“Of course” is doing a lot of work.
MAKING ROOM FOR NO: PART 3 OF 4 (see the series)
Camille is a composite drawn from several situations I have encountered. I have combined and changed details to protect the people involved.
In 2017, adrienne maree brown published a poem called “boundaries and borders.” One line from it has stayed with me ever since: learn the difference between boundaries and borders.
I want to add a third word, limit, and use all three as we return to the meeting where Camille’s name made its way onto an interview schedule. These are not dictionary definitions. They are distinctions I have found useful and I invite you to try them on.
Boundary: what I am available for
Camille knows something inside herself. She is not available to tell reporters a story about growing up Black in Harlem, a story that in important ways is not hers. That is a boundary. It is about her own choices, and it does not need anyone to agree that it is reasonable. Other people can be disappointed, wish she felt differently, or even judge her. Her boundary is still hers.
Limit: what I ask of others
A limit is what Camille might ask of other people to make it easier to live within her boundary. “Please take my name off the schedule.” “Please ask me privately before putting me forward for media.” Now someone else is involved and they have a choice too.
In the way I’m using the word here, a limit takes the form of a request. We often say boundary when we mean limit. “That’s my boundary and you need to respect it” can turn something that is mine to hold into a requirement of you, using a word that sounds hard to argue with. When we do that, a demand can pass as self-care.
If he says no to her limit, Camille still holds her boundary. She does not have to show up for the interview. But she may pay for it. She may face an awkward conversation, wonder what gets said about her afterward, or feel her place in the group shift a little. Holding a boundary does not remove the social cost of having one. We will look at that cost more closely next time.
Border: the rule nobody voted on
Here is the question I find most important. Why did nobody in that room, Camille included, feel able to say any of this out loud?
Under the meeting sat rules nobody had agreed to.
Of course a Black member will speak about Black experience.
Of course being asked to represent the group is an honor, especially for someone new.
Of course people from marginalized communities will offer their stories when those stories help the group’s work.
Nobody said these sentences. Nobody needed to. That is what I mean by a border: a rule that works like a fact, even though the people it shapes never chose it. Many of the borders on today’s maps were drawn by people who never lived on either side of them. There is nothing in the soil. Someone drew a line, enough people went along, and over time it came to feel like the shape of the world.
One of those borders pressed Camille into a single story. She is Black. She is Trinidadian. She came to Harlem at twelve. All of that belongs to her. None of it makes her a spokesperson for “growing up Black in Harlem.” The request took a real part of her life and subtly made it stand for a whole category.
I don’t think he meant harm. He may have believed he was honoring her and offering her something. That is part of why these rules last so long. Nobody has to be cruel to enforce them. We only have to experience them as obvious.
“Of course” is often the sound an inherited rule makes.
Naming a border doesn’t make it disappear. The power that maintains a rule doesn’t dissolve because someone has noticed it. But once a rule is visible, it can be questioned and renegotiated.
In that meeting, someone could have said, “I notice that when we need stories about race, we tend to look to our members of color. Is that something we have actually agreed to?” Or, “Before we put anyone’s name forward, could we ask who wants to speak?”
A sentence like that turns an unspoken rule into a question the whole group can hold. People can ask who the rule serves, who carries its cost, and whether they want to keep it.
It also shifts where the work sits. The way we talk about boundaries often asks the person with less power to get better at defending herself. I want that capacity for all of us. I also want those of us with more standing to get better at noticing the rooms that make some people’s boundaries so much more costly to hold. Otherwise, we keep teaching the people most affected by a rule to get better at surviving it.
In your experience
Listen this week for an “of course” in your workplace, family, or community. Who agreed to it? Who benefits and who adjusts around it? What might happen if someone asked about it out loud?
An invitation
Making unspoken rules speakable is at the heart of FACE Talks (Fostering Antiracist Conversations and Engagement), my six-week course on conversations about race, power, and equity. We practice noticing the moments when something feels obvious to one person and costly to another and bringing that difference into the relationship where it can be worked with.
The fall cohort begins Friday, October 30 and meets six Fridays through December 11, with no session November 27, from 9:30 am to 12:00 pm Pacific on Zoom. If this is work you want more capacity for, I would love to have you with us. Learn more and register.
Making Room for No, the series: ← Previous: Part 2, He Asked So Beautifully | Next: Part 4, What Her No Costs and Who Pays
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