Profesore, Why?

    

     There was a time when I was an English major in college, striving to become an investigative journalist for The New York Times. I was taking four English classes and one business class to go towards my minor. It was in one of the English classes that I had a certain professor. She was an older woman with a deep love for literature. She was engaging and relatable, but also maintained a firmness in her expectations for students. She was understanding of the fact that the school system had failed many any of us, so she made sure to give our writing grace. I'm not so sure that the grace extended the other way. 

    Sometimes, some professors seem to have an image of what intelligence looks like premade in their mind. What it might present as. What it may sound like when it speaks. In our modern society, however, it is apparent that intelligence can take on many forms and appearances. It may show up in the kid wearing a frayed graphic hoodie and sweatpants. It may look like the girl who can't stop wearing pink and doesn't feel satisfied if her socks don't have frilly lace. It can be the student who won't stop fidgeting and changing the subject. It could be the student who doesn't speak at all. Intelligence doesn't look like one thing, nor has it ever. Okay, that's a lie. At one point access to academic spaces was limited to a certain demographic, though it's gradually expanded over time to include most people. The invite is there. However, is the space truly inviting? 

    It was apparent to me that this professor had some mental blocks when it came to keeping an open mind. It was almost as if she was open to new experiences and opinions, but only under a condition. She can temper her expectations with our work because of the flawed education system, but is confounded when we surpass them. She is open to progression, but maybe not so much the accountability that comes with it. She is supportive of the progression of women's rights, so long as they conform to her biases. Now, it is not a bad thing to be biased. We all are. It is when you let these biases overshadow your humanity that it becomes an issue. 

    Now, do I think that she's a bad person? No. Do I think that she lacks humanity? Also, no. I think her bias has her nearing a duplicitous character. My dilemma came about the day we had a discussion on microaggressions. I'm black. I was not the only minority in the class, but I was the only non-passing POC. Therefore, when the question, "Can discrimination expand beyond the realm of race?" popped up, and no one was willing to answer, I decided to speak up. I explained that it can, indeed, expand beyond race. As humans, we are all multifaceted beings, and any one of these qualities can be picked apart and treated in a disparaging way. I tied this back to microaggressions by talking about my experience in an emergency room. The story goes: 

    One day, I was stretching my back and began to feel lightheaded. When I went to lay on my bed, because I weighed so little, I bounced right off and hit my head on my chair, then bounced off and hit my head on my bed rail, and then I bounced off of that and hit the floor. Fast forward, I go to the emergency room to make sure that my brain isn't leaking out of my skull, and the doctor began examining my face and head. Once he finished, he made a joke about "no more monkeys jumping on the bed". I laughed as a reflex, but felt puzzled once I remembered that I haven't jumped on a bed in well over a decade. 

    My classmates sat in quiet solidarity with my account, while I sat relieved that my feelings were being not validated, but affirmed. However, this did not last very long. Almost immediately, after a brief, passive acknowledgement of what I had said, my professor began to talk about her own experience with discrimination in the workplace as a woman. Her story? Definitely a case of sex-based discrimination. However, my issue lies with the fact that she sought out confirmation that she could be upset about her experience through my acknowledgement that discrimination isn't based solely on race (which she seemed quite elated about), and then brushed off my experience in favor of her own. Due to her distance from me racially, as a white woman, I guess she found it difficult to process the weight of that experience. Having said that, that's not the first time she's been dismissive because she feels distant in identity. For example, she grew up as a tomboy, so she has difficulty relating to women who are expressive with their femininity. She may describe applying makeup as painting one's face, or create motions of confusion with her hands while explaining the concept of a woman wanting to get dressed up. I was a bit taken aback when I noticed this, because we are talking about an intelligent, well-educated, well-rounded woman. I find it hard to believe that she can't process what it means to put on makeup and get dressed up. A child can understand and explain that process. But her mental disconnect with the hyper-feminine aspects of womanhood downplay her intelligence. Her passivity with systematic discrimination so long as it is not overt or places a negative spotlight on her character is two-faced. Again, I do not believe that she is a villain or a terrible human being. I just think that she is simply an example of the progress a certain demographic are conditionally willing to make when they are content within their own reality.  

P.S., I'm not here to give you an answer, I'm here to make you think.