We sat on campus benches in the dappled sunlight of late summer while he asked me what I had learned about American Indians from the time I'd spent working with them. It wasn't so much that I'd learned something new, but rather that what I'd believed before the summer started had been validated: under our skin there is no race. We all have red blood and white bones. Our students had ranged from a woman who was as open and good natured as they come, pleased to introduce non-Indians to her reality, to a quietly, gently helpful woman who offered guidance in how to interact with my students, to one who had a chip on her shoulder and a cynical attitude. Then there was the alcoholic who held his cards close to his chest. The same spectrum of personalities is found in every human population.
Having been offered a tenure-track position, I elected to stay at this college, after asking for a leave from my regular job. The next year, during a break, I drove with Emma, one of my Anishinaabe students, her husband Joe of the Diné, and their daughter Eva, to visit Joe's family on the Dinétah (the traditional homeland of the Navajo) in the Four Corners region. I was alerted to the fact that my White skin would cause a small stir, and gave over driving to Joe while we were there. Although I was excited about the trip, I definitely didn't want to cause them any trouble. They knew me; the neighbors didn't.
I was honored to be given the couch on which to sleep, rather than the floor. That sense of honor lasted until morning when I opened my eyes to see a line of small faces peering over the back of the sofa, watching me sleep. As I startled awake, the horrible thought struck me that they'd been observing me snore -- which has been compared to a train roaring through the bedroom wall. I was mortified. But as I rose and woke further, I comforted myself that perhaps I was just a novelty -- a White person in their home where few were ever seen, and they were simply curious.
Figure 1. What do you see?
Months later when I described what had happened to a friend, who is herself a mother, she laughed until tears ran down her cheeks, then she informed me, "It was Saturday morning! They wanted to watch cartoons and couldn't until you were up!" As soon as she said it, I knew she was right. I didn't have children, had stopped watching cartoons years earlier, and in fact was not a morning person at all. What she said made perfect sense as I remembered the kids grouped around the TV when I came out of the shower. It just wasn't something I'd considered. It was out of my range of immediate knowledge, and I was expecting something, shall we say
exotic, since I was acutely aware at the time of my own skin color and of being
different.
We all have filters based on what we've been taught and experienced. Our point of view, our assumptions, our misconceptions all impact what we think we see. The figure at right shows some simple ovals, with only one shaded... Use your imagination... What could these objects represent? Some suggestions and more stories over the fold.
Figure 2. What we perceive is all about our filters.
On the one hand, the original shaded oval could represent an interloper, something which doesn't belong or is being hunted - like a wolf among the sheep (pretend the "elk" is a wolf). Or it could be something good such as medicine introduced into your bloodstream to fight an infection. Or they could represent something neutral like balloons floating away.
Emma and I had become good friends. One striking moment that became an indelible memory came when she told me so-and-so (another Indian), "acts just like a White woman." When I cried, "Well, gee, thanks, Emma!" she looked at me blankly for several seconds until she finally remembered that I'm White. "No," she said, "I meant a snotty White woman!" I was equally sad that she considered calling someone "White" an insult, and honored that she no longer saw me as The Other, but as a friend.
Her insult was completely unintentional, and I returned it in kind on the trip to Dinétah, speaking from ignorance and without thought. We had gone to visit Canyon de Chelly (pronounced de shay), and were walking along the rim. She pulled her pant leg up and mourned that she needed more sun, that she had grown pale over the winter. I laughingly asked, "Are you turning White on me, Emma?" After scowling at me long enough that I understood I'd committed a faux pas, she realized I had not intended an insult and was teasing. She finally laughed, too, but I learned not to make that type of joke and have never done it again. I was slowly learning to question my own assumptions about the world.
I once read of an anthropologist giving a talk on the research he'd done in a third-world country. He began by describing a morning meal of eggs from a special domesticated bird, the meat from a specific forager, some fungus from the forest floor. He strung the audience along with his story and they took the bait hook, line, and sinker. He finished the description by telling them he'd been describing his breakfast that morning: bacon, eggs, and mushrooms. The shift in perspective that he accomplished with his story is powerful. We need more people explaining things like this.
When I was teaching at a large state university, I went down to the computer lab to help my TA with the first lab of the semester. I sat down next to one young man who had a definite attitude problem. He was so hostile I nearly gave up helping him, but as I was getting ready to move on to other students, it came back to me what he'd written on the student information sheet I'd had the class fill out. He was pre-law. Realizing that fear can manifest as an "attitude," I sat back down and pointed out that if he was going to be a lawyer, he couldn't give up that easily. He'd have to stick with his studies and with the cases he'd work in the future, so he might as well learn how to be stubborn now. It got through to him. A piece of information and the sense to step back from my initial assumption was all it took to make a connection with my student.
Decades ago, I remember reading about a little girl who had her paper marked wrong for coloring bananas black at school. The story then noted that she came from a poor family, and all her mother could afford were over-ripe bananas. Hence, she thought all bananas were black. She was working from her reality, unsuspecting that the world was any different from her experience. The teacher had been working from her own reality with no reason to question her assumptions. That's the problem with our filters. If we understood more about our own assumptions in our decision making processes, perhaps "The Other" would be less "other" and more "potential friend."