Reply #9: thanks for your story...a lot of people don't believe it [View All]

[noiretextatique]

until it happens to them. interestingly enough, i was just having a conversation about this denial the other day. a black woman claimed she experienced racism, and immediately, two white women dismissed her experience as "something else." one even claimed it was "dangerous" to make such a claim without "evidence," and then began to recite her experience with racism and bigotry because she's jewish. this same person however, denied the black woman's experience was what the black woman thought it was...amazing.
i am always amazed when this happens...and it happens a lot.

i am not sure what the denial is about, but i gently explained to those two women:

you don't get to decide what someone else experiences, nor do you have the right to automatically dismiss someone else's experience as invalid...because you have no idea WHAT she experienced. still amazes me that this happens so frequently.