Musings: The Friend Argument

[ismnotwasm]

10. I have this story

When I was young, I ran away from home and hit the streets. Many stories later, I had developed a way of talking street, and hanging out with other dispossessed and damaged young people. I found a different identity then poor working class white--in my case it was hanging out almost exclusively with Native Americans in the city. Many stories later, when I was secure, In school and stable and white, I made attempts to use my experience to have NA's relate to me---in retrospect, I was NOT to trying to relate to them-- While I never ran into rudeness, I found a..wall.. there. I came to understand this, What were my very few years of experience to a people who have been battered for centuries? What did I know about having my culture ripped away, stolen and denigrated and being lost in the city? Compared to the NA experience what I saw and felt was incidental.

So I learned, and what's interesting, that it wasn't until I was off the streets and a functional human, I met powerful NA's deeply involved in their very active and diverse cultures.

I knew nothing, because of how I process experience--through Whiteness. A lesson I carry with me always.