Being the Offense

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I think, as a member of a privileged group of people, I am guilty of obliviousness.

Right before starting local enrollment in a COVID vaccine clinical trial, I was trying to explain to another nurse practitioner--who would be working with me on the study--that it would be pointless to get fitted for the N95 masks that the primary study site had, as we would be in a mobile clinic with a completely different type of N95. That turned out to be wrong, because through most of the recruitment phase we worked right at the primary site, but the logic itself is sound.

There were several other instances like that with this colleague, but what exactly they were doesn't matter much for my point. What I do want to say is that she later brought these instances as examples of times I hurt her feelings or insulted her. And honestly, although I still don't understand how she does not grasp what I was saying, I also have to admit that, at least in not understanding her, she has a valid complaint. I think that, instead of trying to know her reasoning, I may have tried to force my reasoning onto her.

What's truly embarrassing is how indifferently I did so. When she was sharing these instances in our mini-staff-meeting-of-four, she did not look at me once, but kept her eyes on our other two colleagues. I interpreted that to mean she was really just complaining about me to our co-workers, and told her she should look at me to resolve these complaints. At that point, one of our other co-workers informed me that, in the nurse practitioner's home culture, intentionally not looking at someone is a sign that she was trying to control the anger she felt toward me. That's about the timepoint when I stopped feeling offended, and started realizing how I had given offense.

As a concept, being a "sore loser" is pretty well understood. I'm thinking that idea can apply to people of privilege as well; being white, Christian, heterosexual, cisgender, and educated, I can be a "sore winner" just in not realizing or acknowledging what the other options are like. I can be so caught up in trying to get people to understand and accept me that I forget to try to understand the alternatives.

Basically, what I'm saying is I don't think I'm racist (or elitist or lots of other -ists), but I don't think I'm always trying not to be racist (or various -ists). And I don't think, to maintain our society, we can afford not trying anymore.

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