So, it is Friday afternoon, right before Easter Sunday. I had a kind of long week and I don’t want to just go to the house where I have a friend’s cat to feed (left plenty of food and water this am went I left to meet with potential clients). So I drive by a micro-brewer bar close to her place I had been wanting to try for a while. Figure it is happy hour (I’m a new enterprenuer and must watch every penny) and I can afford few bucks on a beer.
I walk into the place to find it pack (had to ask a waiter to find a chair for me so I could seat by the bar). I wanted to catch up with the news in the blackberry and as soon as Dailykos starts downloading, this older man says "stop working and relax" To which I responded I was reading the news..guess I have found Dailykos relaxing, go figure.
Anyway, the guy, who is at least 20 years older, and I start talking about business and superficial stuff. Then we smoothly got into current affairs and soon found ourselves talking about the speech. You see, he was the only mixed black/white race person in the room and I was the only Latina as far as we could see out of easily two hundreds patrons.
I never care about that. Been in IT long enough, working with outcasted geeks, not to feel bad being the only Latina. But I quickly had the sense of being "different" when the two of use literally clicked.
We started talking about "The Speech’s Ripple Effect" Dam, we were living it. I wanted to go beyond the race thing to find out that he had the resentment Obama spoke of and which, for the first time in forever I actually didn’t only hear about, but felt it via someone who was personally describing it to me. Remember, I am a Latina. Came to a rather "white" state in ’94 when Latinos were still the minority of minorities and I personally experienced business people telling their staff that they would not work with me.
Soon I understood my experiences of rejection, being felt small and humiliated, confused, insulted, let down and whatever else I have felt over the years trying to make it as a Latina in IT was absolutely nothing to what this older man have experience. And guess what, I heard and felt I was listening with a sense of empathy, lack of prejudice, and openness I have never ever experienced.
His anger of having to conformed to the fourth or fifth class citizen role to be able to make extended to the point of telling new employees (black) at Xerox where he was a high level employee that they should drive old cars and dress down as to be able to obtain the support from the white men to claim the ladder. His stories where the first ones I had not read in a book that put me in the shoes of the amount of efforts an African American must feel they have to put to be able to get ahead.
Dam, I left the corporate IT world and started my own business out of exhaustion of having to try to figure out how to fit in and play the game to get ahead...couldn’t come near imagine what it would take if I was an African American female and I was hearing these stories from an African American male.
I listened and heard.
And I mentioned the many Grandma stories I have read in Dailykos because this man didn’t believe white people were getting and I said, but they are. And not only did I say that, but I said something in the lines of "I refuse to be as prejudicial as we feel white people might be against us so I give white people the benefit of the doubt to get the message." He wasn’t ready for that so I shared the many Dailykos diaries and asked him to join and share his stories with us. He is not yet sure, but for the first time in my entire life I actually gave a total stranger my cell number if he went to the site and couldn’t know how to enter a diary.
After a couple of hours I remember the cat. I wish I didn’t have to leave because the conversation was so enlightened I wanted to hear as much as possible to share with my 6.2 ft, white male partner (whom I just adore) for him to have yet another reason to support Obama.
Anyway, everywhere I go now I hear some version of the Speech I never noticed was there before. I had been so focused on my own minority issues I couldn’t spend time understanding, I mean, really understanding, that of others. Worst yet, I volunteer hundreds of hours every year for non profits that serve the underserved.
The Speech’ ripple effects are happening. What I am now trying to figure out is how to keep them from fading, how to make them part of me so I always remember how to empathize with human beings for their experiences with no attention to their skin color. I am proud of Obama for opening a window in my mind and my heart to consider how to do this.