Some things are really hard to explain to someone who has not experienced them. Take racism. How do you really explain what racism FEELS like as opposed to what it is ?
Yesterday, I went with the love of my life to look at a potential new house for us. We had been to a housing agency to see what was on offer and to register with them so they could do the looking for us. The only suitable house they had on their books was one where the owners had said that they didn’t want foreigners. My heart thumped. A loud single violent thump.
I didn’t mention it for a while afterwards because I didn’t want to sound like I was being paranoid. We talked about it briefly later. “No. It won’t be a problem. People like us. We are good people. We are not the type of foreigners that people don’t like”. I felt bad even to be saying these things.
A few days went by but it was on my mind. An annoying worry that I kept pushing down. I kept saying to myself “Don’t worry, things have changed here. Not everyone is racist. We’ve managed to get along with people. We have had mostly good experiences here”
So yesterday, love of my life called and said there was a house for us to look at in the evening. “Shall we go ? Yes, great, that was quick, sounds ideal”. So we pop over to the office to get details and head on up to see the place. Just as we reached the door my heart thumped again.
The door opened and the landlady hesitated. Just for a second. As we were making our introductions, her eyes kept flitting over to me. I knew what she was thinking in those first few moments. She showed us into the hall and the little looks continued. She didn’t stare. She didn’t look disgusted or frightened. Just hesitant. As if, perhaps, her mind was thinking through other thoughts apart from showing us the house ? We looked at the two bedrooms and moved into the kitchen. I was trying to concentrate on looking around but it was as though I was holding my breath the whole time. Waiting.
After probably less than the two minutes that she and the love of my life had been making small talk, there was a tiny pause. My heart thumped. And then she said it. “I was expecting you to be Greek”.
She didn’t say “I don’t want to rent to foreigners” or anything like that. After all she could have said that at the door and not shown us in if that was how she felt. No. She had been surprised that we were foreign but she was showing us her house anyway. It was a relief. The air was clear to continue. I stopped holding my breath.
Now, I am NOT saying that she was racist. What I am trying to explain is what racism FEELS like. It’s that awareness of hesitations when people meet you for the first time. It is that fleeting look. It is that waiting until the fact of your differentness is mentioned. It is that hoping that you are “the right kind of foreign”. It is that thinking about it even when you don’t want to. It is that pushing away of those thoughts because you don’t want to seem paranoid or to “have a chip on your shoulder”. It is in that slight withdrawal when you approach. It is the fact that you know, even if no-one else does.
It is in that loud single violent thump of your heart.
Technorati Tags: racism, personal, xenophobia, multicultural
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A very perceptive post.
I have experienced this ‘hesitation’, the ‘awareness of this hesitation’ and the fleeting looks when I used to live in England.
I know how it feels and, switching to the perspective of the hesitant, of those giving the fleeting looks, it’s maybe natural. We are humans, we have reflexes geared towards shielding us from change, be it a loud thump, a thunderbolt or (variously) unfamiliar faces. Racism starts when (among other things) we declare we “don’t want foreigners”, or worse…
need help moving….!
*sigh* I wish I could say that I didn’t understand what you’re talking about here….You don’t deserve to go through this sort of stress.
*nods*
funny, how it just catches like that…and that pause or that hesitation goes from awkward to something else.
We won’t be taking the house anyway. Not because of the feelings I wrote about above, but because I didn’t like the house! And the landlady lived upstairs with her mother and dog. And she kept saying that they were very quiet people which we are not! (We are not annoying but we do like our music and socialising)
Hi Loxias. Those of us who experience this, know it, don’t we ? I wonder if someone who hasn’t could relate to this post?
Thanks for the offer of help, Z !
Hi Bint, yeah moving is stressful enough eh ? Thanks girl, we’ll talk…
Yes Sly. Hard to describe though isn’t it ?
I wonder if there might be an idea here? For us to each try and describe how racism feels to us because I think that often gets lost in the conversations. People discuss what it is (often very academically) and WE, as people with feelings and emotions, don’t get the chance to express how racism makes us feel. For real.
you got it right on, diva. it’s that *waiting* more than anything–always anticipating.
really amazing post.
Hi Devious Diva,
I grew up in a Greek-American family in the American South. Both of my parents were well-educated, politically conservative, but I believe that as members of the human race, they would have looked past the color of people’s skin.
