Learning to Listen

I’ll never forget the first time I got shouted down because I was White. 30 years later, I still use that lesson in voicelessness to learn how to listen.

Photo by Sushil Nash on Unsplash

Spring 1991.

For a White kid in a Black school, blushing sucks.

Not that blushing is a White thing; everybody blushes. But for me, the uncontrolled rush of blood to my face is evidence of a direct hit — a literal effect of someone figuratively getting under my skin.

Right now I’m blushing intensely, because I’m getting lots of direct hits from my Black classmates. They’re angry at my counterargument to a leading question from our English teacher:

Is the “invisibility” in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man universal? Or is it specific to the Black experience in America?

This is pretty rarified compared to Magic vs. Bird. But everything is personal now, fueled by the tension we all feel as we near the end of high school.

For my Black classmates, the tension comes from a new awareness of the world beyond our majority Black community. They were warned by their parents and by older siblings. They hear about it from Public Enemy, Bob Marley, and Gil Scott-Heron. But in the last couple years, they’ve begun to experience the daily indignities: getting followed in a store; getting pulled over by cops for no reason; being refused service for laughing too loud in a restaurant. They’re starting to feel uncomfortable, and unsafe.

For me, the tension comes from fatigue at being an outsider. After 13 years of passing, I realize that my friends, now semi-mobile teenagers, are living separate lives. I don’t go to their homes. I’m not invited to birthday parties. I don’t know what they do on weekends. I stay on my side of the tracks, they stay on theirs.

Black and White and in between, we’ve been simmering in a toxic stew for our entire lives. None of us like it, but we come at it from different perspectives.

Which is why we’re arguing over Invisible Man.

For my Black classmates, Ellison’s “invisibility” is the experience of Black Americans struggling with racial hostility. It’s about the humiliation, and futility, of “uplift suasion” as a strategy to earn the respect of White people. It’s about choosing “voluntary invisibility” instead of settling for the “involuntary invisibility” that only benefits the people holding them back.

For me, Ellison’s “invisibility” is the experience of any individual who finds themselves a “minority”. That includes my Black classmates in America, but also a woman in a traditionally male field; a Chinese-American at a White college; a gay man on a football team or in a fraternity; or an American living in India.

I also see myself as being “invisible”, never more than at that moment. I’m the White kid in a Black school getting shouted down by the Black kids who don’t agree with me. My individuality negated, my perspective dismissed with a final, heated “Just stop talking.”

Suddenly, and uncomfortably, I’m voiceless.

It Doesn’t Matter that All Lives Matter

Over 30 years, every time I think about that day in English class, I still blush. But not because I’m still aggrieved or hurt. I blush because I’m embarrassed.

I blush because I was wrong.

Let’s start with Ellison.

Ellison was a humanist, a democrat, and a believer in the ideals of America. No doubt he would agree that “invisibility” is universal, and that prejudice is not limited to Black Americans. He would also agree that “contextual invisibility” exists, and that, in the right circumstances, even a historically privileged person can experience the dehumanizing pain of prejudice. Even a White kid arguing with his Black classmates about his book.

But Ellison wouldn’t care — not as much as he cared about the Black American experience. Ellison was a Black American, and Black America was his focus. His intellectual and emotional passions were Black voicelessness, including his own, and the unique voices he and other Black Americans created, both in literature and music, to achieve the equality we keep denying them.

So there’s no way Ellison wrote Invisible Man to describe universal “invisibility”. The fact that “invisibility” could be universal just doesn’t matter.

I think about this distinction every time someone uses “all lives matter” to attack Black Lives Matter. Yes, all lives matter. Just as everyone can experience prejudice, or be shouted down for an unpopular opinion, or get killed wrongfully by cops.

But Black Lives Matter isn’t about “all lives”. It’s about Black lives, and the objectively unique and twisted way in which those lives have been bought and sold, dehumanized and murdered, throughout our history.

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So while it’s true all lives matter, that fact itself doesn’t matter. Not within the context of Black Lives Matter.

And that was my mistake that day with Ellison. In that context, in that classroom, my “invisibility” didn’t matter. I was worrying about myself, dismissing perspectives that made me uncomfortable, and not listening to my Black classmates as they wrestled, in a relatively safe environment, with existential questions that for me were academic, and temporary.

