How I'm Learning from Black Lives Matter

Like so many other Whites in the U.S., these past few weeks have been wildly disruptive for me. I've been confronted in uncomfortable ways with my prejudice, assumptions, laziness, and responsibility when it comes to race and racism. I thought I got it before... and I was wrong. I still don't get it - but I'm getting iteratively closer to understanding, listening better, and becoming an active part of the solution.

This post is a line in the sand for me, briefly documenting what I am coming to understand.

If you're a Black reader, don't waste any more time on this post - you know all this and are shaking your head at my sad ignorance.

For all other readers, this isn't intended to be a sermon, and it isn't written to convince or chastise you. It's not written for you at all, it's written for me to work through what I'm learning and to record it, however immaturely and clumsily. If any of this causes you discomfort, start to sit with that discomfort and ask why you feel that way. If you want to learn more, you don't even need to ask for resources - there are a billion lists out there of wonderful podcasts, movies, scholarly research, and novels to help you dig into equality and anti-racism more deeply. Here's a great place to start: https://www.qualtrics.com/qualtrics-life/how-to-be-an-ally-to-the-black-community

Many of these thoughts were catalyzed by White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. It's deeply challenging. If you want to start with a summary, here's a good one: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/white-fragility-why-its-so-hard-to-talk-to-white-people-about-racism-twlm. You'll probably agree with some of it, be challenged by some of it, disagree with some of it - that's cool. That's what learning should look like.

In no particular order, here are some of the things I've been wrestling with and learning from:

1. I kind of have a problem with Jesus and his love for the lost and oppressed

This comic hit way, way too close to home.

In Luke 15:3-9, Jesus tells two parables that are essentially about how he will leave the masses of safe folks behind to risk life and limb to help the hurting and lost.

In my more honest moments (e.g. these ones), I'll admit that I don't really like this Jesus. I want him to chase after me. All the time. I know everybody else matters... but in reality I want to be the one who really matters the mostest. And although on one level we are all the lost sheep and lost coin of the parables and Jesus seeks to save each of us, it's also super clear in the Bible, and especially the New Testament, that Jesus chases super duper hard after the oppressed.

It's easy to spout off Christian-sounding niceties that Jesus came for all and died for all (a short semantic hop to "all lives matter"). And, yes, yes he did. But he also spent a whole lot of time working on behalf of the downtrodden of his day - the Samaritans, the widows, the prostitutes, the sick, the poor, the powerless - those whose rights were systematically denied by the Jewish law and economy and government. Jesus chases after the ones in danger. And boy does he have some harsh words for insiders (the ones who benefit from, perpetuate, and don't actively dismantle the bigoted attitudes and policies)

And he calls us to do the same.

2. I don't naturally self-identify as White
I don't think of myself as White. I don't think of my family as (mostly) White. My subconscious position is that race is something for other people groups  - you know, the "racial" ones. And White just means that I'm not Black or Indigenous or Asian or Latinx or Middle Eastern or...

I simply don't see race as an essential part of my experience. Because I am the defacto one. And the other races are, just that, "other".

Now, it drives me crazy that I needed to hit my 41st year to recognize how insane this is. For many years, I have experienced the segregation and bias of being "other" - by being a woman. My gender is does not represent the defacto experience. My environment is predominantly defined and controlled by and for men, and I am out side of that. Even the name of my gender remind me of that - the origin of "woman" is "wife-man" - my gender's very word is a description of our relationship to the group in power.

I know how hard it hurts to be so far outside.

Yet I never really internalized (or, at least, started to internalize) that this is just a small shade of how hard it hurts to be even farther outside of the defacto, assumptive normal experience as a Black person.

It is super uncomfortable to talk about myself as White, and I think that's at least partially because of the clear privilege encapsulated in the term. Thinking of myself in racial terms has been a healthy struggle.

3. The most useful definitions of racism are not about individual moral choices
If you asked me to define racism a few weeks ago, I would have described racism as something like, "decisions bad people make to discriminate against people of another race."

I now understand that this definition of racism isn't super useful. This definition is mostly a shortcut tool that we use to prove that we can't be racist and don't need to enter into the conversation about racism. The logic goes something like this: "I am a good person. I don't make individual choices to discriminate against people of another race. Therefore, there's really no need for me to educate myself about racism or to enter the conversation except perhaps to point out how morally inferior racists are."

It's tidy logic that exempts me conveniently from discomfort or responsibility in regards to racism.

But.

Then there's the undeniable evidence that Blacks are incredibly oppressed in our nation by every measure I can think of - from political power to economic power to incarceration numbers to educational achievement to social mobility to corporate power. The "better" you get along any of these scales, the whiter (and more male) your surroundings and the people around you.

The system is rigged. And the use of power and policy to perpetuate the elevation of one group at the expense of others is a pretty decent working definition of racism.

4. And, so, I have a responsibility

White Fragility says it well, "I don't feel guilty about racism. I didn't choose this socialization, and it could not be avoided. But I am responsible for my role in it. To the degree that I have done my best in each moment to interrupt my participation, I can rest with a clearer conscience. But that clear conscience is not achieved by complacency or a sense that I have arrived."

For years I have been trying to help my coworkers and employers understand that gender disparity isn't a women's problem - it's a human problem and that it cannot be solved without the support of those in power. Yet, somehow, I hadn't made the emotional and intellectual leap to think the same about racism.

This is an imperfect analogy, but it's one that helped me:
Women gained suffrage in 1920 (remember these were mostly White, middle class women who gained suffrage, but the analogy still stands). It was impossible for women to earn or gain themselves suffrage. Because women were unequal in the eyes of the law, they could not get their own suffrage no matter how hard they tried.

The only way women could gain suffrage is for the people with the power (in this case, White men) to grant it, to extend it, to change their policies and attitudes.

The group in power had to care and get involved enough to dismantle bigoted policies and extend that power to another group.

My right and responsibility as part of the group in power is to stand with and for Blacks. To listen, to educate myself about the Black experience, to dismantle systems of privilege, to gain sensitivity to my own prejudice and dismantle it, to enter uncomfortable conversations, to engage in uncomfortable learning (all learning is uncomfortable!), to put my energy and money where my mouth is and invest in equality, to replace racist systems with anti-racist ones.

This is rough learning. And I am deeply grateful to be on this uncomfortable journey.