“For me, part of the waking-up-white process is acknowledging that I’m a recovering lemming*…I never considered that the space I was taking, or the resources I was using, might be being withheld from another to make it all possible.”
I found this chapter to be provoking and troubling, and I lead off with this twinned set of quotes. So much of my experience is similar author, not in fulfillment but in similar design. The creation of whiteness, and its enveloping me with its cocoon, led me to believe that this is just how things were as a child and even as an adult, that it was reasonable to expect others to understand this way of living and also choose to live in it. I think one of the unspoken but central ideas here is that white is no-color, that whiteness is no-culture, that whiteness as an attitude is the normal, typical, American way of thinking, disconnected from race and race-based superiority and unconcerned about the way that the government of, by, and for the people was really a mechanism to protect and exalt white people.
There was an odd and (to me) amusing moment when I applied for scholarships, and in one application I honestly mismarked my race, checking the box either immediately above or below mine. “How funny that this school is so anxious to get me to come,” I remember thinking, and then I discovered that they they I was of another race—not white, but of a traditionally disfavored class of Americans. I briefly amused myself toying with the idea of “I’ll just show up and then that will be fun to see.” Not a hint at all that were I to accept the scholarship I would be shoving aside someone else for whom the scholarship was targeted, someone who did not come from a traditionally favored class. I had not a care that I’d take the place of someone who needed such a scholarship.
In the end I didn’t take the scholarship, of course, but not due to any sense of moral outrage. Just “Nah, that doesn’t make sense.”
There was a movie released in the 80s or 90s with the plot, and I had no interest in seeing it. “Been there.”
White people simply don’t think about the consequences to their class being favored.
“Don’t discuss religion, politics, money, negative emotions, fears, resentments, vulnerabilities, or bodily functions. Do discuss weather, hopes and dreams (as long as they’re none of the above), travels, who you know, who’s doing what where, commuting routes and times, consumer products you’ve tried and do or do not like, where you go/went to school, sports, and music.”
Another great set of quotes, and one that strikes me today. I do have a circle of friends with whom I hang out with on a near-weekly basis. Typically we gather in someone’s backyard around a firepit, we share about our lives (“check in”), and we use the time just to sit with each other, sometimes in silence, sometimes speaking, more often just listening. We are just ourselves, and every so often when we realize we’re getting shallow we reset.
Gotta tell you, it is one of the things about my life right now that I most sincerely treasure, and one that I consider as the truest signs that there is a merciful God who breaks through the sinner’s heart to bring redemption. It is not something I chose to walk into nor is it something I earned my way into. Instead, these guys invited me into their lives. It is a thing late in my life, and I regret the 50 years prior where all I had was the shallow talk and the boasting and the whining. When I think about how that was satisfying to me, I grow hot with shame and anger—shame at being content with what whiteness let me skate by on, and anger that I have lived my life with so much emptiness. Ms. Irving has a deep insight here, that whiteness is walls and parapets and moats that keep us from connecting to each other. Being “white” is its own reward, and we likely will die happy that we did nothing with our lives except be white.
I discovered these men because I was broken so much so that I called out for help, and they answered, and they’ve been with me every single day for the last 10 years. It is what I offer now to people I meet & with whom I find an affinity: that we can talk, and connect, and see our real faces, and just love each other. I don’t want the old stuff anymore. I want what I get when I abandon whiteness: I want connection, not position and not a role to play.
“They would explore with me the similarities and differences between the way my ancestors risked their lives to free themselves from English rule and the way black Americans and their white allies were now risking their lives to free themselves from segregation.”
This also struck me because I just never even thought of this until I read this book. Indeed, our brothers and sisters who lay claim to the rights and guarantees of the Constitution are doing what our white forebears did in grappling with their own sense of Nature and Nature’s God: that people had inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—and by God they were going to fight for it.
Whiteness is a placed of settled accomplishment, and when we sit in our isolation and see how desperate BBIPOC† people are to gain their own place, we are the ones offended—we, the children of the Patriots.
I’m still processing this.
