Kyle Phoenix Answers: Is it hypocritical to say that one is all for diversity, while advocating the creation of exclusive spaces for women, POC, LGBT persons, etc?

Absolutism and binary thinking assert that anything, everything must be either or. One, this ontological thinking is Western based. Light dark good bad up down. Ontology being the very foundational perspective on the nature of reality. This imposition is given at the end of power, social or institutional structures, without regard for inclusiveness.

I often wonder: what is so terrifying about diversity? And to whom is it so scary?

But then I remember POC, LGBT folk, trans folk, we possess a unique ability, a unique way of engaging our surrounded ontology—-we permeate it, pass through it’s thresholds, surf it’s currents but are often not of it. We are not included into the framework, though we are part of the girders. Because we are often invisible or de-visibled. I know there are umpteenth POC and LGBT and even trans folk who work in these spaces, making sure that the garbage bins don’t overflow, the food is laid out proper, the garbage doesn’t build up and sour the air.

But when those who are students or employees or simply citizens say hey, in this macrocosm of a structure, of an institution, where my tuition, work effort and tax dollars pay for the carpet, and the chairs and the glass in the windows, want a corner, a spot, a room, where maybe, just maybe, Lord have mercy, we don’t have to deal with pointedly White folk….White folk freak out. You don’t want us there and if you let us in you want us segregated but when we say hey, segregation has it’s upswings, you freak.

Here’s what White Folk, a a psychological infection don’t want: happy POC, LGBT, women folk.

It’s happiness that threatens hegemony.

I’ve been at a State university, a private small one and an Ivy League one.

I, brown as the floor, had to press with a teacher in a Women Studies Poetry class that I was at a State university, she could suggest that I might have issue with being the only male in a class but to bar me would be grounds for a lawsuit. And I would gleefully sue. I was in the class, had a great time, got an A, learned a lot, made friends.

I’ve been warned by a English Department Head that a professor I was about to take a class with had issues with the Black folk and I might want to change. I asked were Jews allowed in his class—-the Dept, Head was Jewish—-I went into the class and it was one of the most radical and challenging and edifying teaching classes I took before I even understood, teaching, that I wanted to teach. Aced that one too.

At that school were Black student clubs, LGBT ones and I was close friends with one of the handful of visible trans students.

At the private college, it was just a freakdom of intellectualism and whatever you wanted to be-ness. That humanness mattered more than labeling with ontology.

Now at an Ivy League spot, it’s all about almost a merging of the two and there have been bumps, challenges, things I see and experience as diverse people bring in diverse perspectives and try to figure out how to be accommodating without being indulgent.

But I still wonder: who’s a LGBT room where folk can go be LGBT harming? What harm does it bring to say some spaces are for women, like locker rooms where they do women things and I go on about my life without grudge? Could there just be all gender bathrooms and everyone act like a friggin’ adult and simply focus on the two matters at hand in the bathroom and not biological origin and psychological profiles? Can’t we just pee?

Sometimes being a POC, as I’m sure we;ve all mused, we wonder what it would be like to be one of the lighter POCs, who are termed White, who just got to the guns and money first and therefore dominate. But as that advantage dwindles< this panic on all fronts makes me wonder, does a lack of melanin, a lack of a diverse sexuality, a diverse psychology actually point towards a mental illness?

Is being White, classified as such, and issued the Privilege Card, actually Bi-Polar III?

I’m going to pray for my lighter complected POC who have the ontological label of White cause this infused dialectical dilemma seems to be leading to their madness at people being in a space, people not being in space, people wanting to be in a space and engage with them, keeping people out of that space to not be able to engage with each other if they aren’t included——though they don’t want to be included in the thing they don’t want people to be segregated about though they do want those people segregated just not happy in the segregation but they don’t want to be aware of the misery from segregation or from lack of segregation.

Whiteness sounds exhausting.

I’m going to stick with brown as the floor and keep it pumping.