For many of us, the pandemic and its American response strained relationships and ended friendships. It shrank my social circle so much I became desperate to meet new people and make new friends, but Chicago has remained stuck in distancing behaviors. I invite people over who cancel at the last minute. I meet new people, exchange contact information, and then struggle to get them to meet me in person. Chicagoans want to Zoom everything, from professional networking to religious services to live performances. The majority of Chicago residents aren’t ready to try new things or meet new people unless they can do it virtually.
In my isolation and loneliness I became willing to spend face-to-face time with anyone who would spend time with me. If someone invited me to their home, I’d go and stay for hours even if I was having a miserable time. I live alone, so over and over I’d tell myself, “This is better than being home by myself. It’s better than being home by myself.” I’ve done this at social events I would not have put up with in 2019.
It was 2019 when I became fed up with that form of racism called micro aggressions. These are manifestations of prejudice that are so small that white people often don’t notice them and people of color are often called crazy for being bothered by them. Micro aggressions include the assumption that all Mexicans are good cooks or all Black people are good dancers or all Chinese are good at math.
They include the briefest under-the-breath comments that might include wondering if the Asian grocery store worker speaks English or saying Black people have weird names or assuming the Latino wants the hot sauce.
A micro aggression is a white woman talking about her Black coworker’s hair or how unfair it is that brown people don’t get wrinkles or a white man saying how convenient it must be to apply to jobs as a member of a minority. It was someone I thought of as a friend saying he was researching domestic workers in the U.S. and then asking me what my mother did for a living.
If those things don’t sound so bad to you because it’s not like we’re getting strung up in the town square, then you probably need to examine your assumptions about people who aren’t the same as you. Micro aggressions are racism. If you think something is “sorta racist,” it’s racist.
I got fed up with micro aggressions in the spring of 2019 and I even made the decision to put my attention and energy into making friends with people of color from then on. I lost the will to ignore micro aggressions or spend energy addressing them. White people’s ignorance was taking too much of my energy and I wanted more friends and acquaintances who were people of color.
Then the pandemic culled my friends and acquaintances so harshly that I became starved for any social interaction at all. Some friendships ended abruptly. Some faded out as the person stopped responding to my invitations. Some I let go of when our differing beliefs became clear and stark. Down to a fraction of the number of friends and acquaintances I used to enjoy, I couldn’t discriminate anymore. My resolve to focus on new friends of color went out the window.
I became grateful to anyone who would meet me for coffee in person, and even more grateful for those would come to my home for a potluck or game night. Being invited to someone else’s home became a wish come true. And because I live on the far north side of Chicago and have too much education and tend to move in white, educated, middle-class and close-to-wealthy circles, my friends became almost 100% white.
Actually that’s always been a problem. My parents raised their daughters in a city with excellent schools and almost no other Mexicans, so I can say I was a teenage white girl. Except for when I was in college and graduate school, I’ve struggled to make friends with other people of color. In the general population, I seem to be a unicorn: a fourth-generation Mexican American woman with advanced degrees who grew up in a small family, and didn’t learn the values most Mexican Americans have: family, God, motherhood, family and God.
I have always dwelt among the Anglos.
Plus I sound exactly like a white person, so white people are very comfortable around me. I know their vocabulary, their accents, their cadences, their halls of academia, their corporate protocols. I make a great white person.
Except that underneath my degrees and my Californian/Midwestern accent, I’m Mexican and my parents taught me not to put up with shit, especially racist shit. So when white acquaintances learn what Chicago neighborhood I live in and say how bad they think it is, I stop them. When someone’s white husband hears me say I’m Mexican and asks if I speak Spanish and if I’ve been to Mexico, I tell him why that’s the wrong way to go.
And last Saturday when a new white friend came over for a game night, I called her out on the prejudiced comments she made throughout the evening (it was a quite a display of ignorance). Before she left, she apologized, but it made me think about that vow I made to myself in 2019. Am I still desperately lonely enough to tangle this frequently with white people’s racism?
Chicago remains caught in the anti-social behavior of trying to stay at home as much as possible. But it’s time for me to stop thinking of myself as hopelessly isolated, desperately lonely and mostly friendless. It’s making me vulnerable to interactions I shouldn’t have to deal with. At the very least, I want my home to be a safe space where I don’t have to correct and instruct.
It’s infuriating how many ways the pandemic has made me compromise on what I want from life. Before summer 2020, a good book was a hundred times better than time with people I didn’t like. It’s time to stop thinking of being home by myself as an inferior way to spend an evening. Even if I can’t rebuild an entire community of friends quickly, it’s time to put in place the structures and habits that bring me closer to how I really want to live. At the very least, that means creating a life with a lot fewer micro aggressions than I’ve had to address over the past three years.
13 Feb 2023
What a bummer, the lockdown interrupting your friend search. I send wishes and vibrations your way that you find both – many new non-white friends and becoming comfortable home alone with a good book.