One day my friend was explaining to us cis folks about the cis gaze.
“It’s this way that cis people have about staring at trans folks. You would probably understand, given how you experience the white gaze.”
I was taken aback. Gears turned in my head. “Well… no. You have the period before your transition to compare how people stare at you then versus now, but, well, I’ve always been a brown girl in a white world. I’ve probably internalized the white gaze, if anything.”
Sometimes people skeptical about racism (🤣) ask me about my experiences with racism. I explain that while I have experienced overt instances of racism, it’s the more subtle kinds that are more insidious. It’s the can’t-quite-put-a-finger-on-it, but-know-something-is-there feeling.
This passage I was reading in my social psychology textbook validated this phenomenon of can’t-quite-put-a-finger-on-it miasma (emphasis mine):
“Do other people perceive us in terms of meta-stereotypes? To find out, Vorauer and Kumhyr (2001) had pairs of Aboriginal and White Canadian students at the University of Manitoba engage in a getting-acquainted conversation. Afterward, each person rated their conversation partner and how they believed their partner perceived them. The results were striking—white Canadians who were high in prejudice felt that they were stereotyped by their Aboriginal partner when, in reality, they were not. Low-prejudice White participants did not feel as though they were stereotyped by their Aboriginal conversation partner, and they were right. Interestingly, neither high nor low prejudice stereotyped their Aboriginal partner, and indeed the Aboriginal participants did not feel as though they had been the target of prejudice. This story does not have a happy ending, however. ** It turned out that Aboriginal participants who were paired with a high-prejudice White participant reported feeling self-critical, ashamed, and angry with themselves. In other words, the Aboriginal participants attributed the negativity they experienced during the interaction to themselves rather than to prejudice. **” — E. Aronson, T. Wilson, D., B. Fehr, and R.M Ackhert
In more words, the effects of not understanding that there is a miasma to begin with does a number on poc’s psyches. Another analogy is the term mansplaining—before that term was a thing, womyn often felt crazy in the can’t-quite-put-a-finger-on-it, but something-is-up feeling in everyday interactions.
Something meta happened while I was reading the above passage on meta-stereotypes. So, I was overhearing some people talking, but they weren’t in sight. I assumed this person was white. The only reason why I know I assumed they were White is when I actually glanced over and saw that they were actually Asian. A— I noticed that I had formed an initial impression on this person based solely on their voice and the assumption they were White, and B—I noticed this impression completely change when I saw they were Asian. It wasn’t negative, but it was completely different. I was amazed to viscerally see this change in perception in real-time.
So. poc have a lot unconditioning to do, regardless of if we’re aware of it or not. (actually, everyone does, but poc have a particular kind of unconditioning to undertake.)