Equality and Transparency, Part II
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Back to Cape Town. I’m sitting in a BMW showroom, of all places, which conveniently doubles as the lobby to the IMAX theater where we’re about to catch a movie. I don’t even remember what we saw … probably because what was about to take place in the luxury car showroom enraged me so much that I hardly paid attention to the film afterward. Emily and I were sitting on a stoop, not wanting to partake in the hors d’oeuvres and merlot that surrounded the $50,000+ cars. I’m still not sure if a particular event was taking place or if this is just what wealthy Cape Towners do on weekday afternoons, but what I do remember as if she were four feet in front of me today is how elegantly that bitch was holding her wine glass. I also remember her laugh: falsely untroubled, practiced, and spiteful in its perfection. The confidence with which she held herself suggested mid-40′s, but the perky breasts, waistline, and satin legs said 33. If this woman had ever experienced a hardship in her life, it did not show … and this is what I was probably thinking when she smudged a window of the pearly white sports coupe she was leaning on. She could have left it at that. An honest mistake. But when she noticed a young, ebony-skinned man nearby with a windex bottle and rag and nothing more in his hands, she flicked her wrist at him and pronounced – in perfect brahmin speech – “oh dear, look at the mess I made, do be a darling and make it beautiful again.” The only evidence that he even heard what she said was that he was already wiping efficiently at the smudge, eyes cast down, before she even finished her sentence. Then, walking away, she placed her finger on the passenger window and dragged it across, leaving behind a filthy streak, which the young man followed silently, obediently with his blue rag. I couldn’t believed what I had just seen. My legs twitched. I looked at Emily, but her head was turned back toward the theater. No one else, it appeared, at seen the awful exchange. My entire body flushed hot with rage. My muscles tightened and my jaws clamped together. Just remembering it now … I wanted to get up. I wanted take hold of the filthy, smug bitch by her curly locks and smash her face through windshield. And then through another and another and another. Until all that was left was shattered glass and the silence it conjures. But of course I didn’t. I’ve never been able to surrender to pure emotional response and obvious logic told me that face-through-glass-smashing would only get me placed in prison for life. I contemplated more subtle forms of revenge: “accidently” bumping into her and spilling wine on what must be a $500 outfit. But it was clearly not my revenge to take and all I would likely accomplish is further humiliation to the young man with the blue rag. Besides, what’s important for this series is not how I did or did not retaliate, but rather how I reacted within. Why was I immediately filled with so much rage when the event had no bearing on my own life? How does my reaction make any sense in evolutionary terms when, if anything, it’s the white, upper-class woman who is part of my own “tribe”? Was it racism’s continuity or class difference that stoked the fires of my fury? |
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Evolutionarily, is it possible that you feel a kinship with the man cleaning the windows? Be it service industry experience or a similar encounter with a bitchy society lady, it seems that you feel that you have more in common with the young man than you do with the woman regardless what the genetic truth is. In order to support my obviously quickly put together hypothesis, it would follow that your rage was brought about by the class injustice; however, the class injustice is a manifestation of the racism (or possibly visa versa).
That’s my idea on first read. And I know exactly the kind of woman you are talking about. I have met countless S.A. women who have some sort of racial entitlement complex. It is pretty disgusting, and I can say, with reasonably certainty, that I have felt exactly what you felt.
I had that same thought. While many would write it off as “white liberal guilt”, I think it’s more about seeing yourself more accurately reflected in the blue rag guy, maybe knowing that in another place in the world, under different circumstances, had you been born another color, that would have been you. Empathy is about feeling for others, and I think the “others’ that conjure it most in us are those who we find similar, regardless of race or social class. By your definition, in Mexico I should have wanted to hang out with American-educated upper echelon “fresa” women, but I felt more comfortable in the presence of the liquado lady or the janitor. I found that most of my American friends felt the same way. Why is that? It must be that there is an innate and unifying value (authenticity ?) we find in people we feel we identify with. Perhaps your desire to not reflect (identify with) the mean white lady also intensified your feelings of empathy, which is, in the end… “white liberal guilt”.