When I moved to the Midwest to take my first real job in my early 20s, I came into an office that had three blacks in management. In retrospect I am shocked and embarassed at my own preconceptions. I became very close to my female black colleague, and at a time shortly after I had lost my mother, she became a surrogate mom of sorts. I discovered that being of Greek descent (and southern), she and I had so much in common–the importance of family, of honorable behavior, even some of our superstitions were the same!
Whenever we went out together and interfaced with people, she would point out to me that hesitancy that you talk about. It was a huge revelation to me. I still don’t know if it was my youth or my southern ‘exposure’ or both that made it such a revelation. All I know is that her character and grace in those circumstances have made a big impression on me.
Hey, bfp. I know you know what I mean…
Hi AntigoneSis and welcome to my blog. I will pop over to yours in a while. Thank you for sharing your story and I am very glad that you have been willing to really listen and absorb what your friend was talking about. And yes, there are many similarities between different cultures and races. If only we could connect more through those rather than constantly focusing on difference…
In my opinion, diversity is a gift and if we all could get past our preconceptions, like you did, we would discover the joy in that gift.
story #1
my dad rents out an appartment in patissia. when his last tennant left, he put an ad with our house phone number, and I would frequently take callers’ details. He told me not to bother with anyone who sounded foreign. we got into a huge fight about it. he tried to convince me that although he didn’t have anything personal with foreigners, the other people in the building (most of them owners-occupiers) made it very clear to him that they didn’t want “5 nigerian cd vendors crammed in a one bedroom appartment” living in their building. I was furious with him and told him he shouldn’t care what others think.
The appartment is on the top floor, and my dad had been trying to convince everyone to pay to insulate the taratsa forever. He was certain that if he rented the place out to foreigners, there was no way he could get the other owners to pay. It’s his appartment so I let it go.
story #2
my aunt left me a huge 3 bed in an island. I go for a couple of weeks in the summer, but the rest of the year the place goes to waste. last summer I got an albanian guy to paint the outside. when I went round to his house to pay him and realised that he was living with his wife and 3 kids in a tiny one bed, I felt terribly guilty. He mentioned that his landlord was evicting him.I offered him my house, asking for less than what he was paying, on the condition that I still get to visit for a couple of weeks in the summer. The look he and his wife gave me when I said that is one I will never forget.
A couple of days after they had moved in, he called me. the next door neighbour (an old lady to whom I am not related but who cried everytime she saw me as if I was her lost grandchild or something, and who would offer me coffee and tell me lovely things about my dead aunt) told his wife that the house is cursed (!) and that’s why my aunt died young, accompanied by some ridiculous story about the ghost of a black cat in the attic. I told him to put his wife on the phone, and I explained to her that she obviously was jealous that a family of albanians was living next to her in a house twice the size of her own. It worked.
When I visited them a week later, and I saw the garden taken care of and full of life, and their kids’ colourful toys among the trees, I knew I had done the right thing.
On my way down to the port, I met the old lady who looked the other way as if she didn’t know me. I didn’t bother. I just felt sad for her and her miserable life.
Not something that I have really experienced DD, except in an Edinburgh pub recently and that was quickly sorted out; but I know precisely what you mean. This is a very perceptive and well written account of very personal feelings, and that is what such things are – personal to everyone who experiences them…
Well-expressed. That hesitation, how do I take that based on that piece of data…It’s the accumulation of those not saying anythings that wears down on a person,
Hi danilena, I didn’t reply to your comment! Thank you for sharing your stories. And good for you for trying with your father and for doing what you felt was right with your house. The world needs more people like you !
Hey BondBloke! welcome back. I hope all is well. Thanks for the words.
Hi Pearl, you’re absolutely right…it’s the accumulation that wears you down. You hit the nail on the head. Thanks
I hesitated once. I don’t know how to explain this properly, but I am trying to tell you of an experience of being on the other side. And how it made me feel. I think that I am not racist at all – that I am the most open person there is… but… then …A long time ago, I had a house to let and advertised it. A lot of people called and I showed them the place. Then someone with a foreign accent phoned me. They told me they were living in emergency housing, had a baby and another one on the way and really needed somewhere to live. I nearly said “no, its not suitable for you” – but then I remembered that I am not racist (!) and so asked them to come and have a look. In the end I rented the house to them. I still examine my reaction on the day.. and I think (and hope) that it wasn’t racism… but rather a fear of the unknown.
