You’re Woke but I’m Wokerest
I’m surrounded by intelligent and compassionate white people. They are woke and ambitious to make the world a better place.
See where I’m going with this? Okay, slow your roll and let me set the scene.
It’s my friend’s birthday, and we’re at brunch on the patio of a local diner, playfully relating the week’s domestic horror stories, as the middle-aged do. In attendance: the woman of the hour, her teenager, her older sister, our mutual friend, and me. They’re all white, and I’m all beige.
As the server delivers greasy delights and refills mugs, we bounce between the usual topics: grocery store what-the-fucks, pet burials, moody children, moodier spouses, and the odds of Janelle Monae whisking us off for a make-out session in vagina pants. Run of the mill, you know.
During a pause, Older Sister asks what we mean by intersectionality, a term she’s never heard before. Fair enough. She’s being honest and curious, and I respect that. It can be tough to admit you don’t know a word–not a problem I have, of course. There’s an umami of venial that I perspicuous eponymously, if you catch my drift.
I learned about intersectionality in the 90s. Being Brown, female, queer, immigrant, and the traumatized child of an alcoholic, I intersect in my sleep. By the time I’m elderly, I’ll be the Taganskaya Square…
