Don't classify me!
My parents invited me to dinner one night this summer. My mom told me they we grilling out, and said I should stop and get a nice watermelon from the farmer's market for dessert.
That night, I was driving home from work, and decided that I'd stop at the grocery store on my way. My drive from work is close to an hour and a half, and I didn't know if the farmer's market would still be open. As I drive, I think about the location of this grocery store. It's out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by farm country.
Wait a minute! There are no black people in this area. I'm going to have to walk into a store packed with white people and buy just a watermelon.
There is no fucking way. None.
I don't even order fried chicken when I go out to eat, no matter how much I may want to. That shit is eaten in the privacy of my home. Even though I'm a rock n' roll kind of girl, I like the occasional hip hop. I still feel like an ass blasting Mos Def in my car. Especially since it's all dented up on the side. Typical...black girl in a hooptie listening to rap!
I went home and told my boyfriend, who is white, that he has to buy the watermelon. Or at the very least, carry the watermelon, which I will then pay for.
Of course this leads me to wonder if other people feel this way. I can't be the only person worried about reinforcing some stupid stereotype? Am I?
posted by jess @ 11:05 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Welcome to the gang!! Great first post!!
No, you're not the only one. I have a very superficial example from this past week.
I had a minor eye injury, so I couldn't wear my left contact lens. The only alternative was to wear my glasses...which make me look totally like the stereotypical nerdy Asian. Shallow, I know, but I hate it so much that I went back to my contacts today even though the eye doctor told me not to wear them until Thursday.
Don’t worry, you aren’t alone! I hate it when I have to say ‘I’m white’ because of the stereotypes that are carried with it(Damian’s post – Not Quite White – that was about me). And I live in the South, which doesn’t help a bit. I find that I go out of my way to make sure people know that I don’t fit into ‘Southern white’ stereotype. I was born in MI, but I’ve been in SC since I was 7 and I’ve fought the Southern accent from day one. I don’t want anyone mistaking me for a backwoods, ignorant, racist, redneck.
J
To debunk a common stereotype, I enrolled in an engineering college with an engineering major. I wear t-shirts and jeans to work and code/program/route packets all day long in your stereotypical Dilbert cartoon. I don't wear makeup and my hair is always in a ponytail (unless I'm on a client site.. then I dress in black slacks and a collared shirt). To convince the world that women belong in IT, I have given up my right to be girly. I can tell a man the difference between Dolby Digital and DTS... and I hate every bit of it. I regret it. And to think, my whole career started when this guy told me, "Girls can't be engineers." I had to prove him wrong. I did... now where am I? Going back to school to be a doctor... to make a difference... to be alive again.
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