mixed in vienna

One important lesson I have learnt in my years of befriending white Austrians, particularly white Austrian women, is that things are good as long as their personal circumstances are good. Five years ago, after George Floyd’s death, many white people seemed eager to learn, to undo harm, to understand oppressed people’s perspectives. Now, amidst a global cultural backlash and an undeniable and unwavering rise in fascist and far-right ideologies, the widely embraced BLM era seems far gone. “Black fatigue“, as some white US-Americans call it, is being complained about in an unironic fashion — even across the pond. 

I almost ended a ten year friendship today. It shouldn’t have come as a shock to me that our first and only ever argument after a decade of knowing one another would not be able to withstand an entire ten years worth of minor misunderstandings quietly swept under the rug, major disagreements that remained unarticulated, and differences in ideology that bubbled beneath the surface of our every interaction. My friend and I are united in our love for language, art and Genuss. We are divided in our lived experiences as a) a white Austrian cis-het woman from an affluent background, a caring and, until fairly recently, stable family home, and b) a mixed Austrian/*Nigerian cis-something woman from a single mother household with a loving, yet fairly unstable home life. The tensions in that were always there, and yet our friendship managed to blossom. She was one of the few white friends that had an open ear during the rise of BLM, who was able to withstand the rage and eventual sadness that came with my own antiracist awakening. She is a reserved person, eager to listen, a day-dreamer with an inner life that doesn’t always come to the surface. Our dynamic lent itself to my talking, talking, talking. It was one of the first times somebody was actually willing to listen! It also meant that she was not the one that was mainly doing it. I tried — but ultimately failed — to be mindful of that. 

Personal circumstances have impacted us both in our capacity to show up for one another. Grief and the unbounded loneliness that inevitably follows fundamentally restructures the brain. Fate had struck me earlier, and by the beginning of 2020, I was grieving heavily. Her fate followed, the pain deepened and continues to reach far. What does it mean to show up for someone who is actively grieving? How can one hold space for one’s own grief and someone else’s loss at the same time? I tried to lead with empathy, to tap into my own well of resilience and experience. Many of the things that she had told me about her own journey of grief resonated with me deeply. I had lost my mother in 2020, shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic started. Feelings of abandonment, betrayal — anger at worst, and a constant irritation at best — quickly became daily companions. I am feeling better now, after five years of struggling, a fight that was compounded by the almost daily incidences of racism and misogynoir that I experienced whilst living in Vienna. My mother was my anchor, her whiteness a shield of motherly protection and a privilege in Austrian day-to-day life that needs to be acknowledged more often. 

She lost someone as well, and the painful circumstances surrounding our loved ones’ deaths overlapped. Many times, she would ask me, “How did you feel when XYZ happened?“ and I would try to reassure her that she was not alone in how she felt. I talked to fill the silence. At times I definitely talked too much when I should have given her the required space to do so. During other times, she vented. The constant irritation, a byproduct of the recent timeline of her grief, was always present. I could relate to her frustrations about her family, her friends, and about how the rest of the world was seemingly unable to handle the passing of someone in an empathetic, dignified manner (especially once the one-year-mark of mourning had passed). I had experienced the very same thing when my mum passed away. The nature of our conversations shifted, and I felt all the more hesitant to mention my ongoing struggles as a mixed woman living in Vienna, although these struggles firmly intersected with my own feelings of grief and (un)belonging. Slight comments that she made from time to time, along the lines of “But what does race/racialisation have to do with this?“ or “If people don’t like the city’s vibe/the unfriendliness of Vienna, they are free to leave“ indicated to me that she currently didn’t have the capacity to fully engage with the heavy-hitting topic of racism and discrimination in Austria. I knew what she was going through, I understood the limited capacity for other people’s issues — and frankly sometimes, other people’s bullshit — very well. I was also aware that I, a mixed woman in Vienna, was not able to ignore or simply opt out of my own racist mistreatment, even though I was also in the process of grieving the loss of someone I cared for deeply. I thought we had an implicit understanding about this, and even when conversations between the two of us got a little bit heated or uncomfortable, I believed we were on the same page regarding the grand scheme of things. I kept quiet about racist microaggressions that happened to me around her family’s (admittedly elderly) friends, and around her partner, and she kept quiet about them as well. 

I only took offence once our last slightly heated conversation took an unexpected turn. My  hypothetical disagreement in passing about a topic completely unrelated to both of our lives led her to initiate a talk about all the things that have been bubbling beneath the surface until now. The next day, she asked me, “How did you feel about our conversation last night?“, to which I responded, “Not too great“, and she agreed. She told me that she had been feeling this way for a long time, confided in me that she wanted more space within our dynamic (a confession I am thankful for), and that my harsh rhetoric made it difficult to disagree with what I was saying at times. 

I was confused and emotional. What was she referring to, specifically? What did she feel the need to disagree with in particular? Does this have anything to do with my passionate stances on BLM, a topic we stopped talking about many years ago?

What she was saying felt like a text-book-instance of tone policing to me, and I was not having it. I explained my issue with this statement, hastily packed my bags and ended our planned sleepover preemptively once I realised that she was not able to hold space for what I had just said. She expressed her profound hurt and disappointment over my leaving, and that she didn’t know if she could forgive my behaviour. I explained to her that the feeling was very much mutual. As I was walking down the streets of Vienna in the middle of the night, looking for a hotel to stay in, I thought about the impact of such statements on the ways in which I presently express myself (with great self-censorship, that is). I thought about the Angry Black Woman stereotype, and about all the times that my white male teacher would come over to my school desk to say “smile more, you always look so angry“, when I was simply daydreaming, face on neutral mode. I remember the times when my mother would criticise my “sharp tongue“ whenever I expressed disagreement over something. 

That very same “sharp tongue“ is a white man’s “refreshing honesty“. 

Misogynoir. 

I don’t deny speaking boldly at times. It is a painfully acquired skill required of someone who only has a few people, mainly other Black and mixed women, willing to stand up for her. I am also aware that those very same words that come out of my mouth would be received very differently if they were spoken by someone who inhabited a less marginalised identity. 

What exactly was my friend referring to? What did she feel compelled to disagree with in particular? Does this have anything to do with expressing my lived reality as a mixed woman during the BLM era, a topic I had already toned down quite intentionally, considering where she was mentally?

Today, I don’t know where this friend and I stand. I know, however, that tomorrow, I — and perhaps even we — will need to reckon with these questions in the hope of gaining some clarity.