I met a racist tonight. I had a hard time reconciling my need for harmonious social interaction with my instinctive rejection of his words. It highlighted to me something I have been thinking about a lot, about myself: that I really do care about social interactions going smoothly. I used to think I didn't care about that. But I do. It also highlighted how difficult it is to persuade someone that their own subjective experience is not reality. He, naturally, thought that he had more expertise in the subject matter than I did, because he grew up in a black neighbourhood in Chicago. What could I tell him that could possibly convince him that his perceptions were false? We couldn't go back in time to consider specific incidents, deconstruct them into his expectations vs. his perceptions vs. his behavior vis-a-vis the other's expectations and perceptions and behaviour. What could I say to counter the statistics he provided to support his stance? Only that statistics don't show the "why" of a phenomenon, and my interpretation of the differences he described were different from his. That "racism" is not a phenomenon made up by people who want to underachieve. That the perspective of those in minority groups are probably different from those of people in the majority. I didn't tell him that his perspective was wrong. How could I? I'm too much of a psychologist to tell someone that their subjective experience is inaccurate. I don't do that, and I guess that makes me a really crappy anti-racist.

I left the house this morning in a rush, after having in spectacular and somewhat Rube Goldbergian manner knocked over and smashed into pieces and puddles a bottle of Pastis that H had given me for Xmas. Mourning this profound loss, I mopped up what I could then sped to my dentist appointment. I then spent the day at work having completely forgotten about this incident until I got home just now, and my memory of it was triggered by the unmistakable olfactory cue. More mopping to do tomorrow morning, I guess... unless I should leave my floor sticky with licorice liqueur? Would that count as aromatherapy?