I was talking about religion and culture, responding to the idea that a person can claim to 'have no religion'. I believe anyone born into this culture is in fact culturally christian regardless of whether they are atheist, deist, theist or agnostic - unless, of course, they were born into a different religion. And I was trying to argue that point. I started with the assumption that this friend who claims to have no religion was white. If they were white I wanted to argue that dominant culture white people are accustomed to believing they are 'without culture', that they have a universal perspective or that they have 'no position'. But I was then told that this friend is black so that ended that line of argument...
K laughingly quipped, Well that's one for your diary... -which, I have to say, completely confused me at the time. I wouldn't have included the incident here had she not said that. I did not, on any level, experience myself as acting or thinking in a racist manner. BUT I was interpretted that way.
It's an interesting one - the difference between what I meant to say, and how I was interpretted - the difference between intention and reception.