Learning to listen and speak across differences
Before I start into this chapter, I wanted to update this series on something that is related to this journey. I took part in some conversations this week, and one of them highlighted something that I may have heard before, but it resonated this time: We are not trying to be good white people, but safe white people. There’s a lot to unpack here for me, but I can say that part of my struggle is attempting to deal with what I think and feel, which then becomes what I do and say. I struggle with all the nonsense that it in me, hidden or overt, and feeling like a complete failure when I say or do something that goes against my principles and my commitments.
But if the goal is to be safe, then while it’s good to work on being good, it’s not the critical thing. It means I can work on my internal stuff on my own time, and just manage my external stuff so that I am behaving like I want to behave. It’s the mantra of recovery: fake it ’til you make it. Not a bad thing; not an encouragement to hypocrisy (at least, not to me, because I am working on the internal stuff); instead, it is a simpler, less stressful way to behave and speak as much as possible like I intend to behave and speak.
I’m still working on what I think and feel. That’s where the deep work is. But I’m going to be less convulsed by finding out yet another area in my life that was hidden from my view, and I’m going to be more loving to myself to believe that I’m on the way.
So let’s dig in to this chapter now…
The comfortable, polite world of my youth not only made me fearful about saying something wrong but left me empty-handed in terms of having the skills to navigate an upset should one occur.
Interesting how this fits in with my opening paragraphs. We don’t have tools to talk about difficult things, but maybe more importantly, we don’t know how to honestly want to talk about difficult things. We leave the difficult conversations behind—and the people whom we’d have them with—for the sake of comity or politeness. I do have places to talk about some things, and in some contexts I even have space to talk about important things—but for the vast majority of my life truth lives in a desert.
The hope was to better understand how the school’s culture might be alienating people by sending the signal that unpleasant subjects are taboo.
This is a good exercise for us to use in other places as well—I think this would be an excellent methodology to use in the business setting, for example. I’m sure like everything it can be misused. But let’s talk about the hard things in our lives, when they matter.
A friend of mine who also attended the workshop, and who is Black, chuckled, shook his head, and said something like, “It’s kind of shocking for me to hear you say you don’t talk about this kind of stuff. This feels like normal to me. In my family, and with my friends, and in my church, we talk about this stuff all the time. This is everyday conversation.” Then he shook his head again and asked, “What do you talk about?” “The weather,” a white man said sheepishly. Nervous laughter filled the room.
Just wow on this. Sometimes I posit ideas on why it is that white people can’t seem to have hard discussions without hard work leading up to it. (Pace Kendi, I’m juggling several ideas here, so for now let’s hold off on the instructions of How to Be an Antiracist for another blog series!) What I see is hard truths wait to be explored in secrecy, but with my friends there is a desire to have those conversations even if they’re uncomfortable for everyone. (Including me.) This is something I’m learning, that when the questions are asked, and the answer might be combustible—that is okay and that is expected. My friends genuinely want me to speak out the truth to them. It is how to deal with the hard things. It is not an act of mercy to stay quiet about something disturbing you, and it is not healthy to ask others to stay quiet about their own stuff. YES, it is messy and there are more points of emotional conflict. YES, it can be tiring. BUT the result is a healthier emotional being. It is okay to talk and share and poke and prod. That’s what people who genuinely love themselves do when they interact with others.
As we walked back to our cars, I turned to my friend and said, “You know, there I was growing up in Winchester with all the material comforts a kid could want, and what I wanted more than anything was the kind of honest conversation and connection you and your family had in Harlem.”
I wonder how much of this is due to the lack of confidence we have in ourselves, stemming from our own shaping, that we cannot have the openness with our families that we want—we don’t know how to be vulnerable, because we’ve learned that to be vulnerable (a healthy condition, and a mark of human freedom) is to be identified with weakness (also a human condition, but one that is labeled with failure and shame).
