The Ones in Collared Shirts
I walked into Panera today after a
successful interview and sat down in one of the armchairs with my
laptop, laying the buzzer they give you on the coffee table with my
turtle wallet – just like any other day. While I was waiting for my
food to deliver itself to me on the legs of a servant, a man
approached me, about ten years my elder, and asked if he could sit in
the chair next to me.
He was tall; dark, clearly Indian; had
short hair that seemed to have been cut recently. Although he was
wearing a T-shirt, the air that followed him was a particular
combination of education and dignity that I can only describe as
distinctly west-coast. A tablet emerged the moment his back touched
the chair's, and he became enraptured by the images on his screen.
A couple minutes passed; out of the
corner of my eye, I noticed his eyes become even wider than they
already were, and an open-mouthed childlike glee came over him,
accompanied by the appropriate whispered verbal expression. I
couldn't help but smile and ask what was so exciting. With his answer
that the stock market had boomed, an hour and a half-long
conversation commenced.
The story he told was fairly
unsurprising, especially given that we were in the heart of Redmond.
After coming to the States to go to Stanford, he spent a few years at
Microsoft. That gained him enough experience to start his own
business after a few years, and he's traveled all kinds of places in
the process of becoming, apparently, extremely successful. We talked
a little about his story, and a little about my story, and then
debated socialism and capitalism for awhile. I've rarely known people
like him, so it was an interesting conversation – I fully
actualized my appropriate role as naïve, hopeful college student,
and he fully actualized his as jaded, cynical economist.
It was shocking to me how differently I
seemed to be perceived because of my appearance today. The slacks and
dress shirt I wore to an interview I had this morning became some
kind of hypnotic weapon, changing the very way I seemed to walk down
the street. I do not think it is coincidence in the slightest that I
was told by a random acquaintance that I looked like Marissa Mayer,
CEO of Yahoo, instead of an actress or artist. I felt preternaturally
powerful, and not only because I was confident riding the success of
my morning. Actually, the speed and ease of the interview is telling
of the same undercurrent I feel. It is one of privilege:
white/fair/blonde privilege, cis privilege, straight passing
privilege, American passing privilege, and most glaringly obviously,
the ability to present myself as superlatively able and silver-spoon
wealthy.
My heart breaks to think that some of
my best friends are not able to present this kind of facade. I feel
rather like a fraud receiving the kind of positive attention I do,
and it's absolutely crazy to me how easy it is to manipulate this
public perception. If I go out with my hair done slightly more
hipster than normal, wearing the rings and bracelets and necklace I
often do, in color skinnies and a band T-shirt, and then proceed to
tell them that I am a Gender Studies major at a liberal arts college
they've never heard of, people are first surprised that I am of
college age and then vaguely dismissive of my interests and choices.
If I go out dressed as I was today and tell someone that I am a
Pre-Med student with a Biology major at Calvin College in Grand
Rapids, Michigan, people assume I'm a year or two older than I am.
Suddenly they talk to me as a young adult rather than as an overgrown
teenager, even though each depiction of myself is equally authentic
and true.
It's not that I expect appearance and
social presentation to have no bearing on public perception. But if I
can be respected a million times more when I say that I'm a Biology
major than that I'm a Gender Studies major, or by saying first that
I'm a Pre-Med student and then that I'm a Gender Studies major,
something begins to feel deeply, fundamentally wrong with the way my
worth is being prescribed to me.
My experience takes into account only
that which I was barely trying to manipulate. What if my skin were
black? What if I were overweight? What if I hadn't worn makeup? What
if my head were shaved? What if I had a male-passing body and chose
to wear a skirt and heels to the interview? What if I had spoken with
the Renton accent I could feasibly have picked up as a child instead
the rounder, more refined, meticulously enunciated Redmond accent I
acquired after we moved? Sometimes I can't help but feel that my face
and my body are what makes this world an oppressive place to those
the system idealizes.
All it takes is noticing the gaping
holes, the embarrassing flaws in the way people treat each other.
What if society dared not to look down on or disdain those that it
learns are less intelligent or privileged or, for God's sake, less
responsible than it'd like them to be? The world seems an unending
struggle between lost souls and the nebulous, undefinable
Siren-concept called “success” from this perspective. The secular
humanist Quaker Christian in me cannot go down with that ship.
And for that matter, neither can the
lesbian me, or the queer me, or the South African me, or the woman
me, or the child me, or the heretic me. I cannot stand the idea that
people with different labels – labels that I experience in others
as unique and precious and valuable – are treated as sub-human, or
at least dismissed as unimportant, when I am treated with
unquestionably higher regard than I have ever (or could've ever)
deserved.
I'm not okay with this – white, cis,
privileged me is not okay with this. It makes me sick that I can have
a conversation with my gay Mexican-heritage friend in which I naïvely
tell him that he shouldn't wish he weren't those things – that
they're a couple of the things that make him most beautiful and
unique – only for him to reply, under his breath, that society
disagrees. I'm reminded of a song that becomes more powerful to me
every time I hear it: “No freedom till we're equal, damn right I
support it.”
“It” is not just marriage equality.
