I learned this term in my Anthropology 101 class at Queens College in New York City. While the professor charged us with learning a heaping slew of terms, my forgetful brain perked up and retained this one nugget nonetheless.
Among the areas of New York City, Kings County (Brooklyn) is never called such, while Queens is a constantly referred-to thing. The King is an unmarked given.
Without bending to check the undercarriage, pet enthusiasts default to the "he" pronoun.
Repair people are assumed to be male.
Clergy too.
Politicians, especially these days, are assumed to be lily white, and male. The trickle of women who pass through the old-boy gauntlet are interrupted, shushed, and belittled.
The Unmarked straight white adult male speaks a bit too loudly -- at the dinner table, in restaurants and on the street corner. The default volume on this default category is turned way up.
The Unmarked tend to mark their territory nonetheless. They man spread, man splain, man spit, man scratch and man segregate. These forms of metaphoric pissing on all things they believe they own is widely accepted, sometimes applauded, and seldom challenged.
The norm dictates neighbors be straight (family members certainly so!) and, in fact, there are only two types of neighborhoods: Neighborhoods, (read: straight white, male dominated ones) and blackgayhispanicinnercityghetto neighborhoods.
I have a number of personal stories illustrating the Unmarked. While I check a couple of "marked" boxes, I still cannot comprehend the daily existence of people of color, especially in this day of white-supremacism-is-real-america. The image of a white man in power kneeling on the neck of a black man, causing his death, exemplifies the perceived privilege of the Unmarked. It is high time the Unmarked be given the Mark of Cain placed upon their foreheads.
