Last night I had a dream, which is not a remarkable event in itself, but this dream was about discrimination. Interestingly, it involved place of work, an authority figure, being insulted, belittled, and shamed by verbal comments in public, the rescue of a coworker, and the search for an ethically sound decision. The plot for a movie? An essay? No, just part of my life, just me telling myself some things I had forgotten.
Dreams take so many different shapes, mean various things, it all depends who tells the story. Be it a fortune teller, a psychoanalyst (Freud, Lacan, Klein follower), counselor, psychiatrist, scientist, neurologist… and the list could continue, you know, boring.
In this case, I am the owner of the dream, and that is how I tell the story. I know what discrimination is, I know how it feels, I know some tricks to overcome it (some more effective, some not so much). Above all, because I have been privileged in so many ways, I was able to raise above it (most of the times). But my dream reminded me how my personal encounter with discrimination shaped my life by destroying, blocking, shutting down paths I could have taken in life.
I am here because I was there, sort to speak. Gladly, I did not choose to hate, I could have. But I did not. And that was the single best conscious decision I have ever made. This was a long time ago, although it lasted for years, and in place of a disclaimer I am revisiting this story cleaning the room were I lived until I was 29. Time traveling exists!
Apparently unrelated, I read a random post in a social media venue, where a White small business owner felt discriminated by an African American woman. In reading all responses, I acknowledge there are several perspectives, but my story only lets me see this point of view, here in my posts:
“Exactly my point… Awareness of privilege (the “white” kind or any other) is a very hard step to conquest. It is even harder than accepting other shortcomings because it is rooted in the environment we grow up (which we can’t change). I choose to understand instead of getting angry, I choose to respect instead of hating, and I choose to think critically instead of blindly accepting dogmatic views in this world. I am a work in progress.”
And I like who I am. And this is a tribute to my family, each one of them. Because I chose right backed up by each one of those journeys. The immigrants escaping war, the immigrants escaping poverty, the natives fighting for their rights, all of us looking for a better life. I understand it. That’s all. But understanding, true understanding has a price. It demands some kind of action. This is what I do to fight discrimination.
(Thanks to Google maps for letting me point to the exact place on earth where I lived through all that!)
