Yes, frequently. I said above that the only way to understand the undertakings of another social group would be to become part of that group – you can’t look through a window at others and expect to understand the minutia of systemic oppression inherent in the system we’ve all inherited. There is no academic equivalent to oppression based on things you can’t change nor choose.
I started worrying about this when I first moved to the States as a kid and was immediately beaten up for being gay (I was actually French) then when I lost my French and picked up English again, but with my family English accent, I learned what a Limey was. So I lost that accent – I betrayed who I was in order to blend.
It was really at 14 and through my second serious girlfriend, who was a Native American, that I learned some hard truths. That this happens to people who can’t “blend in” or “change who they are”, that people who you thought you knew were actually racists and that racially blended couples weren’t popular. That really began my journey to try and approach the world with empathy first. I learned about the bravery of not betraying who you are from some kid whose name escapes me – the little brother of a girl I was friends with - in high school. He came out, in the late 80’s – one of the bravest people I’ve ever met.
I’ve said some stupid shit along the way too. In college, a girl I was seeing was half-caucasian and half-latino. I jokingly referred to her as my “favorite little half-bean”. Thanksgiving dinner with her father’s side of the family was another learning experience – not when she brought up the half-bean, everyone thought that was hilarious, but when it came up that I wasn’t a citizen and I mentioned that “green cards aren’t actually green, they’re pink” - I could tell by the looks on her fathers and uncles faces that I’d just said something really stoopid so I added “most American’s don’t know that…” and I saw it dawn on them that this gringo wasn’t being intentionally nor unintentionally racist, he’s just stoopid – and when he says “American” he actually does mean us and he doesn’t think of us as Mexican first, but as generically American. It was a bumpy start, but we got along famously.
There are plenty more examples – trying to explain to my rich white friends why everyone these days seems to hate “rich old white men”, trying to explain why gay rights needs to be a thing, how havig a parade to celebrate it isn’t degrading heterosexuals because every day is hetero day or, in one of my more foolish times thinking that “the only thing I won’t tolerate is intolerance” was an enlightened PoV.
Bottom line is, I’m still learning, I’m still screwing up, and when I said that seeing this “RBF” defined in the WaPo - of all things - along with them suggesting that the cure is, apparently, “a wee smile all the time, or being a boy or being an unattractive woman” was the type of idiotic thinking that would ruin my day…
…and it has.
