Dear Prudence: this one is a doozy.

[minoanmiss]

The actual title is "Help! My Daughter-in-Law Makes Fun of My “White Woman Tears.” But She Doesn’t Know My History." Content advisory: sexual assault, race issues.

In my early 20s, I was raped. By a man who happened to be Black. I don’t think he did it because he was Black. He did it because he was “a somebody” where we were and I was a nobody, and I don’t honestly think he thought of it as rape. I was very drunk and he took advantage, as most of the men (mostly white) in the place in which I worked at that time would do. I went to work there in part out of my own socialization as a young woman, and I can’t say I wasn’t complicit in the culture that led to that specific moment. After it and some ensuing complications, I spiraled and lost a lot of a lot of years, but because I am white and privileged and because the job paid well, I was able to access therapy secretly and stabilize. I’m one of the lucky ones—most women who went through that sort of experience don’t get to use it to improve because no one helps them.

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No one in my family knows about this, and frankly, it’s none of their business. But my daughter-in-law, who is a young, politically active Black woman, has recently started trying to get me to “check” my privilege by using terms like “Karen” and “white woman tears.” It makes me really angry, disproportionately so, which actually seems to encourage her. I know I’m flawed, and I know the statistics she quotes at me are horrible for women of color, but I’m tired of being her easily accessible punching bag. It’s too triggering. I want to just move on. I am trying to remember that in the wider system, she’s so easily dismissed (young, Black, intelligent, from a financially deprived background) that she needs to know that she’s getting through to someone, and my reactions are at least reactions, not the indifference of so much of society. And, of course, if I am going to be an ally, I need to listen and acknowledge at the very least.

But I’ve just started avoiding her, even if she seeks me out, trying to educate me. I tell myself that if I could take the time to investigate my rapist with compassion and look at the society surrounding us and stop throwing around terms like “white trash” (which I used for years in reference to myself), then she can learn to stop using stereotypical terms, too. But I think I just look like an asshole, and maybe I am an asshole. My son definitely thinks I’m being ridiculous and I need to suck it up and stop being so weak. Sometimes I think I should tell her about my youth, but then I just feel sick to my stomach. It’s not that I think I did anything wrong anymore, it’s just, once you share something like this, it’s like telling people you had an abortion or something. They tend to define you by that thing that happened to you, and I don’t want that.

I realize that’s ironic, as she is regularly telling me that she is defined by the color of her skin, which isn’t fair and is, for her, unavoidable in our modern society. As an old woman, however, I want to exploit my privilege in this area and just not share this story. How do I frame my time with her so that I don’t make things worse? I want to support her in her work and in her life, just as I want to support my son, but I want to feel like I’m part of the solution, and I am finding that very difficult in our conversations.

—Maybe I Am White Trash

I think the first thing to address is that something horrible happened to you, it was not your fault, and it’s totally understandable that being raped at least partially derailed your life.
Although you feel you were able to use the experience to improve yourself, it was still traumatizing. This should go without saying, but the fact that you’re white and your assailant was Black doesn’t mean it wasn’t bad or you don’t have a right to continue to be upset about it. There’s no statute of limitations when it comes to talking about what you survived to friends, family, and most importantly, a therapist. Please don’t let your concern that people will define you by this experience stop you from continuing to process it (maybe to a professional or other women survivors, if that makes you more comfortable).

All that said, I had to read your question several times in an attempt to understand how and why you connected your assault to your current issues with your daughter-in-law. If I read between the lines, I think you may be saying, “My daughter-in-law would not be so mean to me about my white privilege if she knew that I was raped by someone from the same, nonwhite racial background as her.” Is that it? If it is, I really urge you to try to disentangle these issues, and come to terms with the fact that they have nothing to do with each other.

Maybe this could begin by changing your definition of white privilege: It doesn’t mean that nothing bad has ever happened to you, or that a Black person has never hurt you. It simply means that throughout your life, many things were easier for you than they would have been if all the circumstances were the same and you weren’t white—and that the bad things that happened to you likely didn’t happen because of your race. Trying to get your head around this, along with the idea that a Black person did something terrible to you that has nothing to do with how you currently relate to Black people, is not going to be easy—and it’s not something I think you should subject your daughter-in-law to hearing you process. Joining a chapter of a group like SURJ, which is designed for white people who believe in racial justice is one idea. On the section of the website that covers the organization’s values, it says:

Calling people in is how we want to be with one another as white people. That means: Recognizing we all mess up, and speaking from this shared experience. Being specific and direct. Talking to people in times and places that support conversation and learning.

It sounds like this community could be a place where you can receive some guidance from those who are ready to hear your unfiltered thoughts and eager to discuss them with you and gently help you reframe the way you think.

