by Anna Atkinson, Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Vancouver Island University

I’m going to tell a story on myself. It’s the story of perhaps the most profound educational experience of my life, and certainly one of the most important. I tell this one to students because stories are the way our minds remember best, and because the power of language is far too easy to trivialize away through the rationalization that we are only using a “figure of speech;” in fact, these figures arise directly from our culture, and express something our culture on some level believes. I tell it because we need to be aware not only of our language and its impacts on others, but also of our culture and the power dynamics that are always running in the background.

The story doesn’t shine a particularly good light on me, but I cheerfully explain to students that I was probably younger, and almost certainly less mature, than most or all of them are now when it happened. I also explain that the experience taught me two things: how powerful the language I use is, even when I’m not aware of it (and consequently how aware I need to be of it), and how great a gift it is to have someone gently point out our own obliviousness.

May I someday be as wise as my friend Matthew was when this happened.

I was a very young first-year student, away from home for the first time, in residence at the University of Calgary in a co-ed dorm (boys down one wing of the building, girls down the other). Matthew lived down the boys wing. It was (or at least it was described as) a “study floor” of the residence, which was (supposedly) quieter than the regular floors, and which I suppose is why Matthew was living there even though he was in his first year of law school.

I had a crush on Matthew: one of those deep, drippy, saccharine crushes that only certain unhealthily romantic teenagers sometimes have. Matthew was very patient, and put up with the constant attention and the need for creating great drama out of very minor circumstances.

On one occasion, however, his patience wore somewhat thin. I had wafted into his dorm room on a cloud of probably-vile drugstore perfume, and perched on the side of his bed in what my mother would have called a “brown study” (I was aiming for this, or perhaps this, but minus the cleavage—I didn’t have any—and plus an oversized hoodie, because I was far too shy to dress like that).

It is to Matthew’s immense credit that as he looked up from his textbook he didn’t sigh or roll his eyes as he asked me what was wrong. “Oh, Matthew!” I replied, making my eyes as mournful and limpid as I could (and probably looking ridiculous in the process), “I’m in such a black mood!”

Pause.

“What is it with you people?” he asked rather brusquely. A bit taken aback, I asked what he meant. “Whenever you want to describe anything negative, you always describe it in terms of blackness.” I hadn’t noticed, and said so—and then added that it was “only a figure of speech,” after all. Why was he so upset, I wondered?

Matthew rose from his study chair and came to sit beside me on the bed. He gently took my shoulders in his hands and shook me a little (“oooooh!” I thought, “he’s going to kiss me!”). Matthew looked deep into my eyes and said “Anna, I’m black. That’s why.”

Then he got up and went back to his studies.