James Baldwin* said this, I’m told:
“If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”
I can’t find the source of this quote, but it is widely attributed to him, and as I see no one protesting that these are not his words, I’m gonna go with it.
Which leads me to the main purpose of this post: to introduce you to a new project I’ll be undertaking with a few friends, a journey to read the book “Waking Up White: and Finding Myself in the Story of Race,” by Debby Irving.
I’ve not read this before, so the plan is for each of us to read the book, one or two chapters a week, then blog about it—and cross-post or cross-link as needed. We want to generate discussion among our selves, being separated by distance and career obligations, but interested in this topic for our own reasons. The book is 45 chapters long, I’m told, but the chapters are short, and they conclude with “Study Questions” that we’ll each answer in our own way.
Now, I don’t to presume that any others have the same interests as I do. I’m not going to read into their energy or their investigations—they may or not tell us, and (listen carefully) that is perfectly fine. We should all do only what we’re willing to do in most things where we have choices. The choice to read this book and think through the questions is for each of us to do in our own ways. Our interests differ, and that is entirely good and right.
My interests are open: I want to see racial conciliation in America. I’ve thought a lot about the why: Why do I have this interest? Why do I want this as a goal? Why does this grab my attention and lead me to seek answers? Why does this impel me to seek restoration and justice, to look for healing and redemption, to oppose and even overthrow instances of individualized and systemic racism in America?
There are a few reasons.
One is that, in my heart or soul or whatever it is you want to call what makes us individual humans conscious and self-acting, I want to see justice. I want to see that the right things are done. I want every one of my fellow humans to have extraordinarily rich, fulfilling, free, creative, adaptive, adventurous lives. This is for all my family of humanity, whether they are like me or far different from me. To be alive is the greatest adventure, and racism is something that destroys our humanity and our access to the wider human family. It is good and right and true to do this, and my soul and heart call me to it.
Another is because of the extraordinary people I meet and become friends with, who are exceedingly kind and funny and angry and smart and loving and creative and goofy and insightful and hurried and lonely and disconnected and … well, my friends, of whom I want everything good. I want my friends to be completely free of any suppression of their opportunities or oppressions of their persons, and as I consider that everyone can become my friend when I meet them (online or IRL), I extend that idea of “wanting the best of my friends” to everyone in my human family. I love my friends, love their quirks and quibbles, their strengths and their breaking points, love their quiddities and oddities, love the individuality of their personalities, love that they morph like chameleons depending up on whether they’re inside or outside the circle of trust, love that they all have their surface appearance that they think they present as 100% real and that they have the “real” real that they always, always reveal by how they act and what they say, even what they are saying about.
And another is, frankly, because for far too long I have both actively and passively participated in the literal oppression and subjugation of others who are not of my immediate tribe. I can provide you with the list of reasons I use to exculpate myself, but none of that matters, not at all. What matters is what I did and what I spread, and I was wrong to do so, and my actions were destructive. In my view, one sign of becoming an adult in this world is to own up to our actions and, as far as possible, make amends and bring restoration. We can’t unring the bell or unsqueeze the toothpaste. But we can acknowledge, and grieve, and mourn. We can repent, and then we can plant the seeds for a new harvest.
So I’m on the journey to see what happens. Hope you stick around to see what happens. I have no idea how this 45-step journey ends.
* And one more thing I want to mention because I think it’s interesting in a meta sort of way: notice how I was able to confidently use a quote that I cannot reliably source as being from the person I claim said or wrote it? I did so deliberately because it is one of the ways in which “whiteness” is expressed: we can colonize everything and make its meaning be what we want. I imagine that not one person in 1000 reading that quote would look to see if I quoted James Baldwin correctly. It is enough that a white guy says it, and we believe it. Let’s hope that this journey is full, complete, and honest as we discover more about ourselves and our predicament, and that we leave behind the automatic assumption that we, as white people, can always be the final arbiters of meaning and value.
To follow along with the others, see also:
Di Brown “Nixie” at https://dianabrown.net/blog-challenge-waking-up-white/
Dawn Claflin at https://dawnclaflin.wordpress.com/
My daughter Kari Carlson encourages me to take this challenge.
I have a copy of the book “Waking Up White” at our home on the Noth Shore of Lake Superior. Today the windchill is -70, very white outside with more than four feet of snow on the ground. We will go there in two weeks.
We started life at St. Luke’s Hospital in St. Paul. So did Kari.
My wife and I have an apartment in Woodbury, MN, east of St. Paul, where the air is white with freezing fog. Denise is finishing six months of therapy after surgery for a large brain tumor on July 23. Only the surgeons at the University of Minnesota could do it. She was cleared to drive lasst week. She could not eat, drink, or speak after 2 1/2 months in three hospitals, until the end of October. Recovery has been remarkable since.
We flew to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where Kari met us at GRR (Gerald R Ford Regional Airport). The drive to her new home in Battle Creek was a refresher on sundown and sunset cities. My wife and I saw it in the 1950’s and 60’s in St. Paul, but learned what it meant much later.
