Listening To The Other

One smart goy writes:

The first time I was told white men didn’t listen enough, I was in 9th grade, and we were reading The House on Mango Street, or A Raisin in the Sun, or To Kill a Mockingbird. But I was a person of conscience, so I read those books, and many more, including books about lesbians, books about Asians-Americans, books about women hating men, books about suicidal women, books about gay men, books about colonialism. And I didn’t stop there: I didn’t just want to make my teachers think I could listen to “the other,” I wanted to really hear what it was like to be “the other,” so I read up on atheism and became an atheist, I read up on Buddhism and practice Zen meditation for a while. I read up on Kundalini Yoga and did that. I tried drugs. I committed sexual sins. I watched Kurosawa movies in a room with gay black men and lesbians and anarchists. Then I moved to the South, and I learned to attend Baptist church, to watch NASCAR, to eat and appreciate the differences between Eastern and Western Carolina BBQ. I watched hours of YouTube videos about orthodox Judaism, I have read and taught the Koran. I could go on, but you know, at this point, I know who is reading: Michael, Mark, and possibly Luke. And I’m not trying to convince them. I was trying to convince others, but you see how it’s a hapless project. I will be accused of not listening, of always dominating, and they will not hear my rebuttal. And to satisfy Michael, I will even say that I understand that “reading books about lesbians” is not the same as really listening, because books are a white male construct or somethingrather and basically a cis-person can never understand. Well, fine. But I can hardly become a lesbian at this point, and I think I’m okay with that.