(I journaled everyday for a little over a week as I truly worked to confront my own racism and to educate myself on what anti-racist work looks like…. this is the prologue of sorts that I wrote. I will post the rest of my entries, day by day after this.)
Hello White Friends (and any POC who are reading this)
In the last several weeks, I’ve done a lot of reading, listening, and searching… RACE. Damned difficult thing to wrap your head around sometimes. I’m hoping most of you will be able to relate to what I’m about to share, if you have thought about your white privilege at all, I think you will.
Imagine… You’ve started this journey of checking your privilege and examining the systematic racism around you. You find two or three kind, sweet, docile POC and sit with them in a cafe. There you recount your life’s story, how you’ve come to there after days and days spent agonizing and dismantling the racist constructs within yourself. Perhaps then they might offer you some congratulations, a hug, a pat on the back. Next you ask them all the questions you’ve thought of since you saw your first rap video or drove through your first black neighborhood. You ask about the culture and how you should navigate this or that, and how can you help?! You want to help.
Let me stop you there. Yup, it’d be nice. And sure I’m mocking a bit. But I would still very much love the opportunity to sit and ask some nice elderly black couple about raising black babies in a world that hates them and how to do their hair. I’d love to ask a bunch of questions about how to not mess up, make it worse, and what they really want. I have SO many questions. But we’re WAY past that. It’s 2020, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed more than 50 years ago and black bodies are still being strangled in the streets by white cops. What’s more, in the grand scheme of things, we white people haven’t done shit about it.
So yeah, most POC are done sitting down, listening to our inane stories, answering our never ending questions, and waiting for us to get our shit together. If you need someone to listen, I’ll do it, or better yet, write it down and share it with other, less motivated white people. Maybe it’ll inspire them. (I’m not saying you are less motivated…. just check out facebook though, you’ll see who I’m talking about.)
As for your questions, feelings, qualms, and insecurities… better get used to them. It’s going to be trial and error from here on out. You just do it. Jump down off the pedestal of whiteness you were born onto and now you’re in the thick of it. You’ll be okay. But this won’t be fun or easy.
You’ve shown up. But you aren’t getting an overly warm or welcoming vibe from the room? That’s because, like me, and so many others, you’re late. It doesn’t mean you aren’t welcome or aren’t needed, you are. But you’re like the guy who comes back from the bathroom in the middle of an intense scene in a movie, making the whole damn row get up so he can sit down. Only this is a centuries long battle, not a fictional moment.
Furthermore, we’re going to fuck up. You’re a good person and so you will likely feel really bad when you realize it. That said, POC already know, they were there, they’ve been there. Their brothers and sisters and aunts and ancestors have all been there. They know we feel bad, it doesn’t make it better, just do the work. The more you work at it and the more learn and listen, the less likely you are to fuck up. Please don’t waste time feeling sorry for yourself.
Our privilege is the greatest detriment to this movement. I can’t find the quote again but one article I read said something along the lines of it’s like a gun that goes off without warning and always hits a POC until you take the time to learn how to aim it and dismantle the auto fire. (It sounded better when they said it). But that brings me to my next point; It is also our greatest weapon to contribute to this cause. We can say and do things without fear of retribution, we are welcome in spaces they aren’t, and we are heard by people who will not hear them.
In order to use your privilege for good, you must first acknowledge it, learn about it. You must learn the difference between the privileges that shouldn’t be privileges but rights for all and the privileges that are specifically designed to elevate us based on our whiteness. You have to take the time to identify how you have benefited from institutional racism, how you will continue to, and how will you mitigate that? How will you do the work?
Lastly, with all those unanswered questions, the grief and guilt piling up, and the intense overwhelming flow of information coming at you… the one thing you need to know is that you won’t make it worse. Yes you will fuck up, you will misjudge moments, you will overlook your own biases, you will unintentionally further the suppression of an entire race… But you won’t make it worse, unless you’re out there killing POC in the streets, grand scheme… if you’re aware and trying, you are making an honest effort, you won’t make it worse. So get a move on.
Coffee & Conundrums 