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."
This is so powerful and so well put, Elizabeth. I keep going back to your second sentence-- about the "need" for other white people to whom we can always feel superior. Damn, that's the rub, ain't it? We are so addicted to the myth of individual deliverance that we continue to ignore the ways that we're called into work with each other. And that Claudia Rankine quote! Yes, yes yes! My childhood pastor had a similar line-- "there are two religions in the world-- the religion of being right and the religion of being in love... and you can't be a member of both at the same time."
Have you read Joanie Mayer's "Barriers To Organization Between Anti-Racist White People?" So much of what you wrote and referenced brought me back to what I love about that piece as well.
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."
This is so powerful and so well put, Elizabeth. I keep going back to your second sentence-- about the "need" for other white people to whom we can always feel superior. Damn, that's the rub, ain't it? We are so addicted to the myth of individual deliverance that we continue to ignore the ways that we're called into work with each other. And that Claudia Rankine quote! Yes, yes yes! My childhood pastor had a similar line-- "there are two religions in the world-- the religion of being right and the religion of being in love... and you can't be a member of both at the same time."
Have you read Joanie Mayer's "Barriers To Organization Between Anti-Racist White People?" So much of what you wrote and referenced brought me back to what I love about that piece as well.
Thank you for this, sincerely.
WOW. Yes, thank you, Garrett, I've needed to read this for years - and it was written in 1997 (!!!!). Thank you.