Ever wonder why it is that even when good people want to fix things, nothing really gets fixed but a lot of talk passes by? I grew up in the fabulous 50s and 60s, and I remember the talk on how we were well on on way to fixing racism. “Just a little while longer,” I heard, “and we’ll get this discrimination eliminated. Just a few years more and all God’s children will be playing together.”
Spoiler: It didn’t happen that way.
The effort needed to make change happen is much, much great than the effort needed to think about making change happen. We can wish all we want. We can feel anger and frustration all we want. But until we effect change, things are not changed.
“Something’s really wrong here. I don’t get it, and it hurts my brain trying to figure out something I just can’t get.”
One of the signs in my own life that something was wrong was the vague discomfort I felt at the situation of my life back in my mid 50s. I tell a bit more about this on my Medium post (“My Journey into Blackness—and the Unravelling of My Whiteness”), but the gist of it is that I was fortunate enough in life to be successful and yet to find that I was not happy with success. Trying to figure it out meant that I was shining the walls of the box I was in. It took a tremendous jolt to my comfort for me to start the journey more focused to understand myself and my situation, and I will state right now that even after ten years of diligent work, I am perplexed and disappointed daily by my inability to understand or to “get” stuff that it just accepted and lived by the people I’m trying to learn from. (I say this in order to make it plain that the journey is not for the purpose of success, but for change and growth. “Success” doesn’t fit in here.) I still grieve over my stupidity and my lack of empathy—always way after the fact—and I struggle to figure out why I just don’t understand the words people tell me.
“Where was the variety I sought?”
In the book, Ms. Irving is analyzing her own choices as compared to her own desires. She wants more diversity in her life, and yet her choices and her environment and her life as a white person keep her from that variety. I see it, dimly, the same way in my own life, that I can say I want diversity and a wider circle of friends and more places of social interaction and friendships—but I keep defaulting to my white friends and white circles. I have to choose to get out of my comfort zone—which is probably great—but it means that my default, unless I am eternally vigilant, is to return to my place of safety: my very white world. My lips might say I want diversity, but my hands and feet say I want sameness.
“How could I be scary to anyone?”
This was a shock to me, and still is, when I do something I think is perfectly normal for anyone, but then my friends fill me in on how utterly white and dangerous it is to them. I won’t go into details, but I do stupid, naïve things and then, if I’m lucky, I get pushback and a terse statement. How could anyone find fault with my actions? is my default response. I have to work hard to listen and accept the rebuke for my literal thoughtlessness. I hope I’m learning to be wiser and more understanding so that I am not exploring the limits by trying new, stupid stuff daily that can hurt my friends.
“Not yet in touch with the fact that I harbored my own subconscious feelings of discomfort and avoidance, I could only focus on the shocking notion that a person of color could find me, or white people in general, ‘scary’ or ‘freaky.’”
This is such an excellent insight, because it brings up something that I think I hide: I have my own discomforts and avoidance, and I don’t deal with them. I am uncomfortable and my mind races to give me an excuse. I don’t know how much to share—this is public—because I do not want to further hurt people. But I know what I’ve said and done in the moment to convince myself that I was being “kind” and “careful” to others. And yeah, it leads to “people of color,” to quote Ms. Irving, who are then scared or freaked out by me.
“Little did I know that my lack of self-awareness fueled the Zap factor, making any hope of building close relationships across racial lines a pipe dream.”
I laughed, ruefully. I mean well, but my friends have much better choices in life than just me, and they do yeoman’s work in putting up with me. I will say with 100% certainty that I have never built a trans-racial friendship on my own—it has always been initiated by someone who is black, brown, indigenous, or otherwise a person of color. My efforts always fall flat. I don’t want to make much of this, but it is a very big deal that I can’t comprehend.
“I felt more certain than ever that sticking to our own was a setup for more of the same. Yet my desire to connect and my ability to do so were still years from meeting up.”
This is the heart of the question. To stay where I am is to admit that change is impossible. But I lack not just the tools, not just the insights, but the desires to do the hard work of digging in, uncovering my core racist attitudes, and then doing whatever it takes to kill the racism that so fully has committed itself to me.
Questions
Have you tried to form relationships across racial lines?
Yes, some.
How have they worked out?
To be honest, a lot have worked out, but always because the person or group reached out to me as a likely candidate for relationship.
If they didn’t get very far, how did you explain that to yourself?
“I guess I’m not likeable.”
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: https://dianabrown.net/waking-up-white-chapter-22/
Dawn Claflin at https://dawnclaflin.wordpress.com/
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