A Habit of Invalidation

During a recent class, we briefly discussed slave narratives and the way that society received them. Slave narratives were written not only to express feelings and record events but also to expose the reality of what happened to enslaved people at the hands of their owners. Narratives like these had great potential to persuade individuals who were on the outside looking in that the institution of slavery was deeply, morally wrong. However, more often than not, white readers would dismiss the words of enslaved individuals. They would invalidate the experiences of the writers by accusing them of exaggerating or by claiming that the writer was an anomaly.

The optimist in me wants to trust that naysayers really believed in their heart of hearts that slave narratives were exaggerations of the truth. However, the tendency to shrug off another’s’ account of their own lived experience is something that we are still facing today. How many times have we witnessed survivors of sexual assault speak out about their lived experiences, only to be accused of being incapable of recounting their experience accurately or told that they are being too emotional to tell the truth?  How many times have I read posts online written by white individuals accusing their their black friends of twisting the truth about encounters with law enforcement, refusing to believe that racism exists in the hearts of those who are charged with the responsibility to protect all citizens? The answer to both questions: too many to count. Clearly, discounting others’ realities because it is not the reality that we want to believe to be true is a pattern that is still relevant today.

This phenomenon begs the question: why? Why does society continue to hush the cries of those who are being oppressed? Time and time again, we witness the silencing of minority groups by majority groups. Though there is certainly no hard and fast answer to this question, one possible answer is simple: it is easier to invent a reason for why it is impossible for grievances to be justified than to fix the problem itself. Even if a white slave owner were shaken by reading painfully honest accounts from a slave, it probably would have been easier to brush it off by saying that it was probably overly dramatic. Often, humans elect to take the easy way out instead of pursing what we know to be right.

Another possible answer to this question is that white males had and continue to have all of the leverage and power in situations like these. History and the media tend to cater to the white male’s perspective, which allows that group of people to steer popular opinion in the direction they prefer. This problematic occurrence is one that we have yet to completely separate ourselves from. In my opinion, if we, as a nation, are to progress away from the marginalization of any type of minority group, we must break this toxic habit.