From The Free Dictionary:
give someone the benefit of the doubt
to believe something good about someone, rather than something bad, when you have the possibility of doing either.
I’m afraid this is going to be more ‘stream of consciousness’ typing, taking the thoughts as they come – which is what I am actually more comfortable with – rather than something that has a specific beginning, middle and ending. Or point. I did have something else planned, having to do with the question “Why is this a feminist issue?” but, you know… I think I’ll just leave that one for another place and time. Heh.
I, as always, speak only for myself and my experiences and not as a spokesperson for any particular group of people.
So, this is an off the top of my head topic, mostly because I’ve been seeing that phrase (the benefit of the doubt) used lately and it does sometimes seem to me that different people have different ideas of what that means – depending on which side they are looking at it from, I suppose. I know, shocker. It often comes up (in one way or another) during discussions of race on and off the blogs, especially when it’s an issue of someone – usually, but not always, a person of color – saying to a person – usually, but not always, White – “hey… you know, that’s a racist saying, picture, way of thinking”.
Needless to say, this is not always greeted with cries of joy, thankfulness and relief. More often with defensiveness, pushback, argument, hard feelings, hurt feelings, discussion and then – if we’re lucky – some sort of resolution. And in there somewhere, sometimes, wails about being given the benefit of the doubt. And that’s when I wonder… what is it people think the benefit of the doubt actually is? Whatever their interpretation is of it, it’s far different from mine, I guess.
I have a favorite blogger, a White guy, that I came across through a link from another site – most of the time, with those, I go, look at whatever it was that was linked, and then forget to go back again, but with this one I was so impressed with the quality of writing, as well as the sense of humor and heart of the writer that I put it on my daily reading rotation. Almost as much fun as his writing is seeing the pictures that he finds to go along with the posts – some of them are just brilliant. Old timey, retro stuff a lot of them – really fun and neat. He doesn’t write much on race (that’s not what I visit his site for), but when he does it’s with a level of understanding – including knowing that there are some things he can’t understand – of righteous rage (especially about Katrina) and a talent for getting to the heart of the matter. I knew that this was someone who “gets it” and I felt comfortable there.
So, imagine my… well, surprise, surely, but mostly shock and um… gut kicked feeling when one day I click on the site and there is this really dreadful, racist picture there, illustrating a post. Oh man – I knew what it was about, from the post… it was being used to illustrate some sort of racist thing right wingers were doing or saying regarding Black people and he was ripping them a new one. Still… as you can see, I had a dilemma.
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