Edging towards the margins one blog post at a time

I read Christena Cleveland’s call to read blogs by people of color with a surge of chutzpah.

“Absolutely,” I said to myself. “I just didn’t know where the people of color were blogging. I will get right on this.”

Later that day, I added the twenty-odd bloggers to my feed reader. I felt proud. I was sticking it to the man. I was living in solidarity.

I clicked through some of the posts, and read with enthusiasm. I loved it: a window into other cultures, experiences and points of view. It was awesome.

A few days later, I clicked over to those blogs again.

I was disappointed to feel a little bored. The few headlines that seemed interesting left me cold after a few sentences. I felt like I was stepping into a conversation I wasn’t included in. I didn’t know the context; I didn’t get the code words; I felt left out.

They weren’t speaking to me.

Hmm, I thought. Maybe I need to thin these blogs out a little bit. Look for the ones where I’m really the audience.

And then it hit me.

The whole point of the exercise was to—for once—read something where I wasn’t the intended audience.

And I couldn’t do it for twenty seconds without getting whiny.

I’m over at SheLoves Magazine today, talking about how hard it is to start facing my own privilege–and how I’m trying it anyway, one baby step and blog post at a time. Join me!