* Yes, I know lemmings are not as popularly described. Just go with the symbolism!
† BBIPOC – Black, Brown, Indigenous, & People of Color
Questions
How connected to or disconnected from the larger world was your family, your school, your town?
We lived on our street of about 10 or 12 houses where we all knew each other. The street was U-shaped, and we were on one arm of the “U.” We barely went to the middle of the “U,” and almost never to the other arm. The entire street, both sides, along all three parts of the “U,” had 30 houses. I was not aware of the larger neighborhood, let alone the city I lived in—I know I walked to school down at least two fairly busy main streets, and even walked or biked to one of the major malls of the area—but I can’t tell you much beyond some memories of undeveloped land and a few places where we did some awesomely anarchic things & never really told any adults about—again, a very white childhood where we never thought even once that we might get in significant trouble for rule-bending and actual law-breaking. The world was safe to us, because we were white, trusting kids. My school was almost entire white, with enough people in the 50s who were refugees from Europe (similar to my mom) that I can remember their white ethnicities—but they were white, and considered “one of us.” My town, as far as I can remember, was mostly white. Wikipedia tells me that today there is a significant percentage of people of Japanese descent, but I don’t remember ever interacting with them in the 50s. The town was booming suburb of Los Angeles with all the signs of suburban wealth—malls and shopping centers, and good schools and good architecture for community and business projects.
How much did you understand about conflict and struggle in your world or beyond?
I can’t recall much of anything that reached me from outside my town except from what I puzzled out from the newspapers I read as a child and the B&W TV that I watched. (I was an early reader and was reading the paper before I was in kindergarten.) I can’t remember of how I synthesized a meaning over what I read, and I do remember the scenes of the early civil rights struggles, with so many voices with different opinions. But I didn’t get what it mean. I remember seeing the short clips of black Americans in the South being attacked by dogs and abused with firehoses—but I didn’t comprehend what it meant. We had moved to another suburb, about 20 miles away, by the time Watts burned in 1965, which I watched on TV. And I remember the headlines the day after King was assassinated and there were riots—I did not understand the meaning of King back then. (Not saying I do now, but I understand more than I did before.) My world was safe from racial conflicts and political conflicts over the place of the United States in world events—the early stages of the Viet-Nam conflict were still slowly forming a cohesive set of American actions, but it felt more like isolated, but endless, conflicts and battles.
One thing I do remember is the the Cuban Missile Crisis. We lived cheek by jowl next to a Nike base defending Los Angeles from Russian attack, and the days of the attack were filled with anxious parents. I have a somewhat hazy memory of parents arriving at school, panicked, to pick up their kids, but I look back now and think “if that base were attacked by Russia, our house would be in the first 100 yards of the fireball.” When we moved to another suburb, we ended up living across the street from the Naval Ordnance station where the government stored materials for bombing—including, it was rumored, bombs for nuclear war. Maybe the land was cheaper or something.
How did you make sense of people who had material wealth and people who didn’t?
I don’t recall knowing anyone who was significantly more wealthy or poor than us. There were some people on our street who lived more or less the same as we did, but we were already sorted by income and class by dint of being in a 50s suburb.
What was your family’s attitude about the people in power?
It was more about political parties. My father was a moderately liberal Republican or somewhat conservative Democrat at the time, and there was lively conversations when his dad, a staunchly conservative Republican, would visit. The election of 64, with Johnson and Goldwater, was greatly contended, but I hazily remember a discussion between my dad and mom that if they didn’t talk about Goldwater then maybe they could have some peace when he visited. (This is all through my memory, and my thoughts may be entire imagined about this. But I do remember something about an agreement to avoid this topic. Maybe it was later, when I was older, and my dad retold the story.)
- For context on this series, see my kick-off post here:
To follow along with the others, see also:
Di Brown “Nixie” at https://dianabrown.net/blog-challenge-waking-up-white/
This chapter: http://dianabrown.net/chapter-5-within-the-walls/
Dawn Claflin at https://dawnclaflin.wordpress.com/
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