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Nobody Cares/Everybody Cares

Sometimes “slipping” is talking over someone by not inviting them to the conversation.

            It is a bright and lovely late morning. We meet in front of Thomas Great Hall, a spot which frequents the college homepage. We are to be lead on a walking tour entitled: “Black at Bryn Mawr.” At the top of the steps are, what appear to be, two white women. These are two-thirds of the project’s team, and the primary tour coordinators. I am the only person here who is Black at Bryn Mawr.

I cannot help but cringe whenever I hear the term we, or us – the very stamp of inclusivity. This supposed notion of involvement forces me to question the extent of history, our history—one that I am told is in fact my own. As we, a group of students and professors, strolled through the ‘Black at Bryn Mawr' tour, the storyteller made a subtle yet clear distinction between us and them.

 Who is us? During this experience, every mention of we when referring to the wrongs carried out by the white people in the past caused me unease.

 “We would live in the nicer rooms…we could get multiple rooms.” ~Grace Pussey

I am on a date with my girlfriend at Mamma Maria, one of the best restaurants in the North End of Boston. We have been saving up for this date for weeks, excited to get all “dolled up” and take the train into the city. I don my blazer, my “nice” skinny jeans, and a tie, and she wears her favorite black dress.

I am Irish step dancing in a service at my church. I am on the last step in the sequence that I chose; it is one of my favorite steps, and my favorite part is approaching. I will jump off my right foot and kick my butt with each of my feet in succession, all while making a three-quarter turn. The music is fast; I am caught up in dancing and have lost much of the control that is so essential to form. I have done the step many times before and am hardly thinking about it now, when suddenly, as I start to jump, I slip. I recover quickly and proceed with the step, but the turn is sloppy. Many people in the audience, who are unfamiliar with proper Irish step dance technique, do not notice. I, however, am startled, shaken, and embarrassed.

In her chapter, “’Slipping into Something More (Un)comfortable’: Untangling Identity, Unsettling Community,” Anne Dalke brings into focus the idea of “slipping.” Dalke presents this as unintentionally offending and hurting another group or person in a moment of uncensored words and actions. In the essay “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Mary Louise Pratt also speaks to how different cultures interact, and then applying a pedagogical view of learning through hearing the experiences and feelings of others in intersectional spaces.

The term slippage can be defined as something we say without thinking, which we should not have said, that is perceived differently than its intention. By saying without thinking I mean something that is said without consideration of the potential for negative interpretation. These things we say are a product of the prejudices, stereotypes and generalities that we have experienced or been presented with in society. While we may not buy into these ideas, or want to agree with them, they are nevertheless present, and in our minds. Slipping is different from controversial. To speak controversially is to know that there is potential for the idea to be taken in a different light. A slippage is to say something and realize its implication to others only after it has been said.

Elena Luedy

Professor Cohen

E-Sem

9/16/15

Danger, Slippery when wet

              When I hear the word slip or slippage, I often think of a silent movie-era comedy sketch where someone slips on a banana.  In the context of Professor Dalke’s chapter, however this is not the meaning. When she uses the word “slip” she means to subconsciously relapse into a mental state you had moved past.

Alison

ESem Paper #3
September 18, 2015

Different Background and Slippage