Thinking I could control or deny negative feelings sounds ludicrous. Thinking I shouldn’t feel this way or that way is like thinking I shouldn’t be thirsty. I can’t not feel thirsty if I am. I can’t not feel angry if I am. I can do something about both, but only if I first acknowledge the sensation. If my words or behaviors are hurting someone, I want to know so I can do something about it. I much prefer a room of outwardly angry people than a room of polite, silently seething ones because I’d rather know what I’m dealing with than try to guess at it. No problem can be appropriately addressed without an honest assessment of its form, warts and all.
This is something to strive for. I’ll be honest here—yes, I do avoid this, with friends especially, because I want to avoid what I see as pain (it is painful to talk about), but if we don’t dig in, sometimes we don’t find the root and then find the healing.
Ignoring and invalidating dissatisfaction and anger is tantamount to throwing gasoline on a fire. White people must learn how to listen to the experiences of people of color for racial healing and justice to happen.
Listening is perhaps not emphasized much here on what it means. It is not just “waiting for your turn,” but really, it’s becoming a friend and a sibling, to let them know that they can connect.
We’re in this journey together, stuck here while we figure out how to get along with each other. It’s not too wild to expect us to do better so that we can be happier and live a richer, freer, more emotionally connected life.
Questions for Discussion
Make a deal with someone you trust in order to practice giving and getting honest feedback.
Set your own guidelines, such as: If I ask your opinion, you will give me an honest answer, even if you know it might hurt, or, Feel free to gently point out to me [name one of your flaws] when I do it, so that I can increase my awareness of when and where I do it. Keep in mind the words of pastor Warren Wiersbe, “Truth without love is brutality and love without truth is hypocrisy.”
I’ll admit that I haven’t done this, and I’m not sure I’m capable of this right now. But I’m willing to try. So for now I’ll put a pin in this and talk to some people who know me.
For context on this series, see my kick-off post here:
Di Brown ‘Nixie’ at https://dianabrown.net/blog-challenge-waking-up-white/
This chapter (from 26-45): https://dianabrown.net/waking-up-white-the-final-chapters/
Dawn Claflin at https://dawnclaflin.wordpress.com/
Pretty deep there, Stephen. You’re goin’ in deep.
We have to do this work, right?
We do this because we’re drawn to justice—it is our efforts that help to bend that moral arc.
You may be surprised by what you can do when you step up. 🙂 I have certainly offered you honest and uncensored feedback on occasion – usually without an explicit invitation. On each occasion, you have received that info with grace, given it consideration, and drawn from it those things that you found to be of value. On no occasion have you received it in a way that harmed our friendship.
With that in mind:
1. If you can hear that from a white person, you can hear it from a PoC who is generous enough to offer it to you.
2. You didn’t really volunteer for that. I mean, beyond foolishly befriending a loudmouthed nixie. 😉 And yet – when it came to you, you were perfectly capable of handling it.
So either you can handle it, and are underestimating yourself – in which case, this is a great time to step out of that and open yourself to better feedback than mine – or you know you can handle it from me, and only fear what you will hear from people who *really have something legit to say on the subject – in which case, it’s well *past time*. You’ll learn a whole lot more from them than you will from me, IJS… 🙂
I wonder if I am just unapproachable. I’ve worked hard on my own lack of confidence throughout the years and maybe I come across as arrogant and unhearing.
Or perhaps–this is just too awful a thought!–I’m just not all that interesting! 🙂
Also–I don’t know why, but I instantly got you, and I look forward to your honesty and frankness. You are one of the kindest and most thoughtful people I know, someone who sees other people and seeks to make them feel seen and known. Who wouldn’t respond to that positively?
lol Oh, may Darlin’ – you want a list?
But yes – you did kind of instantly “get” me and I am so grateful to be ‘seen’ and understood. As we’ve discussed, I was not properly socialized – and I don’t get the white-culture approach of “if we avoid truth long enough it will go away.” Many people consider that direct-and-truthful thing to be badly behaved. I just kinda consider it more efficient. In the end, it doesn’t really fail any worse than ‘ignoring the truth’ – and sometimes succeeds better. 😉
But back to the core – *you are perfectly able to receive and learn from feedback. I’ve seen it over and over. You can think up several examples just between the two of us. So what is it that makes you feel or fear doing the same in this far more important venue?