The Struggle of Calling People Into Spaces that Don’t Welcome the Marginalized

Last updated on: January 11, 2018 at 7:41 am by Andy Gill

The Struggle of Calling People Into Spaces that Don’t Welcome the Marginalized 2018-01-11T07:41:47-05:00 Andy Gill

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TL;DR

This year a group of my friends decided to spend Christmas together. We’re a very small circle and while we like to keep it small we love to invite others in. This Christmas we decided to invite as many people to the table as we possibly could.

(Side note: It’s sadly surprising how many of us have nowhere to go on Christmas – I’m left wondering if this is something new, or if it’s always been this way?)

Nonetheless, the more the merrier; we invited about 25 people and of the 25 there were 7 that showed up. The food was mediocre (I cooked, which was the problem *cough cough*). But! the alcohol, good conversation, and laughing until your stomach hurt made up for this.

When inviting people in, we do this with an understanding that they might not be as progressively liberal as us; meaning, two things: 1) We’ve accepted, for at least this one day, that their views might be the polar opposite of ours… And, 2) we’ve come to this resolve in that, things will most likely be said that are not necessarily the most “politically correct.”

Needless to say, many things were said, while only one of them stood out…

It was one of those unfortunate but, perfectly-timed moments when the music was transitioning, other conversations lulled, and the clanking of pans had stopped… and, on queue, my friend blurted out in what was a private 3-4 person conversation, “But honestly, did Louis CK really do anything wrong?”

Oof…

You could visually see his body recoil in this moment as 12 other people awkwardly waited for someone to respond…

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