Word: enterances
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...enter Kirkland Dining Hall, heads pick up--male heads, of course. I pass by a female friend who normally says hello to me. She glances at me briefly, then keeps her head down without acknowledging me. When I ask the female dining checker where I can put the UC collection boxes, two male staff workers at the table near the desk immediately answer for her, pointing out energetically where I can place the boxes. She rolls her eyes and tells me where to go. As I leave, two staff workers stop talking to stare at me. I'm gradually losing...
While crossing John F. Kennedy Street, I get my first whistle, from a guy driving by in a truck. When I enter a store, a salesman automatically jumps up and asks me if I need help. He then helps me pick out a clock for my roommate, and when the computer jams, he gets flustered and jokes, "The computer's jealous." I'm impressed with the service, until I realize that no one is helping the other 10 customers in the tiny one-room store...
...bravely enter Harvard Square. I notice that men with beards gaze at me curiously. Unfortunately, I'm still in the mode of rebuffing advances, so I throw them cold looks. Later, my roommate explains they probably were waiting for me to say, "Assalaam- alaikum," the universal Muslim greeting, meaning "May peace be with you." I realize that my clothes serve both to exclude me from the general population and to include me into the smaller population of the Cambridge Muslim community...
...enter the same store where I had been so energetically served the day before. The same salesman greets me as I enter, but remains at his seat behind the counter, flipping through a comic book. I wandered around the nearly empty store, passing the counter a number of times as though in search of a certain item. Still, no one approached me to ask if I needed help. Finally, when I neared another salesman, he politely asked if he could help me. The respect in his voice contrasted with the easy, presumptuously friendly tone of yesterday's salesman. I decline...
...their membership in the dominant ruling majority, since they individually did nothing to deserve such "burdens." Yet how reticent they are on giving up the collective privileges of that membership--their access to a power structure against which blacks can never openly compete, but which they must struggle to enter, or their ability to lead lives and claim identities unharried by the stigmas and stresses of black skin--despite the fact that they are no more deserving of that either...