shedding whiteness practice

When I’m in a flare, when the pain isn’t ignorable and the brain fog makes working almost impossible and the fatigue forces me to pause, I get wrapped up in my mind trying to explain to the world how fatigue is different than tired. Most people, I imagine, would prefer not to work full time. Most people, I’m pretty sure, would love to take a break and rest whenever they felt like it. Lots and lots of people live with chronic illness and pain or stress so overwhelming it’s difficult to function. I know this. So, when my body makes it almost impossible to keep up with my day-to-day tasks, part of me thinks “sure, you spoiled brat don’t take care of our responsibilities, everyone else has to keep going but you’re too lazy.”

Ugly, yes?

I wouldn’t speak to a friend that way, but there’s a part of me that’s sending a steady stream of this bile at me when my body won’t let me keep going.

There’s stuff going on in me, as an individual with my own life history and emotional makeup. And there’s also the general demanding force of racialized capitalism that we live under here in the USA. Produce produce produce. Tired? Keep going. Need a rest? You are failing. Bills too high? Tough luck, keep working.

Racialized capitalism wants to keep us too tired to organized. Too tired to imagine other alternatives.

When I hear the ugly voices in my head as I can not stay standing, can not keep typing, as I have to lie down, I can disentangle myself from my personal stuff, I can heal that. The force of racialized capitalism’s messages feel insurmountable, though. I imagine a crowd of people with lives much more difficult than mine calling me names and making me feel responsible for their suffering. How can I rest when I know others can’t?

Being a member of the oppressor groups brings a thick layer of “I don’t deserve rest” messages. Believing that lie hurts more than just me. It keeps me too weak to be a part of creating a better world for all of us. It prevents me from showing up for other humans when they need support. It’s letting racialized capitalism win if I believe that lie. We all deserve rest. There is no meritocracy for deserving the basic necessities of life — food, shelter, clothing, love, joy, and rest are the necessities I’m thinking of at the moment. At this moment, I can’t keep typing. I need to go lie down.

middle aged white woman with dark hair and glasses, she is wearing an N-95 maskEveryone I know, including myself, wishes COVID wasn’t an issue anymore.

I remain COVID-cautious — masking whenever I am with people outside of my immediate family, socializing almost exclusively outside, testing and using air filters if we are going to be in a group inside, etc. Most people I know, even those who were as cautious as I have been for the first three years or so, have moved on to acting like COVID isn’t a concern anymore. (My children are sweet, they mask when they are with me and they do sometimes mask in social gatherings but not all that often as far as I know.) Being COVID-cautious is exhausting and lonely. It’s also disappointing.

Why am I still masking everywhere? Of course, I’d like to not catch COVID again (I made a rare exception to my COVID cautious behavior last year and ended up getting it). And, as someone who lives with chronic diseases already I definitely don’t want to get long COVID. I won’t try to post data or statistics here trying to show how COVID-19 in general is still a serious threat—everyone knows how to Google—but long COVID is a heck of a chronic condition and I wouldn’t wish chronic illness on anyone.

Even more than these substantial personal concerns, I mask because I care about the most marginalized people in our communities. I mask because there are people who can not go places where people are not masking. I wear my mask most of the time even when I know it’s “low-risk,” because I want anyone who would be in a life or death situation if they got COVID (or any other respiratory illness, honestly) to know they are a part of our communities.

When my faith community gathers on Sunday mornings, almost no one is wearing a mask.* Because of this, I only attend via Zoom. Again, some of why I don’t attend in person is concern for my own health. But sitting in a room full of people in close quarters silently breathing together mostly unmasked for an hour fills me with deep grief and raging anger. How can these people not care about our disabled siblings? How can they be so callous? And, because these feelings of grief and anger well up more intensely when I am there in person, I’m not able to center in to worship. So I don’t attend. The same feelings flow when I am attending via Zoom, but I don’t want to lose my faith community entirely and I need that worship time.

Those of us who are still COVID cautious are few and far between. It is, as I mentioned, a lonely way to be. Of course I would love to visit with friends inside on a regular basis. But most of my friends aren’t masking anywhere, so the personal risk is too much. Of course I would love to attend Meeting for Worship every Sunday. But, as I mentioned, almost no one is masking and I can’t stomach being a part of a community so dismissive of immune compromised and disabled people.

It’s difficult to have conversations about this with friends, loved ones, and other people in my life because in agreeing to disagree about our “personal choices” or our “individual risk tolerance levels,” social lives remain not inclusive. In agreeing to disagree — in saying “it’s okay for you not to mask” — I am abandoning those among us who will be shut out from all social gatherings because of that agreement.

This situation is exhausting. It’s also unavoidable until more people start wanting to build inclusive communities for everyone.

 

 

 

* After a lot of pressure from me, and possibly from others, my faith community has been experimenting with “masks encouraged” Sundays once a month. I am so grateful for it, and I do attend in person on those Sundays whenever I can. But I’m still grieving and angry that these folks who claim to care so much about humanity seem perfectly comfortable telling our disabled and immune compromised siblings they don’t matter on other Sundays.