I was a bad ally that day, and that’s what really matters.

A Draft Playbook for Being a Good Listener

I would love to say that I learned my lesson 30 years ago, and ever since I’ve been the good listener and ally I want to be — the good listener and ally I should be, given the head start I have from my experience growing up.

Unfortunately, that’s not true. I have other examples similar to that day, and they make me blush as well.

The truth is being a White ally to Black America is hard. There’s no simple answers, and no opportunity to turn back the clock. There’s no playbook for listening when the conversation gets uncomfortable, as it so often does for White people listening to Black Americans share their unique and difficult experiences.

Really, the best I have is a few tips that I follow to manage the risk of screwing up. These aren’t totally satisfying, but they’re a good start.

1. Remember it’s not about me personally (unless it is). In general, unless I’ve just said or done something regrettable, listening begins by simply letting someone speak: about what they think, how they feel, why they’re angry, why they’re afraid. I also really try to be careful about expressing any self-congratulatory exceptionalism (which is ironic, given this entire blog post). Instead, I stay as neutral as possible.
2. But it is about me as a White person (generally speaking). White Americans have accumulated wealth and power at the expense of other groups of people based on imagined differences, especially Black Americans. This is objective fact. So when a Black American finds their voice by pointing this out and accusing me, I accept it. Sure, it sucks to be held up as a representative of an entire group of people and to have my individuality wiped clean. But tough shit. That’s called racial prejudice, and part of listening to people find their voice is experiencing voicelessness myself.
3. Remember it’s not about finding a solution (unless it is). In general, unless I’m specifically tasked with solving the problem being discussed, I steer clear of solutions. This is very difficult for me, because I like problem solving. But a rush to solutions is easily interpreted as a desire to stop listening. It’s also hard to talk about a solution without making it seem as if I’m blaming the speaker, and assigning them tasks. So it’s best to listen now, then return to solutions later.
4. Avoid “whataboutism”. This is one of the most popular and insidious logical fallacies in the racism denier’s arsenal. It’s also central to my counterargument in English class 30 years ago and every “all lives matter” counterargument today. I try desperately to avoid it, and hate myself whenever I slip.
5. Don’t expect a reward. In the moment, being an ally — listening — is difficult, uncomfortable, and without any reward. Again, tough shit. The process of learning to be an ally needs to be reward enough.
6. Don’t ask for an explanation. Asking for details, or even admitting my confusion, is similar to trying to find a solution, and as counterproductive. Being an ally is about listening first, understanding later — especially when I hear things I don’t understand, don’t like, or don’t agree with. Also, people who feel voiceless don’t want to spend the voice they do have explaining to me how my actions, inactions, or ignorance hurts them. It’s best not to ask.
7. Research your own explanation. When I hear things I don’t understand, don’t like, or don’t agree with, I make a note for later and then do some homework. Not only is this respectful to the person talking to me, it also gives me time to calm down and depersonalize the conversation, which improves both my objectivity and the chance I’m going to learn something useful. Don’t take my word for it: look up Critical Race Theory, focusing on its academic history. It’s pretty complex and surprisingly dry, but I bet you’ll be surprised at how little it resembles what you hear about it on Fox News or Twitter.

Practice Makes Everything Better

The final tip I try to follow is to practice being an ally whenever I can. Especially in contexts that are less difficult and complex than Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, or any of the topics Fox News uses to scare White America away from thinking clearly about what we really need to do to make America great.

I look around, and I can see abundant opportunities to listen to people finding their voice. The female colleague antagonized by male colleagues. The homeless man outside Walgreens who may in fact just need money for the bus, or maybe not. The friend navigating a relationship with an abusive parent or partner.

And yes, even me 30 years ago: the White high school kid struggling to figure out why his Black classmates don’t trust him, and don’t care about his experience. His voicelessness may be contextual, and the consequences temporary. But the feelings of voicelessness are real, and worth getting him to talk about.

Even if, as a middle-aged man, he’s still working through the lesson.

Links for clicker tappers who also made it this far:

• Background on Ellison’s Invisible Man
• Background on Shadow and Act, Ellison’s collection of intense essays — a must read for anyone interested in Ellison and the topics that interested him
• Great review of “whataboutism”
• Detailed, semi-academic discussion of Critical Race Theory

Originally published at https://www.realpagano.com on August 8, 2021.