Saturday, October 13, 2012

Describing people superficially

A while back, Miss Manners printed the following letter:

DEAR MISS MANNERS,

People just don't see my roommate the way I do.
When I look at her, I see the hilarious, kind, goofy, generous, fun-loving, down-to-earth roommate that I've had the privilege of living with this year.

Other people look at her and see only one thing: cerebral palsy. Well, that and the big red power scooter she uses to get around campus.

So, when I'm trying to tell someone who my roommate is, I describe her as Katie: the petite, blonde-haired, blue-eyed freshman Psych major who lives in such-and-such dorm down the hall from so-and-so, or something to that effect. You know, the characteristics you'd use to identify just about anyone: name, major, year, appearance, etc.

In response to this, I get blank stares.

But as soon as I say the word "scooter", most anyone on campus- professors, students, staff, etc- knows exactly who I'm talking about.

She's fine with that; she's been "the scooter kid" in the eyes of the general population for as long as she's had the thing. But I feel I'm being disrespectful to her when I bring the s-word ("scooter") into play, because I'm reinforcing the idea that her disability is her most important identifying characteristic, when that's nowhere near being true. She and I have been attached at the hip-- or, handlebar, if you will-- all year, and I see her in a very different light. Yes, she has CP, but that's not in the top ten or even top fifty things that come to mind when I think of her.

When it's obvious that a person isn't going to know who I'm talking about unless I bring her disability into the conversation, should I do so, or just drop it and say something like "Never mind; I'll point her out to you if I see her," or "I'll introduce her to you sometime." and leave it at that?

This letter attracted my attention because sometimes I have the opposite problem.  I understand that it's insulting to define people by their most visually apparent marked features, but I keep running into situations where I need to identify people about whom I know nothing except their most visually apparent marked features.

I recently had a worker in a store where I was shopping notice that the item I had selected off the shelf was defective and go out of his way to find me a new one before I even noticed the problem, so I wanted to send the store an email thanking them for this worker's helpfulness.  Unfortunately, he wasn't wearing a nametag.  So I tried to describe him.  Medium height, dark hair, probably under 30...this described a number of workers in that store.  The feature that best served to distinguish him from the other workers is that he's brown.  However, I know that you're not supposed to call people brown.  People sometimes call themselves brown, but we can't call others that.  Which is fair enough under normal circumstances, but I honestly couldn't come up with another way to explain the concept (I'm not nearly savvy enough to determine his specific ethnic origin, and I know confusing one ethnicity with another can also be offensive.)  So my choices were to be kind of racist, or to give incomplete information and maybe have him not get credit for his helpfulness.*

This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened to me.  Once I was buying some clothes, and the cashier asked if anyone had helped me, presumably for commission purposes.  Someone had helped me, but I didn't think to catch his name.  He was rather nondescript - white guy, medium height, brown hair...the most effective way I could have described him was "fabulously gay".

When I worked at my alma mater, I was trying to help one of my new co-workers put a face to the name of a departmental secretary.  Middle-aged, medium build, medium brown hair, all of which describes the vast majority of the departmental secretaries. The most effective way to describe this lady would have been "the one who walks funny".  I don't know the name of the disability that caused her to walk funny.  She didn't use an assistive device so I couldn't say "the lady with the cane". (Which the letter-writer in the Miss Manners letter above would object to, but at least isn't coming across as an attempt to define the person - it's similar to "the lady in the red shirt" or "the lady carrying the iguana".) She wasn't the only one with a disability so I couldn't describe her as "the one with a disability" (which also sounds bad now that I say it out loud). I can do a fair imitation of her walk (which isn't appropriate in the workplace, obviously) but I can't describe it in useful google keywords.

I'm not entirely sure what to do with this. On one hand, I want to propose a rule that grants leeway in situations where a superficial description is genuinely more useful and/or is all you could reasonably be expected to provide. On the other hand, that sounds perilously close to people who say racist things and then argue that it isn't fair that they're being thought of as racist.  And I don't want to be one of those people.  But I do want to be able to accurately describe the worker who helped me, even when I don't know his name.

*Update: karin points out on twitter  that I could have identified him as "South Asian" and it would have done the job.  I was initially reluctant to do so because of the possibility that he might be Middle Eastern (my dentist, for example, is from Iran and has the same colouring), but I now see that "South Asian" would still have communicated his colouring, and worst case they just have a good laugh at the ignorant white girl, rather than using slurs or referring to anyone by the ethnicity of one of their culture's historic enemies.

3 comments:

laura k said...

My initial reaction is that I don't think there is anything wrong with describing someone as brown. I do it and I hear others do it in many contexts. It's a fact of the person's appearance, and there's no reason to avoid it. South Asian works, too. But why not brown?

I also don't think there's anything wrong with describing the roommate in question as having CP or using a scooter. Those are also facts. I very much doubt the letter writer's honesty when she says it's not in the top 50 things she thinks about her roommate.

To me it sounds like she's trying too hard to pretend the roommate doesn't have a disability. But the disability is part of who she is. It doesn't need to be ignored or avoided.

So tell me, why is it considered wrong to include skin colour in a description of a person? Is it supposedly racist?

impudent strumpet said...

It isn't skin colour, it's "brown" itself. I'm under the impression a white girl like me isn't supposed to call people "brown", although some people do choose to use "brown" to describe themselves. It's like "fag". I can't call a guy a fag, even if he referred to himself as such two minutes ago. All of which is fine as a general principle, but inconvenient in this particular circumstance.

laura k said...

Ah! Thanks for clarifying. I don't put brown in that category.