Brandon Dean

I am tired of the race thing. Can I not deal with it? Oh yeah, I CANT.

I know this girl in my grad program who when she gets a little tispy, will try to start “deep” or “controversial” conversations about issues concerning my race, or sexual orientation. She will point out a comment I made on facebook about a girl wearing boat shoes and how I had something to say about boat shoes having a particular connotation where im from in the south. Instead of letting me say what the connotation is, she shushed me thinking I was going to get into an argument. She does this all the time instigating topics and then wanting to terminate it when people could potentially not see eye to eye. 

I am able to conduct a conversation with tact. I am not a confrontational person, and she of all people should know that I among the grads am MOST capable of carrying on a conversation about a controversial subject in an intelligent manner. 

What burns me up the most is that she often uses the fact that I am on a minority based fellowship as an argument to say I am spoiled or privileged over the white majority in the program, just because her former black boyfriend who also had the fellowship at one point was spoiled. She even thinks I am a special commodity, thats more desirable because of being a minority. First of all, I’m not her ex boyfriend, so just because we are both black has NO bearing on anything that we may have in common. Secondly without the fellowship I WOULD NOT BE IN GRAD SCHOOL AT ALL, where as the other white upper middle class students I am surrounded by are here in spite of having little aid. I wouldn’t be able to attend grad school at all if it weren’t for my fellowship which is part of the point of the award existing in the first place. Its there because when you get past undergrad, you are several times less likely to see people of color, especially African Americans, in graduate and terminal degree fields. And if it weren’t for this, I would be one less. Heck, even WITH the fellowship there are only 2 black people in a group of over 60 graduate students, and NONE in the over 50+ member art history graduate programs. 

In essence, I am tired of people thinking they know my perspective due to some generalization about black people, or by some black guy they know. They don’t know shit about what MY situation is, and if they think getting a fellowship means I am privileged above them, they haven’t taken a hard look at their lives to know what real privilege is. 

Real privilege is being able to paint whatever you want and not have it be politicized. Real privilege is doing something bad and having it only reflect on YOU, and not your entire race. Real privilege is being in an environment where your race never factors in as a negative. Real privilege is never being told you are doing something well in spite of who you are.

So in my most polite opinion, fuck her, and anyone who thinks I am spoiled or priveledged over white people. I am tired of people not being able to see things from anything other than their perspective. And what I have found is that the people who consider themselves open minded liberals are often just as bad at it as any other more predictable group.

No one is going to read this. It doesn’t matter, I don’t give a shit.