My parents grew up in rural Amery, Wisconsin. KKK was active. At age 6, I walked past storefronts with signs that read, No colored, no Jews, no Indians, no Catholics. Of course, I had no idea that cousins and uncles were involved in white suprmacy. My grandparents welcomed everyone into their homes.
My color blindness continued in Montgomery, Alabama, where I went for Air Force bootcamp at Gunter Air Force Base, July 1966. From the train depot I rode to the base on the same bus Rosa Parks rode. Downtown Montgomery was a ghost town. Nobody walking the streets. I had no idea what was happening in Selma, even though many of my classmates at Macalester College were freedom riders
My wife and I became Baha’is in 1973. In the St. Paul Baha’i community we learned that there were no Greenbook hotels when the first Baha’is arrived in 1909. Wealthy supporters on Summit Avenue hosted blacks in their mansions. The first Baha’is in Duluth in 1918 likewise hosted blacks and Indians in their homes. Lynching was still happening in Duluth.
I have four classmates taking a Baha’i Wilmette Institute Course, “Preparing For Interfaith Dialogue”. Several more friends meet weekly, “Elevating conversation.” On future blog posts, I want to share some of the quotes from recent documents on how to take effective action on racism, social action, and social justice. In brief, the next three years require strong action, and not the demoralizing anxiety many of us suffer.
Wow, I would really like to learn more of your journey.
When I was hosting some public classes in my own church w/r/t whiteness and tackling racial issues, the kindest people there were the Baha’is. They asked the best questions and were the most honest in their answers and responses. There is something about choosing a way (or being chosen for it, I guess!) that can help us be comfortable with just saying our truths.
Welcome to the journey here & I hope we continue this conversation!
My copy of “Waking Up White” arrived on Saturday, Feb 2 from Amazon. Despite two day delivery offered, no postal deliveries happened in the Twin Cities for four days due to extreme cold (-50 windchill).
Jumping ahead to race and class, my father left the family farm north of Amery, WI, after 9th grade. He worked with uncles painting barns, and learned to do autobody painting and repair in Winona, MN. That level of poverty was true of our family home in St. Paul. My mother had a teaching degree, but did not work outside the home until my sister and I could care for ourselves in junior high. Even when my dad had enough wealth to buy his own service garage in the Selby-Dale neighborhood, and later move the business to Snelling Avenue, when he sold the business, he said my mother had no idea they had accumulated over $500,00 wealth.
They did not move out of my childhood home until 1999, when my dad suffered a stroke, and mom was dying of cancer. My dad died May, my mother June 2, 1999.
My mother always felt inferior to her neighbors. As her health declined, she suffered extreme anxiety, agoraphobia.
Consider that level of poverty. My junior highschool 8th grade social studies teacher was a Minnesota State legislator. He was begging for union scale annual wages higher than $4500. Our household income was less than that.
My 9th grade social studies teacher was one of the first Black teachers in the St. Paul Schools. He went on to leadership in school administration.
My parents made college education possible for my sister and me. We both enrolled at Macalester College in St. Paul. With a grant-in-aide my tuitionwass $1100 per semester. Now annual tuition is nearly $50,000, but programs still make graduation possible for under-served students worldwide.
My wife, our daughters, and our son-in-law all are upper middle class.
That’s some amazing events, David
I mentioned the Selby-Dale neighborhood in St. Paul. My dad’s service garage was four blocks north of the wealthiest colonizers (1850’s onward) on Summit Avenue. In 1936, he was storing their cars over night in the garage. Chauffers arrived early.
The Black neighborhood, still called Rondo, was six blocks north. My dad went to a black barbershop on Selby Avenue. Selby Avenue was on fire in the long hot summer.
Rondo did not exist after I-94 displaced that entire population. It was a white supremacist city and state government. Organized crime took care of dissent. Displaced Black and American Indian neighborhoods was a bigger scandal in Minneapolis politics (where I-94 and I-35W merge).
stephen, i almost skipped this post for the sake of time as i’m so many weeks behind. I’M SO GLAD I DIDN’T. you brought me to tears. i love who and what you love and want what you want and, since i’ve chosen to travel this road, i’m so thankful to be on it with you.
What do we do when we’re confronted by things we don’t want to see?
In the end, if we’re lucky and time has not ended, we sigh and we work with those things, after we’ve tried everything else. This is me, with my cracked personality and my warped sensibilities and my broken loves. I did not intend to become this. My dream as a child was as of the child on the cover of this book: innocent, happy, trusting, loving, and someone who was loved.
I’m no longer that child, not after decades of life. I learned my survival skills, and had I not had some significant life shocks, I would not be on a different path.
But I am on that different path now.
One question I’ve had taped to the door for a long time is “Would the child you were be proud of the adult you’ve become?”
For years I avoided an honest answer. “Look at all the things I do. It is enough.”
But I think now that child might at least nod their head and say “you’re doing well.”
Glad we’re on this journey together. Often a clear life is not much more than taking that next step.
The child I was and the adult I am are proud of who you are. ❤️ Kindness, honesty, humility go a long way in my book. In every book, really.