But the man who molested me was white

*Trigger Warning*

The other day, my aunt announced that she was no longer a fan of Barack Obama due to his remarks on the Trayvon Martin case. In typical white-person fashion, she thinks that Obama revealed himself as an anti-white racist by suggesting that white people are racist.

After my brother and I tried to explain and defend Obama’s point of view, she said, “Well, I don’t trust anyone, black or white. But then, you know, every time [other relative] was mugged, it was by a black guy. I don’t know. I don’t know. There’s good and bad in everything.”

I’ll say there is. For instance, the men who mugged that relative were black. But the man who molested me was white.

I didn’t tell her that, though. When I told my parents I’d been molested, my mom got angry at me for not responding strongly enough, and my dad got so disturbed I felt like I was supposed to comfort him for my having been sexually assaulted. They got even more overprotective than usual soon after I told them (even though I was twenty, texting them every time I went someplace else wasn’t enough — now my brother had to accompany me there).

I like to think that if I’d told my aunt about my experience, she would have changed her thoughts about race and crime. I like to think that she would have channeled her negative feelings about that incident towards the white man who molested me just as hard as she’d channeled her negative feelings about our other relative’s incidents towards the black men who’d mugged her. In my wildest fantasies, she would have realized how the kyriarchy was not only giving that white guy and others like him permission to abuse others, but also helping them get away with it by drawing her and other white people’s attention to black-on-white crimes, which in turn led to things like the murder of Trayvon Martin.

Maybe it’s OK that I didn’t want to deal with the effects of disclosing that I’d been sexually assaulted just for a tiny chance that a closed-minded white woman would become a little less racist. Maybe I was just being selfish. I don’t know. All I know is that I went away from the incident feeling bad about myself, bad about my aunt, and bad about our stupid fucked up world, which Trayvon will never see again but which George Zimmerman is free to enjoy — as am I, especially because I’ve chosen to keep hidden my victim status.