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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