When I teach the conflict management skills in my interpersonal communication classes, my students often say to me, "I understand the concepts but it's hard to think that way in the moment."
How well I know.
I was tested this afternoon and found myself wanting. A colleague attacked my presenting self and instead of responding calmly I bristled and became defensive in a way that still annoys me. So I'll write about it!
What happened? I'll review the event from the best of my memory and use material from the 13th Edition of Looking Out, Looking In (Ronald Adler and Russell Proctor II, 2010) to analyze it.
This colleague asked me if I was going to here Mindy Williams, a new Humanities instructor, lead a
discussion called, "Can We Talk About White Privilege? Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." I said that I was indeed white and privileged and knew quite a bit about the issue. I didn't say that I've been to a few presentations about this issue in the past and that one of the fundamental aspects of my doctoral dissertation was an interrogation of the construction of white identity in mid-Century America. In fact, I learned a ton about white privilege when I was 19 years old and got busted for carrying pot onto a plane and did not do any jail time. I knew then that I owed my freedom to my skin color and social class. I also know that we are not in a post-racial society. I know this because I can read and think and do so.
Oh....see how much I wrote there? Can you feel the irritation? That irritation is part of the emotional miasma that swirls through most liberally raised members of the 15% when confronted with issues of race. There is a certain amount of shame in knowing that, no matter how clean my own hands are, much of what I have been blessed with is mine through the fluke of being born white and middle class. Also, there's always the issue of genocide in the family history of almost any white person in America.
Of course, a cursory glance at history tells us that there is no truly innocent society. We all arise from seas of blood. I say that not as a denial of my own privilege but to put it in millenia of context.
But I didn't say all those particular things. I just said that I was familiar with the topic of white privilege.
Then my colleague said, "Don't you want to give support to a younger colleague?"
According to Adler and Proctor, this is a "counterfeit question." 'Questions that trap the speaker. When your friend says, "You didn't like that movie, did you?", you're being backed into a corner. It's clear that your friend disapproves, so the question leaves you with two choices: You can disagree and defend your position, or you can devalue your reaction by lying or equivocating -- "I guess it wasn't perfect." Consider how much easier it would be to respond to the sincere question, "What did you think of the movie?"' (p. 249). Last week we read the chapter on listening and this week I'm actually calling my students to have them perform active listening skills, so this kind of question was on my mind.
So the question I was asked was actually telling me, "If you don't come to this event with me, you will be a bad person because you won't be supporting your younger colleague."
So, on top of emotions that were already stirred up by the issue of race and privilege (and my gilt over the latter) I felt like my presenting self was under attack: "when others confront us with face-threatening acts -- messages that seem to challenge the image we want to project -- we are likely to resist their messages." (p. 348) I responded first through my usual method -- avoiding responding to the threat. So I just said, "Anyway, I need to go to my office hours."
So my colleague said, "I'm skipping my office hours to go. Come on."
For some reason I then said, "Well, when I was here during my first five years I put on many events and no one came." I'm not sure why I said that. But my colleague was sure, saying that I was the last person in the world to be suspected of being motivated by spite.
I was being called spiteful. This person had not in the past, at least in my perception, been mean to me so I felt confused and hurt. And I also wondered if I was being spiteful. As I think about it I really don't know what motivated me to talk about my unhappy past. Was it that I meant, "I suffered so new people should suffer"? Am I spiteful? Or was I trying a shift response, was I trying to get her to not be mean to me by saying, "Look, I suffered when I was new. It's part of what happens when you're new. So be nice to me now." Or maybe I was intending to say, "Look, I paid my dues."
Instead, my colleague said to someone else, "Kake isn't going to the event because she already knows everything about white privilege." The tone of voice with which this was said was sarcastic. This was another face-threatening communication as it implied that I really didn't know what I was claiming that I knew.
At that point I started saying that I was feeling shame and guilt. Now those are two different emotions. Guilt is reserved for things we've done which require reparation. Guilt can be redeemed. Shame is a feeling about one's wrongness as a person. Was I feeling guilt? No. If I didn't go to my office hours and get promised work accomplished for my students I would feel guilt. But I did feel shame. I felt like I was a bad person or that I was being called a bad person and that even if it was the other person's perception that I was a bad person I actually was a bad person because I was failing to respond appropriately to someone calling me one. (Sounds like one of R.D. Laing's knots, doesn't it?)
I was also angry. One of the reason I said I was feeling shame was that I wanted to attack back. I thought that saying I felt shame would evoke some sense in my colleague that what she had said had "made me" feel bad.
And see? I'm using no-no words to talk about emotions now! My colleague didn't "make me" have any emotion at all. Every fluttering bit of electricity whipping neurotransmitters (mostly cortisol) around my brain was based on my own interpretation of what was said and how it was said. I could have interpreted her words as being an attempt to use humor to persuade an old woman (me) to move out of her comfort zone and go to a presentation she might enjoy.
I keep wondering what I "should" have said and if it would have made a difference? I could have sought more information, as Adler and Proctor (and I) advise when confronted with criticism (p. 362) "Why do you think I said that out of spite?" Or, I could have been open about the actual emotions I was experiencing and owned my confusion and hurt: "I feel sad when I perceive your word choice as telling me I'm a bad person for making the personal work choices that I do."
Why has this incident annoyed me so much that I felt compelled to blog about it? Because I also fall victim to the fallacies of approval and perfection. My textbook says about the latter, "People who accept the fallacy of perfection believe that a worthwhile communicator should be able to handle every situation with complete confidence and skill." (p. 145) I know that it's not necessary for me to have the approval of others in any but a work-life sense. And I also know that perfection is not achievable in our human realm. And yet, I will still sometimes feel ashamed if I'm not the "perfect" communicator who is able to get everyone to like her.
So I guess I'll continue shelling out the $20 co-pay to my therapist.
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