Many white people I talk to about the roles we play in upholding white supremacy in the USA recall the time when Mike Brown was murdered as pivotal in their racial development. It was then that some of us who are white started to face the truth that our systems (legal, educational, health, political, and more) are set up as if Black lives don’t matter. And, it was then that mainstream media shared stories of how Black families often have to have “the talk” with their children, especially their boys, about how to stay safe when the police approach them. And, more generally, how Black parents too often are forced by everyday racism to educate their babies about how dangerous and harmful white people and the systems of our country can be. I write this and I feel deep grief in my body. Those babies. They shouldn’t have to be taught the world is going to hurt them. But it is a reality for so many (most, as I understand it) parents of children who are Black.

Sometimes I talk about how whiteness prevents me from being fully human. Part of that emptiness, those parts of myself that aren’t completely and deeply in humanity, involves coping with the ugliest realities of everyday life. Because whiteness has allowed me to believe the world is mostly good, and because whiteness has given me generations of cellular-level denial skills when faced with violence and injustice, I don’t have a lot of practice holding conflicting truths together at the same time.

Today, when my 14 year old’s school announced the police department has received a text that there was an “active shooter” at her school and that the school had been evacuated, I was flooded with adrenaline. (The message was a hoax, there was no shooter.) As I’ve been recovering from the terrifying roller coaster of today, I’m reflecting on how unfair it is that Black families don’t get to protect their children the way I’ve been able to for the most part almost entirely (until today, in some respects). Just thinking about it fills me with such rage I can’t even think straight. I’m also full of rage that our country has so many guns. I’m full of rage that people aren’t getting the kind of support they need — that someone thought it a good idea to send that hoax text.

I gave my children a white family’s version of “the talk” when they were very young. I felt like I was breaking rules, telling my children really scary stuff about how police can be dangerous especially for Black people, among other things. I’ve continued to have conversations about how fucked up our racialized capitalism systems are, how unfair it is that Black children don’t get to feel as safe as they get to. I’ve also talked with them now that they are older about how we, as white people, need to build skills that will allow us to stay in the truth: evil exists. Evil. And we, white people in the USA, are helping evil continue in large part because we don’t have the skills to be even just a little uncomfortable. These are, of course, mostly intellectual exercises. Breaking free from whiteness requires these steps, though, as far as I understand it.

We white people need to learn how to be uncomfortable. To hold conflicting truths — there is evil and violence and oppression AND there is beauty and joy and solidarity — at the same time. We need to practice and practice and practice so we can become fully human.

[Note: I’m aware that the sweeping generalizations I’m making in this series of posts don’t apply to everyone. We are a complicated species with loads and loads of influences and motivations for our behavior. I write these for white people like me who want to break free from the prison of white supremacy culture so we can live in solidarity with everyone and everything.]

Note: This post is about me as a white woman dealing with my racism, written mostly for readers who are white, though of course anyone is welcome to read.

Twenty seven years ago today (it’s just past midnight on July 2), I spent 24 hours not drinking or using drugs. Twenty seven years ago tomorrow, I went to my first 12-step recovery meeting. I haven’t found it necessary to take a drink or misuse other drugs since then. I’ve written about my recovery story a few times on my blog (here, here, and here, for example). The short version of that story is I found out in 1996 that I have an allergy to alcohol. If I drink even a little bit of it, I have a reaction that becomes overwhelming: I need another drink. I also am not able to remember fact this 100% of the time. I had to build a spiritual life that included a power greater than me (I call it god) to keep me connected to that truth. These days, not drinking is something I pretty much only think about when I’m in fellowship with other alcoholics. It’s not a big deal to me at all. I’m grateful, and I love living in recovery.

That said, as I consider my recovery story tonight, I’m reflecting about the ways I use the tools of a 12-step program to learn to break free from my addiction to whiteness.

When I say “whiteness,” I don’t mean the color of my skin which of course I can’t change, though being white plays a role. A quick Google (google is our friend, my fellow white people!) pulls up a concise definition shared on the National Museum of African American History & Culture website, “Whiteness and white racialized identity refer to the way that white people, their customs, culture, and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups of are compared.” I sometimes refer to it interchangeably as “white supremacy culture,” though there are probably nuanced differences I miss when I do that.

Using whiteness, even when I didn’t know I was, has done for me what drugs and alcohol did (for a while, until they stopped working) — it keeps me numb. My recovery from my addiction to whiteness and white supremacy culture is about being different, moving differently in the world. I don’t have a checklist, this is not a linear path I will complete after x, y, z tasks. One of the most important and effective part of this recovery is learning how to stay in my body.

Following Resmaa Menakem‘s way of using the phrase, “somatic abolition,” combined with embodiment practices shared in trainings led by Rev. angel Kyodo williams, author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation, as well as therapy, 12-step recovery, and Quaker worship, among many many other resources* I am learning how to stay in my body so I can, among many other important things, actually face the truth of — words fail me so much, and I’m a writer! — the horrors of the ongoing and historical oppression of Black and brown bodied people and the ways white people like me have also suffered.