Hi denise, thank you for your comment and your honesty and welcome to my blog.
I think the fact that you are examining your reactions is a good thing. It is something that I think we all need to do constantly if we are to learn and become better human beings.
As I said, I do not think the landlady was racist but I was trying to illustrate how a lifetime of racism feels, if you know what I’m saying.
It is only when “fear of the unknown” (which people of colour feel from people all the time) turns into discrimination that it becomes racism.
I have realised through writing this post how extremely hard it is to describe the “other side” of the equation. It is so much easier for people to understand the landlady’s position (not just you denise, most people) than it is to understand how it feels from where I am standing. Not just the landlady. But everyday. Everywhere.
Thanks for your comment, denise. It got me thinking and that’s always a good thing!
What an amazing post. Thanks
This was a really great post. Thanks for the honesty and insight.
“I wonder if someone who hasn’t [had this experience] could relate to this post?”
Premise 1: Racism, sexism, and xenophobia exist.
Premise 2: Different races, genders, and nationalities are *unevenly* subjected to these emotions.
In this context, I come from a relatively small cross section of people who, because of race and gender, may proceed blithely through most of the world without eliciting the reaction you described. (You didn’t invoke sexism in this episode, but it is a related phenomenon). My nationality isn’t even particularly objectionable in this part of the world. And so, I don’t have a parallel story in my own experiences. I’d like to say “I know how you feel,” but I don’t remember that I ever did – at least not to the depth that you do, hammered in by the reactions of people everyday, everywhere.
But that doesn’t mean that I don’t understand why you would feel tired (at least), if not offended or wounded, by these reactions. It is enough to just imagine myself in your situation on that one occasion; I flinched when I pictured myself in your shoes.
So can I relate to the post? If you’re asking for a shared memory, I don’t have it. That’s almost guaranteed by the way you phrased the question. I can assure you, though, that you have my understanding and empathy. And speaking for myself, I don’t think the lack of this same experience constitutes any kind of gulf between you and I, or between brownfemipower and I, or any two people. We are all people.
Thanks nameless and Elaine Vigneault for your comments.
Hi Matt, Thank you for your comment and welcome to my blog. I totally agree that the lack of this same experience does not constitute any kind of gulf between you and I.
Your understanding and empathy is what builds bonds between people of different experiences. The fact that you read this and pictured yourself in someone else’s shoes counts for so much. The fact that you do not negate someone else’s experience of the world speaks volumes.
Thank you.
These are all entirely natural reactions. People don’t *want* to be around people who are entirely alien to them. The only reason they pretend they don’t mind is because that’s the message that’s been blaring throughout modern (western) culture for the past 50 years, this idea that it’s “evil” to be “racist”. I don’t think it can last long. There are simply too many people like myself who are willing to speak up and point out the glaring deficiencies in the multicultural/multiracial model.
I have had rather nasty personal experiences with Greek racists, where the racism was directed at coloured people. Although this discrimination is now illegal under Greek law, and you should report it to the Synigoros tou Politi, I have a piece of cheering news on Greek racists. They seem to be narrow-minded people who can think only of themselves, and obviously make very bad landlords. So, they do us a big favour by announcing their attitudes: we should all boycott their housing, services and general company in our own self-interest!
Sweet post.
I know you will read our page..
Thank you again
Great story–albeit I read it quite later than it was posted initially.
One other point I’d like to add that I suppose is in line with Martin is this. I gave another suggestion to Diva on another post about having a Greek person call for you, but then I started to remember my first days in Greece and how that is NOT what I did. So I’m starting to ponder more now….
When I first came to Greece as an American, I did tell them up front I was American in the first few words of the conversation, so if there was any concern of theirs, I’d prefer to know right over the phone because ultimately I wouldn’t want to live where I was not wanted.
So, when I did meet landlords, they already knew I was American and I was pre-approved as it were. The ones who said no vacancy or already rented, or hesitated just made my job easier in not having to deal with them in person. Sadly, being pre-approved can make you personally feel better, but are you just giving in?
Anyone?