Yes, Garrett, and everyone else reading this, I'm learning how deeply I *need* the people who read White Fragility and stop there. Somehow, I've internalized that I am to be the only (and, let me note, #exceptional) white person in the room of all BIPOC colleagues, and that's what collective liberation looks like. I don't want to invite other white people into the room because it gets MESSY when a) I can't control what they will think/say/do and 2) I take responsibility for their actions and emotions, rather than my own (lesson #1 of Nonviolent Communication: emotions are not private property but they are our individual responsibility) and 3) I want them to be better and do better, and it reminds me of all the ways that I want myself to be better and do better. It's so related to what Brené Brown talks about when she says that shame is not an effective motivator, and yet I do it (mostly in my head, but still loudly) to other white people all the time. There's so much that I can observe in myself + other people reading White Fragility of Gloria Anzaldúa's notion of the collective shadow. The more we can claim, collectively, of our shadow, the less likely we are to project it onto and harm others. And, as I'm doing work with other white Episcopalian folks on racial justice right now, I'm learning the truth of Claudia Rankine's language of being "less interested in being right than in being true, being together."
Yes, Garrett, and everyone else reading this, I'm learning how deeply I *need* the people who read White Fragility and stop there. Somehow, I've internalized that I am to be the only (and, let me note, #exceptional) white person in the room of all BIPOC colleagues, and that's what collective liberation looks like. I don't want to invite other white people into the room because it gets MESSY when a) I can't control what they will think/say/do and 2) I take responsibility for their actions and emotions, rather than my own (lesson #1 of Nonviolent Communication: emotions are not private property but they are our individual responsibility) and 3) I want them to be better and do better, and it reminds me of all the ways that I want myself to be better and do better. It's so related to what Brené Brown talks about when she says that shame is not an effective motivator, and yet I do it (mostly in my head, but still loudly) to other white people all the time. There's so much that I can observe in myself + other people reading White Fragility of Gloria Anzaldúa's notion of the collective shadow. The more we can claim, collectively, of our shadow, the less likely we are to project it onto and harm others. And, as I'm doing work with other white Episcopalian folks on racial justice right now, I'm learning the truth of Claudia Rankine's language of being "less interested in being right than in being true, being together."