For all that I call class "lesbian class", we're far more often talking about race and class and privileges than queers specifically.
It's all gone into a larger cauldren of thought that is fed with the passing statements and observations I make or overhear day to day. Maybe class has made me think about it more. Perhaps people around me are also pondering these things more. I'm not sure.
Scarcity, heritage, and privilege do seem to be coming up a lot.
20% of my grade in this class revolves around a group project. We got assigned the topic "queers and race". Now, I'm happy to work on queers and race. But I'm also intensely aware that, in a group of 4, I'm seemingly the only caucasian. Well, to be fair, it is only lately that I've become intensely aware of it, as no one else in the group seems willing to start work on the project. (and I'm left to ponder on my own)
In trying to think about the project, and the course, I've formed some ideas, but I don't know what to do with them. To me, race seems inextricably tied to heritage. There's a whole host of assumptions and history and cultural mores that go along with belonging to one of the worlds tribes. Its a shared history and experience.
What if one has no history? If you're culturally unmoored? I look white. But my heritage begins and ends in a hospital in Miami, with a name tag of a vaguely Italian name. I'm an abandoned mutt, of some variety. Does it even matter what kind? Finally taken from the child-pound at the age of three, I embarked on a new history. But you can't give a new history wholesale to a 3-year-old. They remember too much.
So how can I approach race? I have no tribe. My mom came from Dundalk, she was raised to be a wife; her dad worked steel, became a foreman when he lopped the fingers off his hand. My dad ran a car parts store when they adopted me, and has failed to hold a down a job for more than a few years ever since. That's my tribe, an adopted tribe of three.
Mostly, I let my past lie lightly on me. Perhaps it lies lightly because there is not much accumulated past to weigh it down. But how do I approach race and heritage with people, my classmates, my group mates, who must have a different perspective? I have no clue. I'm at a loss.
So. Scarcity. The idea that there is a finite amount of privilege- wealth, attention, accolades- and we must all scrabble and scramble for our small bits of it; once garnered, they must be held onto like a magic talisman. That any bit of privilege someone else has acquired means less for me.
I've never understood this idea. I cannot subscribe. Even when I was working three jobs just to go to college, I didn't resent my wealthier classmates *for their money*. I just couldn't respect how they squandered their opportunity. Why go to college and waste your parents' hard-earned money for something you couldn't even be bothered to get out of bed for? Why not go off and do something you *wanted to do*?
The notion of scarcity is what creates division; it ensures that people view each other as competition, and are less likely to help one another. It also feeds into the notion of entitlement. If one feels as if one has wrested one's worldly goods from the hands of the heartless world, that one's spoils are rightfully won... then one is more likely to feel entitled to these spoils. Instead of honoring the capricious grace that gives and takes away, americans rail against cruel fate and the man keeping them down when they have nothing, and only credit themselves for getting ahead. Ah, well.
Fuck it. I'm tired of caring, of explaining. I've been lucky, yes. I was swooped from abandonment to genteel poverty. I was born with some brains. I appear to be white. I've played the hand that was dealt me, and I'll keep playing it. But nothing I do, nothing I disown, nothing I keep will hinder *someone else* from getting ahead. Resenting me is pointless. Nothing is constant.
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