“It” is everything that carries the weight of oppression. “It”
is the victim, the other, the marginalized, the object of pity and
laughter and dirty labels. There is a deep anger that boils beneath
my placid self-content. I am still young enough that it makes no
sense to me why anyone deserves to suffer more than I do – these
questions still carry weight for me.
When I was 8, some kid on the
playground told me that one day I'd grow up and stop believing in
magic. When I was 10, someone's mom told me I'd come to terms with
lipstick when I got older. When I was 12, my own mother told me that
I'd stop climbing my tree when I got my first boyfriend. But I
redefined magic to be compatible with science, I still cringe at the
thought of makeup, and I drove an hour to drag my first boyfriend
into that same tree. I'd like to think that no matter how much money
I make, no matter how cynical I'm tempted to become, no matter how
much I benefit from my own goddamn privilege, that I will never
become deaf to the cry of the many that still do not have what I do.
It is wonderful that you have realized this at such a young age, but what do you plan on doing with this? Many individuals come to this conclusion by experiencing and observing these injustices, but they do nothing about it. What do YOU plan on doing with it?
ReplyDeleteAnother point, people learn to judge people with the senses. It's a fundamental trait in all animals. Some people take it further than necessary granted, but you get the gist.
ReplyDeleteIf I am trying to hire someone to take care of my house while I am on a business trip, and the person walks up to me with greasy hair, a dirty shirt, and has not shaved in awhile.... you understand why I would be hesitant in hiring them, or not hiring them at all. It's the same with any job. If the person cannot take care of themselves, how can they be expected to take care of the work the job would put forth? Now with the way people act towards others in a business setting. First off, you want to look neat. You want them to look at your credentials and potential and hire you. If you are wearing bracelets and a band tee, there is too much going on; they are going to focus on what you look like and not what the paper in front of them says. It is not a matter of hiding yourself, it is telling the person that you are invested in this job, and want to show them that. If you wear what you wear everyday to an interview, it shows that you didn't put any thought or effort into it.
People not taking you seriously as a person because you wear bracelets and a band tee, is unfortunate. But it is a reality, and a truth for many young adults, like yourself, to learn. It is also something you will learn as you pass through life. It is not good that people are judged by the job they choose, but that is an American trait. In Europe, trades are held in much higher esteem than office workers. It's an epidemic in America that people do not recognize and are unwilling to acknowledge. Fortunately this is not true in most of the world; the more civilized parts of the world like Europe, Asia, and South America tend to treat most careers with equal importance and respect.
To call it an injustice, is also very American. Learning to treat people with respect and respect the craft, job, or trade they have is something that you learn from your parents and in the social arenas in which you engage with others. In America, you are taught early on that if you do not go to the university and get a degree, you are a lesser person. Your parents tell you to study hard to get good grades so you can go to college.
The question should be: What do you want to do for the rest of your life? If you want to be a carpenter, a machinist (commonly called a gold collar job in Europe as they are extremely well paid), a cook, an electrician, etc. then why would you go to college? You go to a trade school and learn………your trade!
America needs less people griping about how unfair things are, less people sitting on their duffs calling it an injustice, and more people making the effort to recognize people for who they are and respect their trade or chosen career.
Well, you make a good point. I am a young person and college student still with fairly little money to my own name, and I can't do very much on the practical level. I can't create scholarships, I can't hire diversity, I don't even know enough to have very many concrete ideas about how to make a change. But I figure a good way to start is by hearing people's stories and learning to see the world from their eyes.
ReplyDeleteI mean, what you say we should be doing is "making the effort to recognize people for who they are and respect their trade or chosen career." I can certainly say that, as someone raised on the rhetoric of "following whatever God path leads you down," I'm awed and inspired by people that choose to be teachers or caregivers or artists because they love what they do. Most of the CNAs (caregivers) I have interacted with in the past few weeks as I've gotten certified as a nursing assistant are honestly no more or less hardworking than people that earn five or ten times their pay. A majority of them are recent immigrants and have had to fight every step of the way - not that that's compromised their senses of humor. Not only do I deeply respect the work they do and the closeness of the connection/intuition they build up with their residents, but I respect their way of life. Hearing their stories has certainly put into perspective my own immigration story...I am humbled by their strength.
I have found that the best way for me, in the short term, to practically "recognize people and respect their trade" is to give what I can to support the many artists that need and deserve funding, or projects that aim to improve the lives of vulnerable groups. I'd like to get involved in ways that I can, and I think for my demographic - students - that's most of what we can do. Teach ourselves to think differently, critically, compassionately, and spread that movement. I recognize that I'm at the very very beginning of the time I'm going to spend thinking about these issues...My time will come to contribute.
As to the first point you made in your second comment, I'm absolutely not saying that people should hire blindly. Not hiring someone because they look unkempt and sloppy is reasonable in my book. What is unreasonable and prejudicial to me is the value judgment and monumental perception shift that results from such a small change as whether or not your shirt has a collar in a freakin' sandwich shop. If it is not already so, it is certainly my desire to treat all people with equal quantities of basic human respect...especially people I don't know. Perhaps it's valid to make character judgments once you know someone well based on the way they've impacted your life, but casting a boatload of assumptions on every homeless person you drive past or every cashier that rings you up or every person of X demographic you've got sweeping assumptions about is counterproductive and arrogant.