Callousness in any context is infuriating. I find that when it comes with power differentials, or when the humiliated can only respond with meekness, it’s downright painful.
you watch the behaviour in just about any culture, including animals and insects. if there is someone on the top, that means there are people (or whatever) underneath. and once those people have that sense of accomplishment, they will go to great lengths to keep it. it’s interesting to me that no matter what i accomplish or learn or acquire, i always feel like i haven’t ‘made it’ and since i don’t know why or what that should feel like, only that i don’t feel like i have it, i assume that i’m a fake to everyone else and that they know it. i repeatedly have to remind myself to be in the moment and accept myself for who i am, whatever that is. my thought is that i wonder if people like that snotty woman are really insecure and must make the person ‘beneath them’ really feel it so that in comparison, they can feel much higher/better. maybe they don’t know who they are by themselves but only when putting someone else down.
These comments remind me of a book review I read last weekend of Amartya Sen’s Identity and Violence. Sen supposedly argues that we each have a multitude of identities and that depending on the circumstance we emphasize one: the San Diegan, the WASP, the American, the Spanish speaker, the worker, the human being. But the reviewer is more cautious:
Greg, Jennifer, Swervecurve, Steven,
I wish I could agree with you … and with Sen … that my reaction was born out of empathy. It would make it more noble and less malevolent. But I don’t remember feeling any empathy for the windshield washer. In fact, I was furious at him as well for not having the blanquillos to stand up to her. Nor do I think that we had anything in common: to the degree that a windshield washer is similar to a barista, I think everyone could claim that they work in the “service industry.”
Race, it seems, probably was a contributing factor. Especially given that I was in South Africa less than a decade after the end of apartheid. But I don’t think it was the predominant factor. If I picture Condalezza Rice doing the exact same thing to a working class white kid (or, for that matter, Bill Cosby doing it to a white – or any other color – woman), I’m sure I’d be just as indignant.
No, I can’t convince myself that I reacted out of empathy. I don’t think I even reacted to the woman’s callousness. I’d say it was something much more objective and detached. I think what made my blood pressure rise and my fists clench was a disruption of an abstract regard for “equality” or “fairness.” My rage didn’t come because I related to the man with the blue rag or because I was offended by the woman with the wine glass. It came because I saw that one person had power (ie. money) and another person did not … and that was enough.
Assuming I’m being honest with myself, where does that violent desire for equality from? Did I learn it as a good desciple of west coast liberal academia? Or is it deeply programmed into our DNA? Did early bands of homo sapien, or even our predecessors, fare better when members of a tribe felt themselves obligated to enforce “egalitarianism” even if it came at the cost of smashing some homo-sapien face into a tree trunk?
Leahpeah,
I agree. I think that high-handedness is always inspired by 1.) insecurity and 2.) fear of losing a position of unwarranted power/priviledge. But evolutionarily speaking, that makes sense to me. As does someone who doesn’t have power wanting to knock the king off the hill. But what I don’t get is why any creature would feel a gut impulse to enforce a sense of overall equality.
I feel your reaction was a good one…it conveys beauty in a human soul. Why oughtn’t you feel rage and repulsion to see a human being clearly enjoying the subjugation and domination of another? And why not call it what it is? Your reaction tells me there is hope for humans, that reaction tells me as much when I see it and feel it all over, in different forms. It is one that asserts what is Good; refutes what is Cruel, and unconcscious.
Honestly Oso, your reaction was normal for a humanitarian. The only thing I could think of that would of got back at her was to get up and give the young man with the windex bottle a big hug right in front of her insipid facade.
while race or class played a part in this exchange, i think ultimately this woman was a bully. bullies tend to target those they deem weaker than them. in this instance she knew that this man probably wouldn’t lift a finger at her. i wonder if she would have done the same if it was a woman (her size or bigger of any race) holding the rag and windex bottle.
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