{"id":94398,"date":"2016-04-28T05:04:10","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T13:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=94398"},"modified":"2016-04-28T05:04:10","modified_gmt":"2016-04-28T13:04:10","slug":"listening-to-the-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=94398","title":{"rendered":"Listening To The Other"},"content":{"rendered":"

One smart goy writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The first time I was told white men didn\u2019t 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\u2019t stop there: I didn\u2019t just want to make my teachers think I could listen to \u201cthe other,\u201d I wanted to really hear what it was like to be \u201cthe other,\u201d 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\u2019m not trying to convince them. I was trying to convince others, but you see how it\u2019s 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 \u201creading books about lesbians\u201d 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\u2019m okay with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One smart goy writes: The first time I was told white men didn\u2019t 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. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t