Chinese Water Torture

I just had an interesting and vigorous discussion in my Intro to Education class about unintentional discrimination. It started out as a commentary on those seemingly harmless (to me) comments that teachers make that get their students fired up with a little 'girls versus boys' competitiveness, e.g. when a boy does something good, saying "ooh girls, don't let em get away with that!", and vice versa when a girl does something good, with special care taken to make sure that the comments are balanced within the context of a single class. That's a pretty vague description, but the point is that the instructor was making an effort to intentionally foster competition between the boys & girls of the class without endorsing either side.

My reaction was that there's nothing wrong with these types of comments as long as you keep a bead on whether it's bothering any of the students, and stop if you see some evidence of that. The girls in my class saw it differently - they felt that they'd prefer not to be placed in that kind of competitive situation, and that it felt like discrimination. The guys in the class and the girls in the class (it was a small class) lined up perfectly along those lines - guys felt that it was no big deal (but were willing to stop), girls felt that it was out of line.

I started out feeling fairly confident of my position, but as the discussion moved on, I was reminded more and more of some of my extremely rare experiences with racial discrimination, specifically the unintentional ones at the hands of my friends.


Some quick history on myself: I grew up in a rural upstate NY town, lived in the hills well outside that town, on a farm, in a relatively poor family. My parents were relatively poor, but this was somewhat by design for them as they struggled to embrace a self-subsistent lifestyle. My school was mid-sized for the area - about 100 students per grade, and I was one of maybe six black kids in the entire school district throughout my years there. I don't think I ever saw much real discrimination there, partly because I'm a fairly low-profile person, partly because the school was populated with really decent people, and partly because my parents taught me to let it slide off my back, so it basically went in one ear and out the other. There were situations that pinched me a little, though, and the stuff that I remember the most clearly through the years are the situations where it was my friends that were making me feel uncomfortable.

It was always clear to me that it wasn't intentional, but there it was, and the discomfort was worse for the fact that I knew I could never say anything to them about it, because they would either feel terrible, or they would conclude that I was hypersensitive and draw away from me slightly; neither of these options seemed like a win to me. One instance in particular was related to the one black girl that joined my grade briefly in high school. I never really became good friends with her, and my perception is that we both deliberately maintained a neutral attitude towards each other, to avoid the assumption that we were going to stick together just because we had the same skin tone. We had friends in common though, and I found that after a number of months I began hearing from a few of my friends, "You should go out with her!"

Up to that point, none of my friends had made any recommendations at all of that sort to me - I was (and still am) a relatively shy person when it comes to women, and I think some of the kids translated this into a suspicion that I was gay. But once they decided to break the ice, of course, my internal reaction was pretty negative - "What, you think the two black kids outta get together, eh?", "If she's so great, why don't you ask her out?!", and "There are plenty of hot girls in this school, why exactly are you only recommending this one to me??"

My public reaction was just to drop the issue without taking any action on it. In retrospect, I have mixed regrets about handling it that way - from what I heard, she was actually an extremely vibrant personality, kind of an edgy tomboy, probably exactly the kind of person I would have wanted to be close to. I also believe now that there are a variety of plausible non-racially related reasons why they may have brought her up to me, one of the simplest among them being that she may have asked them to [note: if you were there, you may recognize this as wishful thinking on my part]. I'll never know for sure.


So, after bringing these experiences back to mind, I thought about the similarities between the two events, i.e. the two distinct interpretations they each elicited from the majority participants versus the minority participants. Namely, the majority participants (the guys, and my friends) had pure intentions, and the negative interpretation of their actions wasn't even on their radar as an element of the situation. The minority participants (the girls, and myself) could acknowledge the possibility of pure intentions, but still couldn't put aside the negative feeling caused by the form of the comment.

How is someone supposed to sort out the correct way of behaving? Both views of the same event are absolutely valid, given the information that each party has at their disposal. People in these situations don't typically engage in a philosophical debate with themselves before they react, so there's little hope that they're going to think hard about the opposing viewpoint and moderate their reaction. It has to be an a priori understanding, something that pre-educates everyone about how to navigate this type of misunderstanding.


The glorious punchline: I'm not sure how to solve this problem. But I did think of analogy that feels very accurate, and may shed light on how to be sensitive to the stress of being in the minority. Picture a victim of Chinese Water Torture. Supposedly the art of driving a person insane, by randomly dripping water on the exact same spot of their strapped-down head. I've heard that, along with the intense psychological stress it creates, there is also a significant amount of real pain. So then imagine this victim escapes from their torturers, only to find themselves caught in someone's sprinkler system. Some of the drops will hit the tender spot on their head, and it will cause far more psychological and physical pain than a drop of water really should, but whether or not it makes sense to the innocent sprinkler, the pain is real.

Similarly, a person in an oppressed minority of one sort or another is randomly, but steadily poked in the exact same place over and over again (whether they shrug it off or not). After a while, it really becomes difficult to decipher the intentions of the one poking that spot. After a longer while, it becomes difficult to care what their intentions are. It's just irritating.

On the other hand, I'm a staunch believer of the idea that intentions must be taken into account, always. There are so many little feuds in the world that are constantly created out of thin air, simply because of a mistake or a misunderstanding, that honorable positive intentions have to be respected where they're seen, or they'll be stamped out through negative reinforcement. From this perspective, I've felt that it was my responsibility to look for reasons not to be offended, and to grow thick skin. I think it's possible to be supportive of the overall fight to end discrimination without finding each instance and taking it to court.

So homeowners, turn off your sprinklers when you see someone hurting in its shower. Tortured masses, recognize the scars that your victimization left you with, and plan ahead. Carry an umbrella.