appears to relate to us personally. It's just important.
