As a white male, I don’t have to confront very many (if any) barriers to societal entry because of who I am. (Even my Catholic upbringing has been met with complete tolerance from Protestants and the random “And also with you” from fellow Catholics.) Short of whatever handicaps came with being a bit of a nerd in elementary and high school, I had to confront nothing on the level that Leah had to face.
When I look back at my childhood and adolescence, though, I realize that I haven’t seen much of what Leah describes in the people I know. It never appeared to me that my mom’s best friend had to face any difficulties as a black woman, and all the minority women I knew in high school didn’t encounter anything like Leah’s “cross-hatch” when I knew them. To be fair, I only significantly interacted with them within school, so if they met anything like that outside I never knew about it. (I found out about some things my male minority friends had to face, but that’s because I knew them outside of school.)
It might have just been that the conversation was never thought of as belonging in that space. Maybe we were too young to discuss it; maybe the Catholic part of “Catholic high school” pushed it to the side; maybe the environment was good enough that it didn’t need to be brought up, at least in discussions I could hear.
I doubt that, though. And after half a semester of this class, I wish those conversations had happened in the space I grew up in, both in high school and at home. Not as a result of the racial-sexual two strikes, but as part of something to deal with in real life. I'm glad I'm getting it now; I just wish I could have started earlier.
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