Facing the truth means uncovering the layers and levels of denial that are baked into my DNA as an individual, and are the default way of being for me and my white peers. It requires a lot of therapy and a lot of practice. I’ve had to find places where I can process the levels of pain and despair that feel like they might destroy me when I consider what my blood ancestors did, for example. I’ve had to build skills — and oh my goodness, I am so new at this! — to be able to stay present in my body when I face how much I’ve benefitted from systems and structures that have brutalized and continue to brutalize people.

As I mentioned above, words fail when I try to talk about the injustice of these systems that keep me and my white peers from being fully human and literally threaten the lives of Black people every day. It seems like no matter how much I try to write about these things, I can never capture all of the complexities. I can never do it justice. But I still do write about it, some. I write about it (imperfectly) because it has been my experience that we white people need to get out into the open the things we hide even from ourselves. I write about it so other white people might look at themselves, too. Rev. angel talks about having closets full of crap (I’m very very loosely quoting here) that we’re trying so hard to keep hidden and it takes so much energy to keep it hidden, we’re never fully able to be present. I think of it as what prevents us white people from being fully human.

In addition to therapy, addressing my own specific experiences of trauma, learning to stay in my body, finding space and communities where healing is possible, I also depend deeply on my spiritual life to break free from whiteness. Just like alcohol, that the book Alcoholics Anonymous refers to as “cunning, baffling, and powerful,” whiteness is slippery and tricky and whispers to me all the reasons I don’t need to be on this transformational path. I’m someone who spends quite a bit of energy on this practice and just the other day I was a seriously racist jackass to a dear friend. If I’m ever going to be able to play a part in movements of solidarity, I need to get my own stuff in order. (I made amends to my friend as a part of a much broader conversation.) And also, I can’t wait until I’m “done” before I work against the existing systems of oppression, because, the fact is the more I learn, the more I know I don’t know. I’ll never be “done.” I need a spiritual connection to a higher power to keep me in the truth: my humanity depends on breaking free from whiteness even if so many strong forces around me are crying out for me to stay in the numbness.

The process of dropping the weapons of whiteness leaves me vulnerable in ways that are absolutely terrifying. I have to trust and rely on god as well as the grounding/embodiment practices I’ve picked up along the way. The identity shifting that’s been happening over the last decade or so has taught me that life outside of white supremacy culture is deeper and more joyful (and painful!) than anything I’ve known before. It opens of channels of imagination (and I feel whiteness trying to shut it down!) that I believe are part of the keys to a better world for all of us, together.

 

* I’ve worked with an extraordinarily gifted consultant as part of this growth, and I’m currently reading (very slowly) Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto and Braiding Sweetgrass.

Only July 1st in 1996 I celebrated the fact that I wasn’t an alcoholic by drinking many, many vodka lemonades with a stranger in a Minneapolis bar. My reasoning made sense at the time: I hadn’t had any alcohol for three months, so, surely, I must not be an alcoholic.

What I didn’t understand then is that how much, how often, when, or what I drink (or how long I don’t drink) doesn’t tell me much about my alcoholism. Whether I’m drinking or not, I’m allergic to alcohol. When I drink it, I experience almost immediately a physical craving for more. I simply don’t have the ability to moderate my drinking once I’ve started. We all know what drinking too much alcohol can lead to, ranging from a messy personal life to death of oneself or others. So, you’d think that stopping drinking would be the solution, right?

Well, in addition to the physical allergy, I also have a quirky brain that doesn’t let me remember I’m allergic. The book called Alcoholics Anonymous (also known as “the Big Book”) describes this as a “mental blank spot,” or a “peculiar mental twist.” No amount of will power will keep this truth — that I’m allergic to alcohol — in my brain. The “Big Book” even describes this as a kind of insanity, and I don’t use that word lightly. It’s baffling.

It turns out I needed to find a spiritual solution; the power I need to keep the truth in my brain — that I can’t drink safely — has to come from what I now call god. Other people call it spirit, a higher power, universal wisdom, or an infinite number of other terms. Through a 12 step program, I found a way to tap into that power with a focus on recovering from alcoholism, and it worked.

Each year in this last week of June and first week of July, I have faint memories of what it was like back then. The memories are fuzzy. What I remember most is how terrified I was, and how terrified I was that someone would find out I was so terrified. What people thought of me mattered a lot. And I suppose that’s probably true for most 20-somethings, but it was especially true for me. I felt like everyone else had been given an instruction book for life that I somehow missed out on.

Not drinking was only the beginning of my life getting better, but it was an important part of that beginning. After I stopped drinking, I found a way to live a life that is “happy, joyous, and free.” To keep that gift in my life, I need to continue expanding my spiritual life. And, let me tell you, addressing my own racism and the truth about white supremacy/racialized capitalism has been requiring deep spiritual growth. It’s only because I recovered from alcoholism that I’ve been able to begin facing my addiction to whiteness. In this part of my life’s journey, I’ve only just begun. Recovery through the 12 steps and the tools I learned in the fellowship of recovering people allow me to find courage and faith to stay on this path. And for that, I am so, so grateful.