Dorothy: What does that mean?
Edie: That means that I can pull that trump card anytime I want.
Dorothy: Which means?
Edie: I’m a white woman. I’m white. It’s my world. And I’m going to make sure that I still have this shop. I’ll be a good person, very good person, empathetic, colleague, understanding, everything, but if I need to be, I will do something that will remind you whose store this is. From their point of view, having been socialized to know that, from our point of view, having not been socialized to know that, I don’t know when I’m pulling that—I don’t know when I’m doing that. I do now. It’ll make a big difference.
Dorothy: So, it is provocative to hold you as accountable for an entitlement process that you are not even fully choosing yet, that is the existential paradox, we are born into these dynamics and then, we can become accountable. And, now that you see this, from your perspective, what could the provocative question have been?
Edie: The question I had to ask her was, “Why didn’t you bring that up then and let me have the benefit of your seeing something that I wasn’t so that we could have talked about this?” She says, “I don’t know. I wish I knew.” I, Edie, didn’t have that much power or that much courage. You know, –she’s an ENTJ like I am. We can look like we’re much more powerful than we often are.
Dorothy: Well, of course and “looking powerful” can also keep people from asking the question that break open the conversation, even for you as a pioneer, to reflect on where you did not ask the questions that mattered.
Edie: That’s a good question because it would have made a big difference. She may have thought I wouldn’t even have understood it then, which I understand it now. I’m not so sure I would have. I think I would have. I do believe I would have. But, at least I would have been curious enough to find out what was going on but in a different way.
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