So let’s think about your relationship with your daughter-in-law apart from your rape. You are allowed to ask her not to call you names like “Karen” or minimize the distress you experience with terms like “white tears.” You can make this request not because a Black man raped you, but because you two are family, and family members sometimes have to provide guidance when it comes to how they want to be treated and spoken to. If you’re sincerely interested in feedback on your behavior from her as a Black person, but would appreciate it if it didn’t involve mocking or dismissive remarks, tell her! If you continue to get your feelings hurt and feel disrespected, you always have the ability to pull back and spend less time together. But I have a strong suspicion that if you’re able to do the mental and emotional work you need to in order to interact with her without being preoccupied with the fact that you were assaulted by someone of the same race, you might display fewer of the behaviors that are inspiring her to criticize you.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

Ow, ow ow. My heart bleeds for both women. I'm going to be thinking about this one for awhile, about what I would say to them, separately and together, about what I would say to LW if I were the columnist.

One thing I would definitely give, that I think the answer lacked severely. is an explanation of what the terms "Karen" and "White women's tears" actually mean. They aren't supposed to be ways to scold middle-aged White women for having opinions. They are meant to describe ways in which White women can weaponize distress against POC, and SO, there is a conversation to be had about if LW is practicing these maneuvers. Without addressing that, I think "please stop calling me these" is going to come off as "stop expecting me to behave better" rather than "these titles are causing me deep pain."

I think I will have more to say, maybe

[lunabee34]

I wonder if the daughter in law is talking to her specifically about sexual assault; she mentions quoting statistics at her, so I wonder if that's the disconnect that columnist is mentioning, that the LW is getting upset because the DIL's activism is specifically about sexual assault.

[green_grrl]

I was wondering that, too. Like maybe she could tell DIL that the intersectionality here is that women (any color) are disproportionately attacked by men (any color). And that since she’s one of those women who’s been assaulted, it’s a particularly triggering issue for her. If DIL wants to talk about white financial, career, criminal justice, etc. privilege, she’s ready to listen. But could she please leave off this one issue.

[minoanmiss]

Oh that's a good framing, a very good framing indeed. *attempts to beam this idea to the LW*

[azurelunatic]

And if she chooses to disclose that she is a rape survivor, she doesn't necessarily have to disclose who the rapist was, or his race. She could say something like "I am a rape survivor and I'm not ready to talk about the details yet."

[azurelunatic]

I wonder if DIL has been talking about false accusations of rape from white women against Black men. Which is definitely a weaponized aspect of white women's tears.

[melannen]

Yeah, LW has probably spent a fair amount of time fighting to a point where she feels like she has the right to say that yes, she was raped, and yes, she's allowed to be upset and traumatized by it. So if DIL is going hard on the "Black men assaulting white women is a white supremacist fantasy used to justify racist violence" and "white women expressing public distress are enacting harm on Black communities" that's probably going to hit LW really hard, even if DIL isn't doing it at LW, even if it's only a minor part of what she's talking about, even if she'd be horrified that LW was taking it that way.

(And there's a nonzero chance that people would react to LW taking it that way as yet more white woman's tears, so I can see LW not feeling like she can be any more detailed even in the letter.)

[jadelennox]

When I was reading the letter, I assumed LW was going to say the DIL accused her of having white women's tears in situations where she was actualfax triggered into rape-memory trauma, but from the letter, I don't think that's the case? In any case LW seems very sensitive to the issues at hand -- overly so, TBH, given that she has no responsibility to take the time to investigate [her] rapist with compassion and look at the society surrounding us -- and she doesn't strike me as the sort of person who'd assume all mentions of white women's tears are actually about her?

And yet... I don't know. If her DIL is calling her a Karen, that's completely inappropriate. If you're mad at your MIL's racism there are productive ways to address it (including disengaging). But if she's just mad that her DIL uses the term Karen at all, then I admit (unless LW's name is Karen) that not only does she need to get over it, but yeah, the relationship to the rape is inexplicable to me.

[minoanmiss]

The relationship to the rape is that the rapist was Black and so is the DIL, and so LW has a link in her mind between them. She knows the link is wrong and doesn't want to have it, and one of her problems is how to break it.

(That's what I see here, anyway.)

[conuly]

I don’t honestly think he thought of it as rape.

A lot of rapists don't. It's... a big concern, actually.

But yeah. I don't know what LW needs to do with regards to her understanding of race and/or intersectionality, or what DIL needs to do with same, but LW needs to just tell DIL that she's not able to have these discussions with her. And then, if she's been saying or doing super insensitive things that trigger them, stop doing/saying those things.

Maybe just stop interacting with each other outside of holiday cards? It's okay to do that.

[shirou]

This letter has a hole you could drive a truck through. What is LW saying or doing that leads her daughter-in-law to use terms like "Karen" and "white woman tears?" I gather it's not about the rape, since LW says nobody in her family knows about that, so what it is it? Maybe LW is doing something deeply offensive, or maybe DIL is flinging these terms at LW haphazardly simply because LW is white. I find this letter difficult to judge because such a crucial piece of information is missing.

[cimorene]

Yeah, that was my first thought. The writer is so upset on this topic that it's actually plausible she didn't even notice she left it out, too. 😐

[minoanmiss]

I figured the LW was so upset she couldn't bring herself to write about that part of what's going on. shirou is right that there's a big old hole here but, to me, that seemed an indication of LW's pain that there are things she cannot say even though she knows they exist. (I may be being too sympathetic to her.)