Privilege

I inhabit a racial liminal space since I am Sri Lankan, Portuguese, Dutch, Anglo-Indian and Scots. I recently realized that I inhabit other liminal spaces.

A few weeks ago, I headed out on my usual trip to the Farmers Market, a trip I always I look forward to. I love how the seasons bring different vegetables, fruits and other products. I love tasting the vegan cheeses, sampling the seasonal fruit, and the slow joy of looking at the huge variety of flours, grains and dried legumes. Throughout the year: tulips and pansies in the Spring, roses and sunflowers in Summer, fiery dahlias in the Fall, and branches of holly and eucalyptus in the Winter.

I stepped onto the bus and settled in for the ride. A few stops later, a young guy got on, in a black t-shirt printed with dolls heads, flowers growing out of the empty eye sockets. He was eating an energy bar but kept slumping over. Outside the day was already warm. Along the city streets, groups of homeless people sat in the shade with their backs against walls. Some waited for the free food store to open. One man lay face down on the sidewalk. And across the street, a tourist family with their small child dressed in white shorts and a white shirt, walked into Muji.

Suddenly I felt the chasm of no money vs a lot of money. It’s something I’m aware of most of the time as I move around my city. Some people get by. Some people get by comfortably. And some don’t get by at all.

I walked into the Farmers Market – an open-air space with no visible fences. But no houseless person could walk into that space and sample the vegan cheese or the summer fruit, or wait in line for an over-priced coffee or a taste of quince brandy.

People with pull-along carts stuffed with squash, salad greens, red onions, flower wreaths, honey on the comb, Tibetan Tsampa balls, fresh ground elk. One excited kid shouting, "Tomatoes! Tomatoes! Tomatoes!" Three small kids demanding St. Mary’s strawberries. And in the middle of the market, a marimba group: middle aged white ladies cheerfully pounding their wooden mallets. I started counting people of color passing by. Total: fourteen.

As I waited in a long line to buy apricots I felt my throat thicken and choke with my own privilege: I was able to be here and buy luxury foodstuffs -- my soft fruit and my pickled onions and my frozen soup.

With a full backpack, I walked to the bus stop even though my bus was 40 minutes away. I stood in the sun and tried to imagine what it must be like to have stand in the sun all day, or find a scrap of shade to sit in while other people pulled carts of food past me, or to have people look straight past rather than say good morning.

I don’t belong to the Farmers Market crowd even though I’m tolerated. And I don’t belong to the houseless because I’m fortunate enough to have a place to live. And from my liminal space I watch those who take up space and those who shrink back against buildings or lie face down on the sidewalk while others step around or cross the street.

On the bus home, the same man in the doll-skull t-shirt was still there, bent over his energy bar wrapper, dozing and waking. For him, coming or going were the same thing, understanding at some deeper level that eventually he would be asked to get off, that he would find another spot far from the small park he’d been cleared out from, that time would stretch into night until the cold morning brought him to another bus so he could find another bag of energy bars that would take him through the next timelessness. And I went home to my comfortable house with the soft sofa and pretty rug, where the neighbor-on-the-right waves a cheery hello and the neighbors-on-the-left pretend I’m not there.

As a woman of color, what is my responsibility? What is my right? Where do those imbricate? How do I speak up for those who have been made voiceless when I don’t know if my own voice will be heard? Am I afraid that the tentative position I have in my overlapping communities might be revoked?

I don't have an answer.

But it's also my privilege to support women who face race and gender bias every day. It’s my privilege to help them reclaim their voices, to teach them to root deeply in their heritage and stand in their full feminine power.

And maybe I’ll see the doll-skull t-shirt guy on another bus, and greet him and ask him how he’s doing. And listen. Maybe that's a start.

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