This last weekend I attended Norwescon for the first time.

I’m sitting at my first panel of the day, titled Colonial Imperialism in Fandom.

The panelists are all Native Americans, one woman is also Romani and has some very insightful and passionate things to say about the term ‘Gypsy’ (Basically? Don’t use it. Ever.)

All of them, in fact, are passionate, funny and breathtakingly intelligent.  They speak honestly about how they feel when people appropriate their culture. They discuss the actions of the Federal government and the impact on tribal life. They challenge us to research, read and listen.

For the most part, we all do.

Then, at the end of the question and answer time, a person took the panelists to task for their word choice, for their anger, for their honesty because it offended her. They intended to educate them on a better way to get their point across, one that would not offend.

If your eyes are as big as saucers at the unbelievable gall of this person you are not alone.

I sat rooted to my seat, sure I wasn’t hearing this person right, that any minute they’d backtrack or we’d find out they were making a point about how the panelists helped them. Something.

But no. This person was dead serious.

And she failed, at the most basic level, to do the one thing we all, as cis, straight white people should be doing when marginalized peoples tell their story.

Seriously.  We all need to be quiet and listen to the person. Sure, they might be angry.  Their words might seem harsh, judgmental and aggressive. But don’t’ they deserve to feel that way after hundreds of years of oppression? After generations of being treated as less than? Aren’t they human and have the full range of emotions at their disposal just as we do?

Sometimes I think “How would I feel if I had to swallow that thick, rotten sludge of racism, bigotry and cultural appropriation on a daily basis?”

I think I’d get pretty sick and tired of it. I think I’d need to get pissed off a little. I think I’d want someone to just shut up and listen to me for once.

Wouldn’t you?

It’s time we stop trying to educate them about their wounds. It’s time we stopped telling them how they get to be angry. We don’t have that right. And thinking, even for a moment, that we do is privilege.

If you’re white, cis and straight like I am, we’ve had the privilege of living the lives of the descendants of the conquerors instead of the conquered. That’s power, no matter your gender or economic status. Our experiences of colonial imperialism have been one of privilege, while most others who live here in our country have had the experience of the oppressed, the marginalized, the less than.

I’ve been offended by what a marginalized person has said. I’ve felt very uncomfortable, to the point of turning off my brain so I didn’t listen anymore.

What I had to do once I realized that, however, was ask myself “Why am I feeling this way?”

It’s a simple question more of us should be asking ourselves but we’re too afraid of the answer. Because the answer is even more uncomfortable than what that person was saying to us.

For me, the answers I saw were racism and bigotry lodged deep in my soul. I had ingested it from my family in ways I wasn’t aware of. I had absorbed it from media without knowing it. And I had to confront it by seeing it for what it was and endeavoring to do better.

Does it still rear up? Unfortunately yes. But instead of hiding from it, I take a good, long look. The more I examine these ugly, dark parts of myself, the less power they have, the more they fade.

I can tell you, however, that I would never have discovered these parts of myself if I hadn’t listened.

And that’s really the key.

Too often we hide our discomfort, we escape our self-examination by turning it all back around on the marginalized group.  And (excuse my language) that shit has to stop.

They need us to listen.

The post It’s Time To Listen appeared first on Trish Heinrich.