Does It Matter?

“Does it matter?” he asked. We were standing at a sundries kiosk at JFK. I had placed an item on the counter and asked the cashier if they had a different version. “No,” she replied, and while doing so, a white man in his late 30s reached across me and handed the cashier his intended purchase. “Actually, I was next,” I asserted, and he dismissively replied, “No, you weren’t.” I wondered how he logically could believe that he arrived first when I was already engaged with the cashier. She took his item, ignoring mine on the counter, and began to ring him up.

“In fact, I was,” I assured him. “I was standing here, my item was on the counter, and I was talking to the cashier when you just reached across me.” Dismissively, he shrugged while the cashier continued with his transaction. “Does it matter?” he asked.

It was the fourth time in twenty-four hours that people had cut in front of me in lines. Was this just New York culture assaulting my delicate Oregon sensibilities or was something more going on? All four incidents involved white or Middle Eastern men appearing to be between their mid-twenties and their mid-forties. All treated me like I was invisible. Did they feel emboldened by privilege or cultural preemption or did they really not see me?

Was it my packaging of 112 pounds in five feet, half an inch? My female gender? My middle age? I had read research about how people stop listening to women in their 50s. Still in my forties, I wondered whether this was the beginning of my obsolescence.

I thought of the ways I try to make myself bigger, stronger, less subject to being dismissed. I often wear suits and make up and shoes intended to convey confidence. I hold my shoulders back and my head high and talk an octave lower than I did before law school. I look people in the eye and talk directly and with authority. I have read the research. I use my middle name because it is more masculine and add my initials when I need to. When people are condescending, I sometimes have to call them on it and disclose my experience or education or qualifications.

And when someone cuts in front of me in line, I will sometimes assert myself and say, “Actually, I was next,” and they usually agree and step back. But he did not. Instead, he denied reality and then asked, “Does it matter?”

“Why, yes, it matters!” I want to respond passionately. Seeing other people matters. Treating one another with respect matters. Taking turns matters. Not relying on privilege to fast track through life matters.

I thought of all the ways that privilege blinds us to those and that before us—the very tragic and profound ways in which we have told groups of people that their time doesn’t matter, their voice, their opportunities, their health, their education, their very lives don’t matter. We don’t see some people and when they assert themselves—their rights or needs or desires—we, at best, marginalize them and, at worst, are threatened and ostracize and occasionally kill them.

I thought of the implicit bias embedded in his mind that may have made me invisible to him, and the discrimination that is inherent in our cultural DNA—discrimination against women, minorities, immigrants, and those who are disabled, very young or growing old.

I thought of the dual tragedy inherent in our blindness to others. Not only are others dehumanized and subjugated by our blindness, we are dehumanized as well. We are less human and our minds and lives are less rich for not seeing so many varied and lively and colorful human beings who are so very different—in language and appearance and dress—and yet not very different from us at all.

I thought of the threat to society when we are blind to one another, when inequality or privilege is seen as acceptable, if not preferable. What happens to a society where fairness is lacking, and justice does not reign?

Emboldened with these cascading thoughts, I assured him that, “Yes, it matters,” and as I drew my breath to explain all the reasons why, he simply said, “Then you just go ahead,” as the cashier handed him his change and he picked up his item and walked to his gate.