"I’m a big believer in facing it."

Welcome to What’s Helping Today, a newsletter about the everyday work of staying alive on earth, written by Sandy Ernest Allen.

Hi all,

This weekend I was re-watching Hari Kondabolu’s The Problem with Apu. I’d sorta forgotten how good this documentary was. It’s a few years old now but its themes alas feel enduringly relevant.

I had also forgotten about Whoopi Goldberg being in it (and being fucking awesome in it). She and Hari discuss the history of minstrelsy and Whoopi’s collection of antique racist memorabilia. Hari questions why she’d have such a collection at all.

“I’m a big believer in facing it. You got to see what it was,” Whoopi says. “When you deal with ignorance, how can you be pissed off? They don’t know any better.”

I oftentimes find myself debating inside like, why bother attempting to educate people who hate me? Or who think they hate me? Or who may not even think that deeply about it, they may still think that trans people are just gross or funny, something to sneer or laugh at? Why must I remember their humanity when they forget mine?

I really like her rebuttal to that. They don’t know any better.

Tangential but not totally unrelated… I sometimes remember how, as a sixth grader in California, I was assigned to do a report on anyone I wanted, living or dead. I chose Whoopi Goldberg. At the time this felt like an extremely random choice. I may have even gotten some pushback about my pick.

I hadn’t even been a particular Whoopi Goldberg fan. (I don’t even know what movies of hers I would have at that point seen, other than hearing her voice in The Lion King and I know she had a cameo alongside many others in the Pee-Wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special I adored and rewatched every December). But I recall privately feeling a lot of conviction that I wanted to do my report on Whoopi because I was saying something about myself. Of all the people I saw out there in the world, on the TV screen, she was a rare example of someone like me.

I didn’t yet know about concepts like “gender” let alone “gender non-conformity.” But Whoopi was someone who was both gender non-conforming and beloved, I sensed, despite all her visible differences.

That to me, quietly in my young heart, was the dream.

What’s Helping Today: This week I got a response from the mother of a trans woman who wrote this letter to me, which I replied to in this previous advice column. She said: “I wrote to you many months ago. I loved your reply. I wanted to reach out and say I’ve been thinking about you. I hope your surgery went well.” I sure loved hearing that. If you haven’t already, I hope you’ll read our exchange.

Also helping today: A friend visited last week, which was lovely. Their final morning they made these gorgeous wontons (and soup).

Take care,
Sandy

p.s. I’m not allowed to lift more than 5 pounds for some weeks yet. Eventually I’ll go scrounge through my boxes and see if I can’t find my Whoopi Goldberg biography project.

p.p.s. Periodic reminder that you can email [email protected] if you’d like to submit a question for consideration for the advice column. I won’t use your name. Questions can be about anything.

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