Thursday, October 5, 2017

My Apology with a Broader Perspective


Remember my last blog post, about needing an “I’m Sorry” card? I can’t think of anything else to blog about, so let me elaborate on that situation. The person I snapped at with a great deal of sarcasm was a customer service worker, and I usually pride myself on being kind to such people and having a great rapport with them. I was simply at the end of my rope, but a complicating factor (maybe?) was that she was not white. Now maybe she just thought I was a grumpy customer, and indeed I was, since my snippiness had nothing to do with her race, but I wonder if she thought, “Snotty white woman full of white privilege who gets snarky when things aren’t going exactly her way!” So I felt a need to apologize not only for my bad behavior (and my apology was a simple one that didn’t mention race), but also because I felt somehow that I was representing my whole race. If you read websites written by people of color, they often mention this feeling that their behavior is judged not as being done by an individual but by their group, and this situation made me feel the same way. If this lady reads my apology, I am imagining her telling her equally nonwhite coworkers, “Look at this! A white person actually apologized!” The fact that my first name (or at least my hated childhood nickname that I no longer go by) is slang in black communities for a white woman who throws her privilege around may be the icing on the cake; I imagine this lady telling her coworkers, “How perfect is it that her name is Famous?” So maybe I will at least furnish some amusement for them, and hopefully they appreciate and accept my apology.

Famous Hat

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