A boss neglects to notice your achievements. A potential love interest snubs you. A stranger acts as though you do not exist. An acquaintance does not respect your opinion. Sometime, somewhere, someone has failed to treat you how you believe you deserve to be treated.
But what, in that ego-crushing millisecond just happened? A bevy of explanations can rise up to explain this injustice. Some bring a modicum of relief- the boss in question had a lot on his plate, the stranger was in a rush. Others not only fail to quell your concerns, they cause a number of more maddening problems to bubble up.
What if, in your moment of neglect, you were just discriminated against? Have you really just been a victim of racism, sexism, ageism, or some other horrifying -ism? You can never know for sure. You cannot confirm whether or not the offender in question is a horrible racist, sexist, ageist whatever-ist.
This looming question, I suspect, tortures many people of discriminate-able backgrounds. The feminist languishes over why, exactly she didn’t get the job in the male-dominated office. The gay couple silently questions why they did not get the apartment owned by the woman with the large cross around her neck. The person of the minority race wonders if, and why, so many people stare at him on the street.
I have heard, several times before, the very tenuous claim that the good-old-days of open discrimination sure beat the hell out of these covertly prejudiced days. Now-a-days, you don’t know if someone looks at you and sees a person, or if they see a caricature. In such an ambiguous situation, prejudice can appear everywhere, and nowhere at all. It can drive a woman, man, minority, old person, young person, religious person, atheist person absolutely crazy if they let it.
I would venture that we all see discrimination more often than it actually happens. My hunch falls back on one of social psychology’s golden children, the fundamental attribution error. It goes a little something like this: we all think like terrible, foolhardy amateur psychologists. Very foolhardy. We all attempt to explain the behavior of others, yet we make a fatal flaw: we assume that most behaviors come from an underlying disposition, rather than ever-changing circumstances.
Thus, as the oft-cited example goes, when a person trips on the street, we say it’s-because-he’s-clumsy, not it’s-because-the-sidewalk-has-a-nasty-crack. In the same way, we may see a potential love interest of another race brush us off and say it’s-because-she’s-a-racist, not it’s-because-she-is-married. Et cetera.
Sometimes, perhaps, we even deserve the discrimination we get. Author and gay-rights advocate Dan Savage [1] sometimes dwells on this topic in his podcast, Savage Love [2]cast [2] (note: very very mature content). A caller, a young black man, complained that he could find no dateable partners in Seattle, because everyone in town was a terrible racist. Not so, Savage said- based on you arrogant tone and short temper, some of those people probably discriminate against you for being an “asshole”, not a black man.
So Dan Savage doesn’t have the most sensitive approach to the matter, but I do think we all need the occasional brutal reality check. Not every offense comes from a deep-seated, dispositional prejudice within the hearts of others. Sometimes the situation leaves us ignored, unappreciated, slighted. And, sometimes, we are just assholes.
This post stems from the frustration I often feel when I am around some of my more sensitive friends. These friends are devoted to quashing a particular -ism, and they see their target everywhere. Any wrong in the world, any obnoxious advertisement, any horrible comedy movie is a despicable symbol of flagrant sexism. I think they are overreacting. But as I’ve mused before, I’m not a woman [3], so maybe I’m not sensitive enough.
However, my response, based on my personal way of dealing with occasional “discrimination”, goes like this: Treat all discrimination equally, no matter what reason you suspect caused it. First, check and see if you “deserved” it- remove what I call Dan Savage’s “asshole” factor. Slow down, and consider that the slight has a situational, rather than dispositional explanation.
If you didn’t earn the mistreatment, deal with the prejudicer the same way you would a person who simply doesn’t like you. Call the person out on unfairness- if you have evidence of it- and don’t associate with people who treat you unfairly. It doesn’t matter why they neglect you, after all- prejudice against race looks very similar to prejudice against sex, to prejudice against atheists, and to prejudice against people who behave like jerks.
Hypersensitivity fixes nothing; I suspect it only makes the labels that divide people more salient. And by seeing all people as potential racists, sexist, ageists etc, we commit the same error that the really prejudiced do.
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