A Talk about Centering - A Case Study in Irony

About a week or so ago, I was having a conversation with someone where I mentioned centering someone else's perspective, and then was asked to unpack what that meant, what "centering" meant in this context, because they were unfamiliar with it.

I unpacked it by example, and mentioned how, when I'm walking down a street to work or whatever, and I am behind a white female presenting person, I center their experience in things I need to do as a black male to minimize their surprise and/or any perceived threat to their personal safety.

I was about to unpack some of the things I do, i.e. pulling out a phone, sneezing, making myself smaller, walking faster to indicate that I have somewhere to go, moving to the other side of the sidewalk if possible to put as much space between me and them as I pass, so that realizing that I'm a black man is as least threatening as possible (especially because of any unconscious bias more than anything), etc. when this person (who was a white lady themselves) interrupted me.

The nugget of what they shared was something like, well any man really.

And so here's why that's ironic. In sharing an experience centered on my own perspective not just as a man or a black person, but as a black man, she "But All Men"ed it, as if to say a woman's reaction would be the same for any man.

She colorbind'ed my own perspective and, whether explicitly or not, centered it on her own, as if to imply that she and/or women in general, would react to all men more or less the same way.

I wish she had read this article, particularly the first point: Pause Before Contributing to the Conversation.

Unfortunately, the insight and reflection I shared above was something that wouldn't come to conscious thought until a day or two later. In the moment of the conversation, I followed her lead and minimized my own intersectional identity, to in the moment agree with her that she was right, as a woman, that she and other women would react to all men the same way, and that my race had nothing to do with it.

When in fact, by stating how I walk through the world as a black man, in this situation, I wasn't saying that a woman or femme-presenting person wouldn't also react to a white presenting man at all or just assume they were safe. And in fact, a lot of times when people of color are sharing experiences like this, it's not that we're saying we're the only ones who go through things like this.

But often times, our intersectional marginalized identities compound the degree to which...to oversimplify it, bad things happen when things go south, the swiftness in which judgments are made in which they go south, etc.

Anyway, I digress. Just wanted to share. Happy Pride!!

P.S. Here's the article I linked, "4 Ways White People Can Process Their Emotions Without Bringing the White Tears".

P.P.S. Here's the Facebook post: